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Thursday, July 31, 2003

New Island Chronicles dispatch -- House Hunting

Our latest dispatch is now up on the LA WEEKLY web site. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:23:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Teens say: Interweb kicks TV's ass

Teens and young adults ages 13 to 24 now spend more time per week on the web (16.7 hours) than they do watching TV (13.6 hours), according to a new Harris Interactive and Teenage Research Unlimited poll. Web numbers don't include e-mail, which makes the numbers even more impressive. link, Discuss (via Lost Remote)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:46:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese Psychiatric Art

Surreal, retrofabulous Japanese graphic art for psychiatric drugs and psych reference manuals. Includes naked children on Rivotril holding daisy-covered umbrellas. So strange. Link. Also check out the American counterpart here. Discuss (via Geisha)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:35:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free, Fun Fast Food Fonts

Fonts that mimic corporate fast food brands (Coke, McDonalds, Burger King, etc.) Link, Discuss (via Geisha)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:31:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Online boycott tools: is that album RIAA-affiliated?

Frank points us to RIAA Radar: "Search to see if the album you want to buy is RIAA affiliated. Works pretty good, too." Query by artists, albums, record labels, etc. Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:49:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Linksys using GPLed code, not releasing modifications

Rob "WiFi high-wire" Flickenger and his band of wily WiFi sreenigne (that's reverse-engineers to you) have discovered that Linksys is using GPL'ed code in its firmware without releasing its modifications -- a major no-no.

One early problem was that of the format of their firmware updates. While the code contained within might be released under the GPL, Linksys is under no obligation to release the details of this file format. And yes, I asked them directly, but to date have gotten no reply.

No matter, with the help of many interested people around the globe, we have been able to decipher the (relatively simple) firmware file format, and even make a little utility that will generate a valid firmware for you. (Note that it's really easy to kill your AP with "bad" firmware, but that's another story altogether...)

Now that we are able to execute arbitrary commands on the WRT54G, it is obvious that Linksys is running modified software covered by the GPL. One perfect example of this is Zebra, the advanced dynamic routing software package. By opening the firmware file directly, as well as by making queries through the makeshift ping interface mentioned earlier, we noticed that the zebra running on the WRT54G doesn't use the standard configuration file locations. This means that it must certainly be a modified binary.

Update: Rob sez, "I might have spoken too soon. I have been gently reminded that it is possible (in fact, trivial) to change config file locations without modifying the source. It also turns out that they are releasing some changes, but there is still some question about kernel modifications. I've posted an update on my original blog." Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:33:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New tech tools for discriminatory pricing

This BusinessWeek article explores how technology will make it easier for companies to "customize" pricing for goods and services:

Why do corporations want your personal data? The simple answer, according to Andrew Odlyzko, the director of the University of Minnesota's Digital Technology Center, is that such information is the key to a holy grail of capitalism: discriminatory pricing. Economic theory posits that price discrimination -- where companies charge individuals based on their ability to pay and their value as a customer -- is desirable since it makes trade more efficient. Yet it rankles consumers, who perceive differential pricing as unfair. The fact that business travelers, whose corporations can arguably afford it, pay more for airline seats than a vacationer has made air travel more popular and routine. At the same time, the price discrimination that charges two people different prices for the same class of service infuriates those who pay more.

In a paper to be presented at the Fifth Annual Conference on E-Commerce this fall, Odlyzko, a Bell Labs researcher for 26 years, doesn't argue for or against discriminatory pricing. He focuses on how technology can bring it to new levels of sophistication and prevalence.

Link to Odlyzko's paper, Link to BW story, Discuss, (Thanks, ESC)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:16:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BB readers' discount for Stanford Singularity con

Boing Boing readers can attend the Accelerating Change Conference at Stanford this September 12-14 at a five percent discount:

Special early bird extension: Save $100 (25%) on conference admission until August 4th, for Accelerating Change Conference 2003, Stanford University, September 12-14. PLUS: BoingBoing readers will receive an additional 5% discount by using the discount code "ACC2003-BoingBoing" (no quotations).

The Accelerating Change Conference will be a forum to explore the paradise of resources, as well as the risks and responsibilities, represented by cascading breakthroughs in computational technologies. Ray Kurzweil, K. Eric Drexler, Steve Jurvetson, Tim O'Reilly, William H. Calvin, Howard Bloom, Robert Wright, and 17 other world-class minds will present to 300 attendees.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Tyler)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:43:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Best American Science Writing 2003

Wired News reviews Best American Science Writing 2003, the latest installment in a brilliant, must-read series. This year's edition is edited by Oliver "Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat" Sacks, and promises to be fantastic.

An omnivore, yet selective, a sort of filter-feeder, I will extract intellectual nutrients from the articles as I extract nutrients from my dinner," Sacks writes in the introduction. "Every so often, however, I am arrested by an article because it contains not just new information but a highly individual point of view, a personal perspective, a voice that compels my interest, raising what would otherwise be a report or a review to the level of an essay marked by clarity, individuality, and beauty of writing..."

"Crows and their cousins in the corvid family, ravens, jays and magpies, have spent hundreds of thousands of years taking advantage of our inventions," Nijhuis writes. "They've been known to perform pitch-perfect imitations of explosions, revving motorcycles and flushing urinals."

The crow population in and around Seattle has increased tenfold over the last two decades, encouraged by a growing food supply as the area's human population has grown. University of Washington wildlife biologist John Marzluff has moved his studies to the suburbs to glean lessons from counting crows.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:41:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

40h fuel-cell laptop by 2005

NEC is promising to ship a laptop fuel-cell capable of running for 40h within two years. Link Discuss (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:34:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Whacky air-races in London this Sunday

This Sunday, in London's Hyde Park, Red Bull will host a competition to loft person-powered flying sculptures -- free admission. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:32:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ISPs strike back: Pac Bell Internet arm sues RIAA

From today's NYT:

A California-based Internet service provider jumped into the contentious music-downloading fray late Wednesday, filing a lawsuit against the recording industry and questioning the constitutionality of the industry's effort to track down online music sharers. Pacific Bell Internet Services, based in San Francisco, is seeking a declaration that the subpoenas served against it by the Recording Industry Association of America are overly broad in scope and should have been issued from a California district court, not the District of Columbia. The complaint also seeks a jury trial to have the constitutional issues addressed.

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:36:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Nicotinis: liquid butts

The Nicotini is a tobacco-infused beverage served at a trendy Miami nightclub that's had its smoking-section shut down by antismoking laws.

Call it a liquid cigarette because this drink comes complete with the nicotine rush and tobacco aftertaste found in a pack of Camels. These tobacco-spiked martinis are being served up for die-hard smokers who don't want to leave their barstools and go outside to light up.

Link Discuss (via FARK)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:01:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Marriott agrees non-free WiFi is too expensive

Tobias sez, "Marriot is going to start giving away free wireless to get people interested, as you suggested earlier it makes more sense than forcing stupid pay schemes and scratch off cards that drive everyone nuts."

Marriott International Inc. (NYSE:MAR - news) will roll out free high-speed Internet access at a number of midrange hotels in the next year and a half, but guests at many top hotels will still have to pay, the company said on Tuesday.

Hrm -- I love this dynamic about hotels: the cheaper the hotel, the less likely it is that they'll screw you on telecommunications. Link Discuss (Thanks, Tobias!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:56:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nailed by the RIAA? Blog it!

My friend Raffi Krikorian is setting up a group-blog for running accounts of people hwo've been subpoenaed by the RIAA:

how did you find out you were on the list? did your isp turn you over or did your school protect you? what are you planning on doing now? talk about it all and let people know what is happening. help others that are finding themselves in a similar jam, and let the rest of us know the effects of what's going on.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:21:04 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bedwetting cure?

A researcher in Australia claims that he can cure most childhood bedwetting with simple therapy that improves nighttime respiration.

Mahony says that of the kids referred to him at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney because of bed-wetting problems, eight out of 10 have a narrow palate. In these cases, orthodontic devices similar to a brace can be used to widen the palate.

A Swedish study found that seven out of 10 children who had all failed to respond to other treatments for bed-wetting improved within one month of using such a device, with four completely stopping wetting their beds. Another small British study found bed-wetting stopped in 10 out of 10 children given these devices.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:19:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disposable digicams

Chalk one up for cheap art and ubiquitous insta-media. From this week's edition of Michael Tchong's Trendsetter newsletter:

This year, digital cameras (digicams) will outsell conventional cameras, 12.8 million to 12.1 million, excluding disposable, one-time-use cameras. That’s a big exclusion because sales of disposable cameras will reach 214 million this year, up from 198 million in 2002. This week marks the introduction of the first disposable, two-megapixel digicam by San Francisco-based Pure Digital Technologies, which will be sold under the Dakota Digital brand through Ritz Camera for $11. While the Dakota sacrifices an LCD screen, which research says is the No. 1 reason people buy digicams, it’s clear that the fate of film is written on the wall. Kodak announced this week it would slash 6,000 jobs this year due to slow film sales.

Image Link to large product shot, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:01:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

P2P politics: Travis Kalanick of Scour, Redswoosh runs for CA governor

Travis Kalanick, co-founder of now-defunct P2P network Scour.net and CEO of redswoosh.com, wants to become the next governor of California -- running on what could be described as the "P2P" or "youth media" platform.

Sources close to the project say 26-year-old Kalanick plans to raise campaign funds online, and campaign compadres will include Angelo Sotira of Deviantart.com and File Front. The gubernatorial hopeful filed initial papers in Norwalk, CA Tuesday at the county clerk's office, and will be listed as an Independent. To get on the ballot and formally become a candidate, Kalanick now needs at least 65 legitimate signatures from voters also registered as Independent, plus $3500. Platform positions have yet to be announced, but reportedly may involve P2P filesharing freedom, education, and taxation the economy.

Travis Kalanick for Governor Homepage, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:16:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Qu'est-ce que un BLOG?

BoingBoing pal Jean-Luc in Paris has assembled an online dictionary of 502 French terms relating to the francophone blogosphere. Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:50:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

ABIT's Fritz-chip keeps the RIAA off your hard-drive

ABIT's new motherboard includes hardware crypto support -- presumably as part of participation in Trusted Computing/Palladium? -- (thanks, Wes!) and they're touting its benefits as a tool for keeping the RIAA out of your hard-drive.

For MAX3, the ABIT Engineers listened to users who were asking for information security. SecureIDE connects to your IDE hard disk and has a special decoder; without a special key, your hard disk cannot be opened by anyone. Thus hackers and would be information thieves cannot access your hard disk, even if they remove it from your PC. Protect your privacy and keep anyone from snooping into your information. Lock down your hard disk, not with a password, but with encryption. A password can be cracked by software in a few hours. ABIT's SecureIDE will keep government supercomputers busy for weeks and will keep the RIAA away from your Kazaa files.

Link Discuss (via Inquirer UK)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:49:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Onion infographic tackles RIAA lawsuits

This week's Onion infographic asks the musical question, "How are music fans responding to the RIAA lawsuits." Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:40:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Briefing the court on Fuck

On the Smoking Gun, a legal petition to dismiss charges against a student who called his Vice Principal a "fucking fag" on the grounds that neither word is that bad, with elaborate etymological research in support of the position. Link Discuss (via K5)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:36:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Self-modifying hardware via distributed genetic algorithms

Sexy new distcomp project aims to evolve self-correcting hardware designs using genetic algorithms. Welcome to the non-human-readable future! We should build GAs into every compiler, just to optimize code in a way that makes it really futuristic.

Host an island with a population of circuits struggling for survival in a hostile online world. During your PCs idle time individuals from this population will evolve through a process of survival of the meekest into circuits with Built-In Self-Test (BIST) and will compete with those hosted on other PCs by migrating to and from them. These circuits will not obey conventional design rules since evolution finds efficient solutions no matter how complex to understand they are - just like it did with our own bodies and brains. You can join into this cluster in one minute by installing the client found at here. Check up on how your population is doing compared to others here and name your best creations if they enter the "better than human" hall of fame.

Self-Diagnosing Hardware is capable of detecting deviations from its normal behaviour due to faults. Self-Diagnosis is important especially in mission critical systems exposed to radiation. Built-In Self-Test (BIST) is widely used yet commonly requires more than 100% overhead or off-line testing. However the latter is unsuitable in mission critical systems such as a nuclear power station controller where we must diagnose failure immediately. In the last 40 years of BIST research, spawned by the NASA aerospace program, conventional design has not come up with a significant improvement to the voting system as an on-line BIST solution. A voting system with two copies of the module being diagnosed is capable of detecting faults by comparing the outputs of the copies. This requires 100% redundancy for the extra module plus more logic for the voter.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Miguel!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:33:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SF vacancies according to Craigslist

The folks at Craigslist produce a chart showing the trends in apartment listings in the Bay Area. That's a nice, healthy curve right there -- especially from a tenant's point of view. Link Discuss (via evHead)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:30:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Illegal Art interview videos now online

Lisa Rein is making a film about the Illegal Art Exhibit that just finished up here in San Francisco this month. She's started posting footage from this work in progress by bits and pieces:

"To start things off, here's an interview with Laura Splan, who's a local artist here in San Francisco that just got picked up for the San Francisco leg of the show (and will be staying with the show as it moves on to Philadelphia in September.) Laura created pillows of prescription pills. She's one of the local artists that got picked up by the tour here in San Francisco and her work will be included in the exhibit Here's Laura explaining why she feels she should be able to create art however she wants to."

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:25:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIAA will take 2191.78 years to sue everyone

Silly but technically considered piece in the Inquirer (UK) today in which a reader calculates the money and time it would likely take for the RIAA to actually sue all P2P fileswappers:

She said: "I pulled out my calculator to see just how long it would take the RIAA to sue all 60 million P2P music file traders at a rate of 75 a day. 60,000,000/75 = 800,000 days to subpoena each person or 800,000 days/365 days in a year = 2191.78 years to subpoena each person". Michaela points out that it's unrealistic to suppose that the RIAA will have any money left in 2191 years, and she even wonders whether the trade association will exist then. Plus, she points out, given the rate of tech advancement, it's likely that we'll have moved on to many different types of music media in even a hundred years.

Sharman Networks (Kazaa) lobbyist Philip Corwin in DC more soberly observes, "I would venture that the RIAA strategy is based on the assumption that most of those sued will fold quickly and settle given the extraordinarily disproportionate statutory penalties that can be claimed under copyright law ($30 million for the two copyrights on each of 100 song files worth $99 retail). However, if the attorneys for the sued drag out the proceeding with motions and novel defenses (much less countersuits) the cumulative costs of prosecuting the suits could quickly drain the coffers of even a wealthy trade association."
Link, Discuss (via pho)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:16:57 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flat sinks

Justin waxes eloquent about Kohler's sexy, outre and somewhat impractical new line of plumbing fixtures:

I think of a sink and I see an indent, a depression, some concave pocket in a surface that is designed to receive water and hold it for a time. Kohler has removed the bowl from the sink - there's nowhere to catch the flow. Water simply passes out from the wall, falls against a flat surface and trickles into a surrounding moat.

The sink was round and they've proven it flat. They removed soaking from the function of this sink, but when's the last time I soaked something in a sink? Actually, they do have some facility for soaking with the Purist™ Wet Surface Lavatory (K-2313) - they sell an optional Purist Hand Basin for $160.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Justin!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:28:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tech docs hall of weird

Darren has started a site for collecting weird and goofy tech documentation warnings. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:21:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF Freedom Fest, San Francisco, August 9

EFF's first annual Freedom Fest is coming up on Saturday, August 9th, from noon to 5PM in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. This is a giant, free, outdoor concert with loads of interesting speakers and all the gratis fun you can eat.

* Box Set, the clown princes of folk rock
* Noelle Hampton, award-winning rock diva
* Austin Willacy, rock, pop and soul crooner
* Colin McGrath, singer, strummer, arranger
* Lasana Bandele, the "Storitela" from Jamaica

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:18:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Speaking at BayCHI, Palo Alto, August 12th

I'm giving a talk on civil liberties and the Web at BayCHI on August 12th, at PARC in Palo Alto. Hope to see you there!

From deep-linking (the right to give someone directions) to DRM (the right to be treated like a customer, not a criminal), civil liberties are inexorably entwined with the web. Increasingly, legal mandates are in the offing to force you to design and deploy technology that restricts what you and your users may do. Find out where these proposals are at, where they're going, and what you can do about them.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:15:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nano Cartoon

Josh "Nanotech Report" Wolfe posted a witty cartoon depicting the extraordinary popular delusions and madness of crowds at the birth of a tech bubble. Link Discuss  

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:38:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Newsweek's Stephen Levy: Capitol Hill P2P Prohibition craziness

In this week's edition of Newsweek, Stephen Levy reports on a Senate Judiciary Committee last week titled: "The dark side of a bright idea: Could personal and national-security risks compromise the potential of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks?"

By the end of the session, the only committee member in attendance, chairman Orrin Hatch-himself a songwriter who sells CDs on his personal Web site-zeroed in on what really bugged him: people sharing copyrighted songs on the Internet without paying for them. Then he ran an idea by one of the panelists: what if you had a system that could detect whether people were getting songs without paying for them and could warn those infringers that what they were doing was wrong? And then, if they didn't stop, the system would remotely "destroy " their computers.

"No one's interested in destroying people's computers, " said the panelist. "Well, I'm interested in doing that, "said the senator. "Warn them, do it again, and then destroy their machine! There's no excuse for anyone violating our copyright laws. "

Fortunately Senator Hatch hasn't yet codified his Dr. Strangelovean no-due-process piracy antidote into upcoming legislation. But in the House, Reps. Howard Berman and John Conyers have introduced a bill that encourages a different approach: jail 'em! Among other provisions, the bill lowers the bar for criminal prosecution to the sharing of a single music file and allocates $15 million to go after copyright offenders. Representative Berman says that he anticipates that prosecutors will go only after someone who, knowing the consequences, uploads massive amounts of music. But the bill says in black and white that if you share so much as a single tune with your pals on the Internet-as millions do every day-you are a felon. Penalty: up to five years in jail. (Better fill up your iPod before you go.)

Link Discuss (Thanks, Kevin)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:18:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Music legend Lester Chambers' album collection stolen -- call for help

From Lola Chambers, wife of Lester Chambers -- music legend, rock and soul pioneer, 1/2 of the Chambers Brothers ("Time Has Come Today", "People Get Ready," etc.):

I am truly heartbroken! My complete collection of my husband's (Lester Chambers of the Chambers Brothers) albums and 45's have been stolen from my home in Tarzana, California. This collection has taken me 25 years to collect and I had intended to pass them on to our two sons. Years before Ebay, I scoured record stores and swap meets to put this collection together. There were over 60 albums and over a hundred 45's stolen. Many were Chambers Brothers' Columbia albums released by Columbia under their many foreign labels and would be needed as proof of their non-payment of years of foreign royalties. These Columbia albums were released under Direction Records out of England, First Records out of Korea, etc. One of their 45's was released in Germany with an abstract orange coloring. Many of their 45's had photo sleeve coverings all in perfect condition. I had their complete recordings from their early years with Vault Records and one of their first albums recorded with Barbara Dane on the Folkways label. I would like to put the word out to all record stores (especially in Southern California), collectors, eBay shoppers, etc in order to try and recover these extremely sentimental albums. Please contact me at (360) 895-7877 or via attorney Lawrence Feldman, leflaw@leflaw.com.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:51:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SEEMEN Machine art show in SF on August 1

Kal Spelletich and SEEMEN present more "Live Audience Experiments with Machines and Robots" -- two shows at 8 and 10PM in San Fran, Friday August 1 (also robotics guru and former guestblogger Karen Marcelo's birthday! W00t!). New, audience-operated machines and robots. See SEEMEN website for details -- $10 to get in. Attendance by advance e-mail reservation. Photos, more photos, Details, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:33:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bigfoot Symposium

The International Bigfoot Symposium will be held in September in the favorite sasquatch stomping grounds of Willow Creek, California. Numerous bigfoot investigators will speak, followed by a guided excursion to Bluff Creek, the site of the famous and questionable Patterson-Gimlin film. Jane Goodall, primatologist and bigfoot believer, was supposed to give the keynote in person but will now conduct a video presentation instead. Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:04:50 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nerve: Sex in the age of phonecams

Essay by SF Chron columnist Mark Morford ponders the 21st-century booty call in Nerve: "What Now, Voyeur?":

[I]t was only a matter of time before the two worlds should merge, a convergence of the technological twain, before popular digital cam technology should penetrate the wildly ubiquitous cellphone underworld. Thus transforming, in one divine swoop, not just how we snap photos, not just how we communicate, not even how we snap photos to communicate. But rather, how we get off snapping photos to communicate how we get off. Voila: the new digital cellphone/camera hybrid, now available, yours for upwards of 100 bucks, soon to be everywhere.

You've probably seen the commercials: Girl spots best friend's boyfriend macking on some skank at a club, snaps instant five-second cellphone video clip, shoots it over to best friend at library. Friend sees clip, is briefly shocked, right until she looks up and makes eye contact with hot new guy across the room. Coy smiles ensue, slimeball boyfriend is suddenly ex-boyfriend. Voila. Relationship revolution, not a word spoken. Elapsed time: twenty seconds. Commercial #2: Myopic citizen hustles through city streets, looking down into purse, wallet, focusing on one little activity while crazy photogenic circus of life whirls around them. If only you had a cool digital cellphone camera to take it all in! implores the commercial. To instantly record this daily phantasmagoria and send to yourself and look at later on your computer and sigh wistfully at the craziness of life! Indeed.

Do you think they knew? Do you think the sly bastard marketing execs at Nokia or Ericsson or the rest realized what an erotic porn-ready firecracker gizmo they had on their hands? You're goddamn right they did.

Link, Discuss (Thanks, ESC)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:27:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Citizens' Protection in Federal Databases Act

EFF, EPIC, CDT, ACLU and Free Congress have drafted a bill that's been introduced by Senator Wyden today, for a new law called "The Citizens' Protection in Federal Databases Act." This is a hell of a law. It finds that various species of spooks are making avid use of commercial and governmental databases, merging them and aggregating them, without transparency, accountability, or any real understanding of the danger to civil liberties involved in this practice. Accordingly, it requires any Fed agency using non-Fed databases to cut it out and make a full report to Congress on who they're buying database and database-services from, what they're doing to preserve privacy, why they're doing what they're doing, and whether they actually have a realistic chance of catching any bad guys. And it calls into account Feds who abuse their authority and limits the kind of doomsday hypotheticals that can be used to justify such abuse.

We've spent the two years since September 11th writing blank checks to anyone who's got a good story about preventing terrorism through the wholesale abridgement of civil liberties, trading off freedom for the perception of safety. It's time that we called our civil servants to account on these scores -- they've spent our money and our freedom, what did we get in return?

Each report shall include -

(A) a list of all contracts, memoranda of understanding, or other agreements entered into by the department or agency, or any other national security, intelligence, or law enforcement element under the jurisdiction of the department or agency for the use of, access to, or analysis of databases that were obtained from or remain under the control of a non-Federal entity, or that contain information that was acquired initially by another department or agency of the Federal Government for purposes other than national security, intelligence, or law enforcement;

(B) the duration and dollar amount of such contracts;

(C) the types of data contained in the databases referred to in subparagraph (A);

(D) the purposes for which such databases are used, analyzed, or accessed;

(E) the extent to which such databases are used, analyzed, or accessed;

(F) the extent to which information from such databases is retained by the department or agency, or any national security, intelligence, or law enforcement element under the jurisdiction of the department or agency, including how long the information is retained and for what purpose;

(G) a thorough description, in unclassified form, of any methodologies being used or developed by the department or agency, or any intelligence or law enforcement element under the jurisdiction of the department or agency, to search, access, or analyze such databases;

(H) an assessment of the likely efficacy of such methodologies in identifying or locating criminals, terrorists, or terrorist groups, and in providing practically valuable predictive assessments of the plans, intentions, or capabilities of criminals, terrorists, or terrorist groups;

40k PDF Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:34:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

A week without Interweb is worse than divorce

A survey has concluded that techies are more traumatized by being cut off from the net than by getting divorced or moving house.

And when something goes wrong with e-mail for a week, the experience can be more traumatic that moving home, getting married or divorce, at least for a third of those taking part in the survey.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:22:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi versus wildfire

An experimental WiFi network provided a critical role in coordinating response to a king-hell brush-fire in California.

After lightning touched off the Coyote Fire July 16, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) deployed more than 1,700 firefighters, 10 helicopters and several bulldozers to battle the blaze. To provide Internet communications for the CDF operations camp, researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and San Diego State University deployed a high-speed wireless link to the remote site in northeastern San Diego County within hours of a request for help.

"The dissemination of information and incident intelligence up and down the command-and-control chain of command is more important than ever," said Jim Garrett, CDF Emergency Command Center chief. "The connectivity provided to CDF for the Coyote Fire was a real-life exercise that clearly demonstrated how valuable and useful the technology provided by HPWREN is to our agency. HPWREN provided us an invaluable service that cannot be overestimated." The 19,000-acre Coyote Fire was contained by July 24 and controlled by July 27

Link Discuss (via WiFi Net News)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:58:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi coming to Second Cup

The Second Cup, a Canadian chain of coffee-shops, is rolling out WiFi hotspots in Calgary and Toronto. Link Discuss (via WiFi Net News)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:56:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, July 28, 2003

Mobile Neurosurgery Table

These mobile operating tables and various attachments, particularly the neurosurgery outfit, look like they could be from a David Cronenberg film adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel. Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:08:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Patent for mind control via TV?

Here's a recent patent on a method to affect a human's nervous system through the electromagnetic field emitted by a TV set:

"Physiological effects have been observed in a human subject in response to stimulation of the skin with weak electromagnetic fields that are pulsed with certain frequencies near 1/2 Hz or 2.4 Hz, such as to excite a sensory resonance. Many computer monitors and TV tubes, when displaying pulsed images, emit pulsed electromagnetic fields of sufficient amplitudes to cause such excitation. It is therefore possible to manipulate the nervous system of a subject by pulsing images displayed on a nearby computer monitor or TV set."

As Doug Rushkoff says about television, "they don't call it programming for nothing!" Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:02:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Very cool new social software app: Tribe.net

If you've been exploring social networking software services like Friendster lately, check out Tribe.net. I just learned this weekend that an old friend and former colleague, Brian Lawler, is part of the dev team... very nice UI on this thing, and seems to facilitate certain kinds of interaction (read: non-gonad-driven) more elegantly than some of the other services out there right now. They're still in beta, but they say they hope to move into general release relatively shortly. So far, I'm liking it a lot. Not ditching my Friendster account anytime soon, though. Where else online could I schmooze with Satan, Carbohydrates, Mister Roboto, and vast legions of Goth/Burningman/Straightedge twentysomething hotties, all under one roof? Wait, don't answer that. Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:34:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hollywood news satire site Dateline Hollywood launches

My former Silicon Alley Reporter Magazine colleague and fellow Angeleno Ben Fritz just launched a new parody site today. Dateline Hollywood is described as "a satire of Hollywood and entertainment journalism -- think The Onion meets Daily Variety, Entertainment Weekly, and Entertainment Tonight." Dig it. Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:21:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

QTVR: spontaneous flashing at Mardi Gras

Thought I'd kick off the blog this week on an intellectual high note. Two words: panoramic boobies. Hans Nyberg says:

Hi Xeni -- this week is a French Week. First QTVR is by Ray Broussard, "Flashing at Mardi Gras New Orleans." The Cajun music is from Basin Street Records. The page will be updated with more "French VR" during the week.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:17:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

mythtv HOWTO: Linux PVRs for the rest of us

mythtv is a brilliant piece of open sourse software that ties together a TV tuner card, a Linux-based PC, and free Internet listings services to build a high-powered PVR, like a TiVo with far more bells and whistles. For example, a mythtv box can be used in many countries around the world (including the UK and Canada), and it stores its files in a format that is intended to be copied for use on other devices, so it's a snap to burn a CD with a bunch of your favorite programs to take on plane journeys, or to email clips to friends, or to drop incriminating CSPAN/Question Period footage in your file-sharing folder and foment revolution. It's also free to operate, and can be upgraded easily, and shares all the other properties of a general-purpose PC (so your set-top box can also be your WiFi router, firewall, and all-round file-server).

However, like many open source software projects, installing and configuring mythtv isn't for the faint of heart. This HOWTO is a good step in the direction of making mythtv accessible to the masses. Link Discuss (via Wasted Bits)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:02:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, July 27, 2003

WashPo embarasses itself with hysterical WiFi FUD article

The Washington Post has embarassed itself today with a FUD-laden, inaccurate and hysterical story about "WiFi security risks" that appears to have been ginned up by publicists for "security companies" who rely on public fear to generate business.

But most of those networks are unprotected, vulnerable to hackers who could steal data, introduce viruses, launch spam or attack other computers. Even as the number of wireless networks has risen dramatically, Poole's surveys suggest that the rough percentage of them that are unprotected remains above 60 percent.

None of these are risks that are unique to WiFi. The world is full of coin-operated or cash-based network access systems (I spent an hour feeding quarters into an Ethernet-equipped payphone in the Vancouver airport in June), and the idea that I, as a hotspot provider, am "unprotected" because the people who gain access to my network can do something bad to someone else is (deliberately) misleading.

I'm no more "unprotected" from spammers on my WiFi node (something I've yet to see a single published account of, despite the continuous warnings about it) than I am from spammers sending Nigerian 419 letters from the next terminal at the library. It's like saying that restauranteurs are "unprotected" from bank robbers who use a back table to plan their next job. Sure, they're "unprotected." So what?

Fundamentally, this is a warning against abetting the anonymous use of the Internet. A Beltway-Insider rag like WashPo should have too much familiarity with the Bill of Rights to advance the un-constitutional notion that anonymity is somehow bad, wrong, or illegal.

In their darkest visions, consultants can imagine someone with a WiFi-enabled laptop walking through an airport launching a destructive computer virus at every other unprotected laptop in the vicinity, because users who tap into a vulnerable network are just as exposed as its host.

In their sales literature, snake-oil "security" vendors identify "being connected to the network" as a risk, instead of "running unpatched and insecure software" as a risk. It's the public Internet. If connecting your computer to the public Internet puts you at appreciable risk from "destructive computer viruses," you'd better get a new operating system.

Hackers could also use WiFi access to anonymously launch attacks at the broader Internet, also threatening non-WiFi users.

Hackers could also use coin-operated Ethernet jacks and Internet Cafes to launch attacks on the broader Internet, also threatening WiFi users. So what? Malice is transport-independent.

Although no calamitous hacking event via wireless has occurred, security professionals say it is only a matter of time.

"Security professionals" also noted that "although no calamitous hacking event has been launched using a Dvorak keyboard, it is only a matter of time."

"It's broken; it has holes and flaws," Skoudis said of WEP technology. "It's kind of like a Band-Aid, but better to have a Band-Aid than a big gaping hole."

Users can also require passwords for access to their networks.

Yes, yes they can. Using WEP technology. Geez. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:04:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi is too expensive when it's not free

Operating a WiFi hotspot that you charge money for costs $30 a day. Operating a free WiFi hotspot costs $6. Clearing $6/day in new profit from offering free WiFi is easy, clearing $30 a day in most locations is damned hard. Will more cafes do the math?

Here's the irony in Wi-Fi public access pricing: retailers can be profitable by offering free Wi-Fi as a customer acquisition tool. But when they charge for Wi-Fi access, these retailers, and the WISPs serving them, almost certainly lose money. According to a market study coming out this summer, retailers are quickly learning this lesson: up to 30% of US location owners who plan to deploy commercial hotspots in 2004 intend those hotspots to be free or free-with-purchase.

Link Discuss (via WiFi Networking News)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:45:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, July 26, 2003

I have a sister!

Tonight, my brother, Neil Howard Doctorow, married Tara Lee Trimble, (now Doctorow). Mazeltov to the two of them, who are achingly, tangibly in love. Congrats and love always, guys. Here's the speech I gave:

And Tara is joining the family, which is not the Doctorow family, nor the Doctorow-Starr family, nor the Doctorow-Starr-Levitt- Cloth-Ceresne-Klayman- Greenfield-Negru- Rochman-Linsday- Goldman-Silver- Fox-West-BenDavid- Halprin family. It's my family, and it's this variegated, global, ramified enterprise whose edges are smeared out and indistinct, so that it's impossiible to tell exactly where it ends.

At events like this one, where we are turned out in our thronged hundreds, I have developed a survival strategy: I bring my dates around and when someone comes up and heartily shakes my hand and marvels at how long it's been, or pinches me -- we're great and cruel pinchers in this family -- and leaves a smudge of lipstick on my cheek, I turn and say, "This is my friend so-and-so," and then, if luck is with me, the familiar face out of my boyhood is joined to a name and a relationship: "Ah, so nice to meet you. I'm Cory's great-aunt's sister-in-law on his mother's father's side, (beat) I knew this one when he wet the bed."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:38:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wil Wheaton in mean Pan remake

I saw a movie this week, and got very excited about one of the trailers, for a movie called Neverland, which appears to be a very lush retelling of Peter Pan that's quite nasty and dark -- like a rusty fishhook in the 'nads.

And this morning, I discovered that my pal Wil Wheaton, blogger and actor, is in the movie, and he says it's as good as it looks. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:05:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Verisign will have to pay for sex.com mistake

Gary "sex.com" Kremen has won an important victory in his legal battle to get justice for the theft of his lucrative domain, which the bumbling fools of Network Solutions gave away to a con-man who forged a fax to them. Since Kremen's contract with NSI predated the addition of the "you indeminfy us from all liability no matter how negiligent we are" language to its agreement (and the even crappier terms of service imposed by Verisign when it acquired the company) the court has ruled that Verisign is liable for NSI's mistake.

"Exposing Network Solutions to liability when it gives away a registrant's domain name on the basis of a forged letter is no different from holding a corporation liable when it gives away someone's shares under the same circumstances," wrote Judge Alex Kozinski, who penned the unanimous opinion for the three-judge panel.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:00:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, July 25, 2003

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

I finished reading an outstanding novel today, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. The conceit of the novel is that it is being written by an autistic teenager in a small British town. He has discovered a dead dog on his neighbor's lawn, and he has decided to Investigate The Murder in the fashion of his hero, Sherlock Holmes.

Christopher, the narrator, is utterly convinving and Martian in a way that is at once both believable and alien. The story manages to pull off the incredible trick of exposing the emotional lives of the characters around the narrator -- whose disorder precludes empathic interpretations of the feelings of the people he's dealing with -- and of the narrator himself, whose emotions are both lost to the noise of autistic overload and still subtly teased out and laid out for the reader.

The novel is very short, 240 pages, and flies past. The above graf makes it sound too soppy, I think -- the book is anything but. It's funny and charming. It's fast and exciting. It's didactic and narrative. I haven't enjoyed a novel this much in recent memory. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Baggies give way to jumped-up fruit-leather

Who needs ziplocs when you've got airtight edible transparent food-wrappers?

With a new school year upon us, kids may soon have the chance to eat healthier and also help the environment, using something unique wrapped around their tuna, turkey or PB&J sandwiches. Edible vegetable and fruit wraps, among the latest developments from modern chemistry, could keep lunches fresher longer and be substituted for some non-biodegradable wraps, says the creator, food chemist Tara McHugh, Ph.D.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Stefan!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:34:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Subpoena Defense: dealing with abusive ISP subpoenas

In related news (see entry below), Subpoena Defense is a new website that is a clearinghouse for information to help you understand, respond to and resist abusive ISP subpoenas from the entertainment industry. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:31:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Are you wanted by the RIAA? EFF can tell you

EFF has launched a service to check whether or not your Kazaa/Grokster/whatever userid is the subject of an RIAA strongarm action against your ISP. It scrapes the PACER subpoena database periodically and indexes all the userids being sought by the recording industry. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:31:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Peer-to-Peer Prohibition Act: Congressman Pitts' anti-filesharing bill

This CNET story from yesterday covers the "Protecting Children from Peer-to-Peer Pornography (P4) Act" put forth by Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa. that would require P2P providers to get parental consent before allowing minors to use their services. A quick search in THOMAS.loc.gov (Link or PDF copy here, ) reveals that the title now reads "To prohibit the distribution of peer-to-peer file trading software in interstate commerce." Prohibition was a real success in the early 20th century -- one can only imagine what wonders the sequel will bring.

Laptop DJ and BoingBoing pal John von Seggern asks, "Can peer-to-peer software be defined legally in such a way that the definition does not include the entire Internet? Aren't browsers and servers sharing files all the time? How is Google different than Kazaa in a larger sense?" And anonymous suggests a grassroots online campaign to counter the congressman's "P4 Act," to be titled "P5: Protecting People from Pitts' Preposterous Proposals."
Discuss (via pho / thanks, Kevin, and thanks Fred von Lohmann for the PDF)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:56:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WIRED: Enhanced TV -- lots of new projects in the hopper

I wrote a story for Wired News today about the American Film Institute's eTV workshop, which kicked off this Wednesday in Hollywood. Phonecammed a few snapshots live from the event, which you can see here (click "back" to proceed through series of snapshots). Participating networks with interactive TV programs in development include PBS, Bloomberg, ABC, FUSE Networks, and The Disney Channel.

[A]s interactive developers debated the pros and cons of "The Rashomon Factor" -- a term coined by AFI New Media Ventures Associate Director Anna Marie Piersimoni for programs that tell one story through multiple points of view -- some television producers called for a reality check.

"Audiences are lazy and TV still caters to the lowest common denominator," quipped Fifth Wheel and Blind Date Co-Executive Producer Harley Tat. "We're operating from a heady place where we're thinking about the future, but plenty of viewers don't have PCs and haven't upgraded their cell phones in years. If the information isn't right in front of them while they're microwaving mac and cheese, it's not going to happen. ETV has to be so simple that they can do it half-baked and horizontal on the couch."

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:53:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Erotic Museum opens doors in Hollywood

The Erotic Museum did a soft launch here in LA on Wednesday, and will open formally in the fall. Such a tease. OK, now here's a museum store worth shopping in. Details from AVN:

The museum is hosted in a building that was originally built in 1911 and at one time was inhabited by a garter company, giving it a historical connection to sexuality beyond even the wide array of exhibits that will be displayed when the museum opens in October. The building, which is located a block from the Kodak Theatre, is currently undergoing renovations designed to bring back the original look. With a mission to "provide the community with a positive image of the potential of human sexuality," the museum will exhibit erotic photography, sculptures and a wide variety of paintings from all eras. Some of the exhibits will include a Picasso etch, covers of gay adult magazines such as Manpower #4 and even stills of John Holmes taken from 8mm loops.

Boris Smorodinksy, the CEO of the Erotic Museum, notes that "you can?t talk about eroticism without talking about Marilyn," as he points out prints of the Marilyn Monroe photographs taken by Tom Kelley that were used to launch Playboy in December 1995. The museum even includes an adult mahjong video game from the Atari era and a video projection that documents stroke by stroke how Picasso etched Bloch 1762. Bloch 1762, a part of the museum?s permanent collection, is a single etch in a series of etches, many with sexual themes, known as Picasso's Suite 347.

Link to museum website, Link to AVN story, Discuss (Thanks, Susannah!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:45:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIAA Shock and Awe: List of ISPs receiving subpoenas

The EFF's Fred Von Lohmann provides this list of how many subpoenas have been delivered to which ISPs. Data is based on subpoenas that are currently available electronically from Washington, DC District Court, which Fred says is a few weeks behind in posting them, but you get the idea of the first 150 or so:

1 Bentley College
1 DePaul University
1 Loyola University Chicago
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1 Pacific Bell Internet
2 Adelphia Communications Corporation
2 Boston College
2 Earthlink, Inc.
4 Verizon Internet Services, Inc.
14 RCN Corporation
15 Time Warner Cable
21 Charter Communications
29 Comcast Cable Communications, Inc.
31 SBC

Discuss (via pho list)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:31:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flashmob in Vienna today, with an eco-Dada theme

BoingBoing reader Norman in Austria says:

The email making the rounds since yesterday states the following (slightly absurd) text in German -- translated here to English:

"Easter rabbits from eastern Styria (province in Austria - ed.) have not eaten anything since yesterday. The dramatic hunger-strike was caused by weather occurences in the adriatic sea and the related efficiency of german bicyclers. please come and donate a small amount to restore the grievances of Austria's wine-region #2 Friday 15:00 - streetcar station Volkstheater (in front of the Palais Epstein on the Ring) P.S.: Update: Meeting is at 15:00, essential info will be handed out by 15:15, the actual happening will take place shortly thereafter."

Link one, Link two, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:25:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Graffitti Zen

(1) banksy
(2) vandal squad
(3) wooster collective
(4) laussanne
(5) stencil revolution
(6) guerilla parenting
(plus, a bonus link from me to you: my favorite tag, above left).
web zen home, web zen store, Discuss (Thanks, Frank)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:09:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How Technology, Law and the Market Affect the Web's Content Layer

More excellent video from the ILAW conference: a panel called "How Technology, Law and the Market Affect the Web's Content Layer," with Google's Alex Macgillivray, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Wendy Seltzer and Glenn Otis Brown of the Creative Commons. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:17:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fonts that change according to current weather conditions

The dutch design duo LettError created a new typeface for the Design Institute of the University of Minnesota -- and the font "changes," based on current weather conditions in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:22:09 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cringely: Time for Son of Napster -- Snapster!

BoingBoing pal Siege says:

Here's Cringely's idea on how to allow millions of shareholders to download music by utilizing their fair-use rights to medium-shift CDs owned by their corporation formed just for this purpose. It sounds like something RTmark would cook up if they had the money...

Link, Discuss (meaningless footnote: By odd coincidence, or sinister conspiracy, Roxio, Inc. happens to own the snapster.com domain)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:05:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, July 24, 2003

Bridis on RIAA "Shock and Awe" sue-the-downloaders campaign

From the AP's Ted Bridis today:

Over the coming months this may be the Internet's equivalent of shock and awe, the stunning discovery by music fans across America that copyright lawyers can pierce the presumed anonymity of file-sharing, even for computer users hiding behind clever nicknames such as "hottdude0587" or "bluemonkey13." In Charleston, W.Va., college student Amy Boggs said she quickly deleted more than 1,400 music files on her computer after the AP told her she was the target of another subpoena. Boggs said she sometimes downloaded dozens of songs on any given day, including ones by Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, Incubus and Busta Rhymes. Since Boggs used her roommates' Internet account, the roommates' name and address was being turned over to music industry lawyers. (...)

Bob Barnes, a 50-year-old grandfather in Fresno, Calif., and the target of another subpeona, acknowledged sharing "several hundred" music files. He said he used the Internet to download hard-to-find recordings of European artists because he was unsatisfied with modern American artists and grew tired of buying CDs without the chance to listen to them first. "If you don't like it, you can't take it back," said Barnes, who runs a small video production company with his wife from their three-bedroom home. "You have all your little blonde, blue-eyed clones. There's no originality."

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:59:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Building Community Wireless Networks, second edition

Kudos to O'Reilly for getting a second edition of Rob Flickenger's brilliant, economical and comprehensive Building Community Wireless Networks out the door. I've bought and handed out about 10 copies of the first edition. Can't wait to get my hands on this one.

Building Wireless Community Networks is about getting people online using wireless network technology. The 802.11b standard (also known as WiFi) makes it possible to network towns, schools, neighborhoods, small business, and almost any kind of organization. All that's required is a willingness to cooperate and share resources. The first edition of this book helped thousands of people engage in community networking activities. This revised and expanded edition adds coverage on new network monitoring tools and techniques, regulations affecting wireless deployment, and IP network administration, including DNS and IP Tunneling.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:37:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Flash mob alert! Paris, Rome, now.

A Parisian flash mob appears to be coalescing right now, (Link), and another is forming in Rome (Link), Discuss . (Thanks, (Howard!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:54:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Greenpeace vs. Nanotechnology

bOING bOING pal and Small Times nanotechnology news editor Howard Lovy on Greenpeace's new report on nanotechnology:

"Greenpeace's just-released report on nanotechnology is vintage advocacy-group treatment of scientific research: Grab the available facts, then make them conform to your predetermined conclusion. That, after all, is what advocacy groups do. And most intelligent readers are able to keep that in mind when they come across any "study" that comes out of an organization that filters information through its preset worldview. It's true for Greenpeace, the National Rifle Association or the Save the Bog Turtle Foundation. That's why I was quite surprised at the reaction of the NanoBusiness Alliance to this report."

Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:31:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Phonecam video footage airs on TV news show in Japan

What looks like a first, clipped from Lost Remote:

A clip of breaking news video sent in from a camera phone airs on Japan's NHK network. A trucker videotaped a huge pileup on a busy expressway with his cell phone, and he called the clip in to NHK. A few minutes later, he's live on the phone (audio) while his grainy video of the deadly accident plays on the air. "Moblogging," as it's called, is poised to change the dynamics of news coverage forever.

Link to original OJR story, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:27:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boy-toy: "Charlie" art-robot at LA's MOCA museum

BoingBoing reader Tim says:

Maurizio Cattelan's latest artwork currently at the LA Museum of Contemporary Art: 'Charlie,' a remote controlled boy on a tricycle that interacts with museum visitors. It was also a hit at this year's Venice Biennale. Maurizio has been doing playful, original work for a while now that often quietly steals the thunder of whatever group show it appears in. A nice overview of his work is here, other works here, still more here. Particularly fun: works where he subjected his art dealer to various humiliations, including being duct-taped to a wall for one exhibit, and being forced to dance around in a phallic bunny suit for another. Other, more melancholy works of his, such as 'Charlie Don't Surf,' a sculpture of a boy in a schooldesk facing the gallery wall, his hands pinned to the desk by two pencils, and 'La Nono Ora,' picturing the pope felled by a meteorite, are as chilling as they are blackly funny, and stick with you for a while.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:38:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fonts derived from old-school videogames

Super-frag-olicious. This website offers free, downloadable font sets derived from classic 8-bit computer games.

Link, Discuss (Thanks, mark!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:31:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Professional Batman Fanflick

Terry sez,

A short Batman movie made by professionals trying to gain some exposure.

No word of lawsuits from WB yet.

"The short film titled Batman: Dead End is written & directed by commercial director and special effects expert Sandy Collora and stars "America's Most Trusted Fitness Personality," Clark Bartram as "Bats" with Andrew Koenig (son of Star Trek regular Walter Koenig) as The Joker."

43.4MB Quicktime Link Discuss (Thanks, Terry!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:15:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese cellular competitors share spimmer blacklists

DoCoMo, Au, and J-Phone are sharing blacklists of spimmers who send unsolicited commercial IMs to their customers' phones. While the convenience is undoubtably fantastic, I worry about this: with three companies sharing black-lists, the lists' maintainers suddenly have the power to shut anyone up across the Japanese mobile universe. What if someone decides to blacklist the kinds of messages that took down a goverment in the Phillipines? More to the point: who decides what's spim and how do you appeal the decision? Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:12:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gruniad assembles edition wirelessly at Brighton Beach

In honor of Brighton Beach's new free seaside community WiFi, the Guardian has moved its offices to the shore for a day, composing and editing the next edition of the newspaper without wires. They're calling on local WiFi geeks to assemble for a group photo. Link Discuss (Thanks, James!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:08:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video games as koans

Wild Divine is a biofeedback-controlled video-game that teaches mastery of mental and physical processes:

To succeed in the game, according to Whitehouse, players have to learn certain principles, which basically require what he calls an 'allowing attitude'--a kind of passive will. [...] In biofeedback terms, the game is set up so that players might actually have to raise either their sweat gland activity or heart rate in order to get through one particular barrier, while moving into a more balanced, or even calmer, state to successfully navigate another area. [...] 'At some point in the game, if a player has learned how to control their internal states to a degree, they can have an internal shift--something akin to an 'aha' experience, where they just know how to do things.'

Link Discuss (via Interconnected)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:06:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Retractable USB-powered phone-chargers

Keyspan, who distributes these killer little ZIPLINQ retractable cables (I have the FireWire cable, and it's awesome -- the size of an after-dinner bon-bon and very satisfyingly zippy in its reeling action), is shipping a line of retractable USB cables that provide charging power to your cellphone.

I want more of this. I already travel with two power-strips to accomodate all my chargers' wall-warts (phone, Sidekick, Clie, camera, laptop, WiFi router). I'm grateful that my iPod doesn't need its own charger -- I just plug it into my PowerBook at night. If I can get my phone charged by plugging it into the USB, that's one fewer AC adapter I have to schlep. And hell, at $20, that's a cheap travel-charger, and one that works in all countries, regardless of native voltage, provided that your laptop has juice. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:04:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free in-flight WiFi coming to Southeast Air

Southeast Airlines, a charter outfit based in Florida, will offer free WiFi and cheap cellular calls to its passengers -- but will add lots of advertising to the in-flight video to cover the costs. Sounds good to me: I'll be watching my screen and wearing headphones. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:48:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Island Chronicles to run in LA Weekly

We are excited to announce that LA Weekly, Los Angeles' largest weekly newspaper, will be running our island dispatches every week. Our first one runs today (with an ilustration by me). Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:43:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Audiopad: Linux-based musical gizmo

Audiopad is a musical composition and performance device that tracks the positions of objects on a flat surface, then converts their motion into music. Developed by MIT PhD students James Patten and Ben Recht, the system is is powered by Debian Linux. It consists of a set of electronically tagged objects on a tabletop, a matrix of antennae that track the objects, and an LCD projector which displays an animated UI. Link to QuickTime demo movie, Discuss (via LinuxDevices.com)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:24:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wil McCarthy's Quantum Dot books

I've just finished reading two excellent books by Wil McCarthy, a geek science-fiction writer and journo. The first is called Hacking Matter: Levitating Chairs, Quantum Mirages, and the Infinite Weirdness of Programmable Atoms. It's an exploration of a technology called Quantum Wells (and secondarily of other quantum technologies), which are tiny cages in which subatomic particles are arranged in quantities and geometries that mimic both natural and artifical atoms. In this way, you can create "programmable matter," which can be reconfigured to take on the properties of (nearly) any material, going from rigid to limp, relflective to dark, opaque to transparent, magnetic to inert, all at the flip of a nanoscale switch.

McCarthy invokes Clarke's Law (sufficiently advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic) in respect of these Quantum Dots (regarding which he holds a patent that is itself a fascinating appendix to the book), and as he lays out the science and the possibilities of dots (in language eminently accessible to the laiety), there's a sense that he's onto something really important -- the kind of thing that scientists and science fiction writers will be exploring for decades to come. At the same time, there's a sense of restraint, even as he spins out wild scenaria for superconducting houses that spill heat into the Earth's crust and for computers that measure their power in ME's -- Millennial Equivalences, or "all the computing power on Earth circa 2001." He's a science fiction writer, but he's trying to be sober-sided here, trying to convey that the possibilities are real and even probable.

Which brings me to book number two, The Wellstone, a science fiction novel set in a world dressed in "Wellstone," a programmable matter built out of Quantum Wells. If Hacking Matter is restrained, The Wellstone is almost out of control. It's a boy's-own-adventure story in the tradition the juveniles Heinlein wrote for Scouting mags in the fifties, but gender-balanced, and full of utterly gonzoid, Rucker-grade speculation about a universe dominated by programmable matter and practical immortality, teleportation, and other post-classical physics technology. The novel's a gripper, fast-paced and funny and quite touching at the close. It's the perfect companion to Hacking Matter -- in fact, I think I wish I'd read it first. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:41:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boing Boing MeetUp

The folks at MeetUp have apparently gotten demand for a Boing Boing meeting -- that is, a monthly date when people interested in Boing Boing can get together in their home towns and hang out. I'm going to try to make these (but given my travel sched and workload, it's a long-shot in most months...). Still, it's a cool (and flattering) thing to have popped up! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:30:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Nanotech newsletter goes blog

Josh Wolfe, who edits a Forbes newsletter on nanotech, has started a blog where you can read over his shoulder as he pieces together his editions. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free WiFi rejected by baseball stadium

The management at Portland, OR's PGE Park baseball stadium are frothing at the chops because the Personal Telco community wireless project have set up a free WiFi node that provides connectivity in the park.

"This is our stadium, and we run the communications for it," said Chris Metz, a PGE Park spokesman.

Last week, Kimball's business, Moonlight Staffing, began wirelessly transmitting high-speed Internet access from its office across the street from the home field of the Portland Beavers baseball team. At any given time, as many as about 60 people with laptops equipped for WiFi can surf the Web.

Metz said he worries Personal Telco's news release late last week -- entitled "PGE Park gets free Wi-Fi thanks to Personal Telco and Moonlight Staffing" -- implied the park management helped market the service...

"Their service might be the greatest thing since sliced bread. That's beyond the point," Metz said. "I just don't like the way it's been portrayed in the press release without our consent."

Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:08:14 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

XBOX fever hitting US troops overseas -- hard.

Dungeons and Dreamers co-author Brad King points us to this item from the US DoD publication "Stars and Stripes":

U.S. Air Forces in Europe has dished out $200,000 to help build 17 online, multiplayer Xbox gaming centers at 14 bases, both large and small, across the continent. Those bored with playing video games by themselves or against a roommate will be able to play someone at another base in Europe or nearly any place across the globe.

Link to DoD publication news article, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:51:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Helvetica to Arial: I'm gonna git you, sucka

Sweet timewaster: Ultimate celebrity typeface smackdown between sans-serif arch-rivals. Flash-based Helvetica vs. Arial fighting game. They had to make it sans serif so Times New Roman wouldn't bite Garamond's ear off again. Link, Discuss . (via Kottke; thanks, bing luke)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:24:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New graphics book out from political street artist Robbie Conal

Urban art terrorist Robbie Conal's new book ARTBURN is out. The man the Washington Post described as "America's foremost street artist" is book-touring the US to support it. Kicks off this Friday in LA. If you live in an American city, you've seen his work pasted on train platforms, under freeway overpasses, and along those temporary plywood walkways at construction sites. link, Discuss (Thanks, JP)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:14:53 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases

I wrote a story for The Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, a forthcoming anthology of funny, faux-Victorian illnesses edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts. Other contributors include Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman and Elliot Fintushel. Every copy is signed by all contributors, and I just read through a galley and found myself laughing aloud all the way through. Here's some of my disease, "Pathological Instrumentation Disorder (The Man With Two Watches Problem)":

The patient, a Mr. Gary Warren, presented symptoms typical of extreme mental distress--elevated pulse, perspiration, acute abdomen, dilated pupils--at the Queen St. Mental Health Center, where a preliminary diagnosis of acute stress disorder was made. The patient's serotonin levels were normalized through quick trepanning, and he was entered into a course of group therapy sessions in the newly installed microgravity chill-rooms. Mr. Warren's symptoms worsened, however, despite daily trepannings. The only visible relief came when in close proximity to diagnostic equipment (EEG, e-meters, MRI/CT Scan apparatus). Even a wall-clock, a PDA, or a thermometer seemed to help.

Mr. Warren was moved to the Bertelsmann-AOL-Netscape-Time-Warner clinic and into the care of Dr. Jojo Fillipo, a specialist in media disorders. Under clinical observation, Mr. Warren was presented with a variety of diagnostic tools, beginning with those found on his person at his admission:

* A Palm Computing "Wrister" wristwatch
* A small, homemade RFI detector
* An integrated wireless appliance of baroque appearance
* A multifunction handheld medical unit, apparently stolen from a Mexican clinic (sphygmomanometer, EEG, blood-sugar/HIV/Hep G/Pregnancy diagnostic)
* An elderly, analog light-meter
* A DNA-signature encoder
* A distributed location/presence device marketed to children for the purposes of playing text-based role-playing games
* An elderly "turnip"-style pocket watch--not working
* A "commando"-style knife with an integrated compass and thermometer

Devices were provided to the patient singly and in combination. Alone or in small groups, the devices produced a marked lessening in the patient's symptoms--in fact, the mere presence of devices intended to measure Mr. Warren's symptoms appeared to alleviate them. In larger groups, or in certain combinations (the wireless appliance and the location/presence-device, for example), symptoms were exacerbated to alarming levels. At one point, Mr. Warren lost consciousness for a period of three days, during which doctors defibrillated his heart twice due to unusual cardiac events.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:19:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

REALLY cheap new PPI

I take a pill every day, one of a class of drugs called Protease Proton (thanks, Frank) Pump Inhibitors (PPI), for acid reflux (really wicked-bad heartburn). There are a lot of different ones -- Nexium, Prilosec, Aciphex, and so on -- but they all do the same thing: keep me from being in intense pain for more than half my waking hours. They're also all horrendously overpriced -- $3-5 a pill. I have health insurance, but my monthly co-pay is $25/month, and every single time I refill my prescription my asshole insurance company gives me some kind of run-around: I have to call them, call my doctor, whatever.

Today, I saw a Canadian doctor who recommended that I try Pariet, a very cheap new PPI from Janssen-Ortho. Like all the other PPIs, these pills make acid reflux go away. Unlike all the other pills, these ones are CHEAP. Like, $0.50 per. I.e., less than my insurance co-payment.

Screw American health care and the FDA and screw Big Pharma and its outrageous, hyped-up, over-advertised Nexium. I bought 200 Pariets. Looks like a lot of Canadian pharmacies are willing to ship Pariet south of the border, too. If you're on PPIs, this might be the thing you've been looking for. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:12:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Will e-Voting work?

Dan Gillmor's written a cracking good column about the movement to switch from paper-based electoral balloting to electronic voting.

Specifically, he should tell them that they must, as part of the verification process, create what's called a ``paper trail'' -- a printout that the voter can look at to verify that the ballot was recorded according to his or her wishes, a document that could later be used for recounts and audits to ensure that the machines had worked as designed.

That anyone disputes this need is astonishing. Yet some people who normally take the side of underdogs, who are passionate about voting rights and the accuracy of elections, are making a common mistake.

They're putting unwarranted trust in technology. They're believing that private companies, for the first time in recorded history, can produce perfect, tamper-proof electronic devices.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:05:17 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

COOP couture: What is hot?

LA-based COOP -- underground hotrod girle monster comic art guru; God of All Devil Babes-- did a smoking hot, bootylicious fashion layout spread in this month's Paper magazine. (sorry -- no direct link, or scroll down on magazine homepage, click on "STYLE" section icon). Discuss (Not worksafe)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:13:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friendster couture: random profiles on tshirts

From Gawker:

"Friendster couture -- Another example of Friendster run amok: Tom Gillis from Glossosaurus is making t-shirts with random Friendster profiles on them. Friendster t-shirts [Glossosaurus]"

There are so many overlapping memes in that photo, the entire blogosphere could implode any minute now. On his blog, Tom says: "If there's any interest in this, I'm going to be selling [random Friendster profile shirts] for $10 (hand made and unique) + $5 for shipping outiside Chicago (up to 3 shirts).... pretend it's 1993, and this is a zine or something. Except that then there wouldn't be anything like Friendster, and we'd all be wearing fake auto mechanic t shirts with other people's names embroidered on them." Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:31:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mobile phones spring to life in Baghdad

Cellular roaming services mysteriously became available in Baghdad today -- mobile phone service was banned for civilians under Saddam Hussein's reign.

Yet officially, a tender for three mobile phone licenses the U.S.-led administration plans to offer across Iraq has yet to take place. A U.S. military spokesman could not immediately say why the lines turned on or what that meant for the tender. Callers with foreign-registered GSM phones were able to make and receive calls and send text messages to countries as far away as the United States and South Africa. Few Iraqis have suitable phones for now. Foreigners working in Baghdad have widely relied on pricey satellite telephones to stay in touch.

"MTC-Vodafone wishes you a pleasant stay in Kuwait," a text message sent to roamers in Baghdad said. Other cellphone users reported they had service on a Bahraini network, Batelco, which said it planned to offer services and was testing its network.

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:16:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sprint to launch public WiFi network in USA

Sprint is the third US cellular carrier to announce plans for a public Wi-Fi network, and plans to launch by summer's end -- with over 2,000 hotspots planned by the end of 2003. Question: Why don't the carriers all get together and make one big happy unwired network instead of proprietary patchwork?

The new service, announced Monday, will let customers connect with the Web whenever they're near one of about 800 "hot spots" around the nation, mostly through roaming agreements with WiFi carriers including Airpath Wireless and Wayport.... A similar service was recently launched by Verizon, which is providing WiFi access through transmitters on its public pay phones. AT&T Wireless plans to launch a WiFi service as well. Prices will be announced when Sprint launches the service, which will be accessible to customers who already have a WiFi-enabled computer or those who buy a special laptop card. A WiFi enabled version of the software used to connect a laptop to Sprint PCS's cellular network will be introduced at that time.

Glenn Fleishman says:

No offense if anyone's associated with the writing of this story, but this is a terrible account. It leaves out most of the salient issues to this announcement: Sprint PCS is pushing roaming like crazy, is building 1,300 hot spots of its own. Verizon didn't launch service of its own; the payphone-based Wi-Fi is not Verizon Wireless, but Verizon Communications, and makes it available just to its DSL customers. Wi-Fi is not spelled WiFi. Full disclosure: I filed a brief on this for the NY Times that appears in today's paper and provided the rest of the reporting here on my Web log.

Link, Discuss (Thanks, Dave)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:02:37 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Michael Jackson: Don't jail music downloaders

The gloved one comes out against criminalizing filesharers:

Michael Jackson says Congress should make no laws that could land music fans in jail for downloading songs illegally over the Internet. "I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans in jail for downloading music. It is wrong to download, but the answer cannot be jail," Jackson said in a statement released Monday. The pop star was referring to a bill before Congress that would make it a federal felony to obtain copyright works over the Internet without permission.

Link to AP story, Discuss (Thanks, Caines)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:20:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

QTVR Panorama: underwater wonderlands

Photographer and QTVR enthusiast Hans Nyberg points us to a delicious new underwater panorama from Nelson Bay Australia (Link), by Mal Yeo who created the very popular Tulamben Wreck panorama from Bali last year.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:05:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moblogging the Tour de france

Jean-Luc in Paris says:

Do you remember Patrik, the Swedish postman who bicycled from Sweden to Gibraltar, moblogging his adventures daily with a Nokia 7650 phonecam and reporting his GPS Position with a Benefon GPS unit? Well, he moblogged live from the famous Tour de France race in the Alps on July 17. Here at the end of the 8th stage point: a live image of the Basque racing cyclist Iban MAYO who won this day, and another live pic of famous and popular racing cyclist Richard VIRENQUE. And on July 18, Patrik (the bicycle mologger) followed the 9th stage point of Tour de France and here, it's the leading racing cyclist of Tour de France (with a Yellow Jacket), he is american and his team is "US Postal" -- Lance AMSTRONG in Galibier pass. And here's a shot of the Swedish postman moblogger in the Alps.

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:56:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Eiffel tower on fire, watch it by webcam.

The Eiffel tower is on fire right now. While you're waiting for CNN to break the Kobegate/Sons of Saddam saturation coverage for live shots, Here's a link to the official Eiffel tower webcam. Discuss (Thanks, David)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:48:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AnarchistU: Toronto free school

My former school-chum, roommate, and co-worker Erik "Possum Man" Stewart is hard at work on building a free-school called AnarchistU in Toronto, coordinated via Wiki.

The Anarchist U is a volunteer-run collective which organizes a variety of courses on social science and the humanities. Most courses run for ten weeks and meet once a week. The Anarchist U follows the tradition of free schools in that it is open, non-hierarchic and questions the roles of teachers and students.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:35:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Palm-a-forming the ocean

Thomas sez, "On the shores of the United Arab Emirates, arguably one of the coolest (and certainly one of the largest) engineering projects in the world is taking place. 100,000,000 cubic metres of sand and rock is being formed into two huge, palm-shaped islands, each with about sixty kilometres of beach and big enough to be seen from space. Designed as a luxury city for Dubai's (and the world's) very wealthy, it sounds like something out of a science fiction novel: but it's real. Amazing what a few billions in oil fortunes will let you play around with." Link Discuss (Thanks, Thomas!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:26:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Plasmaplate casemod

In the future, all my devices will be sheathed in writhing plasma-plates like this killer casemod's. Link Discuss (via Inquirer UK)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:51:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

British tech headlines rock

Great Inquirer UK headline: "Regulator gnashes gums at BT." Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:14:56 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

We're back!

We had a problem with the ftp server on our host yesterday, which meant that:

1. None of yesterday's entries got posted until just now
2. People subscribed to the mailblog got TONS of duplicate messages

Sorry for the inconvenience -- don't miss yesterday's messages. Someday, I'm gonna have to migrate us off of YahooGroups and onto something more reliable to avoid these duplicate-post issues. Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:03:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Emotional robot too scary for kids

An emotional robot designed to monitor and respond to its users' affective cues has been deemed too scary to show to kids under the age of 18.

"We want to investigate how people react when they first encounter Mo, as we lovingly like to call the robot," said Prof Warwick.

"Through one of Mo's eyes, he can watch people's responses to him following them around.

"It appears this is not deemed acceptable for under 18-year-olds without prior consent from their legal guardian.

"This presents us with a big problem as we cannot demonstrate Mo in action either to visitors or potential students."

Link Discuss (Thanks, Zed!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:59:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Commercial open PVR shipping

The Interact-TV Telly is a commercial, open PVR. The device is built on standard PC components, as is the TiVo, but unlike TiVo, the Telly is wide-open to user modification. Adding hard-drives, swapping cards or the motherboard, installing new software and other warranty-voiding no-nos are encouraged by Interact-TV. My TiVo has started to crash a lot lately and my understanding is that the newer TiVo models are even harder to do unauthorized upgrades on at home than the old ones were. Maybe it's time to upgrade to something DRM-free.

"We wanted a box that could grow, that would not be locked down with storage or any particular technology," said Interact-TV CEO Ken Fuhrman.

The Telly automatically records TV shows, and can pause and rewind live TV. Programming information is provided over the Net through a free subscription service.

The Telly also plays music and displays photos. Thanks to a built-in CD-RW/DVD drive, it can rip and burn CDs, and play DVDs. The company said DVD burning will be added in the near future. Consumers will be able to buy and install their own DVD-burning equipment, and the necessary software will automatically be pushed to the device using the Net.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:55:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sidekick vs. P800

Here's a great comparison of the Sony-Ericsson P800 futurephone to the T-Mobile Sidekick, the past-phone whose crippling marketing decisions have cemented my intent to swap it for a P800 when my contract runs out in September. Bonus: The reviewer uses a Mac, and specifically addresses the OS X synching and modem issues with the device.

One thing you can do with the P800 that you can't on the Sidekick is take a picture of someone and associate it with their address book entry. Optionally, you can configure the phone to display the person's picture when they call. If you iSync the phone, the pictures are even carried over to your Mac OS X Address Book, which is a nice touch.

The P800 handily beats the Sidekick in the ringtones department, as you can use most any polyphonic MIDI file, or even a WAV file. I'm currently using a MIDI of the Super Mario Bros. theme song from the Video Game Music Archive...

However, as with all handheld devices, the P800's IMAP support is mangled in its own set of bizarre ways. It can't access folders other than the INBOX and completely ignores the read/unread flags on messages. Yet, unbelievably, IMAP over SSL is supported -- with the caveat that your server must allow a connection on port 143 followed by the issuance of the "STARTTLS" command to begin an encrypted session. (UW-IMAP, for one, does allow this.)

One omission that seems huge is the ability to create local mail folders for sorting POP mail. You simply can't do it. You get one big folder for your INBOX for each account, and that's it. Even the Sidekick offers folder management.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:47:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Charging money for hotel-connectivity is too expensive

Good piece in this morning's NYT about high-speed access in hotel rooms. While many travellers find high-speed connectivity essential (I often book hotels after first consulting the Geektels directory), the actual connections are plagued with problems. Ironically, these aren't connection problems per se, but rather problems with complex billing systems that hijack your connection and try to route you back to a billing screen at seemingly random intervals (at the Crystal City Hyatt in DC last month, I found myself dealing with a non-billing system that wanted me to repeatedly tell it my name and company affiliation before giving me a connection, even though the connection itself was free!). Some systems even require you to install software or (jeesh) hardware before granting you access. These systems significantly raise the cost of providing the service, and turn into enormous support nightmares that the technically unsophisticated hotel staff can't cope with. I'd estimate that about three quarters of these systems result in support calls when I encounter them -- and every one of them is different (and some of them break if you have software running that tries to connect to the Internet when it senses a network connection, like AOL Instant Messenger, an RSS reader, or a mailer -- the billing system receives multiple network requests that it answers with its "Please sign on" screen before you've got a browser open, and then decides that you're a bad actor and refuses to allow you in, so you've got to quit all your open apps before plugging in the wire).

The upshot is that the free connection services -- open WiFi, free DSL modems -- are far, far cheaper to deploy and use, and cost significantly less to support (in Helsinki, I stayed at a hotel where WiFi access required you to go downstairs to the front desk and pay cash for a scratch-off card with a 24-hour WiFi password -- how's that for a customer-unfriendly, labor-intensive process?). And since hotel guests want the service, free connectivity can give your hotel a competitive advantage at a lower cost than the for-pay alternatives -- and best of all, you'll never get orphaned by a tanking hotspot business like the old MobileStar system, because a free, bog-standard connection system can be supported by any moderately skilled technician.

One place where he stayed this year, Mr. Plume said, got it just right: the Reneson Hotel Group's Best Western Novato Oaks Inn in Novato, Calif., where all he had to do was plug a cable into his laptop to get quick Internet access by digital subscriber line, or D.S.L., a telephone company service. And it was free.

"No hardware, no software, no nothing --it's the easiest setup I've ever seen," Mr. Plume said, adding that the hotel's Internet service was the deciding factor in where he stayed on regular trips to Novato last winter.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:46:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, July 21, 2003

Timothy Leary art show review

Judith Lewis of the La Weekly wrote a fantastic piece about Timothy Leary's posthumous art showing at Lightspace Gallery in Los Angeles.

The overall impression is not of a grandstander who narcissistically adored the attention of the media, but of an irrepressible spirit with an unusually exuberant constitution -- a man who had discovered, when he first indulged in the mushroom at the ripe age of 40, a source of magic so delightful, so full of possibility, so unreservedly fun that he simply could not keep the news to himself.

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:01:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

This site blocks the RIAA/MPAA

Now that the entertainment industry has declared ernest war on the Internet and its users, why not configure your computer to reject further requests from IP-blocks assigned to MPAA and RIAA members?

ErrorDocument 403 "<center><h1>No Freakin' Way</h1></center><br><br>Your IP appears to be managed by the RIAA or MPAA, and thus you are not welcome.<br><br> If you believe you have received this in error or wish to argue about it, contact the site owner.<br><br>Alternatively, you can go back to <a href="http://www.riaa.com">where you came from.</a>

8k PKZIP Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:12:10 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Blosxom 2.0 out the door

Congrats to Rael Dornfest on getting version 2.0 of Blosxom, the tiny, perfect GPLed perl-based blogging tool out the door. All this, while he was greeting his second child (another 2.0!). Go Rael!

The biggest change in this latest incarnation of Blosxom is a plugin architecture, allowing the core of Blosxom to remain small, sleek, and simpler-than-pie while providing room for extension and integration. The Blosxom Plugin Registry is already home to some 140 plugins ranging from authentication to Google search, click-through tracking to writebacks (read: combination talkbacks and TrackBacks).

There's also a brand new Blosxom for Mac OS X Installer, the simplest way to get Blosxom on your laptop, desktop, or closet Mac without any of the muss or fuss of installing it by hand. A couple-three clicks of the mouse and it'll skip lightly through the nitty-gritties, installing Blosxom itself, some sample flavours, documentation, and some useful plug-ins.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:41:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SCO stages high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma

SCO, a vendor whose claims to ownership of code and concepts embedded in Linux are such transparent dumbfuckery that it's a wonder they don't vanish up their own assholes, leaving behind puckered, foul-smelling singularities, has decided to embark upon a high-stakes version of the Prisoner's Dilemma, a perennial game-theorist's favorite.

In this edition of the Dilemma, SCO is offering to hold harmless from future litigation any commercial Linux user who will pay them a "license fee" for their nonsensical, notional intellectual property interest in Linux.

Of course, the danger of SCO bringing suit against a commercial Linux user is directly correlated with the amount of money SCO has in the bank to pay lawyers to file its suits. So, if no one pays, no one gets sued. If everyone pays, no one gets sued. If some people pay, everyone else gets sued.

So, if you work for a company that's thinking of buying off the racketeering crooks at SCO, think again. We can all hang together on this one, or we'll all hang separately. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:38:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Jenn Shreve, now on the guestblog

A round of applause to Marc Laidlaw for his masterful guestblogging. Marc has a long history with bOING bOING and we're honored that he's still an active member of our not-so-secret cabal of happy mutants.

Without further ado, please welcome Jenn Shreve to the guestblog. Jenn's a whipsmart, witty cultural critic and journalist. She's also an up-and-coming fiction writer with a penchant for the dark and surreal. Jenn's a Texan by birth, grew up in the agricultural town of Salinas, California, and now lives in the post-industrial wasteland of West Oakland. Maybe that explains her passion for fine red wines and her insatiable appetite for weirdness of all flavors. Jenn's one tough cookie but she has a heart of gold. You've been warned. Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:12:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

NYT on new Woz digital ID Tag company

In today's NYT, a piece by John Markoff on Apple Computer cofounder Stephen Wozniak's new venture, "Wheels of Zeus":

While the company is not ready to identify the manufacturers, Wheels of Zeus says it has initial agreements with two large American makers of consumer electronics to produce the first commercial systems based on its technology, which is called WozNet. The chief operating officer, Rich Rifredi, said the first products were planned for introduction next year .

In an interview last week in Wheels of Zeus's offices in Los Gatos, Calif., which are nondescript except for his Hummer parked out front, Mr. Wozniak described WozNet as a simple and inexpensive wireless network that uses radio signals and global positioning satellite data to keep track of a cluster of inexpensive tags within a one- or two-mile radius of each base station. WozNet, he said, will include a home-base station that has the ability to track the location of dozens or even hundreds of small wireless devices that can be attached to people, pets or property. The tags — expected to cost less than $25 each to produce — will be able to generate alerts, notifying the owner by phone or e-mail message when a child arrives at school, a dog leaves the yard or a car leaves the parking lot.

"We started out with the idea of a product to keep track of stuff," said Mr. Wozniak, the 52-year-old engineer who was the technical brains behind the first Apple computer in 1976. "We ended up inventing a new class of wireless network." There may be other potential applications for the low-speed data system, like text messaging, Mr. Wozniak said, as well as other uses that he declined to describe.

Link to New York Times story (registration required), Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:08:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Coral love

It's spawning season for the world's coral, and apparently swimming around their horny reefs gives people the urge to procreate.

Coral sex occurs between seven to 10 days following the first full moon in August, but to this day scientists are still unsure what puts the coral in the mood to spawn or why coral around the world spawn at the same time.

According to Michael Allard, operator of a scuba diving tour company on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean, the sex session causes the nearby fish to spawn too. The reason, he guesses, is because there's safety in numbers by spawning together.

But more bizarre is that Allard says the spawning may make humans observing the coral more amorous.

Link Discuss (via FARK)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:58:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Searchable full-texts coming to Amazon

Amazon is negotiating to put the full texts of tens of thousands of nonfic books online as a searachable archive to help sell the titles.

Amazon is calling its program Look Inside the Book II, the publishers said. It would expand on a current program that lets shoppers read a table of contents, a first chapter or a few selected pages provided by the publishers of certain books. But Look Inside the Book II would let online browsers search by terms like "Caravaggio," "sans-culottes," or "Osama bin Laden," and then see a list of books mentioning the term along with the sentence that contains it. Browsers could then choose to see several pages around that citation.

Link Discuss

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

Realspace: did the Web steal space?

My friend Paul Levinson has a new book out, Realspace, about the subsumption/sublimation of humanity's space-dreams into the Web. The first chapter and a video interview with Paul are online, though ABC's dumb-ass Javascript-and-RealMedia combination means that I can't watch the video and when I try, every running browser on my system starts to spawn lots of windows and popups and the dark hand of proprietary software reaches through my screen and grabs me by the throat and squeezes.

It is amazing that we made it out into space at all. Lifting ourselves totally off and beyond this planet is -- as far as we know -- without precedent. In contrast to just plain airflight, which was old news to birds, insects, and other winged creatures for eons before we joined them in our flying machines, our movement into space is apparently something really new under the sun. Or, at least, under ours.

Perhaps such extraordinary leaps are always followed by decades -- maybe centuries, even millennia -- of indifference and coasting. None of us, after all, were around when fire was harnessed, when writing was invented, when crops and livestock were first domesticated. Historical records for such signal events are not available. Perhaps lack of progress in their immediate aftermaths was lamented just as some of us now lament our lack of progress in space.

But here we are, nonetheless, heirs to walking on the Moon a little more than a decade after Sputnik, followed by three decades of humans not setting foot on a single extraterrestrial body. It's hard to avoid the question: what went wrong?

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:06:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reverse engineers deliver 802.11b+ drivers

802.11b+ cards are notoriously unsupported under Linux. This is likely because the cards are "frequency-agile" and open-source drivers would allow hackers to change their cards to operate in military frequencies. Vendors have therefore obfuscated the workings of these cards and have steadfastly refused to allow open source hackers to use them with their operating systems of choice. Now, one free software coder has reverse-engineered the instructions and has released a free software set of drivers for the commonest 802.11b+ chipset on Sourceforge. Good Slashdot thread going on about this:

Companies such as D-Link had initially promised to release linux drivers for these cards but later backed down from that promise and announced that Linux would not be supported and that customers should not hold on to the cards in the hope of getting them working, as shown on their current FAQ. Texas Instruments, the makers of the chipsets upon which these 802.11b+ cards are based refused to release code or specifications for the cards, no doubt for similar reasons that were recently discussed here. The fact that the current alpha release is certainly as good, and in some areas better, than the binary drivers that escaped from one of the card manufactureres speaks volumes for the quality and determination of the team to create their own drivers.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:45:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Must-read comic, Y: The Last Man

Y: The Last Man is a fantastic graphic novel/series of comix that I've been avidly following since the folks at Cambridge, MA's Million Year Picnic comic store (brilliant store!) recommended it to me last December.

It's the story of a mysterious plague that sweeps the earth, instantly killing every man (and male beast) -- except one: Yorick, the son of the ranking woman Congresscritter who has become the President of the United States (oh, and his pet monkey). From this fast setup, the story turns into a cracking adventure tale that's thoughtful and exhilerating, funny and sad, mean and joyous. It's one of about five comics I really look forward to every month (others include Warren Ellis's must-read Global Crossing Frequency (thanks, PartTimeSaint) and the Legends book).

This morning, Salon has run a seven-page excerpt from the book, so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.
Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:36:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool Quake 4 leaks, dumbfuck idSoft response

This enormous gallery of leaked concept art and test-renders from the forthcoming Quake 4 game is astonishingly cool. As cool as the company's reaction to the leak has been uncool:

"On Friday 18th July a large number of unauthorised Quake IV assets were leaked onto the web," offered the statement. "We do not know the source of these leaked assets. Please be warned that id Software has instructed Activision that we are not to work with any magazine which uses any of these assets. If any magazine does so, id Software will not allow any assets for id games to be sent to these magazines in the future."

Update: the page is down. I have a 4MB tarball of the images. Got a Bittorrent tracker? Email me. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:20:40 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Bananas will vanish forever in a decade

According to the Globe and Mail, the banana as we know it (a single cloned organism that is vulnerable to all manner of parasites and problems) will be gone from the earth's face inside of a decade. Bye bye, bananas.

Then Panama disease, a soil fungus, attacked banana plantations and the genetically enfeebled Gros Michel banana was virtually wiped out. By 1960, the Gros Michel was no longer a viable crop. Tireless agricultural research eventually produced a successor, the Cavendish. For the past 40 years or so, the Cavendish has been virtually the only commercially grown stock available on store shelves in developed nations.

In the tropics, you can still find other, less desirable banana varieties, mainly grown as a starchy food staple rather than a sweet treat. But these tropical bananas aren't much like their commercial cousins in North American supermarkets. They taste bland. Their texture is often fibrous and mealy. North American consumers would probably find them quite unpalatable compared to the Cavendish, which is sweeter and smoother-textured.

But like its genetic predecessor, the Cavendish is also sterile, equally unprotected from diseases and crop pests. And now a powerful plant pathogen, the Black Sigatoka fungus, has appeared on the scene, attacking the Cavendish stock around the world. Banana yields have already dropped by 50-70 per cent, and banana-tree life spans have been reduced from about 30 years to just about two years. The genetic uniformity among Cavendish bananas has made them helpless to fight Black Sigatoka.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:12:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, July 20, 2003

St. Jude Milhon, RIP

St. Jude Milhon, a former Mondo 2000 editor and prominent hacker who coined the term "cypherpunk," passed away Saturday morning in Berkeley after a long battle with cancer. The co-author of How to Mutate and Take Over the World and The Cyberpunk Handbook: The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook, St. Jude shaped the early cyberculture and inspired countless modem grrrls. She will be missed.

"Hacking is the clever circumvention of imposed limits, whether imposed by your government, your IP server, your own personality, or the laws of physics." -St. Jude

Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:05:26 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

P2P Prohibition: Top 11 Signs your ISP has given you up to the RIAA

Pho list cofounder JP points us to the...

Top 11 Signs your ISP has given you up to the RIAA as a dangerous KaZaA user:
11. All the files in your favorite MP3 play list are now "Lars Ulrich sings 'Feelings'"
10. Your KaZaA rating changes to "Defendant"
9. Eminem insults your mother in his next single
8. Recording Industry Association of America president Hillary Rosen sends you e-mail messages with embedded .wav files of heavy breathing
7. All the spam in your inbox is from Motion Picture Association CEO Jack Valenti
6. You get a bill retroactively charging you 99 cents per downloaded track. Total bill: $29,700
5. A Tommy Mottola screen saver suddenly pops up on your computer
4. Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer picket your home with signs that read, "Piracy don't pay my bills"
3. You receive a request from someone using outdated hacker wannabe slang claiming a friend said you could "hook me up" with the latest Snoop Dogg album
2. You suddenly have numerous songs from someone named Avril Lavigne
1. CD-shaped crop circles appear in your backyard

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:06:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, July 19, 2003

John Gilmore: I was ejected from a plane for wearing 'Suspected Terrorist' button

From Declan's politech list, a post from EFF co-founder John Gilmore:

My sweetheart Annie and I tried to fly to London today (Friday) on British Airways. We started at SFO, showed our passports and got through all the rigamarole, and were seated on the plane while it taxied out toward takeoff. Suddenly a flight steward, Cabin Service Director Khaleel Miyan, loomed in front of me and demanded that I remove a small 1" button pinned to my left lapel. I declined, saying that it was a political statement and that he had no right to censor passengers' political speech. The button, which was created by political activist Emi Koyama, says "Suspected Terrorist". Large images of the button and I appear in the cover story of Reason Magazine this month, and the story is entitled "Suspected Terrorist". You can see the button [here].

The steward returned with Capt. Peter Hughes. The captain requested, and then demanded, that I remove the button (they called it a "badge"). He said that I would endanger the aircraft and commit a federal crime if I did not take it off. I told him that it was a political statement and declined to remove it. They turned the plane around and brought it back to the gate, delaying 300 passengers on a full flight.

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:27:07 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, July 18, 2003

LA art event: Sneak peek of tomorrow's Sixspace opening

As posted on BoingBoingearlier this week, there's an opening reception in LA tomorrow night for a very cool show of graphic and digital pop art at Sixspace. Gallery founder Sean Bonner spent today hanging the show, and he moblogs these digital snapshots to BoingBoing readers before anyone is physically allowed inside to see the show -- so, your eyes are seeing it first: a wall full of hand silk screened postcards, postcard close-up, series of paintings called "80's TV cars" ("herbie" "knight rider" "speed racer" "a team"), and cereal prints.

The show, called "Modern Thought," features work from WSM and Poplab artists and opens tomorrow (Saturday) evening from 7-10pm at sixspace 549 west 23rd, LA 90027. Link to show details, Link to more work by ESM, Link to more work by Poplab. Discuss.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:20:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How the Nerds Were Having A Perfectly Good Time Until The Businesspeople And Lawyers Showed Up And Ruined Everything

Lisa Rein is slowly uploading her footage from last month's ILAW conference. She posted a real prize today: Jonathan Zittrain and Terry Fisher's talk: "Domain names - How the mess came about" or "How the Nerds Were Having A Perfectly Good Time Until The Businesspeople And Lawyers Showed Up And Ruined Everything." Brilliant stuff. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:40:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reports from the game

My pal Wagner James Au is a pro games writer who's working now as an "embedded reporter" (heh) at a games startup, chronicling the developments in the world of a new massively multiplayer game. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:31:52 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Load-sharing, low-latency RSS with Shrook

Shrook is a kickass RSS reader for the Mac with a lot of fit and finish. Graham Parks, the software's author, released a new version today with a really nice, innovative feature: distributed feed-pulling:

In order to keep each channel as up to date, each individual copy of Shrook would have to load the channel at least every ten minutes. For users, this would obviously have an effect on the performance of their internet connection and computer. For popular channel providers, the hundreds or thousands of RSS readers connecting regularly, around the clock, already represent a huge financial burden (amongst other problems), as most are billed on the volume of data transferred to and from their computers. Checking more often would only make things worse.

So how does it work?

To oversimplify: A central server maintains a database of when each channel was last updated. To keep it up to date, every so often, the server chooses a computer to check for new items and report back. The frequency of this varies from every 5 minutes for popular channels, to every half hour for channels with only one online subscriber, and it tries to use a different computer each time. At the other end, each copy of Shrook checks in with the server every 5 minutes, and if any of its channels are out of date, it reloads them.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:28:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

600,000 pages of historic home ec

Tara sez, "Cornell University has created an archive of over 1,500 volumes (over 600,000 pages) related to home economics at http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/h/hearth/index.html . The volumes available within were published between 1850 and 1950 and are just as fun a cultural browse as they are an exploration into home economics." Link Discuss (Thanks, Tara!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:14:47 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Cartoon Zen

etch-a-sketch | flea toon | walmart | unh! project | drawn and quarterly | kevin cornell | edward gorey
web zen home, web zen store, Discuss (Thanks, Frank)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:25:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Online erotic digital photo gallery: Dreampod Sessions

Susannah points us to a new online erotic photo series at Nerve.com: The Dreampod Sessions. Interview with the photographer and non-worksafe photos here (paid registration required). It involves both Williamsburg *and* digital cameras -- seems like it belongs somewhere on the hipster bingo card.

Single-named but multipartnered, Siege is a thirty-one-year-old photographer from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. With some colored gels, a few cameras and a harem of female friends, he created what he calls a "dreampod" in his bedroom, a comfortable space where Siege and his friends are free to express themselves sexually and artistically. Looking at these pictures, I alternate between thinking, "These are some of the coolest images I've seen" and "I'll never be able to walk around Williamsburg again, knowing that above some Polish bakery, Siege or someone like him is getting away with murder."

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:49:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Secret Hasidic Blogger, Invisiblog, and anonymous blogging

From this week's Village Voice:

Yeedel, as we'll call him, writes an anonymous weblog, a kind of online diary, under the pen name Hasidic Rebel. His comments, first posted in February, range from musings about the Hasidic lifestyle to stinging indictments of the community. Anonymous blogs like Yeedel's are set to become a lot more secure--and maybe a lot more common--with the release in August of a new application called Invisiblog. Fusing existing privacy technologies with a tool for blogging, the software makes it far easier to broadcast in secret.

"Political activists, independent journalists, whistleblowers--anyone who is prevented from publishing by repressive laws or threats of violence" can benefit from covert-blogging software, writes Charles Farley of Invisiblog. Indeed, over the past year, online diarists in Cuba, Iran, and Tunisia have been jailed for publishing. Like these writers, Yeedel and several other Hasidic bloggers have put their lifestyle, if not their lives, on the line with their contentious chronicles.

Link, Discuss (thanks, Carl!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:42:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

/opendir poetry

Simple and sweet, a sort of minimalist web/joke/poem/object. No Flash required, no high bandwidth required. (via Geisha) Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:29:16 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Emmett Plant on the Berman-Conyers P2P bill

Emmett Plant, a musician and the co-inventor of the Ogg Vorbis codec and former CEO of the Xiph.org Foundation, which brought us the Ogg Vorbis codec (and a former Slashdot editor!), has written a good letter to his Congresscritters asking them to come to their senses over the new "Use P2P, become a felon," bill. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:06:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Animal Magnetism exhibit at the Exploratorium

The San Francisco Exploratorium is hosting what looks to be a fascinating exhibit of art exploring human attitudes toward the animal world. Featured work includes Sam Easterson's Animal, Vegetable, and Video Project that uses footage from cameras on the backs of live animals, and the taxidermy assemblages of my friend and Wunderkammern-keeper Tia Resleure. Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:44:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Howard Lovy's NanoBot nano blog

Howard Lovy is the news editor at Small Times, the nanotechnology, MEMS, and microsystems magazine that Mark and I contribute to. Howard recently launched NanoBot, an independent blog for his small tech commentaries. From his deconstruction of the "nanotech media conspiracy" to insights about the environmental fears surrounding nanotechnology, he's off to a great start! Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 12:32:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, July 17, 2003

Fox Searchlight Pictures launches movie PR blog

Via LA Observed:

Fox Searchlight Pictures, the 20th-Century Fox unit behind the Internet marketing hit 28 Days Later, launched a Blogspot site over the weekend. The blog is "covering" media reports friendly to the picture and the company, reporting on favorable box office numbers and doing promos for upcoming films. The lead item right now is praise for Ron Grover's Business Week column on the clever marketing of 28 Days. First they turned Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News... (Tip from Movie City News)

permalink to LA Observed post; Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:46:56 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Teen condom ads and other odd snapshots from Bangkok

A billboard in Bangkok promoting "Sweet Teen" condoms (lime, cola or mixed fruit) is one of many surreal images you'll find on this online photo gallery. Among the other snapshots of pop culture oddities and weird Thai ads: Ronald McDonald welcomes you to Thailand, and "Order a pizza and get a gay volleyball team action figure for free!" Billboard Liberation Front, where are you? Link, Discuss (Thanks, Ron)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:38:48 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Birthday math factoids

Neat math factoids about various birthdays:

your 3^19 th second when you were 36y 10m,
your 2^30 th second when you were 34y 9d,
your billionth second when you were 31y 8m,
your 10,000th day when you were 27y 4m,
your 3^3 rd year when you were 27y 0m,
your e^pi th year when you were 23y 1m,
your 4^4 th month when you were 21y 4m,
your 12! th second when you were 15y 2m,
your 7! th day when you were 13y 9m,

Link Discuss (Thanks, Don!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:38:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

EFF/Illegal Art event in Oakland, July 25

I wish I was going to be around on Jul 25, but I'll be at my brother's wedding:

On July 25, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will host a night of music, art, and conversation to celebrate digital culture. Hosted at the Black Box in downtown Oakland, this special BayFF will bring up-and-coming artists of electronica, digital film, and illegal art together with leaders from the cyber-rights movement. Lawsuits and legislation have become the weapons of choice for dealing with file-sharing and cultural recycling ("sampling"); come out and discover what all the hype is about. Between laptop music, hip hop, and industrial performances, you will hear from people who are fighting to protect new forms of expression and cultural distribution from the attacks of the entertainment industry. This is an all-ages event.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:49:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hipster bingo

Crank up your Hives/Ladytron/Strokes/Raveonettes extended dance remix MP3, and play Hipster Bingo. Are we in Williamsburg yet? Link, Discuss , (Thanks, Mara, who says the "grandpa" photo looks suspiciously like Lou from the band Sebadoh)
UPDATE: I love the Internet! Here is an online auto-generator of randomized bingo cards. BoingBoing reader Glossosaurus created this, and explains: "[J]avascript randomizes the placement of the images. You and your pals can print them out and take them to Enid's or the BQE and see who wins. I'll be the blogger w/ the webcam at the Rainbo looking for the 4-foot girl with the pack of Parlaiments."

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:04:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Two more students subpoenaed by RIAA, new bill to jail fileswappers

Jon Newton on Dmusic's newsblog says: "The Big Five labels now have the identities of two students suspected of using the computer network at Chicago's Loyola University for file-sharing. Their names were handed over to the RIAA by school authorities. This represents shot three in the Big Five record labels' all-out war against file-sharers. Shot two came yesterday (July 16) when Hollywood stalwart rep Howard Berman and another democrat, rep John Conyers, introduced a bill cited as the Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner Protection and Security (ACCOPS) Act of 2003 which in effect says anyone nailed for file sharing could be jailed." Link to post, Link to Wired News story on the "put fileswappers in jail" bill, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:05:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Lava lamps on Korean subway

Dunno what the story is with this, but it appears to be a Korean subway car with lots of floor-to-ceiling lava-lamps. Beautiful. Link Discuss (Thanks, smiffy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:44:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

I'm speaking at Poptech with Kevin Sites. Please join us.

The Poptech website explains: Every autumn, in the beautiful seaside village of Camden, Maine, more than thirty of the world's most intriguing visionaries, innovators, leaders, scientists, intellectuals and artists come together for an extraordinary weekend to explore the future.

Well, they ran out of visionaries, and invited me. I'll be speaking at this year's event, held October 16-19, with Kevin Sites, then-CNN foreign correspondent whose live-from-Iraq audio/photo/narrative blog I built with John Parres, and help from folks like Ev Williams, Noah Glass, Anil Dash, and Paradigm. We'll explore the impact of blogs and DIY online publishing on conflict coverage in conventional broadcast media, and Kevin will likely share news on some of the projects he's planning, now that he's back from Iraq -- good stuff, and big stuff. I hope you'll consider attending the event. This year's program and participant roster (produced by Andrew Zolli) is truly fine and well worth your time. Oh, and $300 off if you register before August 15. Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:33:57 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moblogging, photobloging from Comic-Con in San Diego

Some interesting live photoblogging and narrative updates from folks attending the Comic-Con in San Diego this week. I am not there, but wish I was. Here's one, by way of Warren Ellis; here is a collective blog project created by the guys at textamerica (empty now, they just built it yesterday). Both of the above are also offered in a zesty RSS flavor for easy syndication. The San Diego Union-Tribune is blogging now, and there are some Comic-Con related entries on their Sci-fi/comics blog "Disembodied Brains." Wil Wheaton says he'll be audio blogging from the convention. Got more live-blogging links? Post them here: Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:28:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cool eFashion prototypes from Japan

Bev points us to some cool fashiontech prototypes:

IDEO Japan's e-fashion won Design Distinction in this year's Annual Design Review for ID Magazine. Included in the collection is jewelry that throbs to the wearer's rhythms, a shirt equipped with a camera in the front that sends the captured image to a circular display on the back, a shoe that records distanced walked, solar panel glasses that protects as well as store power (eliminates need for batteries to power another wearable fashion item, I suppose), pants with touchpad keyboards in the fabric on the two sides of the pant legs, and bags and make-up light up when opened. The lead designer for this line is Naoto Fukasawa.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:15:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disabled bloggers: Making Accessible Minds

Susannah Breslin points us to disability policy attorney Mark Siegel and his blog, The 19th Floor. Mark also happens to have spinal muscular atrophy. After guestblogging on her Reverse Cowgirl blog, Mark was urged by Susannah to write a blog post about the relationship between blogging and disability. Here's an excerpt from "Making Accessible Minds." It's wonderful.

Here's why I think blogging can be great tool for PWD. Having a disability can be a truly isolating experience. When you consider that around 70% of PWD in the U.S. are unemployed and a significant portion are living at or below the poverty line, it's easy to see why we still dwell at the margins of society. Blogging can be a way for a person to shout out their existence to the world; to give people other views on disability that have nothing to do with a telethon or a human interest story on the local news. Blogging can be as real and as honest as the author wants it to be. Blogging can be a way to fight the loneliness that plagues every human being, not just those with disabilities. So as big companies like AOL start to deliver blogging to the masses, I hope they remember to make those tools accessible to everyone. And I hope broadband becomes more affordable for everyone. And I hope people with disabilities are encouraged to share their stories.

Link, Discuss

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

RIAA vs. P2P, and the open WiFi IP dilemma

Yesterday, A Wired News reader responding to a story on anonymous filesharing e-mailed me this question:

One issue that I have not seen addressed in the RIAA vs. P2P front relates to the potential for an unsupecting home PC user who just happens to have an open WiFi router being used by a neighbor to share files to get sued by the RIAA when their IP address shows up on the RIAA's list. From the surveys I've done, there are a lot of open WiFi routers a file swapper could easily use to both serve and download files. So, is the RIAA going to have to shut down open WiFi to get its way?

And coincidentally, CNET published a story by John Borland yesterday which explores that very question.

Early last spring, NYCWireless co-founder Anthony Townsend got a note in the mail saying that someone on his network had been violating copyright laws. This type of note is becoming increasingly common as record companies and Hollywood studios subpoena Internet service providers (ISPs) for information about subscribers in order to stop people from trading songs and movies online. But Townsend's case was unusual: As the representative of a loose collection of wireless "hot spot" Internet access points, there was no way he or the relevant access point operator in New York's Bryant Park could identify or warn the file trader. (...)Townsend and others' similar experiences, no matter how limited today, point to a slowly widening hole in the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) recently announced drive to identify and ultimately sue what could be thousands of file swappers online.

Link to CNET story, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:01:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MSFT swag, deconstructed by Mackie of rotten.com

From Declan's politech list. See also this recent column which mentions Microsoft's Freedom to Innovate tchotchkes. Mackie deconstructs. Punch line? They're made in a sweatshop.

A couple of weeks ago you mentioned Microsoft's FreedomToInnovate.com and the availability of T-Shirts. Intrigued, I had to check them out. The shirts say "Microsoft" over the front left breast and on the back is a rather uninspired logo of an American flag with the union portion of the flag replaced with a lame sub-PowerPoint-clipart-grade computer terminal graphic. The text reads "Proud to Support Microsoft's Freedom to Innovate / Sign up at www.microsoft.com/freedomtoinnovate". As a fan of both ironic clothing and corporate faux grassroots campaigns, I ordered one right away.

The shirts are sold by an outsourced company called "ID Partners, Inc." which sounds like some sort of PR branding firm. It was supposed to come with two matching bumper stickers, but they were missing. In fact it didn't even have a packing slip or invoice, the shirt was just shoved into a FedEx tyvek pouch and sent out. Taking a cue from the mail-order sextoy industry the package was as discreet as humanly possible. The return address only said "ID Partners, Inc." and had a New Jersey mailing address. Think of all the explaining I'd have to do if it showed up here with a Redmond return address, oh my!

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:55:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Machinima documentary online

Hugh sez,

Machinima.com have released Artery: Machinima, a 22-minute documentary originally made for Scottish TV on the Machinima film-making movement - shooting films in real-time 3D.

The documentary features interviews with Uwe Girlich, the man who started it all, Charlie Stross, hot new sci-fi author, award-winning director Peter Rasmussen, Machinima groups including the Ill Clan, Strange Company, Nanoflix and more.

It's a great introduction to a really cool new way to make films, and an interesting piece in its own right. But then, I would say that...

Link Discuss (Thanks, Hugh!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:33:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Palm-cooling mouse

The ClicknJoy is a Japanese USB mouse with an integrated fan that cools your palm while you work. Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:30:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mickey Mouse offs himself

Check out this AMAZING 1930 parodical comic strip in which Mickey Mouse tries to commit suicide! Link (Geocities site, will probably max out bandwidth soon) Discuss (Thanks, Gabe!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:26:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reverse-engineer Flash with freeware

Kinesis Software has shipped KineticFusion, a decompiler/reverse-engineerer for Flash packages. Using this freeware, you can download Flash apps and rip them apart into their individual code, graphic, and multimedia elements, modify them, see how they work, etc. Link Discuss (Thanks, Hugh!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:14:06 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HFBD2Me 2^5

Happy birthday to me! I'm 32 today -- 2^5, a prime raised to a prime. Gonna take it eeeeeeeasy. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:42:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DirectTV blackmails anyone who owns a SmartCard reader

If you buy yourself a SmartCard writer -- say, to monkey around with as an authentication system for the hospital you work at -- beware. DirectTV is using legal threats to force SmartCard vendors out of business (because SmartCards can be used to pirate sat signals), and getting their customer lists, and extorting thousands of dollars from everyone who's ever bought one of these devices at lawyerpoint.

...Sosa received a letter from satellite TV giant DirecTV. The company accused him of purchasing piracy equipment, and, by extension, stealing DirecTV's signal. When he called the company to clear things up, he found they weren't interested in his explanations: they wanted $3,500 and the smart card programmer, or they would literally make a federal case out of it and sue him under anti-piracy laws. "I didn't know what to do, I was completely flabbergasted. So I sent the money in," says Sosa. "I have a livelihood, and I have a family, and there are a lot of things that I`d rather be than right..."

If the recipient calls the phone number on the letter, they're given a settlement offer -- usually the same $3,500 that Sosa paid. If they don't pay up, or if they ignore the letter entirely, another letter arrives in the mail as a reminder that settling with the company is the only way to resolve the matter "without either of us incurring significant legal costs." If the recipient still doesn't play ball, the company makes good on its threat and files a lawsuit. At that point, the settlement price tag jumps to $10,000 -- still less than the typical cost of paying a lawyer to go to trial against a corporate powerhouse in federal court.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:41:54 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Firewalls are broken

Firewalls are predicated on the notion that trustworthy people are inside your network and untrustworthy people are outside your network. Despite the obvious untruth of this -- the CEO goes home with her laptop and is treated as untrustworthy; an employee opens a trojan and has his box r00ted by a script-kiddie in Belarus, and is still treated as trustworthy -- we persist in using them, and then get surprised when they fail.

Take this example: employees who work remotely can penetrate the firewall through VPN tunnels. But these employees are on home-networks that might be connected to cablemodems (and hence to all the other users in the neighborhood), or have other security failures at home that can act as a back-door into the network.

And since the firewall means that everyone inside the network is trustworthy, the inward-facing servers and machines often have crap passwords and out-of-date security and use unencrypted protocols, sending passwords and data in the clear. As soon as the intruder gets inside the network, it's fox in the henhouse time. Rather than securing each machine with its own perimter and fall-back defense, the best practice is often to build a high, tight fence around the network and point all your security outside it.

Is it any wonder, then, that teleworkers are now being identified as security risks?

"It doesn't matter how much money businesses invest in securing their corporate network if employees are accessing the network from home with insecure systems.

"It's like securing the front of your house with the latest alarm but leaving your back door open."

(Actually, I'd say it's more like putting bars on the window of the bank but not buying a safe to keep your money in) Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:36:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Netscape's early days

Jamie Zawinski's journal of the early days of Netscape -- in particular, of his race to build and ship the first Unix versions of the browser -- is astonishgly good and nostalgic at the same time (I remember installing Jamie's early Netscape betas on an SGI that I was running in the early 90s).

The power came back on, and we put the damnable program on the FTP server, and two million people all started attempting to download it at once, before we had even posted the announcement message, and we're done done done and I suppose now we can all live happily ever after.

We sat in the conference room and hooked up the big TV to one of the Indys, so that we could sit around in the dark and watch the FTP download logs scroll by. jg hacked up an impromptu script that played the sound of a cannon shot each time a download successfully completed. We sat in the dark and cheered, listening to the explosions.

Four hours later, the Wall Street Journal was delivered, and it already contained an article describing what we had just done. ``Clients aren't where the money is anyway,'' ran the quote from Marc.

I'd go home now if I thought I could drive there without dying, so instead I'm going to curl up under my desk again and sleep here.

Maybe we're not doomed; people on the net are talking about Mozilla with all caps and lots of exclamation points. They're actually excited about it...

I've just noticed that there's still purple ink on the inside of my right wrist spelling the word VOID: the hand-stamp from a concert that I went to last week. I left work, went to the show, and came back to work immediately afterwards. I've been here since.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:17:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hey! Beat Takeshi MP3 sample

The song I'm obsessing over these days is (as has been previously noted), Ambulance's "Hey! Beat Takeshi," a fun bouncy happy track. Turns out it appears on a compilation disc, and the disc's compilers have posted much of the track as an MP3. Fine track. Buy the Ambulance EP for £5! 1.3MB MP3 Link Discuss (Thanks, ElNorm!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:02:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

A Brief History of Negative Space

Chris Nakashima-Brown is a sharp, tech-centric science fiction writer in Austin, whose stories are fine and fun. For example, "A Brief History of Negative Space" (published on RevolutionSF) is as swell an online read as you could hope to find:

The campaign began on a cold Saturday morning in 1973 over grilled cheese sandwiches and dark coffee in the breakfast nook of a furnished apartment on Brattleboro Avenue, near the old university. As elusive phalanxes of snow battered the storm windows, a hundred phantom divisions waged weeks of low-tech nuclear combat across the tabletop plains of Bavaria and Czechoslovakia. From the kitchen window where they sat, the generals could see a small black dog staring at them knowingly from the alley.

Two hours and fifteen minutes into the game, upon the expiration of his seventh turn, Ted removed his glasses to wipe them slowly with the worn cotton of his flannel shirt. The world went out of focus, followed by Ted's mind. Passing over the northeastern reaches of the Alps while one of his light artillery battalions marched like a diesel-powered Hannibal through a pass between Salzburg and Berchtesgarden, Ted considered his insular apartment as an unlikely analog to the "Eagle's Nest" of A.H.

The apartment was a map room, a metaphoric repository, the attic outpost from which Ted charted the coastlines of his reality. It was the laboratory in which he executed the project whose manifesto he had abstracted over a year earlier:

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:26:33 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clarion journals online

The Clarion and Clarion West writers' workshops are science-fiction writers' boot-camps, which run for six weeks every summer. I was a student in 1992 at Clarion, in East Lansing, MI. The experience is intense -- more than intense. Six weeks of permission to write, permission to experiment, permission to suck. It's a rare and radiant treasure for fledgling writers, and between the excellent writer-instructors and the wonderful fellow students, Clarion amounts to a life-changing experience for many of the attendees.

When I attended, in 1992, I kept notes on the workshop on GEnie (Cynthia Ward, at Clarion West, also took notes). It was either the first or second year that Clarion "leaked" -- that non-attendees got a window into the experience while it occurred (when Harlan Ellison, one of our instructors, got wind of this fact, he sharply advised us to cut it out, told us that the Internet was a mindless distraction and worse, and that it would do nothing good for us as writers -- not all the instructors' advice is worth following).

In subsequent years, Clarion has leaked like a sieve. The Clarionites keep online journals, their instructors read them, the instructors respond to them, the Clarionites post about it to the online journal, and the snake enthusiastically eats its tail. After all, these are writers, which means that 1) they write, and 2) they procrastinate by writing.

The Clarion and Clarion West students are at it again. The six weeks are almost over, and the workshop journals of nearly a dozen talented new writers are nearly complete. Reading through these journals is like watching a very intense drama from many points of view, a character study of bright people in a hothouse. My friend and editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden leaves to teach Clarion West in a couple days -- I'm looking forward to reading what his students have to say about him. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:22:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LA bloggers cover Farmers Market tragedy as it happens

From LABlogs:

LABlogger Andy has more details as he is practically on the scene

Link to LABlogs post with more links to related news coverage on blogs and in news media, Discuss. Back when I was still with Silicon Alley Reporter/Digital Coast Reporter magazines, our offices were about two blocks from the site of today's destruction. Everyone in the newsroom used to go to the farmer's market together to munch out on fresh Southern California strawberries and figs and stuff, every week. Incredibly sad news.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:45:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MSFT DRM infringes on Sony/Philips DRM

A US District Court has issued a preliminary ruling on the patent dispute between Intertrust and Microsoft. Intertrust is a DRM company that was all-but-insolvent when it was acquired for nearly half a billion dollars by Sony and Philips last year -- money that was a tangible vote of confidence for its patent claims, which were in competition with claims from ContentGuard, a company that Microsoft had made an enormous investment in, in order to acquire its patents.

Now the courts are leaning toward Intertrust, which is bad news for DRM. ContentGuard's XrML is the basis of an ongoing standards-setting effort at OASIS (I'm part of it), has been incorporated (in part) into MPEG4, and forms the basis for the rights-signalling in Office 11, Longhorn, and the-system-formerly-known-as-Palladium.

I've no doubt that these giants will work out some kind of solution, eventually, involving lots of quid pro quo and cash changing hands between MSFT and Sony/Philips, but for now, this means significant instability in a number of really advanced, potentially deadly DRM efforts around the world. Link Discuss (Thanks, Jason!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:09:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Roundup list of websites that shorten urls for you

Spotted on Jason DeFillippo's (there! I spelled it correctly!) blog, via Feedster: a list of websites that shorten web urls. Includes a tool-by-tool feature set chart so you can compare how the url-shorteners stack up. Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:04:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The making of an online short: Rustboy

BoingBoing reader Steve says:

"Fantastic site describing the ongoing production of a computer animated short film, Rustboy. The samples on the site are gorgeous, and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished article. All the work is being created using off-the-shelf hardware and software (Apple G3 & G4 Macs along with Infini-D, Premiere and Photoshop) by one guy called Brian at home in Scotland."

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:47:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Netomat: Group-editable multi-media canvas tool thingie

Clay Shirky says:

Maciej Wisniewski, creator of the original netomat art piece has now launched netomat.net, which gives you a desktop tool for creating multi-media canvasses that can be emailed to other users or posted to a web page, and the recipients continue to edit them. Part tool, part platform, it defies easy description -- the Writeable Drawable Voice-Annotatable Web, Hydra re-invented as a collage tool, what wikis would be like if they'd been designed by Alan Kay. As usual with odd new tools, their own home page sucks for communicating the possible uses -- netomat only starts to make sense when you make something and give it to someone else to change.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:41:24 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reality TV -- with a bug's-eye view

CNN piece about artist Sam Easterson's "Animal, Vegetable, Video" project. Sure, obscure animals show up in reality TV shows all the time -- let's see, ah.... boar urethra-eating contests, maggot mudbaths... and so on. But here, the tables are turned: tiny cams weighing about a half-ounce are mounted on buffalos, tarantulas, armadillos or plants, and the camera rolls until it falls off. Snip from CNN story:

The result is a unique perspective applauded by armchair naturalists in which the stars of the film are also the videographers. "If people can see things from the animal and plant perspective, they are far less likely to harm them or their habitat, so that's how I present it," Easterson said.

Earlier in his career as a video artist, Easterson put small cameras in strange places -- also with the goal of getting a different perspective. He put them in popcorn poppers and washers and dryers to show what those domestic appliances looked like from the inside out. But equipping a small flock of sheep with cameras in 1998 changed everything for Easterson, he said. The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, commissioned him to tape some sheep as they "mowed the lawn" in a park. Easterson said he learned a lot about his new craft and the nature of animals.

Link, Discuss (thanks, extra88")

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:39:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Teeny, cheap USB storage

This teeny-ass USB storage-fob holds 128MB and retails for $37. John Gilmore has a great rant about storage cost/size/capacity/power-consumption trends -- he says that in 10 years, we'll have drives the size of sugar-cubes with enough capacity to store all the movies, books, music, art and text ever created, that can be powered by a hard shake and are cheap enough to put in a Christmas Stocking. Link Discuss (Thanks, Ernie!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:05:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

AOL to renege on IM interop promises?

When the AOL-Time-Warner merger went down, the FCC required AOL to develop mechanisms for interoperability between AOL Instant Messenger and other services, on the grounds that the AOL-TW empire would command too much market power if it could lock the competition out of IM tech. AOL agreed at the time, and has been trying to renege ever since. Looks like they may succeed.

In April, AOL formally asked the FCC to kill the restriction, arguing that it stifles innovation and unfairly benefits its rivals.

Other leading instant-messaging companies, such as Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Yahoo Inc., offer video streaming. AOL can't offer similar services in certain markets unless it first makes its instant-messaging system operable with rival systems. AOL has repeatedly fought doing that, citing technological and security concerns. Critics say AOL simply wants to maintain its lock over instant messaging, which is one of its most-popular features.

Link Discuss (via Interesting People)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:21:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Crows use tools

Science Magazine reports on research that shows that crows build and use tools. This link includes video of a crow retrieving and bending a piece of wire into a hook so that she can fetch food out of a deep, narrow food receptacle -- it's astonishing. Link Discuss (via Making Light)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:03:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Love in the Time of Spyware

My good pal Bill Shunn has published a science fiction short story, "Love in the Age of Spyware," on Salon this morning. Like all of Bill's stories, this one is a concoction that blends social/technological speculation and a fine, bittersweet human story in perfect proportion:

Hayes leans forward and plucks a white flower, six inches across, from the twining vines that festoon the wall below him. He holds the trumpet-shaped bloom against his face like an oxygen mask, its petals having just untwisted for the night. The sweet scent is overpowering -- but despite the erotic charge it carries for Hayes, subscribers are dropping out by the tens of thousands, flipping over to one of the other subjects or just getting back to their own lives. Exit polling indicates they'll be back later this evening for the fireworks with Sandra when Hayes finally goes home. But this flower-sniffing interlude? Booor-ing.

The robot, a standard enforcement unit with moderate autonomy, has lowered itself into a clumsy squat, one hand touching the ground and the other questing vainly over the wall for its own moonflower. Hayes' muscles tense as if in anticipation of a tumble. "Here, take mine," he says, holding out his flower.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:57:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Beachside WiFi at Brighton

WiFi hackers have set up a free community wireless network in Brighton, called "Pier to Pier."

"If you like the net and you like the beach, this is a great combination," said Ian Fogg, wi-fi analyst at Jupiter Research.

"The real problem - apart from the salt, apart from the sand, apart from the water - is that the screens on many of these PDAs and laptops don't work that well in sunlight.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Anthony!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:44:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese mobile phone prototypes

Nice gallery of prototype mobile futurephones from the Wireless Japan show -- this one is IP based. Link Discuss (Thanks, Juergen!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:41:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Hey! Beat Takeshi

Warren Ellis makes me listen to music from the 21st Century. He tells me it's good for me. Given my druthers, I'd be listening to novelty cowboy music, heavy on the zither and slide-whistle, but I indulge Ellis, because he's a damned good writer, and because the tracks he sends me often kick azz.

These days, I'm obsessed with Ambulance's "Hey! Beat Takeshi," a crazy Jap-Brit techno track with a singsong quality layered over the drum-machine and the Japanese flutes, off their debut EP, also called "Ambulance." I just spent the last twenty minutes looking for a place to buy the whole EP, and I found one: £5, including shipping to the US. (Damn, I wish I had a sample of the track to link to). Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:20:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Marc of rotten.com running AIDS marathon -- donate!

Mark Powell from rotten really isn't all that rotten:

In June I began training for the Honolulu Marathon with the AIDS Marathon training program. The marathon takes place on December 14, 2003. The training program raises money for HIV services through sponsorships of volunteer runners like myself.

From June until December, I'll be logging nearly 500 miles in this six-month training program put on by the National AIDS Marathon. I train during the week, and have a 'big run' every Saturday at the crack of dawn in Golden Gate Park. This past weekend, I ran 8 miles, the longest I have ever run before in my life. Doing something I am not sure if I can do is a great thrill, almost as compelling as helping to combat the pandemic of HIV on this planet.

In San Francisco, 1 out of every 50 residents lives with HIV/AIDS. 40 million people worldwide are currently living with HIV. One million Americans are infected, and countless other lives are affected by HIV. I would like to ask your support- I have personally committed to raise at least $3,000 by September 3, 2003. Any contribution you can make would mean a lot to me and to people who benefit from HIV service and prevention programs in the Bay Area. Contributions are tax deductible and can be made through the simple website listed below. By contributing, you will be making a huge difference in the lives of thousands of people you have never met, and you will help me to reach my goal of completing a marathon in the service of our fellow man.

Link to online donation page, or email [marc at rotten dot com] to arrange an offline donation. Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:39:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amtrak is faking it

Danny O'Brien has discovered (the hard way) that Amtrak is making up as it goes along:

"Well, you have the advantage of me," I began to say... and the conductor grew quite frenzied. "I do not! It was you who chose to get on the train!". I pointed out that there was not much else to do in Redding at 6AM in the morning, having waited four hours for the pleasure. "Well, that's the nature of trains, sir," he replied, delivering some sort of coup de random flail.

What? What? It's the nature of trains to arbitrarily choose the time and their fare structure? I'm terrible at fashioning snappy comebacks to surreal arguments, but I do pride myself on re-engineering odd bureacratic strange-loops. I told him that I had now remembered - perfectly - what price I was quoted, as was expected of me. I revealed that I was to pay $51. He grumpily announced that he wasn't going to argue with me (which was nice) and let me write down my chosen price and credit card number on his carbon paper and moved on. In retrospect, I think I could have got him down to $30.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:28:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Cafepress has print-on-demand books

Cafepress now lets you sell print on demand books with no upfront fee. Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 06:27:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reality shows: pointing the way to the panopticon future

As odious as reality TV shows are, they have the signal virtue of showing us how miserable life is in the absence of any privacy and ubiquitous surveillance.

So why reality shows? Reality shows are dead cheap. You think a million dollar prize is expensive? Each member of the cast of Friends that every night. To be competitive, a show like Survivor or Idiots in a Box hardly needs to beat "regular" shows to turn a profit. And, it turns out, that people will watch this stuff in huge quantities. (There are a couple interesting potential explanations for that, but I'll limit myself to the observation that sticking a bunch of people off the street with no special training or, apparantly, personality still produces a more interesting show with better dialogue than 90% of what the networks turn out. "Perhaps," mull the networks, "the problem is that the audience wants higher definition signals." Yeah, perhaps.) These shows thrive on feeding a never-ending appetite for more and more intimate/embarassing/private/dreadful behavior, and this drives an arms race to the bottom (as if there were a bottom). So why I am heralding them as being so important?

Because, magically, weirdly, just in time, they are teaching us what it means to be watched, all the time, and have all of your actions and interactions not only observed by millions of anonymous strangers, but analyzed, judged, and preserved forever. And this is a lesson that we, especially in the United States, desperately need to learn, because it is about to happen to all of us.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:50:07 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SCOTUS P2P

Oyez is a file-sharing network for distributing audio recording of argument and response before the Supreme Court of the United States. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:48:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Creation Science Fair

Want to participate in a science fair but you believe in Creation "Science?" Why not throw a Creation Science Fair? (Is this a hoax? It seems remarkably unselfconsciously cliched) (This is a hoax, but a funny one)

1st Place: "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"
Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey.

2nd Place: "Pine Cones Are Complicated"
David Block and Trevor Murry (grades 4) showed how specifically complicated pine cones are and how they reveal God's design in nature.

Honorable Mention:

"God Made Kitty" - Sally Reister (grade 3)
"The Bible Says Creation" - Aaron Kent (grade 5)
"Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False" - Paul Sanborn (grade 4)

Link Discuss (Thanks, Henry!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:35:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Supercool online short on body modification: RETINA

The inimitable Warren Ellis points us to a pair of lush new online short films by New York-based directors and designers violet suk and martin koch. Here's the link to RETINA: transformation through body enhancements and manipulation. And here's the duo's latest installment in the "Replica" series, replica3. Suk and Koch describe Retina as an exploration of "Rituals of isolation and decay... twisted, cloned bodies... beauty and mutation... and the digital body in motion. " Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:06:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Island Chronicle extra: Abandoned Raratonga Sheraton

BoingBoing reader David Calkins points us to elegant photos of colonial waste in the South Pacific, where BoingBoing founder Mark Frauenfelder recently moved with his family:

I was reading the Island Chronicles and came across their passage about the abandoned Sheraton:

"For the last 1000 years, Rarotonga has managed to retain a unique South Pacific culture. But about ten years ago, the Sheraton chain broke ground on the island to build a huge destination resort. When we visited the island in 1994, construction workers were just beginning to build the hotel. We were sure the hotel would ruin this island. ... Fortunately, the Sheraton project went bust when it was about 80% finished. . . The ruins of the resort are now covered in rapacious island vegetation creeping in from the jungle. Horses and cattle contentedly graze in the shadows of the unoccupied concrete structures."

Just imagine: Concrete structure over-run with vines. Like Machu Pichu only with modern architecture. Being a bit of an urban explorer, I thought it must be an awesome site - but alas, I won't be flying to the Cooks this year. Fortunately, there's this tool called "Google." I found these great photo albums: Link one, Link two, Link three, Link four.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:52:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LA event: Jerry Lewis' lost Nazicomedy, Day the Clown Cried

If you're in LA tomorrow night whoops, next Wednesday -- an odd event about a Golden Turkey Award-winning cinematic classic:

THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED, Lewis' long-suppressed film about a clown in Auschwitz who entertains kids on the way to the gas ovens, is back for one night only at the Hudson Theater! Come join Scott Aukerman, BJ Porter, Jackie Harris, Sean Hayes, Fred Willard and Jay Jonhston as "The Clown"! This one will sell out immediately so call NOW! THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED Wednesday, July 23rd 8pm show @ The Comedy Central Space at The Hudson Theater 6539 Santa Monica Boulevard, 323 960 5519. Free! They sell alcohol out in the reception area. Get drunk before seeing the show. Really.

Link to plot summary on IMDB, Link to script and screenshots from the film, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:40:15 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

LA art event: pop culture breakdown at Sixspace gallery

If you're in LA this weekend, join me at the opening reception for a very cool show of graphic and digital pop art. Sean Bonner says the show includes hundreds of postcard-sized prints, and he e-mails us these details:

We have an amazing opening scheduled for Saturday, July 19 by a Canadian duo, Kenn Sakurai (ESM Artificial ) and Dave O'Regan (Poplab). With an emphasis on text, this show of mass-produced and one-of-a-kind silk-screened pieces (postcards, posters, stickers) along with painted work will touch upon some of the best and the worst aspects of popular culture that often include models, cars, rock stars, song lyrics, the 80s, and television personalities. Their work also delves into other universal themes such as heartbreak and high school. ESM and Poplab utilize familiar images, subjects, and sayings that are always humorous, poignant, and thoughtful. "Modern Thought" opening reception is from 7-10pm at sixspace 549 west 23rd, LA 90027.

Link to show details, Link to more work by ESM, Link to more work by Poplab. Discuss.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:13:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Portuguese Parliament to government officials: start blogging

BoingBoing pal Jean-Luc from Paris says:

Xeni, I don't know if you've already heard about this, but a new law was just unanimously passed in Portugal by deputies (Projecto Deliberacao number 10/IX) which provides all deputies the option of having their own website or blog (the word weblog is mentioned in the law!). The deputies' blogs will be hosted on the Portuguese Parliament's webserver. The original piece of news, blogged in Portuguese, is here, from July 07, and and I wrote about it here in French.

I don't read Portuguese *or* French all that well, and I couldn't locate the law on the Portuguese government's website -- but if any readers have access to English language versions of the news, or care to provide a translation, please post in the Discuss forum! Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:08:46 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Channeling Philip K. Dick

bOING bOING pal and Techgnosis author Erik Davis interviews the late Philip K. Dick:

"In the course of my current researches into techgnostic religious phenomena, I was experimenting with electronic voice phenomena. I was recording the analog noise between tracks on a scratchy old copy of Karl Muck conducting Parzifal with the Bayreuth Festival Chorus onto a cassette tape. Then I would cut, splice, and process the tape in various ways, and then listen to the results. On the third attempt I heard a voice that I recognized, from a tape once available through the Philip K. Dick Society, as belonging to the late science fiction writer. More incredible was my discovery that, by recording my own questions on the same cassette tape, I was able to initiate a genuine dialogue with this mysterious voice. Subsequent research proved, however, that all of the quotations have already made an appearance somewhere in Dick's fiction, letters, or essays. Nonetheless, the conversation seems worth presenting..."

Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:10:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

MSFT provides tools to defeat its own DRM

Hackers claim that MSFT DRM can be defeated with MSFT's own tools.

Incredibly, there was no exploit needed. These wily crackers merely had to write a program using well documented 100% aboveboard functions provided by Microsoft. It was not hard, involved no breakthroughs, did not depend on reverse engineering, and did not need a key. All they did was build the right DirectShow graph, and since DirectShow is a tool for third party software developers to build shipping software, ISVs can easily offer an all-in-one solution to strip DRM from content without fear of the DMCA.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Lucas!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:14:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to fight for privacy

Bruce Schneier's latest Cryptogram newsletter leads with a stirring editorial about the erosion of privacy and the difficulty for average people to address it.

My wife needed a prescription filled. Her doctor called it in to a local pharmacy, and when she went to pick it up the pharmacist refused to fill it unless she disclosed her personal information for his database. The pharmacist even showed my wife the rule book. She found the part where it said that "a reasonable effort must be made by the pharmacy to obtain, record, and maintain at least the following information," and the part where is said: "If a patient does not want a patient profile established, the patient shall state it in writing to the pharmacist. The pharmacist shall not then be required to prepare a profile as otherwise would be required by this part." Despite this, the pharmacist refused. My wife was stuck. She needed the prescription filled. She didn't want to wait the few hours for her doctor to phone the prescription in somewhere else. The pharmacist didn't care; he wasn't going to budge.

I had to travel to Japan last year, and found a company that rented local cell phones to travelers. The form required either a Social Security number or a passport number. When I asked the clerk why, he said the absence of either sent up red flags. I asked how he could tell a real-looking fake number from an actual number. He said that if I didn't care to provide the number as requested, I could rent my cell phone elsewhere, and hung up on me. I went through another company to rent, but it turned out that they contracted through this same company, and the man declined to deal with me, even at a remove. I eventually got the cell phone by going back to the first company and giving a different name (my wife's), a different credit card, and a made-up passport number. Honor satisfied all around, I guess.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:57:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mannequins: Reverse Cowgirl short fiction on Nerve.com

New on Nerve.com: a short fiction piece called "Mannequins," by Susannah Breslin of Reverse Cowgirl's blog:

Her boyfriend was on his computer all the time. He would go home after work, and he would sit down at his computer and tie up his phone line, so that when she wanted to call him, and tell him that she needed something, or that she loved him, or that she was having the hardest day of her life ever yet, he was always unavailable.

One day, while he was at work, she went to his house and logged onto his computer. She discovered he had been going through listings of mannequins for sale on eBay. He had earmarked pages of angry-looking brunettes, small Asians with black bangs, and alarmed-seeming blondes without legs. Her boyfriend, it appeared, liked mannequins with pretty faces and missing appendages, or great bodies and no heads. And, from what she could tell, he was only one of an entire group of men who spent all their time buying and selling mannequins to one another online.

Link to story, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:21:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dodge debuts the TronCycle

Dodge's new concept motorcycle is a silly Tron fantasy of surpassing impracticality. Looks cool. Link Discuss (Thanks, Brian!)

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

0wn your car's diagnostics

The CarChip is a little box that interfaces with, and logs, all the data coming off your car's microcontrollers. ISTR that some auto-manufacturers scramble the diagnostic info on their engines in order to compel higher prices for their equipment and to ensure than only its authorized agents can maintain its cars. I wonder if CarChip has reverse-engineered any of these cars' systems, and, if so, whether it will find itself on the wrong end of a DMCA suit over this?

The basic CarChip ($139) stores up to 75 hours of data and generates tables and graphs that show trip duration, minute-by-minute speed, average speed, maximum speed and incidents of heavy acceleration and braking.

If your "check engine" light comes on, CarChip will tell you what's wrong — in plain English. If the problem doesn't look serious, CarChip can reset the check-engine light so that you can see whether it crops up again (sometimes it's a fluke).

For $179, the more sophisticated CarChipE/X stores 300 hours of data. In addition to speed, it collects readings generated by five additional engine sensors.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Roland!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:42:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Clie (rumors): super-hot

Supposedly, this is the form factor of the new Sony Clie, which the company will announce on Friday, a PDA with an integrated camera and "wireless" (Bluetooth? WiFi? GPRS? Low-powered FM?). Link Discuss (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:33:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fugs are still recording

The NYT does a good "where are they now?" piece on The Fugs, the original underground rock band whose comedy porn stylings tickled my father -- I was raised on 'em (and can still hear the long-length recording they released of the Exorcism of the Pentagon in my head). Though Allen Ginsberg is dead (and hence not available to guest-star), the Fugs are, astonishingly, still recording and releasing albums.

And though Mr. Sanders, who is 63, and Mr. Kupferberg, who turns 80 in September, have reached what one of their lyrics calls the "time to think of ultimate things," they still sing about sex and peace and poetry (though not about drugs so much anymore).

On July 8 they released their latest album, "The Fugs Final CD (Part 1)," on Artemis Records — "Never let yourself get painted into a corner," Mr. Sanders said of the title — and on July 16 the Fugs will sing with their band at the Village Underground on West Third Street in Greenwich Village, in what they say might be their last gig.

Link Discuss (via Electrolite)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:29:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, July 14, 2003

Old Bailey records, 1674-1834

Long before Rumpole haunted London's Old Bailey in John Mortimer's brilliant series of short stories (Rumpole kicks John Grisham's ass to hell and back, with his Chateau Thames Embankment and his wife, "She Who Must Be Obeyed" and his snide asides about judges and juries), British lawyers argued criminal cases before the bench. Now the full text of the proceedings of the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1834 has been put online, along with scans of the original court records:

10, 11. William Howard and James Harrison , were indicted for stealing a Pewter-Dish, value 3 s. a Pewter Bason, value 12 d. 3 Copper Sance-pans, value 10 s. 2 Copper Stew-pans, value 10 s. a Copper Tea-kettle, value 5 s. the Goods of Jacob Kendall , in the Parish of St. Botolph Aldgate, July 15.

Jacob Kendall I charge the Prisoners with breaking open a Door, and robbing me of a Pewter Bason and Dish, and other Things, between 3 and 4 in the Morning; they had moved 3 Sauce-pans, 2 Stew-pans, and a Tea-kettle, in order to carry them off. The Door they broke was adjacent to the Kitchen, and was lock'd fast. The Pewter Dish and Bason they had carry'd off a good Way. - I swear they were in my Wash-house between 3 and 4 in the Morning.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Pat!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:04:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PhoneCam printer

Fuji is shipping a small color printer that communicates with phonecams via infrared to output mobile snaps.

The Battery will hold for 100 prints. The small printer takes 15 seconds for one print. The NP-1 uses standard photo printer film: Fuji film instant color film instax mini (sizes: 86x54mm, 62x46mm).

The Printer has a resolution of 10.0 dots/mm(254dpi) and 256 colors.

Size: 117.5mmx41.5mmx105.5mm
Weight: 250g incl. battery and film

Link Discuss (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:52:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

How to store a terabyte in 1970

Amazing account of the PhotoStore, an optical terabyte storage device built at Lawrence Livermore Labratories in 1970:

Thiry-two unexposed chips arrived at the Laboratory in a small plastic box or "cell", which was a little smaller than a pack of cigarettes. These were packed in a carton of ten, wrapped in a black cover to exclude light. When more "raw" film was needed, an operator would open a hatch in the top of a low section of the machine and shove the carton in, end-first. Blades would rip the box open, and the cells would drop into a queue from which they would, one by one, advance to the next step: exposure and development.

When a cell reached the head of the queue, its lid would be removed by depressing a release catch, and the chips would be mechanically extracted, one at a time, and held in the beam from an electron gun. The electron beam was magnetically aimed so as to encode the stream of data to be written, forming it into a sequence of dark and light spots on the chip. Between chips, the magnetic field would be sensed and adjusted so to to assure that it was focussed precisely enough to create the tiny spots that were needed. At specified intervals the filiments of the gun would be changed automatically by rotating a turret of eight filaments; only after these were exhausted would operator intervention be required.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Eli the Bearded!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:48:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Epcot to unveil the barfotron

Uh-oh. Looks like the new Mission: Space ride at Epcot Center is real fun, so long as you don't lift your head out of the headrest -- which is a sure-fire way to end up barfing.

"People who look straight ahead -- even people who close their eyes while they're in the ride -- they're fine," said one Disney cast member who's actually been working on "Mission: Space" during its test-and-adjust phase. "It's those guests who don't follow the safety spiel -- who lift their heads out of the headrest or turn to the side -- who are causing all the problems. They're the ones who have been getting sick."

Which is why -- as guests now enter the pre-show area at "Mission: Space" -- they repeatedly encounter Disney cast members who spiel a warning that goes something like this: "'Mission: Space' is an extremely intense attraction that recreates the experience of space travel. Which is why this ride may not be suitable for all guests. We strongly urge you to read all of the safety precautions before you decide whether or not you actually want to ride the ride."

Unfortunately, given the number of times that WDW guests actually hear this warning while they're waiting in the queue, it eventually becomes just background noise to them. Which is why these people suddenly seem so shocked once they're on board the flight simulator and find themselves exposed to these extreme stresses.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Marc!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:43:58 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Billboard Liberation Front: Apparel Apparent

Our beloved Billboard Liberation Front struck last night in San Francisco. The target? A particularly homoerotic Banana Republic ad campaign. Link Discuss (Thanks, Scott)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:43:22 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

DIY topo maps for wardrivers, geocachers, carto freaks

The latest edition of Kevin Kelly's terrific "Cool Tools" e-zine lists a bundle of websites and software applications for creating your own topographical maps. Also in this issue: very helpful recommendations on tool kits for documentary radio.

Cartography is a once-exotic specialty that is about to hit the mainstream. Making maps used to be supremely daunting. It required ultra-precise instruments and advance technical knowledge. A map could take thousands upon thousands of man-hours to build. And few might ever see it. Three technologies are overturning this profession: GPS, digital imaging, and the web. An inexpensive GPS device allows almost anyone to generate cartographic data. Plotting software allows almost anyone to map that data out. And web technology allows almost anyone to distribute and view these maps.

Most of this recent amateur digital cartography is taking place upon the solid foundations of government-funded topographic mapmaking. The story begins by digitizing the current set of government topo maps. A number of agencies, including the National Geographic Society have completed this heroic task. They employed huge scanners which devoured entire maps at once, and software that stitched all the maps together seamlessly into one huge digital map. Once you have a digital topo map, you can port that stream of bits into a GPS device. Now as you hike or bicycle or drive with your GPS on, your path is traced onto the topo map automatically, or you can pinpoint particular spots. Back at your PC you can annotate your data.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:42:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Electric plaid technotextile debuts

Bev says,

"International Fashion Machines is premiering their Electric Plaid color-changing textile at Cooper Hewitt's current triennal. Looks like an excellent show, and it's going to be on until Jan 25 2004....sheesh! Lots of time to catch it."

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:19:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SF Chronicle on Geocaching fun

Cool piece in the San Francisco Chronicle on the expanding popularity of geocaching as an outdoor "adventure" sport in Bay Area parks:

Dave Grenewetzki, 52, was on bended knee, rooting through bushes in downtown San Rafael, and eliciting bewildered looks from nearby beauty-school students. With a global positioning system unit in one hand, he appeared to be either a tech-savvy bag man or an obsessed arborist. He was neither. He was digging for treasure that was hidden by his friend Don Forman, using only the treasure's GPS coordinates - its longitude and latitude - and a clue: "Think about some of the old rock & roll music and the lyrics. You might get an Education." Forman stood by, tight-lipped.

Although not a Pink Floyd fan, Grenewetzki finally found the treasure, a film canister inside a loose "brick in the wall" behind the bushes. Forman had hollowed out the brick in his garage with a drill bit, and rolled paper inside the canister to allow those who found it to record their accomplishment. "Don, you need to get a life, man," Grenewetzki said. "You are one sick guy. "

Link, Discuss (Thanks, David)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:14:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Web Zen: Pixel Zen

(1) creatures
(2) houses
(3) avatars
(4) builder
(5) tiles
(6) icon town
(7) city creator
(8) mr.wong's
web zen home, web zen store, Discuss (Thanks, Frank)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:07:47 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Mrwinkle.com goes to Hollywood

LA Times story on a live book tour and upcoming feature film role by the canine star of the eponymously named website mrwinkle.com:

The truth is, Mr. Winkle looks as if he were created by some delightfully demented designer for one of those ancient European firms that make uniquely lovable yet dignified stuffed toys. In fact, the most frequent question asked by the 35 million people who've visited Mr. Winkle's Web site (www.mrwinkle.com) in the last three years is, "Are you real?" He is. And he is clearly one of a kind. One of what kind, even the experts are unable to say. Perhaps a bit of Pomeranian, a soupcon of poodle, a blend of two, three or 10 other miniature breeds, they believe. He is clearly a diverse dog of such mixed lineage that he stands -- at under a foot tall -- for no particular breed or class, which means he can stand for all of them.

LA Times story, Discuss (thanks, Susannah!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:53:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Good stuff on WiFiNetNews lately

Glenn Fleishman has been doing an excellent job with his WiFi Networking News site lately. His last half-dozen posts are really fascinating. Check it out. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:30:26 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thousands of duckies head for New England

29,000 rubber ducks, tossed overboard between China and Seattle more than a decade ago, will wash up on New England shores shortly.

After a mammoth journey, they are expected to start washing up on the New England coast. And while they will be bleached and battered from their journey, they are providing invaluable information on the ocean's currents. They were flung into the Pacific on the International Date Line, level with Oregon, USA.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Kai!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:12:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, July 13, 2003

Chronicle of a craphound's house

Jeanne and Aaron say,

We're renovating this really crappy bungalow from 1916 (1914?) that the owner left a TON of stuff in. Some of it we can't even IDENTIFY!!! So, to amuse friends, relatives and blog fans, we post pictures of the stuff under our "WHAT ON EARTH??!!" section and sometimes have contests. This specific contest was "Kitsch or Tacky? You Decide." We posted random photos of house items and folks let us know...kitsch? Tacky? Garage-sale? Trash? Being in this place is halfway between "camping with a mortgage" and "living in the middle of an eBay dimension."

Link Discuss (Thanks, Jeanne and Aaron!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:24:36 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

BoingFilter -- filter BB by author

BoingFilter is super-cool -- you can read Boing Boing by author, filtering out authors that don't interest you. This is exactly the correct answer to "I'm not interested in posts about ______." Don't read 'em. As soon as Blogger fixes its RSS to include authors, this will be even easier. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:58:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Software Defined Radio piece

Ben Hammersley's got a great Gruniad piece this week about Software Defined Radio. It's so cool to watch this crawl into the public consciousness.

In a positive move, the first handheld software radio was unveiled in Washington in May. Instead of specialist radio hardware, a software radio uses a simple receiver to throw the entire contents of a range of frequencies into computer memory, where software - and not hardware - does the signal processing. Vanu Inc, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took an ordinary, off-the-shelf Hewlett-Packard iPaq personal digital assistant and, using only a simple radio receiver and an upgrade to the Linux operating system, was able to demonstrate the device working as an FM radio.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:31:27 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HomePod MP3 stereo component

I don't think it's shipping yet, but I'm thinking about getting this HomePod MP3 receiver for Mac to access my music from my home stereo. Unlike the $239 SLIMP3, the HomePod promises built-in 802.11b. If you have any experience with either product (or another better solution!) please let me know in the Discuss area! Thanks! Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:27:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Worst date ever

Joey "AccordionGuy" DeVilla (he of the "saved from a psychotic new girlfriend by the reders of his blog" story) is serializing yet another of his tales of romantic terror, in a story he calls, "The worst date ever." As usual, it's very funny.

A year earlier, she's decided to switch to a sort of made-up religion: a muddle-headed mishmash of wicca, crystals, aromatherapy and eye-for-eye karmic point-scoring (from the way she carried herself, she seemed to be exempt from karma accounting). Naturally, anything Christian -- the religion of her parents -- was by definition bad. She was doing a lot of flying that year, and like any superstition-prone fool with less rational scientific thinking skill than a bed of kelp, she was sure that she was going to die in a fiery plane crash. She told me that she had faith that I would honour her burial wishes because I was nice to her even when she was "being a total bitch."

All that did was fuel dark power of attorney fantasies. I imagined a funeral theme that could only be described as "Maximum Jesus". I wrote a script in which I would visit a hospital immediately after an accident. It went something like this:

Doctor: Mr. deVilla, she...she's...
Me: Tell it to me straight, doc. No sugar coating. I can take it.
Doctor: She's scraped her knee.
Me: I HAVE POWER OF ATTORNEY! I KNOW HER WISHES! NO HEROIC MEASURES! D.N.R.! PULL THE PLUG! PULL THE PLUG!

I remember saying to my sister: "I don't even have the luxury of wishing she was dead, because I'd be stuck with all the paperwork."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:29:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, July 12, 2003

Air Canada uses trademark to silence critics

Air Canada, a failing, pathetic train-wreck of an airline, is attempting to use trademark law to stifle its critics, who have launched a shareholders' petition to ouster the president of the company. Air Canada argues that the reproduction of its trademarked logo on the petition site is an infringment of its trademark.

To which our immediate and final answer should be: Bullshit. Trademark comes to us from civil statutes relating to unfair competition and consumer confusion. Trademark exists to protect us, the public, from those who would fraudulently confuse their products with ones we're familiar with: in other words, when we crack open a can of Coke, we have the right to be sure that what's in the tin is the real deal, the pure Black Waters of American Imperialism, and not Crazy Joe's Discount Soda Beverage. Recent years have given us a dilution standard as well: if a mark is sufficiently famous, it can't be used even in generally non-confusing contexts, such as Pepsi Running Shoes or Evian Brake Fluid.

Which begs the question: Where's the confusion in Air Canada's case? What reasonable person, confronted with the petition at MiltonGottaGo.com, would assume that this was somehow a service offered by Air Canada, or would come to some harm through momentary disorientation? Indeed, Air Canada's position appears to be that the use of its marks identifies the petition's target too clearly. Under this theory, someone who contracted food-poisoning at Jack in the Box would be enjoined from uttering the company's logo in her accounts of the incident: "I got sick at a restaurant that uses a round-faced clown in a pointy hat as its logo."

Trademarks are powerful because they visually and clearly identify the companies who own them and their products. When a trademark is used to control the ability of a critic to clearly identify the target of her criticism, trademark is being perverted and is being used to undermine democratic discourse. Intellectual property laws are dangerous, ripe with potential to silence speech and stifle expression, the very things they are created to uphold. When trademark holders get greedy and grabby, we need to speak out, we need to protest -- the important word in "intellectual property" isn't property, it's intellectual. Link Discuss (via Blogaritaville)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:30:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Skin your iPod

The iPod BodyMask is a $6, printable adhesive sheet that's die-cut for easy wrapping around an iPod. It protects your device's finish and allows you skin it with any design you care to print from your color inkjet. The adhesive peels away easily and leaves no marks on the iPod's finish. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:05:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Howard Dean guest-hosting LessigBlog

Lessig's going on holidays and so he's turning over stewardship of his blog to Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:00:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Von Neumann's open source cred

Quinn Norton took some notes at the closing keynote for the O'Reilly Open Source convention in Portland, in which George Dyson discussed his research into Von Neumann's papers dating from the birth of computer science:

von neumann invented modern computer under the set of wild conditions detailed in the log books of the people working with the computer. i can't do it justice, so i won't really try to hit on it too much here, i just hope someone can annotate with his talk slides.

with the navy and rca battling over who would have patent rights, von neumann settled things by publishing without patents- this is where dyson sees it tying into the oss movement: "keep it an open universe, cause that's how it started"

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:58:55 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

600,000 blogs for the downloading

Weblog Census is a Technorati/Blogdex/Daypop-style project that has indexed over 600,000 blogs from around the world, archiving all the posts its ever discovered. You can download all this data from the project site, and invent your own data-mining alogrithms to discover the topology of Blogistan. Link Discuss (via Oblomovka)

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

Ruminations on a bee

I love Matt Webb's blog entries. They're superdense, thought-provoking, serious and playful at the same time. He's a smart one, our Matt. Today's entry is awfully tasty.

esterday morning, hot sun and hot pavement, I found a dead bee. I can't remember the last time I saw a dead bee - not since I've lived in a city, I guess - and this one was still brightly coloured, fuzzy and fat. I poked it with a piece of leaf for a while. That knot of complexity! The desk my computer is on now looks vulgar in comparison, so vast, so selfish, squatting over a million bees-worth of space, and doing nothing: one piece of the desk is much like another, and the whole like any desk, anywhere. But this bee, white black and yellow, I bet every single element of it had purpose: every particle, every force, every relative position and potentiality of it, oh and more and wider than I have space here to say, all the way down to the substrate of the universe itself. Not like my desk, built on top of all these layers, in the highly stacked and abstracted world of people -- which is, in fact, just like London around me, there at the west end of Fleet Street, a human construction, a deeply nested virtual machine really, that's all it is -- there with our precarious artifact around me, I witnessed a bee, not built on top of reality but part of reality itself. Indivisible from it. A window to the true reality so far from me. "Auspicious event! Going to be a good day" I texted Es, excited. "Not for the bee" she replied. I'm not sure, it's still there, more real than any of us. Thank you, bee!

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:55:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Stross's first novel hits the stands

Congrats to my collaborator and friend, Charlie Stross, on receiving the first hardcopies of his first real, no-foolin' novel, Singularity Sky. Charlie's one of the most promising writers to enter the field in recent years, someone who's repeatedly been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula as well as other major SF awards. I can't wait to lay hands on Singularity Sky. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:53:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, July 11, 2003

Automated music critic

Enter your favorite album or artist and prepare yourself for a venomous review! Link Discuss (Thanks, Gil!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:17:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Banana Slug provides serendipitous searching

Gary says: "Banana Slug is a Google search tool that my good friend Steve Nelson built based on a trick that I devised for finding new and unusual stuff about ukuleles on the Web. Since Google returns the most popular pages, I started searching on ukulele+some random word that occurred to me. Like ukulele and pickle. So Steve built Banana Slug, which does this for you automatically.

"Here’s a description from the site:

BananaSlug was designed to promote serendipitous surfing: finding the unexpected in the 3,083,324,652 web pages indexed by Google. Directed Google searches return pages most relevant to your search term, based on the pages' popularity on the Web. You may never see some of the pages way down the list that are relevant or interesting, but off the beaten path.

So we give you a little boost. We "seed" your search with another word, chosen at random, and this accidental encounter results in pages you may have overlooked. What, if anything, do all the results have in common? You tell me! We show the seed word at the end of the page, along with the number of results, and how many seed words we needed to try before we got results (it doesn't always happen the first time!).

"I’ve already found a new (to me) ukulele performer using Banana Slug. Jennifer Foster. Listen to her song,Ukulele Dropout."

Link Discuss

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 08:22:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Disney relaxes dress-codes at Parks

Disney has relaxed its theme-park dress code. Men can now wear earrings and corn-rows. Women can now wear hoop earrings and men can wear corn-rows. (tx, jsteven)

Men who don't wear costumes will no longer be limited to Oxford-style shirts -- crewneck, turtleneck, mock turtleneck and three-button collared sweaters will be permitted. Golf and polo shirts are still forbidden.

"Our personal opinion is that golf and polo shirts look nice when they're brand new but they don't look good after you've washed them," Valiquette said. "After you've washed them, they're naturally prone to looking sloppy."

Link Discuss (Thanks, David!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:36:18 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Napster book signing July 15th in San Francisco

Joseph Menn, the author of All the Rave, an excellent book chronicling the rise and fall of Napster, is giving a signing and a reading at Stacey's Bookstore (581 Market Street, San Francisco) on July 15th at 12:30. Joining him will be Napster server achitect and founding developer Jordan Ritter. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:29:12 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Today is 07-11-03. That means free slurpees.

At 7-11 convenience stores in the USA. W00t! Discuss (Thanks, Jon)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:19:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Quicktime video: Futurecop in Soweto

In what appears to be a faux corporate video spec piece, (about 15 megs, Link), a futuristic robot cop patrols chaotic streets of a developing nation. Update: Some folks are having difficulties loading the movie with that link -- try this direct link to the *.mov file instead. Discuss (Thanks, Marc)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:14:32 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

cool online comic-poem: Spectacular Attacks

An online graphic short, in Flash. View the online comic here, read the poem text (html) here, Discuss (Thanks, Susannah!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:46:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Russian mobile providers nix encryption so FSB, police can snoop

Not exactly a shocker, but -- from the Moscow Times:

Mobile phone providers switched off their encryption systems for 24 hours on a government order, allowing the Federal Security Service and the police to eavesdrop on all calls. An alert notifying callers that their conversations could be listened in on popped up on cellphones around Moscow at 9 p.m. Tuesday and lasted until 9 p.m. Wednesday on an order by the Communications Ministry. The alert, depending on the model of cellphone, is usually either an exclamation point or an unlocked padlock.The Communications Ministry said it issued the order at the request of the Interior Ministry, Interfax reported Wednesday.

Link, Discuss (via Dave Farber's IP list)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:36:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Oprah swoons over iPod

I, uh, missed yesterday's show, but I'm told that on yesterday's edition of "Oprah," host Oprah Winfrey reviewed her ongoing list of "favorite things" (fashion, beauty, home stuff), and the final item was the iPod. At the end of her spiel on why she liked the device, iPods were handed out to each member of the audience. here is the post-show iPod breakdown on her website, Link to the complete "O List," video, and transcript ("It'll revolutionize your music!") Discuss (via pho list)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:27:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

unwired pubs: Internet, a pint, and a packet of crisps

Mike Butcher wrote a piece in today's Irish Times about pubs in the UK going wireless:

Walk in to the Progress pub in Tuffnell Park, North London and you won't find horse brasses on the walls. It's not just pints they're offering here, but plasma screens linked to a wireless network. If the well-named Progress is anything to go by, the wireless internet is poised to take off in all sorts of directions. Progress owner Conrad Palmer rigged up the wireless broadband network inside the pub using a 250 sterling (361 Euro) Meshbox consisting of a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth access point, a Linux server, a Web browser and instant message software.

Not only can passing business people pop in to check their email on a laptop over a quick pint but drinkers can snap each other with camera phones and send the results to big screens positioned around the pub. The bar is also planning to use the screens to let customers know about upcoming events and may send digital vouchers to regulars for discounts. Although unusual at the moment, the Progress is the latest indication that the wireless Net is leaving offices and homes and heading out onto the street.

Link, Discuss (via unwired)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:19:02 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pirate keyboard

This "pirates' keyboard" from Defective Yeti is hilarious! Oh, what did we do before Photoshop? Link Discuss (Thanks, mrkazee!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:24:28 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WPA demystified

Tom's Hardware Guide has published a good roundup of WPA, a new access control and encryption system for WiFi. This is a good start-to-finish explanation, but I'm still awfully skeptical about the value of WPA outside of contexts where a server is present (i.e., my home, WiFi hotspots, warstumbled nodes) -- everyone sharing one password is just dumb-o.

Lately, I've been thinking that the best way to go is to turn on VPN access on my router and use OS X's VPN client to encrypt my connection without using WEP or WPA. Link Discuss (via WiFi Networking News)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:13:33 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, July 10, 2003

Own the figurehead from Pirates of the Caribbean

Disney's auctioning off the fiberglass-and-wood figurehead (8 ft. x 11 ft. x 12 ft.) from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The bidding stands at $700, with 6 days remaining in the auction (shipping starts at $4,000!).

You know, my birthday's only a week away. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:57:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Hypothetical Disney ride movies

Andy Baio has whipped up some nice posters for future hypothetical movies based on Disney rides, in the tradition of Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion. Link Discuss (Thanks, Andy!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:49:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

New Kensington WiFi detector

Frank Keeney points to a new gadget which manufacturer Kensington claims is "only WiFi detector on the market today."

Your life on the road just got a lot easier. With the first and only WiFi detector on the market today, you no longer need to cross your fingers as you wait for your notebook to boot up. Just press a button and the Kensington WiFi Finder lets you know if your location is "hot"...instantly. No software or computer needed. What could be easier? Completely hassle free -- no more booting up your notebook to find a WiFi signal... Instantly detects WiFi networks with the press of a button... Three lights indicate signal strength...Compact and lightweight - fits in your pocket... Detects 802.11b and 802.11g signals from up to 200 feet away... Filters out other wireless signals, including cordless phones, microwave ovens and Bluetooth networks... No software or computer required... 2.95"L X 0.39"H X 2.17"W.

Link, Discuss, Idetect offers another similar device, WiFiSense does, too. (Also spotted on Gizmodo today)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:13:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scientists do it all for the nookie

BoingBoing reader Eli the Bearded writes:

Apparently it is all about impressing the dames: "The careers of great male scientists, like those of male criminals, are most prolific in the first flush of youth, according to the study. Both groups pursue their chosen paths with greatest panache before the age of 35 and both lose their enthusiasm when they marry." This news article says a report has found a corrolation between testosterone production curve and scientific and criminal output. But the cause seems far from proven.

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:39:42 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Baseball player hits Italian Sausage character with bat

Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Randall Simon smacked one of the Milwaukee Brewers' sausage mascots with a bat Wednesday when the mascots were running by the dugout in between innings. The Italian sausage and another character, a hot dog, tumbled to the ground. Simon was arrested, booked, and ordered to appear in the DA's office today. I love sports. Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:06:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Incredible Hulk is well-hung?

According to, er, The Sun, a six-year-old girl won a plushie Hulk at a fair and later noticed a bulge in his purple shorts. She undressed the not-so-jolly green giant only to discover that the doll is anatomically correct. Link Discuss (Thanks, Gil!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:50:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired Mag: Oh, Joy! 24/7 Reality TV!

I interviewed Reality Central TV founder Larry Namer for this month's issue of WIRED Magazine:

If everyone is going to get that proverbial 15 minutes of fame, we'll need more airtime. Enter Larry Namer - cofounder of E! Entertainment Television - who this winter will launch Reality Central, a 24/7 cable network devoted to every riveting, repulsive, and banal dimension of reality TV. Namer's partner is Blake Mycoskie, a losing contestant from CBS's The Amazing Race. Mycoskie persuaded the show's winners - and some from other reality fests - to chip in more than half a million bucks as seed funding. The surreality doesn't stop there: Namer and Mycoskie are taping every step of the launch saga so that it can be turned into, yes, a reality TV show. The partners insist their network will not only have staying power, but also will play an important role in the unwiring of conventional media, powered by cheaper, faster digital tools that have the potential to make anyone a programmer, a star, and a producer.

Buy the hard copy, Read the interview online, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:22:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless Art call for entries: ResFest Korea

ResFest Korea (Korean edition of the traveling digital film festival) and Art Center Nabi (a Korean media art center) have just issued a call for entries in a Wireless Art competition in which $2,500 will be awarded to winners in each of several media categories. Proposal deadline: August 18, winners will be announced on September 1.

We hope to explore the potentials of mobile and wireless as new communication and expressive medium for art practice. Works can be described as mobile art, wireless art or multimedia experiments that open up the possibilities of newly-emerged technology of wireless. Korea, known for its nation-wide broadband network, is also a leading country of wireless technologies and services. On this ground, Art Center Nabi aims to support the production of wireless art.

Link to competition details, Discuss , (Thanks, Beverly)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:08:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Weird post-SARS protective gear fashion trend in Canada?

BoingBoing reader Darren wrote: "This is related to the whole SARS art thread. These massive visors appear to be predictors of a new trend in fashion: protective gear chic. I'd be greatful to anyone who can locate the origin and/or photos of these wacky visors-cum-welder's masks."

Then, an update: " With the help of Vancouver Webloggers, I have located a these wacky super-sized sun visors. It is, indeed, a Korean company. When you line them all up like this, they really do look like welder's masks. I figure it's defintely post-SARS paranoia at work, at some subconcious level. I posted a summary update here. " Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:02:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tunisian blog dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui's case returns to court

Zouhair Yahyaoui is a 35-year-old Tunisian blogger and journalist who's currently serving a two-year jail term -- under what supporters describe as extremely harsh, inhumane conditions -- for criticizing the Tunisian government on his website. His case returns to the highest Tunisian court this Friday, July 11. Supporters are hoping for a new investigation of his case, saying that the original trial was unjustly conducted, serving effectively as a state formality before imprisoning him for political reasons. The jailed blogger recently engaged in a hunger strike that lasted over 35 days, and last month was awarded first "Cyber-Freedom Prize" by Reporters without Borders, which works to raise awareness about human rights abuses against journalists around the world. Fiance and campaign organizer Sophie Elwarda tells BoingBoing:

"Following on from the information communicated by his solicitor Mr Abdelwahab Mataar, who was representing him, Zouhair Yahyaoui's case will pass in front of the highest court this Wednesday 11th July at 9.00 am. The highest court will investigate the file to determine if the tribunal has done there job correctly of not. And they will therefore evaluate the manner in which this justice has been delivered. There are currently 2 possibilities, confirmation or cassation, if the judgement is confirmed, that would indicate the end of any judiciary proceedings, in case of cassation the affair will again go before the court of appeal for a new investigation."

Link to RSF website with more information about Yahyaoui's case and the Cyber-Freedom Prize, Link to Yahyaoui's "Tunezine" blog (now a "Free Zouhair" support website), More background, previous BB post (1), (2). Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:43:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Real CD pirates, not in the RIAA's crosshairs

Over one billion pirate CDs will be sold this year:

Of the estimated total number of illegal music copies sold, 40% originate from factory production lines which produce professional-looking products but without paying any money back to the industry or artists.

Asia and Russia have been identified as hot spots for this.

Lookit that: actual organized criminals, mafiosi in Asia and Russia, engaged in actual, commercial piracy of music, directly corroding the bottom-line of the music industry.

Ironic, then, that the enforcement efforts from the RIAA and company have focused on efforts that will do nothing at all to slow these crooks. DRM, we're told, "keeps honest users honest." These are not honest users. The mafiyeh doesn't even slow down when it hits a DRM "speedbump." File-sharing networks are irrelevant to this -- while some of these crooks may obtain their source material by downloading from P2Pnets, they have no problem simply buying one legit copy of the disc in question and taking it to their "factory production line" for "professional-looking" reproduction in bulk.

What terribly madness has seized control of the music industry, that it has decided to attack its customers who use file-sharing networks largely to source out-of-print music and to sample new music before buying it, rather than actually attacking the actual crooks who actually make money at the industry's actual expense? Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:11:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Amish for QWERTY

I've got an editorial on the O'Reilly Network this morning, "Amish for QWERTY," about user-interfaces and the moral panics they evince.

For me, right-living is the 101-key, QWERTY, computer-centric mediated lifestyle. It's having a bulky laptop in my bag, crouching by the toilets at a strange airport with my AC adapter plugged into the always-awkwardly-placed power source, running software that I chose and installed, communicating over the wireless network. I use a network that has no incremental cost for communication, and a device that lets me install any software without permission from anyone else. Right-living is the highly mutated, commodity-hardware- based, public and free Internet. I'm QWERTY-Amish, in other words.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 02:43:05 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, July 9, 2003

Self-surveillance: view your webcam on your cellphone

A company called EyespyFX in Ireland offers a service through which you can view your home-based webcam on your cellphone while you're out and about in the world. I'm sure there are other companies out there doing this, but I haven't been paying attention yet.

Using a standard web cam EyeSpyFX - Mobile will broadcast a web cam page that is optimised to suit your mobile phone. It also broadcasts a live web cam page viewable on a regular PC browser. The PC that is broadcasting can have a fixed or dynamically assigned IP address. When the software is on it sends a "live" message to the EyeSpyFX Live Listings with the camera name and address. The live listings are optimised for phone and PC browsers. EyeSpyFX - Mobile is optimised for web browsers on phones with Symbian OS, Microsoft CE, Microsoft smart phones, WAP 2 browsers and IMODE browsers.

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:15:30 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Remember Napster Bad? Now: Sue all the World.

Bob Cesca and Campchaos -- the ruthless hijinksters responsible for the online animation smash hit "Napster Bad" (ca. 1999-2000?) -- have just created a new piece poking fun at the recent RIAA announcement: "Sue All The World 2003." NSFW, lots of cussin'. Warning: so funny, it may cause involuntary capuccino-choking or pants-crapping. Link to animation, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:15:24 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tech Policy Outlook: Supernova

Here're my impressionistic notes from the "Tech Policy Outlook" panel at Supernova, with Blair Levin, Managing Director, Legg Mason; Bruce Mehlman, Asst Secy for Tech Policy, Dept of Commerce; Gregory Staple, Partner, Vinson and Elkins and Gigi Sohn, President, Public Knowledge.

Tech and policy makers shouldn't be lapdogs for Hollywood.

Copyright has been a one-sided debate for years. Content industries built long relationships with Congress and the members of Congress. It's only slowly that tech and public interest communities are getting involved.

Content is trying to push for tech mandates, including copyright protection. Last year saw the failed Hollings Bill. Hollywood has taken this to the the FCC for "Hollings Light" in the Broadcast Flag. They're working to introduce "Super-DMCAs" in the state legislatures.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:44:29 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

FCC Wonks at Supernova

Bob Pepper, Chief of Policy Development for the FCC, was supposed to be here, but he's ill. Some of the FCC people in the room are taking the stage for an informal town-hall. Peter Tenhula, Director of FCC Spectrum Policy Task Force; Barbara Ezben, Associate Bureau Chief in the Media Bureau; Robert Cannon, Office of Strategic Planning; Scott Marcus, Senior Advisor for Internet Tech; Rob Tanner, Legal Advisor in Common Carrier Bureau

It's easier than it's ever been for the public to reach us. We hear from lots of people who are beltway outsiders.

It's hard for an administrative agency to be contacted by a public that is accustomed to talking to elected officials and getting a response. Expert agencies with technical expertise are being directed comments that are more appropriate to legislative arenas.

Valuable commentary helps us to work out a reasonable solution. It's a data-point that 750,000 Americans would prefer that we don't do something in particular [Ed *cough* media consolidation *cough*]. At the end of the day, that's not as helpful as feedback from someone who has economic expertise.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:54:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Supernova: The next communications industry

Here's my impressionistic transcript of "The next communications industry" panel at Supernova, with Raju Gulabani, CEO, Telesyn; Louis Holder, EVP Product Dev, Vonage; Paddy Holahan, CEO, NewBay and David Isenberg, Prosultant, isen.com

Voice is being transformed, and the business model is up for grabs, thanks to IP telephony. But as price comes down, uptake increases. Cheaper telephony means more talking.

Voice is just an application. Business models have to change. Your voice network isn't an asset, it's a liability.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:28:02 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Haunted Mansion trailer online

The trailer for the Haunted Mansion movie is up. Booyah! Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:21:06 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Brain Rat Cells in US Control Robotic Semi-Living Artist in Australia

Roland points us to a Georgia Institute of Technology news release announcing that U.S. and Australian researchers have jointly created "a new class of creative beings, 'the semi-living artist'." I don't know what all the fuss is about. I think the last couple of guys I've dated could be described as "semi-living artists," and at least one of them may well have been controlled by rat neurons.

A picture-drawing robot in Perth, Australia whose movements are controlled by the brain signals of cultured rat cells in Atlanta... the robotic drawing arm operates based on the neural activity of a few thousand rat neurons placed in a special petri dish that keeps the cells alive. The dish, a Multi-Electrode Array (MEA), is instrumented with 60 two-way electrodes for communication between the neurons and external electronics. The neural signals are recorded and sent to a computer that translates neural activity into robotic movement." The team hopes "to establish a cultured in vitro network system that learns like the living brains in people and animals do." Thi s summary contains images of the robotic arm and of a picture drawn by the 'semi-living artist.' It also contains other references to similar works.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:47:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SARS Art Project: cool Chinatown panorama prints now available

Kozyndan, the LA-based art duo who generously contributed this panoramic illustration (link to full-size image) for the SARS ART PROJECT, have just released five new prints. You can preview and order in this online shop. The SARS ART print, one of five available, depicts terrified citizens of LA Chinatown hurling dim sum at flying, fiendishly grinning SARS monsters. It's called "The Yum-cha Militia," and is available in a limited edition of 600 offset prints for US $25 each. I am so buying one immediately... support your local online artist!

Update: Subliminal SARS Art messages! Scott from Ideo says, "I just showed this to a Taiwanese coworker. She says some of the store signs are, um, unusual. From left to right: Red sign, four characters: 'Stay inside.' Blue sign, six characters: 'Bunny rabbit is evil.' White sign: 'Give us good things.' She didn't really understand the two on the far right. Under 'Luckett Imports' it's something like 'Politician change at home.'" Scott, Kozyndan have kind of a theme going with evil bunnyrabbits, as you can see from their website... but the rest of this will have to remain a mystery.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:36:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Free robot art in NYC: fire-breathing monkey on your back

Kal Spelletich, founder of machine art group SEEMEN, says:

"I am exhibiting the MONKEY ON YOUR BACK in New York City on Saturday and Sunday, July 12 & 13. It should be interesting, as this is a relatively untested machine so far. And, I was kicked out of the EYEBEAM Museum back in 2000 for doing my show. They don't know I am here. Yee Haw!

This is a FREE event, Time: Noon to 6:00 p.m, takes place at EYEBEAM Gallery on 540 W 21st Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues), New York, NY 10011. Nearest Subway: A/C/E/1/9 to 23rd Street."

Link to show information, Link to Kal's extreme photo gallery of hardcore robotic-monkey-on-girl action. Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:23:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Illegal Art exhibit: pics and video clips

The "Illegal Art Exhibit" that's been touring all across the country is in San Francisco this month, and BoingBoing pal Lisa Rein posted photos and a clip from ABC news to give you a taste. Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:07:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Anti-mosquito cellphone download

A Korean cellphone company is offering a 3,000 won ($1.36) app for download that generates high-pitched tones that supposedly keep mosquitos at bay. Link Discuss (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:40:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Simon Phipps on the "Massively Connected" world

Here is my impressionistic transcript of Simon "Chief Tech Evangelist" Phipps's talk at Supernova.

IBM came up with SNA -- the architecture that would rule the world. What if the Itnernet had been built on BBSes or SNA: Prodigy. A central administrator would have to give permission to add your browser to the master table, and every site would use a different protocol.

"Massively Connected" is all about shared, open, royalty-free loosely coupled standards -- not "everything joined to everything else," but "everything joined to everything else WITH THE RIGHT RULES."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:24:36 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

David Weinberger on Digital ID

Here is my impressionistic transcript of David Weinberger's Digital ID talk at Supernova.

I am deeply ignorant of Digital Identity and I hate it. It turns my stomach. I'm not atypical.

Why am I so irrationally afraid of DigID? I'm not sure. I have no argument against it, but here are the roots of my insecurity.

For starters, I'm a hippie. I am not a number. But in the main, I don't mind having a passport a credit card, a drivers' license, and I'm emotionally attached to my phone-number (something the cellcos know, which is why they resisted number portability).

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:33:59 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Caleb Carr slams Potter

Caleb Carr wrote a letter to the NYT celebrating AS Byatt's attack on Harry Potter:

For those of us who have many times found ourselves trapped in discussions (if such they can be called) of this sort with adult Potter fans, but who have lacked the clarity or sensitivity to state our side of the case so well, Ms. Byatt's article is indispensable: a classic and precise piece of true criticism, neither bile nor reverence, but brilliant dissection.

Let children who love Harry read on. But let adults know that their obsessive devotion is feeding something far more frightening than the dark arts: a retreat from the complexities of adulthood in a dangerous world.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:18:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Security panel at Supernova

Here is my impressionistic transcript of the "Decentralized Identity and Security" panel at Supernova 2003, with Marc Hedlund, VP Engineering, Sana; Joe Hildebrand, Chief Architect, Jabber; Jim Kollegger, CEO, BBX and Nikolaj Nyholm, Founder, Ascio.

Security is overfunded and overhyped. Customers got burned in the dotbomb and don't want their critical infrastructure to get orphaned in a bankruptcy.

Biological models help us protect computers at Sana.

Human immune system autonomously defends you without having a signature file of all known virii. Instead, it looks for abnormal activitiy. In a computer, this dramatically reduces false positives and increases protection against new threats, even without a virus definitions list or a security researcher.

A customer of ours -- Smith and Hawkins, a retailer -- has 50-60 stores with no IT staff, and a central office that manages security, and has a PoS that runs over the Internet to clear transactions. Our tech comes out of the Web, not out of Enterprise Architecture, polling over http with Tomcat, etc. We adapt to usage patterns in stores and spot anomalies. A firewall or an IDS would be totally ineffective in this realm, but autonomous software works.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:13:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Practical invisibility cloaks

Wil McCarthy's written a fascinating piece for Wired on "invisibility cloaks" -- micro-video camouflage systems that reproduce what's behind you on pixels in draped in front of you.

A real invisibility cloak, if it's going to dupe anyone who might see it, needs to represent the scene behind its wearer accurately from any angle. Moreover, since any number of people might be looking through it at any given moment, it has to reproduce the background from all angles at once. That is, it has to project a separate image of its surroundings for every possible perspective.

Impossible? No, just difficult. Rather than one video camera, we'll need at least six stereoscopic pairs (facing forward, backward, right, left, upward, and downward) - enough to capture the surroundings in all directions. The cameras will transmit images to a dense array of display elements, each capable of aiming thousands of light beams on their own individual trajectories. And what imagery will these elements project? A virtual scene derived from the cameras' views, making it possible to synthesize various perspectives. Of course, keeping this scene updated and projected realistically onto the cloak's display fabric will require fancy software and a serious wearable computer.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:36:08 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

1937 public-domain radio propaganda

This 1937 Columbia Workshop radio program is a gem: characters from Dickens, Lewis Carroll and other public domain works drive from the Copyright Lane to the Public Domain and have stirring adventures in a world freed from their authors. 6.4MB, 28 minute MP3 Link Discuss (via Lessig)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:34:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reefer Madness: copyright infringement and pr0n

Reefer Madness: Sex Drugs and Cheap Labour in the American Black Market is a new book by Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation. It's a very good exploration of the underground economies in marijuana, California migrant strawberry pickers, and pornographers, arguing for a rational, post-moralistic approach to these things. I was particularily seized by this little factoid from the history of porn and copyright.

The Los Angeles branch of the Cosa Nostra, lead by Dominic Brooklier, worked hard to get "a piece of the porno." But the extortion attempts of the "Mickey Mouse Mafia" proved a failure -- among other reasons, because Brooklier's soldiers made arson threats to a phony porn company run by the FBI. More successful were the efforts of various companies to "dupe" popular hard-core films, to circulate unauthorized prints without paying any royalties. Since the films were of questionable legality, producers were usually reluctant to sue for violations of copyright. *Deep Throat* was widely pirated by small-time hoods unaware of Anthony and Louis Periano's relationship with the Columbo family. The Perianos turned the practice to their advantage. Representatives of their company would visit theaters where bootleg copies of *Deep Throat* were being shown; theater owners were given the opportunity to continue exhibiting the film in return for half of the box office receipts. Few theater owners refused this offer. As a result, the widespread piracy of *Deep Throat* not only facilitated nationwide distribution, but also spared the Perianos the cost of making new prints.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:22:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, July 8, 2003

Auto-remixing Gnutella

NAG is an automated remixer for audio-tracks from Gnutellanet.

N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) is interactive software art for Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP which turns the process of searching for and downloading MP3 files into a chaotic musical collage. Type in one or more search keywords, and N.A.G. looks for matches on the Gnutella peer-to-peer file sharing network. The software then downloads MP3 files which match the search keyword(s) and remixes these audio files in real time based on the structure of the Gnutella network itself.

Link Discuss (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:45:13 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pirates of the Caribbean NPR commentary

This NPR commentary describes a woman's experience being caught on Pirates of the Caribbean. I dunno. It's kinda lame. She starts off by going into lots of detail regarding the scene she was trapped in in the ride -- and describes a bunch of stuff that isn't actually in the ride, begging the question: exactly how traumatic was this? Her punchline isn't a lot more compelling: We left the ride and we were outside. The ride has an outside. Woah. Still, it always warms my cockles to hear about the Park. Link Discuss (Thanks, Bruce!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:44:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Buy a Big Mac, get a free McWiFi connection

Hamburglar meets Netstumbler: McDonalds' is beginning to roll out its on-site wireless internet service in partnership with WayPort, and promotional offers will likely include "buy-a-[insert food item here], get a two-hour wireless connection free" deals. Not everyone predicts success:

McDonald's said it sees wireless service in its restaurants as a natural extension of convenient service, which should appeal to students and professionals, while helping drive traffic during off hours. Still, the move was met with some skepticism from some industry analysts who noted that McDonald's lacked the upscale clientele that was most likely to take advantage of constant connectivity. "With Starbucks, I think it's terrific because it does keep people in some of their stores," said Robert Goldin, a restaurant consultant with the market research firm Technomic Inc. "With McDonald's, I don't see it. The setting to me doesn't seem very conducive."

Interesting: This FAQ on McDwireless.com points out that this is a six-month trial program... the unwiring begins now, and presumably McDonalds will re-evaluate the pickup rate at the end of the trial, to determine whether or not they'll continue to offer. Link to "McDWireless.com", Link to Reuters story, Link to McDonald's press release, Discuss (Thanks, cacheop)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:29:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wireless Frontier at Supernova

Here is my impressionistic transcript of the (very good) wireless session at Supernova. Unfortunately, I missed the first 10 minutes.

MSFT is very interested in mesh wireless. It's a major area of research at MSFT Research, which isn't product development, it's basic R&D. Why wireless mesh? We believe in decentralization, power at the edge. Bob Metcalfe says that 1-2% of the chips produced every year are part of the Internet. The other 98% are not networked. As they come online, you get a Metcalfe's Law effect. In order to get billions of chips to talk to each other, we need to invent a new way.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:50:40 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi to be banned in the Phillipines?

The Phillipines' spectrum policy doesn't allow WiFi.

AS far as the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) was concerned, commercial wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) services, and even Bluetooth use, was still "illegal" in certain regions in the Philippines, including Metro Manila, an official of the regulatory body said over the weekend.

Edgardo Cabarios, director of the common carrier department of the NTC said that the body was still drafting guidelines to regulate commercial Wi-Fi activities and boost their deployment and development in the country.

"I think (commercial Wi-Fi) services have to stop because it is against the law," he said.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:40:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Live photoblogging from Supernova

Jason DeFilippo Supercool Jason DeFillippo, whose consonant-rich name I can't spell, is blogging live from Kevin Werbach's Supernova confab in DC. BoingBoing blog-compadre Cory Doctorow is among the participants. Link to Jason's liveblog, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:01:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Secrets of Dungeons and Dreamers

I wrote a feature for Wired News today about a new book due out in August that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of gamer culture through the eyes of one of its leaders:

Richard Garriott can't speak with you today, the publicist's e-mail read. The man who created Ultima Online, the first commercially successful online role-playing game, was on the way to the hospital -- having just bashed himself in the head with a two-by-four while working on his medieval castle.

The message didn't seem strange, because I'd just finished reading Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture From Geek to Chic, a forthcoming book on the evolution of gaming culture by CNET's John Borland and Wired News contributor Brad King. Due for release Aug. 19 from Osborne McGraw-Hill, it documents the manically creative lives of gamers by tracing the career of eccentric "Lord British," as Garriott is known to millions of fans, and panning out to explore the social anthropology of computer game culture.

The book profiles people who evolved gaming from paper to pixel, through 1970s Dungeons & Dragons roots, to MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) like EverQuest, to bloodstained shooter mods like Counter-Strike. But along the way, it weaves those character sketches into a living record of community, exploring the industry's impact on the broader evolution of computer hardware, software and networking technologies.

Link to WN story, Read the first chapter online for free, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:27:49 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Backfire!

Strange online photo-art/civic psychological torture project:

My name is Howard Stone. Briefly, some years ago I had a delivery job in Southampton, England (I won't say what I was delivering or for whom). It was very boring and badly paid but I soon found a way of livening it up. I discovered that the van I had to drive could very easily be persuaded to produce very loud, frightening backfires as and when I wanted it to (I'm not telling you how, find out for yourselves) and as I've always been keen on photography, I tried an experiment. I mounted a camera, pointing backwards, from the back window of the van, I hid it behind a retractable black cloth shutter and operated it with a cable-release long enough to be operated whilst driving. I would make the van backfire and photograph the frightened mayhem I'd created as I drove past. Out of (partial) consideration for my fellow man, I avoided pensioners, dentists' surgeries and gynaecologists.

Link, Discuss (Thanks, Mister Sean Bonner)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:18:30 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

QTVR panorama: film censorship down under

Photographer and QTVR creator Peter Murphy says:

Hi Xeni -- Larry Clark's recent movie "Ken Park" was scheduled for screening at the recent Sydney Film Festival but the censorship authority here refused it classification i.e. banned it and it wasnt able to be screened. Since then there have been a number of attempts at defiance of the ban -- most recently last night in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Balmain in a municipal Town Hall. It turned into series of tug-of-wars involving a DVD player, the organisers and the police and only a few minutes of the film got shown. My panoramas show the scene in the auditorium after the first of the screening attempts. Link to panorama. And here is the scene later with the police mounting guard on the DVD player to foil any further attempts at playing the DVD version of the movie -- Link to panorama.

Link to Peter's weblog, which includes more VRs and stills of this scene, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:13:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Navy plans disposable ray-guns

Noah Shachtman writes:

American warships could be armed with disposable laser weapons within five years, if a plan by U.S. Navy scientists works as promised. Michael Wardlaw, with the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, has proposed that the Navy use a battery of solid-state, one-shot-only lasers to zap enemy boats and defend against missile attacks. This Expendable Modular High Energy Laser (EMHEL), Jane's Defence Weekly reports, would use a brick of 120, meter-long laser modules that could fire individually or in one giant pulse.

"Each individual module would contain a single-shot laser capable of firing 10 kilojoules of energy at peak power in a single burst," Jane's notes. "With such a system, Wardlaw said, 'you can drill through 6in [15cm] of steel in under a second.'"

Link, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:09:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gigantor Marine Corps robot will kick civilian ass

Roland Piquepaille writes:

A new unmanned robot with lots of weapons will be used as soon as 2007 by the Marine Corps to control angry crowds, reports the Honolulu Advertiser from Camp Smith, Hawaii. "The 4-foot-tall, 1,600-pound concept vehicle recently was demonstrated at Camp Smith, launching dozens of smoke rounds downrange that could have been tear gas, or stingball and flashbang grenades." The Gladiator should be availble by 2007 for about $150,000 apiece. Look at this summary for more details including the scenario of the demonstration and the kind of weapons carried by the Gladiator. The Marine Corps also has a story about this robot, "Gladiator flexes its muscle on Camp Smith," which carries additional photographs.

Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:06:42 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wacky eBay auctions: Buy Elvis Presley's tooth and hair

Current high bid for this undead starfucker auction: US $150,323.00. Link to auction, Discuss (thanks Scott)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:59:41 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google and decentralization

Here are my impressionistic notes from Craig "Director of Technology, Google" Silverstein's talk at Supernova.

We love decentralization at Google, but making that work in a big company is hard. We focus via our mission statement: "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Makes sure everyone understands what's important. "Do things that matter" -- a test to make sure what what we do is important. "Relentless focus on the user" -- makes sure that we're doing the right thing (i.e., no banners)

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:44:15 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Robot USB keychains

Oooh, Gundam-Robot-themed keychain-fob USB drives from Japan. Link Discuss (via KoKoRo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:36:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Geographers undermining the homeland with pesky network maps

A Master's dissertation in Geography is now threatened with being classified in the interests of national security.

Tinkering on a laptop, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee, this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them.

He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: "If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?" In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.

Link Discuss (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:18:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Notes from "No More Rear-View Mirrors: Investing in a Changed Environment"

Here is my impressionistic transcript of the "No More Rear-View Mirrors: Investing in a Changed Environment" panel at Supernova, with Mike Hirshland, Paul Hammer, Jackie Kimzey, Ellen Levy, and James Suroweiki:

Jackie Kimzey:

Rear-view mirrors are useful. We've had lots of bubbles.

Our job is to invest as little as possible for as much ownership as we can get. [Ed: translation, in a seller's market for capital, entrepreneurs get screwed].

We've eliminated the pretenders and gotten back to real entrepreneus who put up their own money and work without pay. We don't have as many me-too projects -- everything is new and unique.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:06:50 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gillmor's readers' travel-tips

True to his word, Dan Gillmor has started posting travel tips for tech-centric people on the road, submitted by his readers and filtered by him. Fascinating stuff.

Many American hotel clocks are wrong, and I still get tripped up from time to time even though I have found this to be true. In contrast, I can trust those combination TV-alarm clocks that I'm had in many overseas hotels.

Printing boarding passes at home is easy, and there are now starting to be reasons to do so: I'm seeing occasionally big lines at the airport kiosks (and the stations themselves don't appear to be overly reliable - during periods of heavy use several always seem to be down).

Priceline has improved over the past year, which was the last time I tried it. Gone is the ~20 minute wait for a confirming e-mail. Instead, I knew within 60-90 seconds that my bid was refused or accepted, in this case for a $95/per night rate at a 4-star hotel in Chicago's loop.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:17:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Supernova: Making (Business) Sense of Networks

Here is my impressionistic transcript of the "Making (Business) Sense of Networks" panel at Supernova, with JC Herz, Joi Ito, Maria Martinez and Ross Mayfield:

From mainframes to minis to PCs to phones: an order of mangitude of increase in devices at each step. I don't care if MSFT takes over the desktop, because it will dwindle to the importantce of mainframes today. How can CE devices eclipse PCs and communcations tools?

Some layers of your business make money, some don't. They flipflop. NTT DoCoMo loses moeny on its devices and makes $8BB on network services. Soon it will go away due to end-to-end and new biz will come up.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:49:10 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Reed Hundt: Spend DTV dollars on broadband

Reed Hundt, the former Chairman of the FCC, gave the opening talk at Supernova. I missed taking notes on a bunch of it, largely because he buried his provacative and very exciting thesis statement (roughly put: "The money we're spending on Digital TV should be used to run fibre to every curb) about halfway through his speech. Luckily, others took notes:

David Weinberger:

He says that we have a policy that charges a surtax on TV's in order to pay for something no one wants: tuners capable of receiving digital over-the-air broadcasts. It'll raise $40B, or about what it'd cost to provide broadband fiber to every household.

Other countries will provide broadband nationally. This will in fact be the smallest of the steps they take. We don't want to fall behind.

Wouldn't it be nice, he asks, to throw money at problems that can be solved, e.g., $50B to research cars that won't contribute to global warming, $50B to end cancer, etc.

Adina Levin Anonymous Wiki contributor:

There are loosers when competition is encouraged. 1996 act resulted in a 10:1 market cap for ILECs:IXCs. But the consumer benefited the most.

Universal service Broadband policy as demand stimulus.

* 100% penetration
* $20 per month per sub until cap ex is paid for
* cost is only 3-4% of current ITC, $50b

Creative destruction should not aim to replace voice and cable networks. Have an overbuild with public money while permitting others to have a future.

Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:31:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Telcos are America's Minitel

I'm at Supernova, the tech conference in DC that's run by Kevin Werbach, an old FCC hand who ran PC Forum for Esther Dyson for some years. I'm taking running notes (as usual).

Here's my notes on Clay Shirky's talk on the inevitable (?) failure of the American Internet.

Minitel: Hahahahaha! It's near Jul 4, we need to make fun of the French.

The French govt underwrote the development of a network through France. When you've lived in no connectivity and ANY connectivity shows up, it's a great leap forward.

However, once the system was up and running, managed centrally, innovation flattened.

The PC started to catch on, but MiniTel was connected.

Then modems, but Minitel could guarantee QoS.

Then the Web: the fusion of the value of the Internet and the value of the PC, and Minitel was no longer the right answer. And Minitel had cost them an enormous cycle of innovation. They overinvested in soemthing that was a good idea for a long time, and once it became a bad idea, they couldn't see it -- the overcommitment cost them the period of innovation.

We've got it worse than the French do: as big a screwup as Minitel was, ours is worse. We're making our mistake in the physical layer, in twisted-pair. It's the bizmodels that say, "It oughta be a good idea to run a circuit-switched, voice-optimized network" -- that was a good idea for a network.

Link Discuss

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

PC in a spaceship

Check out this sweet spaceship PC casemod. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:48:19 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Haunting Brighton Pier pix

Darren sez, "I remembered that back in March you guys mentioned that Brighton's West Pier burned. I happened to be in Brighton a week earlier to attend and take photos at a wedding. I also took some eerie photos of the pier, just days before it went up in smoke." Link Discuss (Thanks, Darren!)
ges/dc

posted by Cory Doctorow at 03:51:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Monday, July 7, 2003

Wearable RFIDs: Speedpass watch

Say hello to the RFID watch. Details on the Speedpass website or on the Timex website.

The Speedpass-enabled Timex Watch is the fastest and easiest way to pay. No reaching for your wallet, or fumbling with change. Speedpass is accepted at 8,100+ Exxon and Mobil stations nationwide, 440+ McDonald's restaurants in Chicago and Northwest Indiana, 4 Stop & Shop Supermarkets in the Boston area.

Discuss (Via Declan's politech list)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:54:03 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Venice, 2123

In the August issue of WIRED Magazine: Canadian artists Kenn Brown and Chris Wren created this gorgeous, speculative illustration on rising sea levels and the fate of low-lying cities like Venice. View this piece here (220K, suitable for desktopping) or here (110K, lo-res). Buy the hard copy on newsstands now. I wrote a couple of items for that issue, too. One of them is accompanied by a slutty, only-partially-clad headshot. Ah, wait, you're probably thinking that's a good reason *not* to buy it. Nevermind. Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:25:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Virtual Book Tour

The Virtual Book Tour is a guestblogging circuit for new, indy authors.

Tours last for two weeks with the author “stopping” at one site each weekday, 10 sites in all. Each site participates either by posting book excerpts, audio clips of the author reading, an interview with the author, or a review of the book. With the site’s permission, the author may also “take over” that site and post to it for a day mutually agreed upon by the author and the site owner—an essay, a personal story, funny facts and anecdotes, etc.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Heath!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:06:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

All shapes in origami

Origami holds the whole of topology contained within it. It's n-dimensionalriffic.

Take a piece of paper, fold it into any flat origami, and make one complete straight cut (i.e., a cut along a line). Now unfold the pieces, and see what you get. Are all shapes possible? Refering back to the original sheet of paper, what patterns of cuts can be achieved by this process?

[...]

The theorem is that every pattern (plane graph) can be made by folding and one complete straight cut. This includes single (possibly nonconvex) polygons, multiple disjoint polygons, nested polygons, adjoining polygons, and even floating line segments and points.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Eli the Bearded!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:00:01 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

IM with crypto

Chris sez,

Ultramagnetic is an open-source fork of the Gaim multiprotocol instant messaging client. What makes Ultramagnetic cool is the inclusion of strong crypto via libcrypt and it's the first publicly-available application that uses Hacktivismo's 6/4 secure networking protocol as the routing layer.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Chris!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:57:49 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

HOWTO: Keysigning parties

The further mainstreaming of geekdom: who needs Tupperware parties when you can have a keysigning party? This HOWTO has the compleat formula for throwing an event that's both educational and privacy-enhancing!

3.3 What Participants Should Not Bring to the Party

1. A Computer 3.4 Why you should not bring a computer to the party

You should not bring a computer to the party because binary replacement or system modifications are very easy ways to compromise PGP systems.

If someone where to bring a portable computer and everyone used that computer to sign the other keys at the party, no one would know if the machine had been running a key stroke logging utility, a modified version of GPG,a modified version of the Linux kernel, or a specially modified keyboard, any of which could be used to capture the secret keys of those who used the computer.

The use of a computer at the party would also leave you open to more simple attacks like shoulder-surfing, or more complex attacks like weak secret key generation, secret key modification, or even infection with virii that modify your GPG binaries to leak future secret keys discretely. Link Discuss (Thanks, John!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:55:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

SoCal surfside town to become America's first unwired city?

Wifi's up: L.A. area beach town Hermosa Beach may become the first U.S. city to be unwired by its own municipal government. Totally bitchin', dude.

Imagine living in a town where you're able to move your laptop from one place to the next without ever having to log off from cyberspace. You can leave a coffee shop, travel down to the beach and then over to a park, all the while still surfing the Internet, free of charge. Hermosa Beach just might be that city if a proposal led by Mayor Michael Keegan to make the tiny beach community completely wireless comes to fruition. The completed plan would make Hermosa Beach famous as the first Wi-Fi city in the United States.

"If it's successful, I think it will be a model for the rest of the country," said Keegan. "It will be the first service that we know of, run entirely by a municipality." Keegan hopes to formally introduce the proposal to his colleagues on the City Council this month. If the municipality votes to approve the project, the San Diego-based firm, Wireless Facilities Inc., will then install antennae towers in town.

Link, Discuss (via SOCALWUG)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:34:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Subway to the bottom of the sea

The New York Times reports that "hollowed hulks of 50 obsolete New York City subway cars were dumped into the Atlantic Ocean off South Jersey today to begin a watery new life as a haven for fish."

Link to NYT story, Discuss (Thanks, Eli the Bearded!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:52:53 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Fraggers not neccesarily stinky, loner, nerdy basement-dwellers

A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project says about two-thirds of college students are gamers, but that they're not neccesarily male or antisocial. And "while about one-third of those surveyed admitted playing computer games during class, the games generally don't conflict with their studies, says the researcher who conducted the survey." Yeah, right! Link to Wired News story, Link to report copy on Pew research site, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:58:21 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Samsung puts kibosh on phonecams in its factories, research centers

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chip maker, announced today that it's restricting the use of phonecams inside its factories and research centers to prevent industrial espionage. Link, Discuss (Thanks, Bing)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:58:35 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WIPO asked to hold hearings on open collaboration

A group of open-source-, free-software- and commons-wonks have sent an open letter to the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, asking that WIPO investigate intellectual property regimes that foster open, collaborative projects.

In recent years there has been an explosion of open and collaborative projects to create public goods. These projects are extremely important, and they raise profound questions regarding appropriate intellectual property policies. They also provide evidence that one can achieve a high level of innovation in some areas of the modern economy without intellectual property protection, and indeed excessive, unbalanced, or poorly designed intellectual property protections may be counter-productive. We ask that the World Intellectual Property Organization convene a meeting in calendar year 2004 to examine these new open collaborative development models, and to discuss their relevance for public policy. (See Appendix following signatures for examples of open collaborative projects to create public goods).

53K PDF Link Discuss (Thanks, Seth!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:04:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Humans inside the spacecraft or on the ground tele-operating robots, free-flying robots, giant crane robots -- all working together

Roland sez, "NASA is teaming together humans and robots to work in space, according to this NASA News Release. "We like to think of these as 'EVA (extravehicular activity) squads' -- humans outside the spacecraft in space suits, dexterous robots, humans inside the spacecraft or on the ground tele-operating robots, free-flying robots, giant crane robots -- all working together to get the job done," said Test Conductor Dr. Robert Ambrose, who also manages the Robonaut Project that supplied two dexterous humanoid robots for the test. He also said that "the technology could be ready for International Space Station jobs in the next three to four years." Look at this summary for more details. And if you need more information, all you'd ever want to know about the Robonaut is available directly from NASA." Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:41:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sunday, July 6, 2003

Web Zen: Son of Lego Zen

(1) nyc
(2) death
(3) comic book
(4) escher
(5) mini you
(6) treasure hunt

Link, Discuss (Thanks, Frank)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:35:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

QTVR: 4th of July fireworks from Empire State Building

Photographer and QTVR enthusiast Hans Nyberg says:

"Hi, Xeni -- Photographer Jook Leung took on a very hard task here. He had to shoot the images for the panorama handheld, as he was not allowed to bring his tripod up at the Empire State Building. The guards said it was for security reasons. Taking handheld panoramas is one of Jook Leung's specialties, but the low light made this especially difficult to do."

Link to 4th of July Fireworks from the Empire State Building, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:25:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Software defined telephony

An NY-based company has announced that it will shipp software-defined-radio telephones that use code to determine what kind of network they communicate on: WiFi, CDMA, GSM, GPRS, or any other acronym of choice.

Sandbridge's chips create chameleon-like radios for cell phones capable of changing from one interoperable wireless standard to the next. The radios flip among Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Global Systems for Mobile Communications (GSM), and any of a clutch of other wireless standards using either software stored in the phone or downloaded over the air.

Link Discuss (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:27:05 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Landis's "Falling Onto Mars" online

Geoff Landis's Hugo-nominated (and very good) (and very short) short story, Falling Onto Mars, is online in a variety of formats (and the Hugo ballot closes shortly!).

The people of the planet Mars have no literature. The colonization of Mars was unforgiving, and the exiles had no time to spend in writing. But still they have stories, the tales they told to children too young to really understand, stories that these children tell to their own children. These are the legends of the Martians.

Not one of the stories is a love story.

In those days, people fell out of the sky. They fell through the ochre sky in ships that were barely functional, thin aluminum shells crowded with fetid humanity, half of them corpses and the other half little more than corpses. The landings were hard, and many of the ships split open on impact, spilling bodies and precious air into the barely-more-than-vacuum of Mars. And still they fell, wave after wave of ships, the refuse of humanity tossed carelessly through space and falling onto the cratered deserts of Mars.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Geoff!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:32:34 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Don't Copy That Floppy!

"Don't Copy That Floppy" is a classic -- a software industry educational video from the 80s 1992 begging kids not to copy games, using breakdancing rappers and a catchy ditty that'll make you tap your toes and burn your zero-day war3z. 16.5 MB WMV Link Discuss (Thanks, Peter!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:54:11 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Dan Gillmor's travel notes

Dan Gillmor is a road warrior ne plus ultra, making travellers like me look like punters. He's devoted this week's column to travel tips, and is soliciting your additional tips.

Conflicting forces are affecting the road warrior's existence. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath caused governments and the travel industry to add new layers of woe. But advances in communications have had a smoothing effect.

I've been on the road more than usual this year, due to a book project and various speaking invitations in addition to my regular job, so I can speak from experience. A colleague suggested I do just that, and this weekend -- one of the summer-travel-season peaks -- seemed like a good time. In no particular order, then, allow me to offer a few observations about travel in the early 21st century.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:51:00 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Distributed fan-translation of Potter 5 into German

A group of German Harry Potter enthusiasts are working to collectively translate the English text of Order of the Phoenix into Deustch. (Machine translation below)

Over 1.000 HP fans want after the translation of HP, succeeded well, tape 4 also the new factory: "HP and the order OF Phoenix" translate together, because English actually so with difficulty at all is not.

How does that function? Everyone, which wants to go through, selects a section section (usually 5 pages), and mailt the own translation 1 to 4 weeks later to Harry up German community back; if the translation is useful, then one gets as thank-beautifully gradually the translations of the others Mituebersetzer inside zugemailt;

The project is absolutely non commercial and is to make above all the fun involved;

Link Discuss (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:49:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Call your Senator, reinstate media ownership regulations

This website is calling on Americans to phone their Senators and ask them to support a bill reversing the FCC's shameful decision to allow for increased consolidation in ownership of mass media.

A month ago the FCC dramatically relaxed media ownership regulations, stifling the cornerstone of American democracy: a free, fair, and open public debate.

Because one million Americans raised their voices against the FCC decision, the Senate Commerce Committee recently sent a bill to the Senate floor for a vote that would roll back many of the rules. Today the challenge is to get that bill to the floor of the Senate and House for a vote.

Call your Congressional representatives and demand that they support the rollback. Enter your zip code and find out if your elected officials are currently supporting rolling back the FCC. If they are supportive co-sponsors, then thank them for their support and ask that they keep the bill alive. If they are not a co-sponsor, ask them to become one.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Bob!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:47:19 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Separating twins joined at the head

On Sunday, surgeons in Singapore began an operation to separate Ladan and Lalehn Bijani, 29-year-old Iranian women joined at the head. Twins joined at the head--one in 2 million births--are the rarest conjoined twins of all. Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:13:51 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Video-game UI built around wireless plastic sword

I'm not exactly sure how this works -- machine translation from Japanese being somewhat unreliable -- but it sure looks cool. It's a video-game system called DragonQUEST, whose CPU is a little plastic shield the size of a pack of cards that wires into your TV, and whose user-interface is a toy plastic sword that communicates its position to the CPU, so that you work your way through the game by slashing vigorously with the sword. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:33:27 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Boston Globe asserts Jefferson is a work-for-hire hack in its employ

Yesterday, the Boston Globe claimed copyright over the Declaration of Independance, but that's OK, since yesterday, I released it under a Creative Commons license. Link Discuss (via Lessig)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:28:21 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Saturday, July 5, 2003

Emailing Ourselves to Death

The NYT attacks the idea of time-slicing and multi-tasking and ubiquitous connectivity, arguing that always-on people (ahem) are junkies for the adrenaline rush of juggling a peak load, where one slip means disaster, like jet pilots or extreme sports afficianados, and that they (er, we) get less done as a result of our divided attention.

Well, I don't have anything other than my own experience to go on, and no empirical measurements of that, but I've been multitasking since I was a child, and I feel that I'm very, very productive. It's true that I have a panicky terror at the thought of being bored, but at the same time, I would argue that my five-things-at-once always-connected way of being is a successful adaptation, not a harmful addiction.

Neil Postman argues that due to telecommunications, our attention-spans have been debilitatingly foreshortened, and he convincingly illustrates this by comparing the reasoned and lengthy rhetoric of the Lincoln-Douglas debates with the soundbite-driven Reagan-Dukakis (?) debates.

The experts cited in this piece seem to be arguing the same thing, along the lines of, "That danged Internet is so slippery and fluid, it's taken away peoples' ability to watch television."

When do we stop lamenting a change like this and start looking for the value of the new trend? When do we start examining the upsides of fluid and multifarious attention, rather than popping off reactionary warnings about the dangers of being "addicted" to communications?

When do we get to consider the benefits of living with one foot in the Net and the other in meatspace?

Dr. Hallowell and John Ratey, an associate professor at Harvard and a psychiatrist with an expertise in attention deficit disorder, are among a growing number of physicians and sociologists who are assessing how technology affects attention span, creativity and focus. Though many people regard multitasking as a social annoyance, these two and others are asking whether it is counterproductive, and even addicting.

The pair have their own term for this condition: pseudo-attention deficit disorder. Its sufferers do not have actual A.D.D., but, influenced by technology and the pace of modern life, have developed shorter attention spans. They become frustrated with long-term projects, thrive on the stress of constant fixes of information, and physically crave the bursts of stimulation from checking e-mail or voice mail or answering the phone.

"It's like a dopamine squirt to be connected," said Dr. Ratey, who compares the sensations created by constantly being wired to those of narcotics — a hit of pleasure, stimulation and escape. "It takes the same pathway as our drugs of abuse and pleasure."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:50:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Friday, July 4, 2003

Sub-$100 video walkman for Christmas

A silicon valley startup is promising to ship a $100 personal video walkman, built with flash memory and a small LCD. Gizmodo points out that this is pretty vaprous-seeming, but hell, I'd probably buy one.

The new PVP, which will be released by HandHeld Entertainment in time for Christmas 2003, will be the first PVP of its kind priced under $100. Roughly the size of a personal digital assistant (PDA), the PVP includes a full-color screen, uses external media and is targeted to eight- to 25-year-olds.

Link Discuss (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:46:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Number-portability even if you've got unpaid bills

When number-portability for mobile phones comes in next November, telco customers will be able to take their phone numbers with them when they switch phone-companies, even if they owe their old carrier money.

"Carriers can not refuse to (transfer the number) while attempting to collect fees, or settle an account," Muleta wrote.

"Today, consumers who wish to change service providers may request service from a new carrier at any time, regardless of their standing with their old provider," he continued. "Consumers must have the same freedom in a number portability environment."

Link Discuss (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:29:52 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

RIP, shopping malls

CNN reports that shopping malls are failing, in favor of urban shopping districts and big-box stores. Good riddance.

The Winter Park Mall in Winter Park, Fla., was a classic case of a dying mall. The 400,000-square-foot mall was located in the heart of the city's downtown. But with all of its stores facing in and a huge parking lot surrounding it like a moat, it was completely isolated from the rest of the town. As the nearby downtown shopping district thrived, the mall failed.

In the late 1990s, a new owner, the city and local business started making plans to break up the mall. Several phases into its makeover, Winter Park Village, as it's now called, is not unlike its surrounding downtown, with apartments, restaurants, a fitness center, a movie theater, a supermarket, office space and, of course, retail.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Howard!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:04:00 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

The Declaration: Read it again for the first time

You know, this is a pretty subversive and excellent document right here.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:12:01 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Japanese toilets demystified

How to use Japanese toilets: an animated, illustrated guide. Link Discuss (via Geisha Asobi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:07:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Can't tell the wonks without a scorecard

From the Media Lab comes an Internet Movie Database-like project to identify every individual, organization and corporation involved in government and create a public dossier on same.

To empower citizens by providing a single, comprehensive, easy-to-use repository of information on individuals, organizations, and corporations related to the government of the United States of America.

To allow citizens to submit intelligence about government-related issues, while maintaining their anonymity. To allow members of the government a chance to participate in the process.

Link Discuss (via JWZ)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:04:03 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Thursday, July 3, 2003

QTVR of weird flotsam that floats ashore in Scotland

Online gallery with QTVRs of strange sea-litter:

Hundreds of tons of litter are washed up on the shores of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, each year - mostly plastic waste from marine industries. The Gulf Stream crosses the North Atlantic Ocean depositing flotsam from all around the globe on the 160 miles of Hebridean shore, mostly beautiful, and otherwise unspoilt, sandy beaches. www.flotsam.org features a gallery of VR images of marine litter. You are encouraged to help identify flotsam sources, get involved in local beach clean-ups and campaign for responsible disposal of waste by marine industries.

Link, Discuss (thanks, hal meeks)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:42:59 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Moblogging Love Hotel Conference

The First International Moblogging Love Hotel Conference takes place today. What is it? What it sounds like. Organized in Tokyo, the global love-blog-in is one of the weirdest and most charming things I've ever seen.

Link, Discuss (thanks, Sean)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:23:44 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Modern/traditional Japanese scrolls

Patricio sez, "These are hilarious reinterpretations of Japanese engravings with the old time designs mixed with American pop culture elements." Link Discuss (Thanks, Patricio!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:29:08 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Telcos don't understand wireless

Bob Frankston's posted an instant-classic rant about the horrors of telcos and the wireless businesses they inspire.

The problems with Wi-Fi Hotspots are symptomatic of the fundamental conflict between the cellular phone industry and the rest of our society and economy. The current telecommunications infrastructure has one overriding purpose -- to generate billable events. It is a tragic mistake to assume that this is the only way we can pay for vital infrastructure since it is an extremely inefficient and dysfunctional system that extracts an unbearable cost on society.

The term wireless has been appropriated to mean "faux wire". The cellular phone system emulates land phones where you pay per wire not per phone. That "wire" is used for billing and the system provides you with cell phone circuits that have the same limitations as their wired counterparts. It's no surprise that the cellular industry created Bluetooth which tried to recreate the limitations of the wire only without the wire.

This is in sharp contrast to 802.11 which just transports packets and the connections you make have no inherent limits because the packets can be relayed to any other Internet connection in the world. But it isn't easy to control or bill for the packets -- they aren't easily metered like phone calls. Even if you can count the packets it is difficult to charge for usage when a video stream can use a thousand times as many packets as an audio stream. You wouldn't be able to tell whether a web page costs a penny or a hundred dollars to visit.

Link Discuss (via SATN)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:54:54 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Inkjet ink 7X more costly than Dom

By volume, the ink in your unkjet cartridges costs seven times more than vintage champagne. Of course, there's nothing inherently expensive about inkjet ink, but manufacturers have used proprietary interfaces (and now, the DMCA to engineer a market failure that allows them to command absurd margins on their consumables. This is why vendors are shipping $30 printers (presumably at a loss): because they plan on grabbing you by the nads and squeezing once you're locked into the printer.

Ink in a typical replacement cartridge costs about £1.70 per millilitre, compared with 1985 Dom Perignon at 23p per millilitre.

Link Discuss (via /.)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:50:25 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Shrub's "scientific" refutation of global warming refuted

The Shrub's pet anti-Kyoto "scientists" have produced findings attacking the idea of global warming. This SciAm article shows the flaws in their "methodology."

"Their analysis doesn't consider whether the warm/cold periods occurred at the same time," says Peter Stott, a climate scientist at the U.K.'s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell. For example, if a proxy record indicated that a drier condition existed in one part of the world from 800 to 850, it would be counted as equal evidence for a Medieval Warming Period as a different proxy record that showed wetter conditions in another part of the world from 1250 to 1300. Regional conditions do not necessarily mirror the global average, Stott notes: "Iceland and Greenland had their warmest periods in the 1930s, whereas the warmest for the globe was the 1990s."

Soon and Baliunas also take issue with the IPCC by contending that the 20th century saw no unique patterns: they found few climatic anomalies in the proxy records. But they looked for 50-year-long anomalies; the last century's warming, the IPCC concludes, occurred in two periods of about 30 years each (with cooling in between). The warmest period occurred in the late 20th century--too short to meet Soon and Baliunas's selected requirement. The two researchers also discount thermometer readings and "give great weight to the paleo data for which the uncertainties are much greater," Stott says.

Link Discuss (Thanks, David!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:26:51 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

PalmOS Apple //e emulator

Check out this open source Apple //e emulator for the Palm. Link Discuss (Thanks, Jed!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:23:35 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Silence of the Lambs fan-musical

An anonymous correspondant writes, "Two wayward film school grads (brothers) have translated Silence of the Lambs into a series of multiple-gut-bursting songs, including the rollicking number 'Are You About A Size 14?' and the introspective 'Put the Fucking Lotion in the Basket!' The whole album is downloadable as a self-promo." Link (Not Safe For Work) Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:21:38 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Satan told me to swap that file

Newsweek story about Christian music companies battling the "spiritual perils of downloading".

Does "thou shalt not steal" mean "Thou shalt not download"? Just like other computer-savvy listeners, evangelical Christians swipe songs off the Net--and Christian labels have watched their fortunes dwindle. Sales in the $845 million industry have fallen 11 percent this year, worse than secular music’s 8 percent decline.

Last week the Recording Industry Association of America announced it could mount "thousands" of lawsuits against individual file sharers. But Christian-music companies are looking for a faith-based solution. "For us, more than it's illegal, it's wrong," says John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association, which launched a task force last month to address the problem. One suggested approach: getting pastors and youth-group leaders to preach against the spiritual perils of downloading.

But as the Rev. Paul Durham, pastor of Nashville's Radnor Baptist Church, points out, many Christian-music listeners think of file-swapping as sharing God's message. "It's like a ministry," he says. That's how Marlee Welsh, 18, of Bethesda, Md., sees it. "You're supposed to receive and spread God's word," she says, "and by that I don't think downloading is stealing." Darren Whitehead, youth minister at the People's Church in Franklin, Tenn., questions the morality of file sharing, but he hopes that "spreading the Gospel takes priority for the music companies over profit--assuming that they're Christian."

Link to story, Discuss (via Pho list)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:52:34 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

QTVR panorama: Chapel of Jean Cocteau

QTVR evangelist Hans Nyberg describes this full-screen panorama by photographer Antonio Moya.

"Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) is one of the most famous French artists from the last century. If he had lived today he would probably been called a multimedia artist. This brilliant artist was a poet, novelist, he wrote plays, articles, ballet, opera. He also made thousands of drawings, paintings, modelled clay, was a sculptor, and designed costumes. Most of us know him for the famous 1946 movie Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bete). By many considered one of the best 10 movies ever made. He decorated many Chapelles in France and the Chapel Notre-Dame-de-Jerusalem also called Chapelle Cocteau was the last. He never got it finished and it was his friend and spiritual son, Edouard Dermi who finished his work. The floor is by the ceramist Roger Pelissier. It is located in the South of France at the village of Frejus."

link to chapel QTVR, Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:41:04 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Siberia for rich kids

A reporter for the Guardian is the first outsider in five years to have gained entry to Tranquility Bay, a Jamaican armed compund where rich foreigners (mostly Americans) send their naughty children to be "rehabilitated" through a program that violates the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention, the Bill of Rights, and common decency.

This long, two-part article gives me the absolute horrors. The things these kids did -- taking drugs, "sassing," getting poor grades, etc -- are things that I did, that my friends did, when I was a kid. Being locked in a walled prison for years and subjected to systematic torture and psychological abuse while being "taught" by means of correspondance courses and standard exams would have been deadly for me.

Jay Kay is 33 years old, and the son of Wwasp's chief director. He opened the facility at the age of 27, after four years as administrator of a Wwasp-run juvenile psychiatric hospital in Utah. Previously he had been a night guard there, and before that a petrol-pump attendant, having dropped out of college. He has no qualifications in child development, but considers this unimportant.

'Experience in this job is better than any degree. Am I an educational expert? No. But I know how to hire people to get the job done.' There is more than a touch of the Jerry Springer guest about his looks - heavy, shaven-headed, colourless, and a similarly deadening certainty of mind. 'I've got the best job in the world,' he claims, but he carries himself like a man who has learnt to expect the worst, and is seldom disappointed.

Tranquility is basically a private detention camp. But it differs in one important respect. When courts jail a juvenile, he has a fixed sentence and may think what he likes while serving it, whereas no child arrives at Tranquility with a release date. Students are judged ready to leave only when they have demonstrated a sincere belief that they deserved to be sent here, and that the programme has, in fact, saved their life. They must renounce their old self, espouse the programme's belief system, display gratitude for their salvation, and police fellow students who resist.

Link Discuss (via Interesting People)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:19:58 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wednesday, July 2, 2003

Goth dog costume

At 25 bucks, this goth doggie costume is a steal. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:29:55 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Warren Ellis's Batman comic

Warren Ellis is squarely on the record as being an aesthetic enemy of the comic-book heroes he calls "Underwear Perverts" -- i.e., Batman, Superman, etc. But when I dropped by my comics store this afternoon, the proprietor had a new book for me, "Planetary/Batman," a perfect-bound, $5.95 Batman comic by Warren Ellis.

The book is a solid kick in the testicles of the Underwear Pervert genre. A cadre of tough-guy comic book characters come to Gotham to arrest a dangerous pan-dimensional lunatic, and find themselves being shuffled through many dimensions -- and many alternate versions of The Bat Man.

Ellis's repeated digs at Batman are anything but loving: they're vicious, clear-eyed and unforgiving indictments of the character and all he represents. By the time I was done, I wanted to jump up and applaud. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:52:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Gibson solicits typos from readers

William Gibson is soliciting typos from the hardcover edition of Pattern Recognition so that he can see that they're fixed in the paperback. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 05:49:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Google gag

Go to google.com, type in "Weapons of Mass Destruction," and hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for a good laff. Link Discuss (Thanks, Brad!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 02:09:45 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Write to MSU, save Clarion

Eileen Gunn, a Clarion grad and the editor of the excllent sf site, The Infinite Matrix, writes:

Update: Here's a Save Clarion form-letter for genre fans to adapt and send in. (Thanks, Captain Psyko!)

In case you haven't heard, the Clarion Writer's Workshop has lost its university funding from Michigan State University. (This is the original Clarion, not Clarion West in Seattle, which is supported by donations.) Please see the forwarded message below for details.

The survival of both Clarions (not just one) is immensely important to the quality of writing, criticism, and editing in the field of science fiction. I am writing to ask you to send an email to MSU's Interim President and Provost, Dr. Lou Anna K. Simon at laksimon@msu.edu, and the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, Dr. Wendy K. Wilkins at wwilkins@msu.edu. Please copy any messages to clarion@msu.edu.

In your letter, please mention what your interest in the SF field is -- as a reader, writer, or critic. If you have won awards in the field, please mention them. The people to whom you're sending mail may not read science fiction, or know who you are.

Clarion's funding has been threatened in the past, and successfully defended. It may still be possible to save it if enough messages from writers and readers are received by the heads of the college. I suppose I don't need to say that speed is of the essence here, but I will anyway.

Thanks for any help you can give in this. Sorry about the mass mailing, but this is a mass-mailing kind of situation. Also sorry if you get this message twice, due to my lack of attention or obsessive enthusiasm.

Please feel free to forward or send out your own plea. A quick, massive, intense response is the goal.

Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:32:43 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Long-distance TV antenna lets you watch homeland TV from anywhere

The TVBrick is a device targetted at ex-pats. You buy a TVBrick and plug it into a friend's antenna back in your homeland and connect it to the Internet. Then, you move off to some other place and use your Internet connection to watch all the shows being aired back home. The manufacturer calims to be adding VoIP and home-media-server options soon, too.

TVBrick uses the Linux Open Source / Free Operating System developped by American, European and Japanese engineers. The TVBrick appliance is based on the OpenBrick platform (www.openbrick.org). Because it includes no fan, no hard disk and no moving parts, TVBrick is 100% silent and can be operated 24 hours a day. This is a major difference with other Home Servers: the use of TVBrick when you stay abroad will not disturb your family asleep because TVBrick simply makes absolutely no noise.

Link Discuss (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:44:46 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

"Wired - A Romance" reviewed

In today's New York Observer, bOING bOING pal (and my Reality Check co-author) and former Wired staffer Brad Wieners reviews Wired - A Romance, Gary Wolf's recount of Wired magazine's semi-sordid and not-so-secret history.

"Had Mr. Rossetto's refusal to buy his staff pens made it in? His raising of the men's room urinal (much to the chagrin of the shorter fry)? Or how about the old kitchen policy? (For years, Wired prepared its staff three vegetarian meals a day, and each week a different department drew clean-up duty. This devolved into a grumpy dish-washing caste.) Was there any mention of the editorial retreats held in a yurt, or the brainstorming on brand extensions carried out in the hot tubs at Esalen? Or what about that middle-aged idler, said to be in charge of 'real estate,' but who, instead of finding new office space, spent his days wandering around with his two Jack Russells chatting people up, right up until the day of the big move to the new digs—which were right downstairs?"

Link Discuss

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:26:22 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Clarion workshop to lose its funding

The legendary Clarion Writers Workshop at Michigan State University is being cut off by the university administration. Clarion is the long-running science fiction writers' "boot camp," that has graduated such writers as Bruce Sterling, James Patrick Kelly, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, Martha Soukup, Scott Edelman and, well, me.

This is pretty disheartening. Clarion has spawned sister workshops in Seattle and Australia, and has served as the proving ground for hundreds of writers over more than 30 years.

On the other hand, this is an incredible opportunity for some university to snatch up one of the most culturally signficant academic writing programs in the world. The Clarion team are soliciting ideas (see below) -- I really hope that someone can come up with a smart answer to this conundrum.

Dr. Lister Matheson has received word from the Interim President and Provost that Michigan State University will be unable to support the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop. He has asked that this message be passed on to our friends. Suggestions and comments can be sent to Interim President and Provost, Dr. Lou Anna K. Simon at laksimon@msu.edu, and the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, Dr. Wendy K. Wilkins at wwilkins@msu.edu. Please copy any messages to clarion@msu.edu.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Mary!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:40:45 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Herman Miller ships austere Aeron

Herman Miller is shipping the Mirra, a new chair that costs half as much as the Aeron and symbolizes post-boom austerity.

Herman Miller hired a small German company called Studio 7.5 to design the chair; the group initially started developing an innovative seat back that could scale from a small woman's narrow frame to a tall man's broader shoulders. But the approach failed, three years into development. Then, in the spring of 2001, the designers hit upon the solution; the Aeron's signature mesh and aluminum construction has been replaced with a less expensive molded polypropylene back that comes in eight colors, from citron to garnet. Aesthetically, the Mirra borrows the biomorphic silhouette and the transparency of its precursor, but the materials are more commonplace. The result is a chair with less attitude; more like an iBook than a Titanium PowerBook.

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:35:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

CD promos in softdrink lids

Soft drink lids are the new flexidiscs? An indie artist called Rachel Farris is embedding her promo mini-CD in the lids of soft-drink cups at movie theaters.

Her independent record label is embedding mini-CDs in the lids of soft drink cups at movie theaters nationwide and a few theme parks.

Featuring not just a pair of songs that can be heard on regular CD players but also video clips and other content viewable on computers, the so-called enhanced CDs make TV and radio seem passe.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Howard!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:24:13 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Scott McCloud launches online micropayment comic

Zed sez, "For years, Scott McCloud has been lamenting the lack of a good micropayment system for ecommerce, which could make paid web comics viable. Well, he's finally giving it a shot, releasing a comic (the first chapter of what will be a 3 chapter work) for $.25 through BitPass, a service by which you purchase a credit of at least $3 by Paypal or credit card, from which micropayments can be deducted. This could be huge." Link Discuss (Thanks, Zed!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:20:17 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tragic mannequins

Creepy gallery of antique wax mannequins from Europe, modelled on real women. Link Discuss (via Geisha Asobi)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:16:39 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Sims Online players making comic books out of the game

Sims Online players are using the game's "family album" picture -- intended to store screenshots from important moments in your game avatars' lives -- to piece together staged scenes that they piece together into graphic novels. Basically, it's machinima comic-books.

Service, known in the Sims community as nsknight, has created several albums that are highly ranked by her peers. Among them is her six-part Vanderbilt series, which took her months to write and stage and which revolves around the story of three sisters separated by the murder of their mother.

Other users have conjured up such storylines as a young woman's drug addiction and recovery; an African-American girl's adoption by a white family; and, naturally, poor girls falling in love with rich guys. Andrea Davis, known as VioletKitty, uses the albums to build narrative Sims tutorials. "Since my Sims weren't 'acting,'" she explained, "it (is) more like reality TV."

Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:13:25 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Human genome project for virii

The Human Virome Project is a proposal to catalog the DNA of all the virii that affect humans.

The new plan is to collect blood samples from laboratories and hospitals every week. The blood would be filtered to extract viruses.

At centres spread around the world, robotic genetic sequencers would start to unravel the genetic structure of the viruses.

Link Discuss (via Futurismic)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:08:43 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Corporate crime hall of shame

This roundup of the top 100 corporate criminals of the past decade is pretty revolting.

1) F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.
Type of Crime: Antitrust
Criminal Fine: $500 million
12 Corporate Crime Reporter 21(1), May 24, 1999

2) Daiwa Bank Ltd.
Type of Crime: Financial
Criminal Fine: $340 million
10 Corporate Crime Reporter 9(3), March 4, 1996

3) BASF Aktiengesellschaft
Type of Crime: Antitrust
Criminal Fine: $225 million
12 Corporate Crime Reporter 21(1), May 24, 1999

Link Discuss (via Ambiguous)

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

Japanese company trademarks "Blog"

A Japanese company filed for a trademark on the word "Blog" on March 6 and received it from the Japanese trademark office on June 28. This trademark would be utterly bogus in the US, but I don't know enough about Japanese trademark law to figure out if it's enforceable there. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:03:11 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Wired: Wireless Hunters on the Prowl

I wrote a piece for today's WIRED News about the WorldWide Wardrive:

Mike Outmesguine leans against a Chevy Suburban packed with Wi-Fi, GPS and ham radio gadgets, gazing out at the necklace of hilltop radio towers that surround Los Angeles' Chinatown.

"The cool thing about war driving is that it makes what's invisible -- the wireless Internet -- visible," the Southern California Wireless Users Group co-founder says, grinning. "I worked on radio frequency jamming systems in the U.S. Air Force, and when I got out I remember returning home and suddenly being aware of wireless waves everywhere."

Outmesguine, a Gulf War veteran and Los Angeles-based wireless technology consultant, isn't alone in that fascination. During the third WorldWide WarDrive taking place now through July 5, participants in dozens of U.S. cities roam around with Wi-Fi-sniffing gear, logging access points that will then be collected, shared and analyzed. Organized by a loose-knit group of security professionals and wireless enthusiasts, planners say the WWWD serves to raise awareness of the need for home and corporate users to secure wireless networks from unwanted access or snooping.

Link Discuss

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:50:14 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Tuesday, July 1, 2003

Xbox hackers threaten to release keys unless MSFT ships Xbox Linux

Australian Xbox hackers have threatened to release the private Xbox keys unless Microsoft digitally signs a Linux bootloader so that it can be run on the Xbox without any modifications. If released, the keys would open the door to widespread game copying.

If Microsoft agrees to release a "signed" Linux boot loader, allowing Xbox users to run Linux officially, then the group will shelve the technique for installing it that they have formulated. If MS does not then the exploits will be released in a matter of weeks.

The advantage to having an official release of a boot loader is that it will not allow the console to run pirated software. The group says that its method does allow for piracy, and that Microsoft has the chance to stop this from happening.

Link Discuss (Thanks, Random!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:40:28 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Printable CD blanks

Memorex has shipped CD-Rs that can be fed through an inkjet printer and printed to directly. Link Discuss

posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:35:41 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

Pixels turn fifty

Next year is the fiftieth anniversary of the pixel. Andrew Zolli's posted a fascinating history of the picture-element.

The Princetonian pixels were as primitive as one could imagine--literally the glowing filaments of the machine's vacuum memory registers--but they marked the beginning of a sea-change in how we represent and see the world. Over the next five decades, we learned to shape our pixels to better reflect the 'real' world, even as we re-fabricated the world to more closely approximate those phosphorescent dots. The pixel became both a mirror and a lens, reflecting and shaping our reality. The result is a contemporary world more closely matched to the kinds of certainties pixels alone can render.

The social history of pixels has several interwoven themes. The first of these, ironically, concerns pixels' gradual disappearance. From early luminescent blobs on a screen, to points of light too small for the human eye to register, the pixel has been slowly dematerializing, losing mass and gaining verisimilitude.

Link Discuss (via Kottke)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:54:31 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

WiFi hotspot businesses cost too much to be profitable (and they suck)

The Economist reports on the failing business of providing WiFi hotspots at very high prices -- especially in Europe (I just spent three weeks there, and discovered that the average cost for a day's WiFi was on the order of $20 or more). The article points out that lower prices would certainly make a difference, and as Glenn Fleishman points out:

Starbucks has an average of two people per store per day use the T-Mobile HotSpot service; Amsterdam's airport has just a dozen per day. At these rates, they'll pay back capital expenses in negative 1,000 years.

Me, I figure that most of the expense of running a hotspot comes from the billing for hotspots. Figure $50 for a cheap access-point and $50/month for a DSL line, and you can imagine coffee-shops turning a profit on free WiFi if by selling one extra latte a day, and a hotel paying off its WiFi by renting out one extra room per floor per month.

Also missing from the article is the painfully stupid practice of using scratch-off cards for WiFi billing, like the network in the Helsinki airport. The network costs about $10 for a couple hours, but the service requires that you buy a scratch-off card with a one-time-use number before you can get on. And these cards aren't for sale in the airport. What's more, the captive portal screen (where all this is explained) lists all the places you can buy a scratch-off card in a downloadable, enormous PDF file, rather than on a web-page, and has a tech-support 800 number that can't be dialled from the payphones in the airport (which disallow toll-free calls). Presumably, this is a significant contributor to the paucity of users for the network -- and nevermind the outrageous costs. Link Discuss (via WiFi Networking News)

posted by Cory D