The titular flag-waving force battles terrorism so ham-fistedly, they often end up destroying more of the world than the bad guys they're out to neutralize. As the film opens, five freedom fighters on strings swoop down on Paris to foil an imminent terrorist strike. One blunder after another sets off a series of impossible chain reactions a la "Keystone Cops." The evildoers get bloody justice, but the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and a fair number of Parisians become collateral damage in the process.

Shortly after another fuckup leads to tragedy within the team itself, the film's heroes discover that Kim Jong-Il (eeeven more eeeevil than Saddam and Osama combined) is doling out weapons of mass destruction to a far-flung network of terrorists. Why? Part of a complicated plot for world domination, natch.

The Team persuades a rising Broadway star to lend his unstoppable acting technique to the cause. Their plan: penetrate the terrorists' network, uncover the WMDs, let freedom ring, drink celebratory beers. But blunders ensue again, and the global cops must now race against time to defend humanity.

In an item I filed for the current issue of Wired Magazine about the production's tech underpinnings (Link), filmmakers Stone and Parker describe Team America's aesthetic as "suppercrappynation." They borrow the "supermarionation" puppet animation method from Gerry Anderson's '60s TV series "Thunderbirds," but crap it up. The feel becomes messier; kitschily self-aware.

Marionettes playing AK47-toting homeland defenders don't have to do much to be funny. There's a specific kind of physical humor here only possible with puppets: suspended on visible strings, they amble as if they're drunk in zero-g. During a poignant exchange, one tries to point tenderly to another's heart, underscoring a dramatic line about "feelings." Her clumsy, string-guided hand misses the mark, to great comic effect. And like "Mister Bill," the characters are at their funniest when they're suffering -- tortured, murdered, or spontaneously impaled like sentient little olives on toothpicks.

There are many moments of blow-soda-through-your-nose comedic brilliance. North Korea's megalomaniac dictator sings a reflective, autobiographical ballad. Housecats posing as rabid panthers maul celebrity peaceniks. Matt Damon's puppet doppelganger cameos as a "Timmy"-esque halfwit whose vocabulary consists entirely of his own name. A computer intelligence network touted as the world's most sophisticated -- and appropriately named I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E -- speaks in a stoned surfer drawl. If Oscars were awarded for moments of cinematic vomit excellence, The Exorcist would have won 30 years ago; one scene in Team America would make it a shoo-in today. And a marionette sex scene manages to cram in such a dizzying array of positions -- from reverse cowgirl to rimming -- you'll need a copy of the Puppet Sutra just to keep up.

Willfull crappiness aside, the film isn't without flaws. The poo/genital/fellatio humor drags as the story approaches its climax. But everything that works really works, and the film seems destined to appeal to broader audiences than Stone and Parker's previous feature-length efforts. In short: it may be the single best crappy movie you'll see all year.

Before tonight's preview began, co-director Stone explained that the cut we were about to see was far from final, and that this was the first screening beyond a small circle of friends and crew. Shooting only finished two weeks ago; scoring, mixing, and post-production were all continuing this weekend, with a completed version due Wednesday. Stone added that in an unexpected dose of real-world irony, the score for Team America -- which parodies every CGI behemoth that famed composer Hans Zimmer ever scored -- was in fact being mixed this very moment at Mr. Zimmer's studio facility in Santa Monica. The finished product is due for a one-day-only release in 800 US theaters on October 9, followed by wide release on October 15.

"Caligula would have understood the depraved decadence and desperate frenzy of spring break—American teens’ annual pilgrimage to shimmering shores, where sex on the beach is as much an afternoon activity as it is a fruity cocktail. A festival of sun and sin, of tanned flesh and binge drinking, spring break attracts thousands of high school and college students, who wash up on Florida’s shores like schools of breeding salmon, ready to indulge their insatiable appetites and hedonistic desires with total strangers.

... Whether it’s partying at a kegger on the beach or engaging in group sex in the shower, entering a wet T-shirt contest or passing out on the bathroom floor, these teens’ uninhibited impulses are as absurd as they are disturbing. Yet Welch accepts, and even embraces, these raunchy rituals of extreme adolescence, allowing a strange sense of sadness to pervade. The morning after, broken spirits are left to reflect on their senseless acts, pack their bags, and head home."

Dentist Hillary Cook, a 56-year-old mother of five from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, helped organise the singing tour. She met John after travelling to Uganda to offer dental treatment to some of the world's poorest people.

"He doesn't look any different to any of the other children in the choir, but his is a truly remarkable story. If it hadn't been for the monkey's intervention he would certainly be dead.

"He's a shy boy and still speaks slowly but when he sings he has the most wonderful voice."

UPDATE: Ari sez: "Fox News did not 'doctor' a photo to make Bush look taller; they took it untouched from the AP. Bush just happens to look taller in that picture because it was taken at a slightly different time, from a slightly different angle. (Of course, you can still argue that they deliberately chose the photo where Bush didn't appear dwarfed by Kerry.).

Logically, there ought to be some inventive way to cross-breed the grass-rootsy cheapness, energy and immediacy of the Net with the magisterial though cumbersome, crotchety, crooked and opaque United Nations. Then bride and groom would unite their virtues and overcome those gloomy vices gnawing at their vitals. The global worldchanging multitudes could beat back the darkness of the gathering New World Disorder while swiftly improving the cramped lives of the planet's majority in a beneficent orgy of networked interdependence! Wow!

Update: Alex notes, "Bruce is just one of the fine folks posting this week to celebrate our first birthday. There'll be over 20 altogether, includes folks like Rebecca Blood, Ethan Zuckerman, Dina Mehta, Danny O'Brien, Anne Galloway, Régine Debatty, David Weinberger, Meaghan O'Neill, Joi Ito and Ross Mayfield.... "

Dr. Miriam Linschoten is part of a team at the University of Colorado Taste and Smell clinic that has identified the problem and recently published its findings, after a review by other experts in the field, in the prestigious American Journal of Rhinology, which addresses issues involving the nose.

"We felt it was important to let other workers in the field know that zinc gluconate could have this effect on the sense of smell," said Linschoten.

Based on its research, the CU team believes consumers should be wary of using the intranasal spray.

"We believe that zinc ions, when you put them directly on the olfactory epithelium -- the part of the nose, the tissue in the nose that contains the receptor cells for smelling -- that you run the risk of destroying those cells," said Linschoten.

Since I had no detailed measurements, I had to build each element based on comparisons to the sizes of established elements. For instance...

a corner of the mansion may have thirteen cornerstones going up its spine, and the level of the front door is three cornerstones above ground level. So, to calculate the height of each of the seven steps leading to the front door, I had to divide the height of three cornerstones, by seven.

So let's just skip to the nearly completed Haunted Mansion model. I say, "nearly completed" because, to date, I've only completed the front facade of the mansion. I'm still building my own version of the rear of the house, and the grounds. I'll post the new models as soon as they're complete.

Challenged about his views on sexual morality, Justice Scalia surprised his audience at Harvard University, telling them: "I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."

UPDATE: Benson sez: The original story is from the Harvard Crimson.

UPDATE: The Harvard Crimson has posted a correction to its story:

The Sept. 29 news story "Scalia Describes 'Dangerous' Trend" misquoted Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as saying that "I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged." In fact, Scalia said, "I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."

All members of WIPO need recognize that higher and higher levels of IP protection, inherent in any harmonization exercise that takes no account of the circumstances of each country, are extremely detrimental to developing countries. Intellectual property rights have to be viewed not as a self contained and distinct domain, but rather as an effective policy instrument for wide ranging socio-economic and technological development. The primary objective of this instrument is to maximize public welfare. The national policy space of each country must be respected, especially when developing countries are asked to assume international obligations. Even the most advanced developed countries, with their complex laws, have to grapple with the anti-competitive practices linked to patents. The absence of any comparable legal regime in developing countries means that these countries are required to grant monopoly rights to IP holders, without any meaningful or credible instruments to regulate the exercise of these rights.

Given the huge disparities existing across the world it is open to question whether IP harmonization benefits developing countries. The developed countries to pay lip service to "development' in the context of Intellectual Property protection, but they do so rather self-servingly. The term 'development' as used by these countries, including in WIPO, means quite the opposite of what developing countries understand when they refer to the 'development dimension'. If you share the perspective of the developed countries, 'development' means increasing a developing country's capacity to provide protection to the overwhelmingly developed country owners of IP rights!

"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Kerry said Friday.

Women should like me! I do manicures"

About himself and the president: "I'm metrosexual — he's a cowboy."

UPDATE: Michael McDaniel sez: "Looks like FOX News has retracted their story, now that they've done as much damage as possible with it."

Most people have probably never heard of the agency, called the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office. And they haven't heard of its plans to add another dimension to our national road system, one that uses tracking and sensor technology to erase the lines between cars, the road and the government transportation management centers from which every aspect of transportation will be observed and managed.

For 13 years, a powerful group of car manufacturers, technology companies and government interests has fought to bring this system to life. They envision a future in which massive databases will track the comings and goings of everyone who travels by car or mass transit. The only way for people to evade the national transportation tracking system they're creating will be to travel on foot. Drive your car, and your every movement could be recorded and archived. The federal government will know the exact route you drove to work, how many times you braked along the way, the precise moment you arrived -- and that every other Tuesday you opt to ride the bus.

Souvenirs are important cultural objects which can store and communicate memories, emotions and desires. "Buildings of Disaster" are miniature replicas of famous structures where some tragic or terrible events happened to take place. The images of burning or exploded buildings make a different, populist history of architecture, one based on emotional involvement rather than scholarly appreciation. In a media-saturated time, world disasters stand as people's measure of history, and the sites of tragic events often become involuntary tourists destinations.

Relying predominantly on evidence provided by PUBPAT when the reexamination was requested, the Patent Office made multiple rejections of the Redmond, WA based software giant's patent. Microsoft has the opportunity to respond to the Patent Office's rejection, but third party requests for reexamination, like the one filed by PUBPAT, are successful in having the subject patent either narrowed or completely revoked roughly 70% of the time.

"The Patent Office has simply confirmed what we already knew for some time now, Microsoft's FAT patent is bogus," said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT's Executive Director. "I hope those companies that chose to take a license from Microsoft for the patent negotiated refund clauses so that they can get their money back."

Updated: Paul Hoffman sez, "Only the claims were rejected, and even that is probably temporary. Most patent applications have some or all of their claims rejected; the applicant then goes into a game of footsie with the examiner, coming out with either fewer claims or the same number of claims with a narrower focus. Sometimes the examiner simply says 'oh, you're right' and un-rejects; sometimes the examiner says 'no, you're actually hosed', but that is much less common than it should be.

"If Microsoft is left with a single claim out of the four, even if it is narrowed, they will still most likely be able to flog it against anyone using the FAT filesystem. Narrowing claims is only interesting in cases where someone makes something *like* the patent; then they hope that the claims are narrowed to less than what they are possibly infringing on. In the case of FAT, unless the claims are somehow narrowed down so far that you can implement FAT and not infringe on what Microsoft might end up with, PubPat's effort is not useful to the folks who want to implement FAT."

BnetD is an open source program that lets gamers play popular Blizzard titles like Warcraft with other gamers on servers that don't belong to Blizzard's Battle.net service. Blizzard argued that the programmers who wrote BnetD violated the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions and that the programmers also violated several parts of Blizzard's EULA, including a section on reverse engineering.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), co-counsel for the defendants, argued that programming and distributing BnetD was fair use. The programmers reverse-engineered Battle.net purely to make their free product work with it, not to violate copyright.

EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz said, "Consumers have a right to choose where and when they want to use the products they buy. This ruling gives Blizzard the ability to force you to use their servers whether you want to or not. Copyright law was meant to promote competition and creative alternatives, not suppress them."

Now a court has ruled that Diebold knowingly abused copyright and the DMCA when it sent nastygrams to the activists' ISPs, and has awarded the activists damages and court costs.

EFF represented the activists' side here. Man, we're winning some important cases these days. I love my job.

In his decision, Judge Jeremy Fogel wrote, "No reasonable copyright holder could have believed that the portions of the email archive discussing possible technical problems with Diebold's voting machines were proteced by copyright . . . the Court concludes as a matter of law that Diebold knowingly materially misrepresented that Plaintiffs infringed Diebold's copyright interest."

But I took it differently: I think they mean that their customers have grown aware of what abad deal these DRM discs are and don't want them anymore. IOW, we complained loud and hard and Sony blinked. Link

The only fly in the ointment for me is this: I really wish they'd set up the licenses so that they constituted a blanket waiver of Moral Rights, but I can't fault them for making it optional.

Still, if you're Canadian and you're CC-licensing your work, please consider the moral-rights waiver; otherwise, people who use your work run the risk that if you take it into your head that they've offended you, you could force them to destroy the new art they've made with your stuff.

By the same token, I will never, ever incorporate a work with a "moral rights asserted" clause into any of my works -- it's not worth the risk to me.

A lot of the world's copyright systems have the concept of author's moral rights -- I really hope that waivers of these rights become the norm in international CC licenses. Link (via Michael Geist)

Types in HTML phrases: I've defined "ahr" to yield "". Whether I'm in BBEdit, or in a TypePad form within a Web browser, I can get these key HTML strings out quickly and error-free.

Types short phrases: This is great in e-mail. I've set it up so that "tf" becomes "thanks for"; "tfy" becomes "thanks for your"; "tvmfy" becomes "thanks very much for your"... and so on. You can be as polite as you want, and optimally efficient, at the same time.

Image: on-ship footage from yesterday's launch -- webcast link. Previous BoingBoing posts: Xeni's NPR report, and snapshots.

Spaceblogger, infojunkie, and BoingBoing reader Brad Neuberg was part of the X-Prize volunteer team. I met him at the launch, and he's been doing a terrific job of blogging live from the event site. Keep your eyes on his blog Monday, I'm sure he'll do more. Link . And here's another live XPrize blog maintained by an event volunteer: Link to Mike Taht's blog. BoingBoing reader Susan Kitchens also attended, and posted some cool photos and details about the festive "X-stock" scene around the airfield, here: Link

We went to war on false pretences. The real reasons for going into Iraq have not been revealed to this day. The weapons of mass destruction could not be found, and the connection with al Qaeda could not be established. President Bush then claimed that we went to war to liberate the people of Iraq. All my experience in fostering democracy and open society has taught me that democracy cannot be imposed by military means. And, Iraq would be the last place I would chose for an experiment in introducing democracy - as the current chaos demonstrates.

Of course, Saddam was a tyrant, and of course Iraqis - and the rest of the world - can rejoice to be rid of him. But Iraqis now hate the American occupation. We stood idly by while Baghdad was ransacked. As the occupying power, we had an obligation to maintain law and order, but we failed to live up to it. If we had cared about the people of Iraq we should have had more troops available for the occupation than we needed for the invasion. We should have provided protection not only for the oil ministry but also the other ministries, museums and hospitals. Baghdad and the country's other cities were destroyed after we occupied them. When we encountered resistance, we employed methods that alienated and humiliated the population. The way we invaded homes, and the way we treated prisoners generated resentment and rage. Public opinion condemns us worldwide.

"RESFEST 2004 kicks off with a survey of state-of-the-art storytelling that mixes animation, live action and graphics-oriented work, giving viewers a taste of the festival's unique blend of filmmaking techniques. See the retelling of the tragic fate of Oedipus in luxurious cinematic splendor redolent of '50s era epics--with a case of vegetables. See what happens when the inexorable thrust of time slows, then stops, allowing three characters to transcend their destinies in Daniel Askill's visually stunning philosophical mindbender WE HAVE DECIDED NOT TO DIE."

"To a scientist, the film is interesting because it compresses everything that could happen under an abrupt climate change scenario (and much that could not happen) into a few days, rather than the more realistic decades. A collapse of the thermohaline circulation is a low-probability, but high-impact event. If it did occur in the early 21st century, it would have a huge impact on weather.

Some data suggest the thermohaline circulation has already begun to slow. Certain parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet are shrinking 10 times faster than they were a few years ago, losing an average of 10 meters of elevation annually, in contrast to the previous 1 meter, and reducing the salinity of the North Atlantic."

The daily release of energy required to generate the hum is equivalent to a magnitude 5.75 to six earthquake, say Junkee Rhie and Barbara Romanowicz of the University of California, Berkeley.

"SS-1" is the top contender in the race for the Ansari X-prize, a global competition to build the first viable commercial spaceship. The winning team will receive a $10 million award. For SpaceShipOne, that amounts to only half of the $20 million or so Allen invested -- clearly, the competition is about more than a cash prize.

Jason DeFillippo joined me and Day to Day producer Nihar Patel for the trip to Mojave -- Jason took some absolutely terrific photos of the launch, flight, landing, and the surreal scene around the airstrip. Link. In this photo, I'm one of a number of silly-looking reporters all squinting intently at the sky and holding their hands against the sun. We were trying to catch a glimpse of a distant SpaceShipOne during its ascent. Vetern tech and space journalist John Schwartz from the New York Times is there in the blue shirt (here's his story: Link). Right about then, Nihar yells out, "HELIOS, THOU ART MY LORD" really loud, which made everyone crack up because we really did look goofy. Like we were participating in an ancient sun-cult ritual, or at least a Planet of The Apes episode.
Link to archived radio segment: NPR Day to Day "First X-Prize Flight a Success for SpaceShipOne", with some of Jason's photos. Link to previous BoingBoing post on yesterday's event, and Link to more of Jason's awesome images.

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity," Fassihi wrote (among much else) in the letter. "Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler." And: "Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

...Making clear what can only, at best, appear between lines in her published dispatches, Fassihi concluded, "One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle."

(Note: there's an advertisement for the University of Phoenix on the right column of the page featuring a scary looking unshaven man with a blinking problem who starts TALKING VERY LOUDLY after the Flash file loads, so you might want to mute your computer's speaker before clicking on the link)

The residents of the island are descendants of the mutineers from the HMS Bounty and the local Polynesian population in 1790.

...believe WIPO's work should help support the multilateral development of intellectual property, not as an end in itself, but as a means to help achieve the economic, social and cultural well-being of individuals and societies across the planet. In that light, we are pleased to see paragraph 6 of the Secretariat's Performance Report emphasize that "WIPO's strategic goals should also be viewed in the larger context of the UN Millenium Declaration adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2000, placing the eight Millenium Development Goals at the heard of the global agenda."

- 1-page PDF version by Trevor Filter
- HTML version suitable for printing by Ryan Brill
- text-only version by Chuck Welch
- an audio version by Ben Yates

Is Google HQ on fire right now? My wife drove your campus and saw smoke. Are you guys okay? I can probably get a ladder if you need it.

The X-Prize webcast of today's flight includes some incredibly beautiful footage from an on-ship camera -- this must be what Melvill saw, gazing out of that little round window. A giant blue dome below, and a black sky with bright stars above. I'd sure like to see the snapshots he said he took up there. Anyway, go ahead and skip through the hoo-ha and just stream the good stuff -- but there is definitely some good stuff: Link

The craft is fueled by nitrous oxide and rubber. I suppose this proves what many Hollywood clubbers have known for years -- that with a little latex and laughing gas, you can get to heaven.

Here, Scaled Composites' Burt Rutan and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen sit in the back of a pickup truck towing SpaceShipOne along the runway, after pilot Mike Melvill's successful flight. Mr. Melvill is still inside the craft. This sight made me laugh. I mean -- come on. A pickup truck towing a spaceship. Garage geekery, grand goals. Link to full-size image. Link to a snapshot moments later, in which Melvill addresses the crowd on the ground, while Rutan and Allen grin widely.

Today's successful flight included a dramatic series of unplanned rolls during ascent. Developer Burt Rutan attributed them to known engineering problems that caused excessive dihedral effect (the way an aircraft reacts when wind hits it from the side). That corkscrew-spiral flight pattern on the way up looked terrifying from where I stood-- as if SS-1 were about to suddenly spin out of control to disaster at any moment. Judging from the gasps I heard in the media corral, others agreed.

Regardless of how risky that portion of the flight may have appeared, or indeed was, pilot Mike Melvill later said the rolls "felt cool" from where he was seated some 337,500 feet above the earth. He said he could see stars above, once he departed Earth's atmosphere. There was enough of a pause at the top for him to take a break from piloting, peek out the windows, and take some snapshots with a little camera he'd stowed on board.

I've been up since 230am today, and there's still work to do on tomorrow morning's NPR "Day to Day" report about today's flight. So for now, just a series of quick snapshots I took at the event. Here, SpaceShipOne at dawn: Link. Here, SpaceShipOne taxis out pre-flight, attached to White Knight: Link. Here, White Knight takes off: Link

President Bush: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories."(May 29, 2003)

President Bush: "I recognize we didn't find the stockpiles [of weapons] we all thought were there." (Sept. 9, 2004)

should say here that I have long been one of those saurians who disliked reading for pleasure from a computer screen. But a couple of months ago, for reasons too boring to mention, I popped for a personal digital assistant (PDA) , mostly to keep track of appointments and addresses when I was away from my desk. As it happened, shortly after I made the buy, I went to Florida to attend the International Conference on the Fantastic and to soak up some rays. On a whim, I loaded some ebooks into my new gadget. By the time I got off the plane in Fort Lauderdale I’d fallen in love with my PDA as a reading device. Yes, the screen is smallish but I can change the font at will. Maybe it isn’t exactly ideal for the beach because direct light washes out the backlit screen, but my days of sunbathing are over and this thing is made in the shade. Often as not it’s my book of choice for bedtime reading. And if my wife wants to turn in, we can douse all the lights and I can read from that cheerily lit screen.

Update: Luke sez, Washington Blogger/journalist Steve Clemons had a better scan of the 'Liberals Will Ban the Bible' GOP scare-flyer last week. Clemons's scan is bigger and has the front and back of the flyer (which includes another BANNED Bible)."

Unfortunately, the evidence thus far suggests that the RIAA litigation campaign has had little, if any, effect on P2P file-sharing. Companies like Big Champagne and BayTSP that track the online P2P population have found that the number of U.S. file-sharers continues to grow. The global file-sharing population, moreover, is skyrocketing. A survey of Internet users undertaken by the Pew Internet and American Life Project did show a marked decline in file-sharing in the months following the highly-publicized first rounds of RIAA lawsuits, but Pew's follow-up reports have documented a rebound in the months since.

In the face of evidence suggesting that the lawsuits have been ineffective at curbing P2P music-swapping, the RIAA responded that "lawsuits are an important part of the larger strategy to educate file-sharers about the law." Well, the "education by lawsuit" of American music fans is also off to a rocky start. Awareness of copyright law is certainly up. For example, an April 2004 survey revealed that 88 percent of children between 8 and 18 years of age understood that P2P music-downloading is illegal. Unfortunately, the survey also discovered that 56 percent of the children surveyed continue to download music anyway. So while many music fans are aware of the "stick" of lawsuits, they seem relatively unintimidated by it.

The aspect of the Internet Bubble that the press seemed most taken with was the youth of some of the startup founders. This too is a trend that will last. There is a huge standard deviation among 26 year olds. Some are fit only for entry level jobs, but others are ready to rule the world if they can find someone to handle the paperwork for them.

A 26 year old may not be very good at managing people or dealing with the SEC. Those require experience. But those are also commodities, which can be handed off to some lieutenant. The most important quality in a CEO is his vision for the company's future. What will they build next? And in that department, there are 26 year olds who can compete with anyone.

Marine Roboticist building multiple, miniature, autonomous underwater vehicles that mimic the behavior of schooling fish...

High School Debating Coach changing the landscape of opportunities within urban schools...

Inventor cobbling sophisticated, life-enhancing devices from inexpensive materials for people in areas with little access to technology and even fewer resources to obtain it.

This overview from Techdirt covers the disturbing practice taken by some providers of free WiFi hotspots: restrictive content filtering. In my book, Wi-Fi Toys, I discussed how network operators can build a free Wi-Fi hotspot and share their Internet connection with a wildly useful free program called Nocat.

Unfortnuately, hotspot gateways like Nocat can also give owners the ability to block sites and restrict surfing to a "€œwalled garden" of accepted destinations. The walled garden idea was meant to give site owners the ability to create a sort of free preview of the Internet where you can perhaps check the weather, read the iHop menu, the local paper, or other casual internet destinations without having to register or sign on to the network.

I suggest people log off and take their business elsewhere.

"Today's ruling is an important victory for the Bill of Rights, and a critical step toward reigning in the unconstitutional reach of the Patriot Act," said Kurt Opsahl, EFF staff attorney. "The Court recognized that judicial oversight and the freedom to discuss our government's activities both online and offline are fundamental safeguards to civil liberties, and should not be thrown aside."

You can look up at towering AT-ATs or look down from them as you blast the rebels to smithereens, evil cackle optional. You can zoom through the trees of Endor's moon on a speeder bike, see your buddies get pulled into a Sarlacc pit, and dogfight above Bespin. More cynical fans will welcome the ability to give Ewoks and Gungans a good spanking, blaster-style. Not only are the arenas exciting enough to pull you in, they even manage to make the prequels look good.

Air France is offering customers of its "l'Espace Affaires" business class service an opportunity to get a free iPod mini; all they have to do is purchase a ticket from now to Nov. 15, 2004. Tickets must originate from any Air France U.S. gateway for travel to any European destination, and travel must be completed by Jan. 15, 2005. Additional restrictions apply. Once travel is completed, passengers mail their information to an Air France address, and the airline then sends them an iPod mini within six to ten weeks.

On the planet Two-Seasons, a rumor kept returning, as often as the rain, suggesting that the wet season was coming to its end.

Slumped in a chair so old and dusty that the light of its tubes merged with the half-light of the agency, Tixu Oty, originally from the planet Orange, watched the heavy drops fall with the look of a divine cow contemplating an antique rocket train.

During the five, maybe six standard years that he had been on Two-Seasons, Tixu Oty had slowly changed into a shaggy, lifeless mass, soaked through with alcohol and boredom. A sickening stench oozed from his crumpled uniform, which had once been light green, and its pungency was reminiscent of the giant river lizards of the rainy season.

Most of today's legislators think very little about intellectual property. When they do, it is often at the behest of an entertainment industry lobbyist. As a result, America's intellectual property policy has become a one-way ratchet of expanding entitlements for rights holders. The public's rights to use and benefit from intellectual property have steadily declined in the last century, and the forces behind that decline grow more powerful every day.

Yet in recent years, the public's awareness of these changes has sharply increased. Much of that increase can be attributed to the work of people like you. This awareness is vital, and IPac hopes to provide an outlet for it in the electoral system. IPac is dedicated to supporting candidates who will fight for balanced intellectual property policy. Specifically, we intend to:

* Fund the campaigns of elected officials who support IPac's principles
* Publish voter guides to help citizens make informed choices about their elected officials based on their handling of IP and technology issues
* Fund issue-based advertising
* Encourage legislation that aligns with IPac's principles

15 - Break.mp3
- Queen, "I Want to Break Free"
- Aaliyah w/Timbaland, "Try Again" (intro sample)
- Beastie Boys, "Shake Your Rump"
- Beastie Boys, "Body Movin'"
- Beastie Boys, "Alive"

Finally, Apple has admitted to shipping a lemon, and has extended the warranty period for people who want to get their bum displays replaced:

Users have been complaining about the issue since last fall, launching online petitions and other efforts designed to get the Mac maker to address the problem.

In October, Apple said people with the problem should contact its AppleCare service, but the company had been handling problems case by case under its standard warranty. In December the company posted more information to its support Web site, an Apple representative said.

"Last year we advised customers whose 15-inch PowerBook G4 displays exhibited faint white spots to contact AppleCare," Apple said in a statement. "To ensure that our customers are well taken care of, we are extending the repair period on these systems to two years from the original date of purchase."

"Break It!" - a track dedicated to the demonstration of techniques, software, and devices devised with only one purpose in mind--technology exploitation. You will bear witness to some of the most devious minds, source code, and gadgets on the planet that focus their energies on breaking the technology we mindless sheep keep on buying. Baaaaa.

"Build It!" - a track that showcases inventive software & hardware solutions--from distributed computing or stealth p2p networks to miniature form-factor community wireless network node hardware or robotics even. Let loose your inner geek, and feel free to gawk. With all the neat stuff, it's important to take notes--that way we all have evidence to shoot down some sleazeball patents 5 years from now.

"BoF It!" - a track that promotes the open discussion of critical information security issues in a "birds of a feather" format. From lightning open source code audits or wireless insecurity discussion panels to DRM rants or anonymity & privacy strategies--it's down and dirty, with plenty of controversy for folks who like hashing it out with fellow hackers. Feel free to throw your Shmooball here, but no fisticuffs, please. Settle your differences at Hack-or-Halo in the evening, instead.

While the rest of Hollywood obsesses over the next CG blockbuster, the creators of South Park are playing with puppets. For their latest film, Team America: World Police, Matt Stone and Trey Parker eschew computer graphics for wooden dummies and WYSIWYG garage geekery. "I hate what CG has done to movies," says Stone. "Filmmakers too often substitute technology for a good story. There's something so much more exhilarating about watching stuff that's real."

Real 22-inch-tall marionettes are what you get in this $20 million send-up of bloated action epics. Due in theaters October 15, Team America tracks a special task force that must save the world from terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. The film stars 90 puppets, including knock-offs of John Kerry, Michael Moore, and North Korean dictator Kim Jong II.

Puppeteers manhandle wires and rods to move the characters using the same supermarionation technique employed in the '60s cult TV series Thunderbirds. But Stone calls his method "supercrappynation" because the wires remain visible and sophisticated articulation is replaced by jerky verité.

The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, will research and develop a traveling exhibit celebrating the 50th anniversary of Disneyland. The exhibit will be created by The Henry Ford in association with Walt Disney Imagineering and The Walt Disney Company.

In an unprecedented agreement, Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative design organization behind Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, will loan The Henry Ford up to 500 pieces of original artwork, models, construction drawings, ride vehicles and media materials relating to the architecture and design of Disneyland.

Democracy is government by the people, and the right to vote is critical to determining what each of us wants of our government. Nearly one quarter of American voters - more than 35 million people - will exercise that right using electronic voting (e-voting) terminals in this election. Unfortunately, due to equipment that has been hastily developed and poorly tested, your right to vote is in greater jeopardy than ever before. There are widespread reports of voting terminal failures, and growing concern about the (in)security of these machines is fueling fierce debate over how to ensure the integrity of our elections. EFF is working to ensure that votes are verifiable and to train poll workers about what to do when the machines fail. Come listen to our team leaders talk about the latest developments, and share your thoughts on how we can make sure that every vote is counted.

"Leo Findeisen, a member of Monochrom, wrote an interesting text and we published it on our server. He compares the 'old codes' of natural languages to the 'new codes' of today, which are programming languages. To help us understand the mechanisms through which new codes originate, grow and thrive (or do not), he examines the history of two natural languages that developed through an open source mechanism: Volapük and Esperanto."

2. REGISTRY. Windows executes all instructions in the "Run" section of the Windows Registry. Items in the "Run" section (and in other parts of the Registry listed below) can be programs or files that programs open (documents), as explained in No. 1 above.

3. REGISTRY. Windows executes all instructions in the "RunServices" section of the Registry.

4. REGISTRY. Windows executes all instructions in the "RunOnce" part of the Registry.

And there's no more powerful alkaline solution than two-week old human urine – and it's free!

I tell you, after two weeks it doesn't smell like wee, it smells like burying your nose in uncooked liver.

For the show I used our crew member's wee – and the job involves dancing around in it bare foot for two hours per length of cloth.

The Court simply wants to scream to these lawyers, “Get a life” or “Do you have any other cases?” or “When is the last time you registered for anger management classes?”

Neither the world’s problems nor this case will be determined by an answer to a counterclaim which is four days late, even with the approval of the presiding judge.

If the lawyers in this case do not change, immediately, their manner of practice and start conducting themselves as competent to practice in the federal court, the court will contemplate and may enter an order requiring the parties to obtain new counsel. In the event it is not clear from the above discussion, the Motion for Reconsideration is DENIED. SIGNED this 21st day of July 2004.

A company named Kwikpoint makes them, and the military hands them out to personnel. The guides help English-speaking personnel communicate with prisoners, would-be-detainees, interrogatees, and so on. Don't speak Farsi or Iraqi Arabic? Need to tell a prisoner to drop trou and get horizontal beneath your boot, pronto? Point to the infographic.

Visually, they're unsettling. The images are functional icons, like highway signs or web UI buttons, so they reflect a simplified aesthetic -- like early childhood storybooks. The subject matter is violent, but the look is "see spot run" or "happy Lego people at play." The most surreal one is a two-part diagram in which a man is asked to remove his toupee so the interrogator can determine whether or not weapons are stashed beneath (shown in thumbnail here).

Civilians can buy the Iraq guide online for $11 each: Link. Scanned lo-res excerpts: part one, part two (jpegs, about 200K each). Remix possibilities boggle the mind.

But behind these blast walls meant to protect us, our spirits wither. All of us who cover conflict on a regular basis got into this kind of journalism because we wanted to be immersed up to the eyeballs in our stories. Most of us have given up the communities, comforts and relationships that are the staples of more "natural" lives. To live and work like this is an anathema to our normal rhythms. So when our interpreter/producer Ashraf brought the video of his wedding to the bureau -- we all crowded around a tiny three-inch mini dv player -- like it was a crystal ball.

We watched us our colleague made the commitment of his lifetime to a stunning, young Iraqi woman -- dressed in a splendid royal blue gown, sprigs of white baby's breath in her hair. The camera moved around the room, allowing us to meet his family and friends -- some of them other Iraqi colleagues we knew -- but had never seen outside of work in this kind of setting, being themselves, full of smiles, the seriousness of newsgathering melted away for a few hours.

And then they danced. Mostly the women, moving like Bedouin princesses under the desert sky. A tiny glimpse of beauty in a place where it seems to become a bit more rare with each passing day.

U.S. bases of the future are supposed to be self-sustaining. But, right now, they produce too much junk -- more than 7 pounds per day, per soldier. And a whole heap of "personnel, fuel, and critical transport equipment are needed to support the removal and disposal" of that waste, the Pentagon notes. So Darpa, the Defense Department's far-out research arm, has just given a Menlo Park, California "gene synthesis" company a grant to give the junk a second life, by turning the plastic waste into fuel.

"Plastic packaging waste has energy content that can approach that of diesel fuel, Darpa notes. "Diesel fuel has lower heating value of 43.9MJ/kg and hydrogen content of 12.5 weight percent. Plastic heating values can range from 26-43MJ/kg with a hydrogen content of 5-14 percent. If energy content of the waste is optimized for secondary use as a fuel source, at today's level of packaging being discarded, a military unit could achieve well over 100 percent self-sufficiency for their generator fuel needs."

Professor Richard Gross, at Polytechnic University, New York, thinks he has a polymer that can get the job done. It'll have "properties similar to polyethylene and will be prepared from renewable resources with a cost comparable to current commercially manufactured plastics," he claims. DNA 2.0, Inc., out of Menlo Park, will produce the enzymes needed to make the designer material for Darpa's MISER (Mobile Integrated Sustainable Energy Recovery) project.

Last May we acquired an existing television network that is currently available in almost 20 million U.S. homes. In 2005, we will debut a new network, a network featuring programming created by and for young adults INdTV is seeking emerging creative, journalistic, and production talent to join the network as Digital Correspondents (DCs). DCs will think, write, shoot, edit and potentially appear on-air. They will work in a fast-paced, competitive environment, alone and in teams, out in the field and traveling the world. They will work with some of the best programmers, producers and editors in the business. And some of the content they produce will become a part of our network programming.

Link to Blogumentary video interview

Viewers of Jon Stewart's show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch "The O'Reilly Factor," according to Nielsen Media Research...

Comedy Central also touted a recent study by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey, which said young viewers of "The Daily Show" were more likely to answer questions about politics correctly than those who don't.

Wikipedia is biased toward over-inclusion of certain material pertaining to (for example) science fiction, contemporary youth culture, contemporary U.S. and UK culture in general, and anything already well covered in the English-langauge portion of the Internet. These excessive inclusions are relatively harmless: at worst, people look at some of these articles and say "this is silly, why is it in an encyclopedia?"

Of far greater (and more detrimental) consequence, these same biases lead to minimal or non-existent treatment of topics of great importance. One example is that, as of this writing, the Congo Civil War, possibly the largest war since World War II has claimed over 3 million lives, but one would be hard pressed to learn much about it from Wikipedia. In fact, there is more information on a fictional plant

Clarke himself left the US in the wake of the PATRIOT Act (as did I), realizing that the US had created a system of law that routinely fingerprinted and photographed visa'ed immigrants, and subjected us to secret arrest without counsel or charge, said arrests possibly leading to indefinite detention.

My question is whether the UK government has made sufficient provision for displaced American innovators to migrate here given the hostile environment they may soon face in their own country. It is my belief that the United Kingdom can only benefit from the influx of talented software engineers from the United States, and should minimise any barriers to their migration here.

The servers are timed to shut down after 49.7 days of use in order to prevent a data overload, a union official told the LA Times. To avoid this automatic shutdown, technicians are required to restart the system manually every 30 days. An improperly trained employee failed to reset the system, leading it to shut down without warning, the official said. Backup systems failed because of a software failure, according to a report in The New York Times.

n other words, a copyright owner has to show that you had knowledge of infringement when you could have done something about it. StreamCast and Grokster (like vendors of photocopiers and VCRs) never had knowledge of a specific infringement at a time when they could have prevented it. The critical factor was the decentralized architecture of the Grokster and Morpheus software. The software gave the defendants no ability block access to the network, or to control what end-users searched for, shared, or downloaded. Accordingly, by the time the defendants were notified of infringing activity, they were unable to do anything about it (just as Xerox is not able to stop infringing activities after a photocopier has been sold). In the words of the court: "even if the Software Distributors closed their doors and deactivated all computers within their control, users of their products could continue sharing files with little or no interruption."

Anyone catch that story that was going around last week about a ringtone that's being sold in Japan that supposedly will enlarge your breasts just be listening to it? Well, we were dying of to hear what such a ringtone would sound like (purely for research purposes, of course), so we convinced Engadget's Tokyo correspondent to download the ringtone to his phone and record it for us as an MP3 so we could heard what it sounded like. I expected something at least vaguly ambient or new age or whatever, but it actually sounds like some dude playing a wicked solo on a guitar. Supposedly the ringtone is selling like crazy (not sure whether I believe that), but the company behind it also has plans for ringtones that'll cure baldness, make you more attractive to the opposite sex, and quit smoking.

In 1962, the interrobang (‽), was introduced by the New York publishing establishment as "a twentieth century punctuation mark". The interrobang combined the functions of a question mark and an exclamation point. It received some attention at first, but never caught on, although for a brief period during the 1960s it was added to some typewriter keyboards.   Link

Technology Review: Is there an existing application that shows how the Semantic Web can form such connections?

Tim Berners-Lee: If you want to play with the Semantic Web, you can make a friend-of-a-friend file. In a FOAF file [the data component of a personal home page, formatted in a standardized way], you can publish stuff about yourself, your organization, your publication, places, or photographs. You can have a pointer that says “this is a photograph about me” and other data about the photograph, such as who else is in it.

To create a FOAF file, you must fill out a form, such as the one at www.ldodds.com/foaf/foaf-a-matic.html. From this information, a Semantic Web–readable text file is generated that you can add to your personal website. There are semantic websites that will pull that data up and give you things like a list of photographs linking you to somebody else. I’m three photographs from Frank Sinatra because I’m photographed with Bill Clinton who’s been photographed with one of the Kennedys who’s been photographed with Frank Sinatra. That’s a silly application, but it really shows the power of the reuse of information.

If you get the President to answer the question (before Nov. 1st, 2004), you'll get another $1000.00 from me (again, proof is needed). If you get him to answer in a news media covered forum, and his answer gets mentioned by ANY of the major news networks during primetime (for this, I consider major to be any of the big 4, ABC, NBC, CBS or Fox), you'll get an additional $4000.00. One more thing. We already know he's been arrested at least ONCE and fined $150 and temporary suspension driving privileges for driving under the influence of alcohol (Wikipedia). IF HE GIVES AN ANSWER OTHER THAN "ONLY ONCE" I'LL PITCH IN ANOTHER $1000.00!

As much as I admire the aesthetics of these things, I wouldn't buy one even if I had the money. It's something like a sin to buy a beautiful work of handmade art that is intended to cradle a bit of technology that will be obsolete in six months. Three months. It's like those gorgeous limited-edition Bang and Olufsen Bose (Thanks, Andrew!) 20th Anniversary Macs -- a work of art surrounding a piece of junk.

Now, OTOH, if someone were to mass-produce cheap, gigeresque enclosures for high-cap memory sticks, the kind of thing you don't mind showing off today and won't mind throwing out tomorrow -- *that* I'd buy in a second! Link (via Gizmodo)

Shown here: Branson holds a model of the Virgin-licensed spacecraft. Five of these "spaceliners" will be built in the US by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, the team behind SpaceShipOne (which makes a go at the Ansari X-Prize this Wednesday morning -- I'll be there, with a crew from NPR). Provided that the venture meets regulatory approaval, flights will begin in 2007 at about $170-200K US per person, with plans to reduce price by half over time. What a news-packed month this has been for aerospace!

Virgin Galactic coverage: UK Telegraph (Link), and BBC News (Link) (Thanks also to Ari Kolbeinsson, Peter Flint, Daen de Leon, John Hoke, and other readers!)

Update: BoingBoing reader Stiv says, "Interestingly, Richard Branson did a promotional spot for the SciFi Channel's "I am Sci Fi" campaign which featured him piloting a Virgin-branded spacecraft (of course, the design differs from the one he's pictured holding on today's edition of Boing Boing). You can view the clip (in all it's craptacular Real Player glory) online." Link

And Ben Adair, formerly of NPR's show The Savvy Traveler, says: "I saw your post about Branson and thought about a disturbingly accurate Branson parody we did on the NPR show I used to run. Not that we scooped you, but it is pretty hilarious: Link. Scroll down to 'An interview with Richard Branson'."

Reader Kevin T. Keith says, "Regarding your BoingBoing post on Virgin's announcement of space tourist flights, recall that Pan Am famously announced - on a break-in live call in the middle of the Apollo 8 TV coverage! - that it would be starting tourist service to the moon, and offered membership in a "First Moon Flights Club" from 1968 to 1971. (Ronald Reagan held one.) TWA also followed suit. Obviously, nothing ever came of it. A brief review of the period (including an image of a Pan Am moon-flight "certified club member's card") can be found here: Link. I'll believe Virgin's claim when I see it happening (though it's obviously on a better technological footing than Pan Am's)."

"It has been assumed that money increases well-being and, although money can be measured with exactitude, it is an inexact surrogate to the actual well-being of a nation. In a 1985 survey, respondents from the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans and the Maasai of East Africa were almost equally satisfied and ranked relatively high in well-being. The Maasai are a traditional herding people who have no electricity or running water and live in huts made of dung. It follows, that economic development and personal income must not account for the happiness that they are so often linked to."

Late last month, a group of Nobel prize winners in the United States (which faces the same dilemma) issued a public letter calling on their government to link public research funding with public dissemination of the results. Canada should jump at the chance to adopt a similar model that would tie free, public dissemination to all publicly funded research. Such an approach would still leave room to commercialize the research results, while providing Canadians with an unprecedented innovation opportunity and a more immediate return on its research granting investment.

"When he is sitting down, and even when he is eating, he makes a guttural sound, a low murmur; and he rocks his body from right to left or backwards and forwards, with his head and chin up, his mouth closed, and his eyes staring at nothing. In this position he sometimes has spasms, convulsive movements that may indicate that his nervous system has been affected. There is nothing wrong with the boy’s five senses, but their order of importance seemed to be modified. He relies first on smell, then on taste; his sense of touch comes last. His sight is sharp; his hearing seems to shut out many sounds people around him pay close attention to. Nothing interests him but food and sleep."

"The By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943 collection consists of 908 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest. These striking silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters were designed to publicize health and safety programs; cultural programs including art exhibitions, theatrical, and musical performances; travel and tourism; educational programs; and community activities in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. The posters were made possible by one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts and were added to the Library's holdings in the 1940s."

Reader CJ Cramer says, "It looks like all that Nucleo is selling is the idea and the cardboard form for your dirt. Why not build your own form? ReadyMade Magazine had their take on this idea some time back." Link

Correction BoingBoing reader Charles says, "I don't think swiss scientists discovered a huge mushroom in the US (Oregon) :) The story excerpt to which Michael points appears to have been a reference point for the largest mushroom in EUROPE, which the swiss discovered (86 acres). Still a honkin' piece of stir fry!"

A spokesman said: "He was running about on all fours and growling. They thought he was playing at first but the house is miles from anywhere and is little more than a ruin, and he was really dirty and naked, so they realised something was wrong. "When they approached he growled and snarled and tried to bite them when they tried to pull him away from the old dog."