Michelin's shown off a concept car whose "active" wheels contain all the elements you'd expect to find in the car itself: "Why not ... use the space within the tire to put as many components as possible, including all the suspension, and make it active, and put in an electric motor, and even eliminate the need for a mechanical transmission?" Link (via Futurismic)

Yet another study has confirmed that the RIAA's plan to stop file-sharing by suing thousands of fans has failed. Maybe they just haven't sued enough of us. There are about 70MM file-sharers in the US -- maybe once the studios have bankrupted, say, 35 million of us we'll get the message.

"We wanted to examine the truthfulness of reports claiming declining P2P traffic and help the community make reliable assumptions concerning P2P traffic estimates and trends," wrote Thomas Karagiannis, a doctoral candidate in computer science at UC-Riverside, in an e-mail. "The assertion of declining P2P traffic was in direct contrast to the constant increase of P2P activity over the last year and counterintuitive to the fact that P2P applications are still the top most downloaded applications (on) the internet."

Link

Wikinews is to news what Wikipedia is to encylopedic-style reference material: a publicly editable site for comprehensive coverage of current affairs. It has posted a mission-statement and requirements and is calling for votes from the public on whether it should actually launch.

We seek to create a free source of news, where every human being is invited to contribute reports about events large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized from elsewhere. Wikinews is founded on the idea that we want to create something new, rather than destroy something old. It is founded on the belief that we can, together, build a great and unique resource which will enrich the media landscape.

Wikinews will already be useful even if we start out by having relatively few original reports - because it will provide free, neutral, aggregated summaries of the news from elsewhere. It will already be useful even if the subject range which we cover will initially be full of gaps - because in these subject areas, we will already benefit from the collaborative wiki model. It can grow to become more useful every day.

While Wikinews aims to be a useful resource of its own, it will also provide an alternative to proprietary news agencies like the Associated Press or Reuters; that is, it will allow independent media outfits to get a high quality feed of news free of charge to complement their own reporting. Thanks to copyleft, anyone can create their own free news source - even a non-neutral one - on the basis of our work. Even if our articles will initially be few, they will be free, permanently available and not require registration before reading.

Link (via Joi)

As someone who earns his living in US dollars but lives in the UK, I'm keenly aware of the plummeting value of the post-fiscal-responsibility greenback. Turns out I'm not the only one worrying about his wealth vanishing down the US deficit: Fidel Castro has ordered Cubans to stop trading in dollars and switch to Swiss Francs, Euros and Pounds Sterling.

Cubans and others on the island can still hold dollars in unlimited quantities and can change them into pesos before the new policy takes effect. But they will have to pay a 10 percent charge to exchange dollars afterward. There will be no such charge on changing other foreign currencies, such as Euros, into convertible pesos.

Link

Fantastic Slashdot thread, in response to MSFT's Steve Ballmer calling for a $100 PC: build a $100 GNU/Linux PC out of new, readily available parts that already have Free Software drivers.

$18 - Celeron 700MHz 66MHz 128K FCPGA CPU OEM (socket 370)
$25 - ASUS MEW-AM Mainboard Socket 370 supporting Intel Celeron 300~533+ Onboard sound/video
$40 - 1 512mb Stick of PC100 Ram $58 if 2 256mb sticks are required.
$3 - Encore - 10/100 VIA Chipset NIC
$24 - COMP-USA ATX Case w 250W Power Supply.
$2 - Generic heatsink

Total = $112

Link

If you're a Californian and you want to make sure your vote counts, check out Paper or Plastic?, EFF's latest Flash campaign, created by the talented Ren Bucholz and friends. Non-Californians: pass this on to your Californian friends!

Electronic voting machines will be used in 10 California counties during the next election. However, every California voter has the right to request a paper ballot, which can be used in a recount and verified for accuracy by each voter. Some election officials are trying to keep this choice a secret, so we want to make sure that you know about the availability of paper ballots. If you live in Alameda, Merced, Napa, Orange, Plumas, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Shasta, Tehama, please pass this to your friends and neighbors.

Link (Thanks, Cindy!)

Pitcairn Island, population 47, is one of the most remote place in the world, inhabited by descendants of the mutineers of the HMS Bounty who washed up there in the 18th century. More than half the men on the island were accused of systematically raping the young girls on the island, in charges going back more than 40 years (they claim that this "tradition" merely follows the Bounty mutineers' example set with their Tahitian brides). Now six of the seven accused have been convicted, though formalities are keeping them out of jail for the moment.

Pitcairn, with an area of just five square kilometres, has no safe harbour and is too rocky for an airstrip. It has no paved roads, no sewage treatment system and no landline telephones.

Visitors must fly to an outlying French Polynesian island and then travel by boat for 36 hours to get there, ending their journey in a longboat, riding the surf that crashes on to the island.

Islanders fear that the Pitcairn community, with a population of only 47, will not survive if the six are jailed.

Many of the men operate the island's only boats, which are lifelines to the outside world, ferrying in essential supplies.

Link (Thanks, Cyrus)

Update: Zach sez, After following the Pitcairn Island link I noticed that smh.com.au now requries users to register. For those wishing to view the article and future articles from this site they can use the following details:

username: boingboing
password: boingboing

Mitch Wagner's written a good piece for Security Pipeline about the danger to the labels if DRM works the way they want it to:

DRM is invisible only when users only want to use data in ways foreseen by the publishers.

DRM makes it harder for consumers to invent their own ways of using technology. A user wishing to listen to digital content on a new type of device needs to go to the media companies first, and ask, "Mommy, may I?"

Link

California's Proposition 69 makes it legal for the cops to collect DNA from innocent people and store it indefinitely, and makes it nearly impossible for you to get your DNA back from the criminal database. So this anti-69 Flash is worth watching for the message, but I'm blogging it because it is, second-by-second, one of the most effective political pieces I've ever seen. Excellent, compact, on-message copywriting and great layout/design/pace. Link (Thanks, Cindy!)

This is an awesome Pez dispenser mod that turns your favorite Pez-head into a USB thumb-drive (and turns the Pez container into a case for the drive). Link

A reader writes, "LegalTorrents has posted a 320kbps MP3 version of November 2004's freely distributable Wired Magazine cover CD - includes Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Dan The Automator, Gilberto Gil, Cornelius, and many more Creative Commons-licensed tracks - unmissable." Link

Regarding recently disgraced acid reflux poptart Ashlee Simpson, BoingBoing reader Kevin says, "She's asking for advice on her own message board."

Subject: How do I get rid of all those videos.
10/24/2004 8:35:08 PM - by Ashlee Simpson
Ok you people know the internet, I'm going to get rid of all these videos posted on other websites, how do i delete them?

Link to message board post, and link to schadenfreudealicious news roundup courtesy of Gawker.

Now, in all fairness -- we have not verified that this post was in fact penned by the real Miss Simpson. Honorary factchecker and wet blanket Jeff "Koganuts" Koga says,

Per a Stereogum comment (Link), The "Ashlee Simpson" who posted the comment you quoted from (notice no photo) (Link) differs from the real Ashlee Simpson (photo, link at the top of the forums pages) (Link). Still, both Ashlee's stats and date of registration are the same, so who knows why she's registered twice? Maybe she forgot her password? :-)

Update: Will the real poptart please stand up? BoingBoing reader and nerdetective Chris Gsell says html source proves the post-er in question is definitely not Ashlee verité:

Hey, just thought I would give you a heads up and let you know that the posts from the author whose profile page does NOT have the picture is not the real Simpson. I say this because if you examine the source of this page, you will see this HTML code:

<td align="right" valign="top" class="txtLabel">Status: </td> <td align="left" valign="top" class="txtBox">Host</td>

On the "fake" profile page you will find this code:

<tr> <td align="right" valign="top" class="txtLabel">Status: </td> <td align="left" valign="top" class="txtBox">Registered User</td> </tr>

...with some javascript below it to spoof the Status field.

Thanks, Chris!

Cardhouse goes to the Arizona state fair, takes pictures of the amateur art competition, and makes funny comments about it.

Originally I didn't notice that in this piece (by Schuyler Graham) the name of the glue is "Love All." There is nothing that can bring the earth together more than a liberal application of seventeen kascrillion tons of glue. It's hard to lift up a gun, or anything really. Don't dilute! Ok!

Link (Via Scrubbles)

UPDATE: Earlier today, the uber-bizarre "Cat Tossing in Zero G" video we blogged over the weekend was taken off the Air Force website where we first spotted it. BoingBoing reader Leonard has since mirrorred the video. Zero G cat flies again! Link to new download site (2MB QuickTime .mov), and link to previous BoingBoing post.

Just in time for Hallowe'en: a zombie-movie-remix context from the Free Culture people!

1: Raise the Dead. Get out your video editing tools and download a slice of George A. Romero's classic 1968 horror flick Night of the Living Dead. Romero's original, idiosyncratic, super-low-budget vision of a broken world filled with animated, cannibalistic corpses has filled the imaginations of moviegoers for decades. Indeed, it's the film that gave birth to an entire genre: the apocalyptic zombie horror movie. [More]

And because it's in the public domain, anyone can borrow pieces of it to make a music video, comic short, or other art. Which is what we want you to do. To really get your creative juices flowing, hook yourself up with another piece of re-mixable art: the 2003 student film "Amid the Dead." [More]

It's available for download here for the first time, under a Creative Commons license that gives you permission to play mad scientist.

Step 2: Go Mad – Invent! Take a piece of Romero, mix it up with some Amid the Dead, and add your own special twist. Use your imagination to build your own new piece of art.

Step 3: Give it a ReBirth Certificate. Tag your new creation with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. It not only lets people feel safe to use your work without having to phone you and a team of lawyers, but it prevents someone else getting their own team of lawyers and turning your work into a big commercial franchise that everyone else has to pay to use.

Link (via Creative Commons)

On today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I speak with host Noah Adams about a form of broadband connectivity called BPL, or broadband over powerline.

Earlier this month, the FCC opened the door for more consumer trials and wider deployment of the technology, which delivers internet connectivity through the electrical system in your home or office. What you may already know is that BPL could soon rival other consumer options like DSL and cable internet, delivering speeds of 2-3 Mbps through ordinary power jacks. More choices means more competition, and that likely means lower prices.

What you may not know is that beyond cheaper, ubiquitous internet -- BPL could potentially revolutionize the way electrical power is priced, managed, and delivered.

Link to archived audio for today's program, Link to NPR Day to Day home. Link to recent FCC newsletter edition which contains details on the October 14 announcement. Here's a link to some of the ARRL's concerns about the fact that BPL can cause interference with amateur ("ham") radio frequencies under certain circumstances. The FCC acknowledged this issue as it gave BPL the go-ahead on October 14.

When a Douglasville, Georgia woman returned home from a 2 1/2 week holiday to Greece, she found that a total stranger had moved into her house, ripped up the carpet, changed the photos on the walls, and was wearing clothes from her closet. The squatter also switched the utilities over to her own name and installed a washer and dryer. Link (via Fortean Times)

Photos and short videos of an exquisitely bizarre looking fish called the Leafy Sea Dragon. As good as discovering complex life forms on another planet. This makes me want to get an aquarium. Link (Thanks, exomorph!)

The British Armed Forces has officially recognized a naval technician as a satanist, meaning that he can conduct satanic rituals on board the HMS Cumberland. This is a first for the Royal Navy.

“I didn’t want to feel I couldn’t get out my Satanic Bible and relax in bed. I didn’t want to bite my tongue any more when dealing with idiots,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.

Link

Following up on yesterday's post about cat-tossing in zero gravity, we now direct your otherwise productive time to these spectacular Quicktime movies of helpless little frogs being levitated by really huge magnets. Strawberries, grasshoppers, and globs of water also get the "weightless" treatment. Link (Thanks, Eric!)

UPDATED BELOW

The much-anticipated new Treo 650 was unveiled by PalmOne today, and BoingBoing reader Marc Hedlund says,

[It has] a bunch of new features, including Bluetooth. Unfortunately the rocket scientists at Sprint decided to turn off Bluetooth for dialup from your laptop (though other networks allow it). Why? Well, they want you to buy *another* $250 product from them (their "connection card") so they can charge you as though you own two cell phones. The phone looks great -- too bad Sprint decided its customers are idiots.

I'm a Sprint user, and I'm a prime example of a likely upgrade candidate for the Treo 650. I don't use a PDA phone right now, and have been thinking the 650 or something like it might make blogging and communicating on-the-road a whole lot easier. But dumb-ass pricing moves like this one are making me seriously consider a carrier switch. Link

UPDATE: Sprint has since announced that it will not levy the $250 fee. Details here. Cool!

Brian sez, "If you like Jon Stewart, you MUST watch this "American Perspectives" interview with him that is now available at the CSPAN site. It was recorded within 24 hours of the recent Crossfile incident. MUST-see television." Link, Alternate Link (Thanks, Brian and Qburns!)

Political satire poster from Minneapolis-based undercover design team Aestheric Apparatus. This model is available with a variety of purported Presidential quotes, including:

# "I figure since I can't use it at camp x-ray anymore"
# "Hey, let's snort coke off this donkey's balls."
# "And then you just simply put the voter in what I call the "freedom machine.'"

Link to details for this image, link to more Aesthetic Apparatus posters, link to group's home page. (thanks, Siege, and Matt Jacobs!)

Following up on this post about knitting patterns, BoingBoing reader Oren says

Thought I'd let you know that my jazz trio, Whispering Johnson, recently released some new recordings of original tunes (the Birthday Numbers) and we've made not only the audio but also the sheet music available under CC Sampling Plus licensing.

As far as I know it's the first time sheet music has been released with this kind of license. We think they're really good compositions, and we hope others will take them, play 'em, write lyrics for 'em, reharmonize 'em....whatever. It's the old jazz tradition, formalized for our times (which unfortunately seem increasingly hostile to the kinds of informal sharing and extension that have always fostered creativity).

Link

And while we're at it -- the Wired Magazine CD with CC-licensed tracks is out on newsstands now. Link

A week ago, I blogged part one of an interview I did with All About Symbian when I was in Edinburgh, about science fiction, civil liberties, Creative Commons, and mobile technology -- now part two is online.

"It's a great phone, but I'm scared to do anything with it." For a man toting the fastest PowerBook ever made, and completely in touch with the electronic world, this surprises me. "I'm largely scared of doing any of the advanced things on my phone mainly due to the cost. And by the cost I mean the ridiculous per megabyte data pricing everyone in Europe seems to have. In the States I had a simple data phone, nothing fancy. But with it I had a $50 a month unlimited data plan. A true unlimited plan, not an unlimited plan until you reach 10mb of Wap Data. Because it was flat rate, it meant that I could take risks and chances with services. I would play with the phone and see just what is possible, because I knew I would never get stuck with on of those bills where you go 'Shit! How did I spend £100 looking up the football scores?!?' So that's scared me off."

Link (Thanks, Ewan!)