By Cory Doctorow at 10:54 pm Thursday, Nov 4
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Britain's national ID card is back from the grave, and the government here is ploughing ahead at speed to make this an expensive, privacy-compromising reality. If you've lived in the UK for the past six months (or more), and you don't want to be issued a Soviet-style "internal passport," get to this site
now and spend ten seconds filling in the No2ID petition. This may be your last chance.
We, the undersigned residents of the United Kingdom, petition the Prime Minister and the government to immediately cease all further development of, and legislation for, national identity cards and the National Identity Register.
We believe the proposals constitute an attack on individual rights and freedoms. We believe they will lead to institutional discrimination and to unfair and unlawful denial of benefits and services. We believe the proposals will lead to an increase in state control and surveillance over the individual, and that they will create an unacceptable imposition on every citizen. We believe the proposals are unlawful under the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights that guarantee every person the fundamental right to privacy.
We believe the identity proposals will lead to an endemic loss of privacy and freedoms. We believe they will present dangers to marginalised, disenfranchised and disadvantaged people. We also believe that an identity scheme will imperil the relations between citizen and state.
Furthermore, we believe that even if these principled concerns had been fully addressed, that the government's proposals would still constitute an enormous waste of financial resources and would achieve little or no tangible benefits.
For these reasons we urge the government to fully abandon the proposals.
Link
(
Thanks, Phil!)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:46 pm Thursday, Nov 4
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Sanrio have launched a Hello Kitty massively multiplayer online game. The cuteness factor here is fantastic -- somewhere between genuinely and sickeningly fascinating:
Hello Kitty World will allow thousands of players to live and participate in Hello Kitty's magical and cute online world. You will be able to roam the streets of Kitty Kingdom, XO Federation, and Melody-land. Enjoy the beautiful landscape and architecture of Puroland or Badtzcity and participate in numerous puzzles, story lines, or adventures lead by the worldwide community of Hello Kitty World subscribers. You can even have a successful career, open different shops, earn and spend Sanrio Dollars in your bank, buy a house, and trade with other players around the vast game world.
Other than hundreds of choices for you to build your dream house and lovely player characters, Hello Kitty World players will also be able to raise pets and teach them special tricks and skills. Players will be able to cooperate and interact with other players to overcome a joint quest or challenge other friends to a friendly duel.
You will be able to make new friends through special in-game telepathy as well as interact with other gamers through a variety of community channels and forums. Share the exciting world of Hello Kitty World and spread the message of love with both your old friends and the new ones you have just met in the Hello Kitty World.
Link
(
via Plasticcbag)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:44 pm Thursday, Nov 4
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Lisa Rein has posted three clips "from the November 3 Daily Show: "Jon covers Kerry's concession, Bush's relishing in his glory, and Stephen Colbert's commentary on it all."
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 3:26 pm Thursday, Nov 4
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My friend wrote this. It's very funny, mainly because it's true.
MY MODEST PROPOSAL: THE U.S.A.R.
By C. B. Shapiro
I feel bad for the Red States.
Yes, they won the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and most of the state houses. But they still can't have the country they really want because the last few Blue States won't roll over. So I am making a simple proposal:
Secession. Divorce. Splitsville.
Personally, I think we made a huge mistake not letting them go when we had the chance back in 1862. Well, no time like the present to correct an old mistake.
Then, they would finally be free to have the kind of society they've always wanted; church and state can be fused so they build the kind of theocracy they've dreamt of, with Jesus at the helm. Then the new USAR (United States of America Red) can ban books, repeal civil rights, persecute gays and have all the wars they like. They want prayer in schools? More power to them. They can ban abortion and post the Ten Commandments in every federal building in their country. Bring back slavery, if they want. We'll be free to live with our like-minded countrymen who believe in science, modernism, tolerance, religion as a personal choice, and truly want limited government intrusion in our personal lives. Why should each side be driven mad by the other any more, decade after decade?
Call the Culture War a tie and everyone go home.
Of course, we in the U.S.A.B. get the Gross Domestic Product, businesses and universities of California, New York, Massachussetts -- basically the whole Northeast and Northwest (plus Illinois and Michigan if they want to come along). They get Wal-Mart and Duke and most of the Nascar tracks. But they can feel free to import movies, TV shows, financial services, and defense technology. We'll import country music, bibles and Confederate flags.
The two countries will by necessity have open immigration policy: anyone who feels they are living in the wrong country can just move across the border, no questions asked.
Ultimately, why should I have to convince my fellow countrymen that Darwin may have had a point and that the word “liberal” is not equivalent to “godless communist?” And why should they be forced to live in a country with morally corrupt non-believers? I'll stay in the messy, free-thinking U.S.A.B. And to the U.S.A.R. I say…
God bless you all, and see you at the U.N
By David Pescovitz at 11:26 am Thursday, Nov 4
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MIT researchers have developed a voice-controlled aircraft guidance system that enables a pilot in one plane to control a nearby unmanned air vehicle by talking to it. From the press release:
"The system allows the pilot to interface with the UAV at a high level--not just 'turn right, turn left' but 'fly to this region and perform this task,'" said Mario Valenti, a flight controls engineer for Boeing who is on leave to pursue a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. "The pilot essentially treats the UAV as a wingman," said Valenti, comparing the UAV to a companion pilot in a fighter-plane squadron.
Link
By Xeni Jardin at 11:22 am Thursday, Nov 4
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Tuesday was a tough night for those of us who hoped to wake up with a new American president instead of a one-way ticket to The Republic of
Jesusistan. As state after state on TV network maps filled with red, despairing leftie friends IMd and SMSed to say they were hitting the cheap chardonnay -- and hard. They
weren't alone in the
disappointment, or the drink. Me, I've been sober for more than a decade, so I drowned my sorrows in -- well, tea.
True, boxed wine can be a comforting mistress. But if these aren't sobering times, I don't know what is. And I believe that now more than ever, the ability to form complete sentences is a powerful political statement.
Many BoingBoing readers put down their meds long enough in to share personal anecdotes from voting day, and the day after. Some dropped science on us. Others offered t-shirts, creative visualization, MP3 playlists and forward-thinking proposals.
Reader E. Whale says:
With all the new reports of lost or miscounted ballots, now is the time to make sure it doesn't happen again. The Open Voting Consortium is a combination of open source coding and election reform effort, and they're looking to get 111 members by 11/11. Contribute code, time, money, or whatever you can -- if we start now, maybe we'll really, truly fix things for next time. Link.
Reader
aacool said,
I just thought I'd let you know I was tracking Internet Load on Election Day, Nov 2, 2004 and blogging on this topic. Since this election was so closely blogged and involved many more Internet-aware voters than ever before, I felt this issue was interesting. Link.
Molly wrote in to say,
As a Texan, I'd like to repeat the words of Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks and say that I'm embarrassed to that Bush is from Texas. And yes, the country really is stupid, and that's why an incompetent criminal has been re-elected. I got a very clear picture of his base constituency when having a discussion over lunch with some co-workers about our favorite children's shows. I was commenting on how much I liked Sesame Street, and one woman (a very vocal Christian conservative) said, "Oooh.. Sesame Street is too tolerant for me". To my horror, several other women nodded their heads in agreement. I guess I didn't even think there was such a thing as too tolerant.
Responding to this, reader Jim Moskowitz says:
I was startled at that email you quoted from "Molly" about a conversation where several people agreed that Sesame Street was 'too tolerant', and I went looking for evidence that that phrase is a propagating meme. Yep, it is. Here's a brief interview about it from earlier this year, on [evangelical Christian network CBN News]: Link to A Christian Author's Push for Radical Intolerance. Warning: contains unsettling ideas and the what-is-he-insinuating sentence "I don't want you to go and shoot people with both barrels of Christianity."
William Gibson blogs today:
My friend Steve Brown reports that the most popular new t-shirt at his local liberal arts college says "I'LL BET YOU VOTE *NEXT* TIME, HIPPY!" Second terms, historically, are not cakewalks. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolute power, this very moment, is patiently eroding the membranes containing the coming year's inevitable debacles and scandals. Unless you don't believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely, how can that be otherwise? Peace.
(
Special thanks to everyone who wrote in, including those of you whose political opinions differ. Thanks for the links, Blamanj, Mikelite, Chris Brown, Jeff Warren, Jon West, Fingers, and Shea. )
Previous BoingBoing post: Kerry Concedes Link
By Xeni Jardin at 10:37 am Thursday, Nov 4
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Harper's Magazine contributing editor Greg Palast argues that election management in Ohio was hopelessly b0rked, and that the state was unfairly and inaccurately declared a win for Bush. Snip from editor's intro to his latest feature, on Tompaine.com:
Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are voided -- known as “spoilage” in election jargon -- because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Drawing on what happened in Florida and studies of elections past, Palast argues that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots. So far there's no indication that Palast's hypothesis will be tested because only the provisional ballots are being counted.
And snip from Palast's story:
Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.
So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new.
Link
By Xeni Jardin at 10:13 am Thursday, Nov 4
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UPDATED
As posted here on BoingBoing yesterday morning, the MPAA is expected to announce details today involving 200 or more lawsuits against individuals accused of sharing copyrighted movie files online. "Hundreds of lawsuits a month" are anticipated to come out of the extended campaign. Defamer has an update:
New MPAA Head Pirate Hunter in Charge Dan Glickman will announce the opening volley of lawsuits later today. Quick, everyone uninstall BitTorrent and throw your computers into the nearest body of water to avoid their wrath! At least Glickman seems to be paying lip-service to a somewhat less bloodthirsty approach than his predecessor, Jack Valenti. [snip from news story]
Glickman said "a holistic approach" was needed to combat piracy, including educational efforts, criminal prosecution and lawsuits against infringers. "You need the stick and you need the carrot both," he said. "You can't just have one without the other."
Glickman took a reflective pause before explaining, "See, the way it works is we dangle the carrot, then when a file-sharer reaches for the it, we wiggle the stick so they know what we're packing, We ask them, 'Are you sure you want to do that? Didn't you see the stick?' And if they insist on going for the carrot, we beat them to death with the stick, you know, just until we can see a little brain through the skull. That's why you need the stick and the carrot both. It's really hard to kill someone with a carrot."
Link. No confirmation yet on whether or not the "holistic approach" will involve (a) cramming acupuncture needles into suspected pirates' WLAN routers, (b) pouring homeopathic tinctures all over their keyboards, or (c) killing them softly with tofurkey.
The LA Times notes that Disney may not participate:
At least five of the seven big studios that belong to the MPAA have agreed to join the effort, which could generate hundreds of lawsuits a month. Among the potential holdouts is Walt Disney Co., according to one person familiar with the association's plans.
Link to
LA Times article (reg required)
UPDATE: The other shoe drops. Link to MPAA's formal announcement of filesharer lawsuits, which took place earlier today at UCLA.
By Cory Doctorow at 8:55 am Thursday, Nov 4
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A Japanese company is making 4,000-5,000-Yen Disney-branded USB thumb-drives.
Link
(
via Engadget)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:41 am Thursday, Nov 4
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Our friend Doug Rushkoff is the correspondent on a new
Frontline program about the ways marketers influence people. Doug wrote an excellent book on the same subject, called
Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say. The show airs on November 9; check your local listings for times.
FRONTLINE takes an in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar "persuasion industries" of advertising and public relations and how marketers have developed new ways of integrating their messages deeper into the fabric of our lives. Through sophisticated market research methods to better understand consumers and by turning to the little-understood techniques of public relations to make sure their messages come from sources we trust, marketers are crafting messages that resonate with an increasingly cynical public. In this documentary essay, correspondent Douglas Rushkoff (correspondent for FRONTLINE's "The Merchants of Cool") also explores how the culture of marketing has come to shape the way Americans understand the world and themselves and how the techniques of the persuasion industries have migrated to politics, shaping the way our leaders formulate policy, influence public opinion, make decisions, and stay in power.
Link
By David Pescovitz at 8:37 am Thursday, Nov 4
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There's now a fence surrounding a 19th century statue of journalist Victor Noir at his tomb in Paris's Pere Lachaise cemetery. From the BBC News:
It is said that a woman who kisses the lips of the prostrate statue and slips a flower into the upturned top hat will find a husband by the end of the year.
The new sign warns: "Any damage caused by graffiti or indecent rubbing will be prosecuted."
Link
By David Pescovitz at 8:28 am Thursday, Nov 4
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The New York Times has an interesting article about pocket-size digital projectors that could someday attach to cell phones or laptops. As with most mobile technology, the problem is power. Still, several prototypes have been developed.
Lasers rather than L.E.D.'s are the basis for a hand-held projector in development at Light Blue Optics, a company in Cambridge, England. "We want a device that you can download films to, press a button and see a huge screen projection," said Adrian Cable, director of the company.
The large projections are produced holographically. "These are not the three-dimensional holographic projections of Princess Leia in 'Star Wars,' " Dr. Cable said, but instead two-dimensional ones produced by an optical process different from standard projection.
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 7:50 am Thursday, Nov 4
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The Vatican has published a pamphlet called "It's a Sin Not to Do It," in which the Church sanctions masturbation for married women, and urges Catholics to get laid more in general. In an unrelated story, Italy and many other Catholic nations are experiencing negative population growth.
Forty years ago, the Vatican published a notorious set of guidelines for courting Catholics that outlawed even French kissing before marriage.
The pages of It's A Sin Not To Do It, however, feature a frank interview with Cardinal Ersilio Tonini in which he emphasises that "the Church is not an enemy of the flesh". He argues that Vatican doctrine has always defended the "nobility of sexuality", which is regarded by the Church as a "treasure" of humanity.
Another chapter likely to raise eyebrows unearths theological justification for post-coital masturbation for women who fail to achieve orgasm during intercourse.
Link
(
Thanks, Leigh!)
By Cory Doctorow at 4:37 am Thursday, Nov 4
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Following on
yesterday's entry on the best WiFi-enabled hotels, HotelChatter today brings us an entry on the worst WiFi hotels... They've limited the field to Namerica, which really cuts back on the competition, if you ask me. Europe is full of hotels that offer wireless at between $30 and $50 a day, and require you to go to the front desk and
buy a scratch-off card in order to get a login for the service, and are often
sold out of the cards. Jesus, Euro-hotel-WiFi just sucks for the most part.
Marriott offers WiFi in their lobbies and common areas. Oh yeah, one catch, if you want access through Marriott's STSN WiFi deal you have to pay ~$3.95 for the first minute and anywhere from .25 cents to $1 for each additional minute (charges vary from Marriott to Marriott). In the immortal words of John McEnroe..."You can not be serious!". Honestly, this charge seems steep. We bet there are psychic hotlines that charge less per minute. Marriott is charging for a service that aches to be free, but it gets worse.
To add insult to injury, if you do scrap together the $4.95 for five minutes online you will not only have to race through your online activities in an attempt to beat the clock, but you will also have to contend with pop up navigation, and a terribly non intuitive interface. Oh yeah, and if you want to use the hardwired broadband line in your guest room, you will have to pony up more cash.
Link
(
Thanks, Mark!)
