Great Newsweek editorial defines the young adults of today as the "tech-support generation" who go home at Thanksgiving and patch their parents' operating systems and de-install their spyware. The related Slashdot thread catalogs the must-install apps, plugins and patches that you should bring home to the old folks to get them online.

Forget the generational tags you’ve already heard, like Gen X and Gen Y. We are the Tech-Support Generation. Our job is to troubleshoot the complex but imperfect technology that befuddle mom and dad, veterans of the rotary phone, the record player and the black-and-white cabinet television set. Next week, on our annual pilgrimage home, we’ll turn our Web-trained minds and joystick-conditioned fingers to the task of rescuing our parents from bleeding-edge technology on the blink.

Link (via Slashdot)

The Nuclear Calendar site reports:

Congress deleted all funds for new nuclear weapons in the omnibus appropriations bill, which passed the House of Representatives this afternoon. It is expected to pass the Senate shortly. This includes funds for the Robust Nuclear Earth penetrator, or nuclear bunker buster, and for the Advanced Concepts Initiative for new nuclear designs.

Link

Designer Sara Cihat creates really cool looking "rehabilitated dishware" out of finds from second-hand stores which are then cleaned up, re-screened, and glazed to new heights of hipster glory. She makes skulls, strippers, and guns look like the foundation for a great breakfast.

Link (via designsponge, thanks Susannah)

From time to time, I lean back in my tattered Aeron chair once rescued from a Bangalore call center's fetid dumpster, inhale deeply from a knockoff Cohiba, and mutter into a lukewarm can of Red Bull, "What a sophisticated, leet lot these BoingBoing readers are."

This is not one of those times.

Following up on a previous BoingBoing post about Target.com selling an item called "Anal Massage," dozens of you gleefully emailed to say you'd spent all night conducting googlevestigation, like so many anal-obsessed Philo Vances packing overheated routers in place of warm pistols. Here's some of the dirt you scraped from the undersides of your gumshoes. Perverts.

BB reader ADM says,

"Mystery solved: A little poking around in the item information for Target's"Anal Massage item reveals an ASIN. This is because Amazon and Target are business partners and ASINs are the unique identifiers used by Amazon. So if you go to Amazon and search for this item's ASIN (B0002KPIBO) you learn that (unfortunately) the item in question is not an actual anal massage, but rather an instructional DVD called "Anal Massage."

Says one reviewer: "It is appropriate for housewives, lovers, massage therapists and everyone interested in deepening the experience of relaxation and pleasure for themselves or for others. The DVD presents an easy to follow hands-on format that is comfortable for all types of viewers." Hands-on and comfortable!

Link.

Reader John Todd Larason says,

Target.com is run by Amazon.com, and shares large amounts of code & backend database info. If you take the target.com URL for that item and replace 'target' with 'amazon', (or just take the asin argument and use it directly, ie the url in this link), you get to Amazon's page for the item -- a DVD, "Anal Massage for Relaxation and Pleasure" by the New School of Erotic Touch.

jhartnett says, "More anal massage goodness! If you go to target.com home page and type "anal massage" in the search window you get these results. Seems to be a booming business. Link."

Reader Bob Jones (not THAT Bob Jones -- uh, I think) says, "Praise the Lord! It appears to be an "Adult Health" title, here's a review: Link." (NSFW warning: cover art depicts giant ass-crack with strategically-poised thumb).

Reader Neil Turner says, "Amazon even offers some 'used' Anal Massage you can buy. Link."

And finally, Music to Anal Massage By? Jeremy K. says, "Just thought I'd let you know, that in addition to the item on Target.com for the Anal Massage, they have a Uranus-Self Anal Massage for M music cd. Crazy stuff going on over there at Target! Link"

Nice work, sleuths. Now -- do me a favor. Don't let congress get wind of this, okay?

BoingBoing friend Mara says,

"The band Guided by Voices put out an album in 1992 called Propeller, and each one had an original cover hand-created by the band and/or their friends. There were only 500 copies made, and one just sold for $6200. Here's a link to an article about the sale: Link."

And here's a guy who's trying to collect images of all 500 covers: Link

A Seattle-based tech company is developing a music service for cellphones. Company execs hope the offering will one day trump Apple's iPod and iTunes in popularity.

Melodeo said yesterday that it has raised $9.5 million in venture capital to help develop and market the music player. Investors in the second round include GF Capital, Ignition Partners, Intel Capital and Voyager Capital. The company has raised $11.7 million to date.

The attraction of Melodeo is that it allows a user to search, buy and listen to music from a cellphone, rather than having to download the music on a computer and transfer it to another device. It does this quickly by loading a list of available tracks and artists on the user's cellphone. The user can then browse and connect to the wireless carrier's server only when a track is purchased.

Link (via unwired)

Snip from a patent application developed for NEC:

In a cellular phone, stereophonic sound reproduction of music etc. is realized by using a microphone and a speaker of the cellular phone as stereophonic speakers. By the stereophonic sound reproduction function, radio broadcasting from FM stations, streaming sound from the Internet, etc. are reproduced by the cellular phone.

Link to " Cellular phone with high-quality sound reproduction capability " (via pho list)

BoingBoing reader Cyrus Farivar says, "Life imitates art. We're making real chimeras now. Front page of the Washington Post."

In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins. In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human. In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls. These are not outcasts from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.

Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal fetuses. Chimeras are allowing scientists to watch, for the first time, how nascent human cells and organs mature and interact -- not in the cold isolation of laboratory dishes but inside the bodies of living creatures. Some are already revealing deep secrets of human biology and pointing the way toward new medical treatments.

But with no federal guidelines in place, an awkward question hovers above the work: How human must a chimera be before more stringent research rules should kick in?

Link

BoingBoing reader Tom Christie says, "The Windows Marketplace site is advertising Firefox as making 'browsing more efficient than ever before.'" Link

But total killjoy and BB reader Oscar Bartos writes, "I know, disappointing. It's all on the disclaimer page:"

Disclaimer: Merchandise pictures and descriptions are provided by the manufacturers of the merchandise. Windows Marketplace is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft makes no representations or warranties, either expressed, implied or statutory, regarding the merchandise, manufacturers or compatibility of the merchandise available within. Information within Windows Marketplace is subject to change without notice. Actual end user compatibility may vary. The inclusion of a merchandise or manufacturer does not imply endorsement by Microsoft of the merchandise or manufacturer.

Link.

And BB reader TeleKawaru says, "It's also interesting to note that the screenshot for FireFox is displaying GMail and not Hotmail. =)"

Following up on this week's edition of Web Zen -- education zen -- (Link, and related post), geek, dad, and technopundit Glenn Fleishman says, "You missed my recent scan of a badly translated manual. This sign means your duty as compulsion things." Link

Snip from Michael Ignatieff's piece in this week's NYT Magazine :

"We now have the terrorist as film director. One man taken hostage recently in Iraq described, once released, how carefully his own appearance on video was staged, with the terrorists animatedly framing the shot: where the guns would point, what the backdrop should be, where he should kneel, what he should be scripted to say."

Link (Thanks, Slavin)

Wasting valuable hours of her life that she will never get back, BoingBoing reader Brenda Vonahsen dove into our last edition of Web Zen ("educational zen") and found herself zenned out by one item in particular.

She says, "The 'Dragon Ballz toy' section of the Hall Of Technical Documantation Weirdness contains this prose:

WARNING: With appertain rotor of screw setting pre ceiling on the understanding that serew no weild. May wield two-faced, pressboard securing. weild pre to begin with wiping ceiling of bilge dasto.

# Prythee no sport with stingy or play asperity game. Winding finger have got bloodstream not walk. Throagh peril.

# Tad disport of time grown man tatelage.

# Till the cowcomes home.Weild toys damage,burn-in prythee wind to a close wield.

# Give attention to open/close toys,therefore take place peril.for instance slipup batteries wield result in the emission of heat rupture liquid.vent itseld prythee pay attention."

Brenda says, "I think that at some point whomever wrote this just gave up. The use of 'prythee' I find sort of cute and endearing."

Link. Plus, I love how instead of calling them "instructions," the document calls them "Ways and Means." Sounds like a House subcommittee.

This curious c.1965 coffee table, weighing in at 200 pounds, is up for auction on eBay:

"The "box" is welded and riveted together to form a frame around a GIANT hand sculpted and hand welded machine gun. The look of the piece is very industrial. It is a stunning sculpture in person and will make an interesting addition to any style home or place of business from machine age to mid century modern."

It would go well, at least thematically, with the child's gun lamp I scored a couple of months ago. Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne)

technical docs weirdness | wacky warning labels | warning signs | public info films | howtoons | cut away illustrations | hand shadows | throw cards | tricks of the trade | more tricks | what is that stuff | unwise microwave oven experiments | periodic table of funk | make friends on the telephone | what to do if the net is down | communication course #1 | how stuff works
Image: Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness/Aerial Smackage. web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

BoingBoing reader Jayson Franklin says:

"This article describes an attempt to make artificial (plastic) 'shells' to be left on the beach for wild hermit crabs. 30% of hermit crabs have shells that are too small for them, and must often resort to using refuse for housing."
Link to The Hand Up Project: Attempting to Meet the New Needs of Natural Life-Forms

BB reader Caines says,

"This guy is drinking noting but Pepsi Holiday Spice for 45 days (similar to the movie Super-Size Me, in which a man ate nothing but McDonald's food with frightening effects). He's keeping a blog to document the impact it is having on his body. Snip: 'I instantly started sneezing, which made me shit my pants and on top of the horror I got another bloody nose. Luckily no one was home when this happened."

Link

WTF? Link to a Target ad which, as one BB reader says, is "offering Anal Massage, at 10% off, and free delivery. 4-8 week delivery lead time. This will probably disappear pretty quick."

Snip from BBC News story:

Church air was found to be considerably higher in carcinogenic polycyclic hydrocarbons than air beside roads travelled by 45,000 vehicles daily. It also had levels of tiny solid pollutants (PM10s) up to 20 times the European limits.

Link (thanks, swirlingpuss, via, and thanks Armin).

"I could not help but notice all these robots fucking in the mini-mall..." From Hint Magazine, an animated homage to fashion designers Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, Hermès, Cosmic Wonder and others. Images by illustrators Thomas Zeitlberger and Manu Burghart, with flash design by Midim, music by TV on the Radio. Link to Everything Must Go.

Today at WIPO saw a flat-out disgraceful cooking of the deliberative process. The administrators of the meeting -- the chair and secretariat -- are pushing hard to make this treaty pass, even if no one wants it to. The solution to the deadlock is "regional meetings" in which countries that oppose the treaty can be isolated and arm-twisted into coming into line, and where few or no public-interest NGOs will be present. Some of the most populous countries in the world -- India and Brazil -- along with many others called for a better approach: any region that wants a meeting can have one, but the real action would be at an "inter-sessional meeting" held in Geneva, with all countries represented. Even though these countries presented a solution that would have given regional meetings to those who wanted them, the chair steadfastly refused to hear from them -- eventually, he used a straw poll to discard their proposal altogether, and then called it "democracy." (Oh, and even more of the public-interest group papers were stolen and trashed today)

India: Before the lunch break I pushed you more for the floor more than I normally would. The reason was that I had a dental appointment. I realize my ideas may not have been clearly conveyed because my speech may not have been clear. I hope my speech is a little clearer now. What I was suggesting was that Brazil's suggestions for open consultations inter-sessionally were an eminently sensible idea. I would have thought that given the open ended consultations are wider in scope and the fact that the differences that emerged in this meeting were essentially differences across regions, it would be more beneficial to have an inter-sessional meeting which is precisely what we are now engaged in. Some meeting like this that brings regions together in inter-sessional consultations. But I see that none of that has been reflected. And since we believe our conclusions are those of the committee rather than the conclusions of the chair, we would request you to show some indication that our contribution has not been entirely dismissed out of hand. Thank you.

Link

I've been in Geneva all week, fighting the Broadcast Treaty at the World Intellectual Property Organization. One of the least-supported provisions in the treaty is the "Webcaster's provision" which would allow people who transmit information on the Internet to control how anyone who receives it uses it -- even if it's Creative Commons licensed, or in the public domain, or not copyrightable. Microsoft and Yahoo's representatives have backed the US's call for this (America is the only country that wants this), essentially saying that they represent the whole tech industry on this.

This week we presented a letter from 20 technology companies and organizations that opposed the inclusion of Webcasting in the treaty -- among the signers were Mark Cuban (who founded Broadcast.com, and owns $500,000,000 in content), O'Reilly and Associates, and Salon.com. I made 300 copies of the letter and set out copies at one-hour intervals (setting out all my copies would have been a mistake, since someone was stealing all of the public-interest groups' papers and throwing them away in the bathroom garbage-cans).

It made a huge difference. After the letter got into the delegates' hands, the tenor of the debate really changed. Click the link to read the letter:

Briefly, we reject the Webcasting Provision for the following reasons:

1. The Internet depends on permission-free access. This is reflected in the exemptions in many countries' copyright laws for online and internet service providers. When authors or rights-holders' permission has been required for fixation, copying, retransmission or decoding in other situations, the negotiation of licenses from creators and copyright rights-holders have provided ample protection for all parties. Adding a new layer of intermediaries, over and above copyright holders, for the re-use of information on the Internet benefits no one -- save those intermediaries. If an Internet company has the rights to a work, or need not secure the rights to a work due to a limitation in copyright, or because the work is in the public domain, there is no rational reason to require that the company also seek the permission of a further intermediary whose sole creative contribution to the work is in making it available.

2. There is no demonstrable problem. Internet businesses are famously, legendarily well-capitalized from angels, venture capitalists, public markets, private investors, governments and every other source of capital imaginable. Proponents of webcasting rights have offered no credible evidence that the lack of legal protection for webcasting rights has precluded the establishment of any new Internet businesses. Indeed, the businesses most volubly calling for Webcasting protection are among the best-capitalized in the history of the world. There is no certainty of benefit here, but it *is* certain that the creation of a new psuedo-copyright will slow down adoption and innovation in Internet markets by requiring all content-related businesses to negotiate yet another layer of license agreements before they can offer new products or services to the public. The most likely result of introducing these new rights will be to skew the market; in practice it will provide financial assistance to incumbents who will be able to assure investors of their right to exclude their competitors and new entrants from the market. At the same time, it is likely to constrain, not increase, the creation of more information products for the public.

We do not desire the "protection" you offer us, nor do we believe it will benefit us.

Link

Another excellent gallery from MasaMania of Japanese kids at play. Link

The EU has announced that it's not going to use patented software standards unless it gets an irrevocable royalty-free license to all the patents in the standard -- guess that means Windows is out!

European Commission's IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations) Unit announced their definition of Open Standards, which require the "intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard to be made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis". It also calls for "no constraints on the re-use of the standard" to be imposed. The definition is part of the European Interoperability Framework just published at http://europa.eu.int/ida/servlets/Doc?id=18063

Among other speakers, Christian Hardy from the French ministry of finance presented the large migration of over 100 000 desktops to OpenOffice, the free software alternative to Microsoft Office, across the national French Administration. Rolf Theodor Schuster, CIO at the German Foreign Ministry presented a live demonstration of the fully open source desktop and server system that secures the global German embassy network.

Link (Thanks, Rishab!)

Update: Rishab sez, "note that the interoperability framework is not mandatory! but the volume of protests from e.g. COMPTIA indicates that it will be influential."

Conservative porn-prohibitionists addressing Congress yesterday compared online porn to heroin -- and urged lawmakers to fund studies about "porn addiction" and create a propaganda public health campaign warning of the dangers. Perhaps a surgeon general's warning for vibrators and videos is in order. All joking aside, how you feel about porn isn't as important here as how you feel about, in their words, "curbing" the internet and other forms of communication. It always starts in the name of the children, doesn't it?

Mary Anne Layden, co-director of a sexual trauma program at the University of Pennsylvania, said pornography's effect on the brain mirrors addiction to heroin or crack cocaine. She told of one patient, a business executive, who arrived at his office at 9 a.m. each day, logged onto Internet porn sites, and didn't log off until 5 p.m. Layden called for billboards and bus ads warning people to avoid pornography, strip clubs and prostitutes.

The panel discussion ranged from hardcore, violent pornography to audience complaints about a sexually suggestive promo that aired prior to this week's "Monday Night Football" game. Brownback, an outspoken Christian conservative who has championed efforts to curb indecency on television and the Internet, said the public is beginning to realize "they don't just have to take it." But he acknowledged the First Amendment right to free speech has limited congressional efforts.

Link. Just in case they're right, I urge you -- whatever you do -- to please, please not click on the Suicide Girls ad that appears to the right of this blog post. Like pot, it leads to (ahem) harder things. (thanks, JP)

In the new issue of Scientific American, UC Irvine neurobiologist Norman Weinberger looks at how the brain processes music. Surveying the research in his and others' labs, Weinberger examines how our brain "retunes" itself to various kinds of musical input and how we've evolved our response to music.

"An imaging experiment in 2001 by Anne Blood and Zatorre of McGill sought to better specify the brain regions involved in emotional reactions to music. This study used mild emotional stimuli, those associated with people's reactions to musical consonance versus dissonance. Consonant musical intervals are generally those for which a simple ratio of frequencies exists between two tones. An example is middle C (about 260 hertz, or Hz) and middle G (about 390 Hz). Their ratio is 2:3, forming a pleasant-sounding "perfect fifth" interval when they are played simultaneously. In contrast, middle C and C sharp (about 277 Hz) have a "complex" ratio of about 8:9 and are considered unpleasant, having a "rough" sound.

What are the underlying brain mechanisms of that experience? PET (positron emission tomography) imaging conducted while subjects listened to consonant or dissonant chords showed that different localized brain regions were involved in the emotional reactions. Consonant chords activated the orbitofrontal area (part of the reward system) of the right hemisphere and also part of an area below the corpus callosum. In contrast, dissonant chords activated the right parahippocampal gyrus. Thus, at least two systems, each dealing with a different type of emotion, are at work when the brain processes emotions related to music. How the different patterns of activity in the auditory system might be specifically linked to these differentially reactive regions of the hemispheres remains to be discovered.

In the same year, Blood and Zatorre added a further clue to how music evokes pleasure. When they scanned the brains of musicians who had chills of euphoria when listening to music, they found that music activated some of the same reward systems that are stimulated by food, sex and addictive drugs."

Link

Disc error? Popular Science reports on the Charité Artificial Disc, a plastic replacement for one of two discs in the lower back. The Artificial Disc is expected to receive United States FDA approval by the end of the year.

“This is the first major breakthrough in back surgery since the 1940s,” says orthopedic surgeon Richard Guyer of the Texas Back Institute in Plano.

Link

Fuji, a 34-year-old dolphin at an aquarium at Okinawa, lost most of her tail fin to a disease that forced doctors to amputate. Tiremaker Bridgestone fabricated a $100k prosthetic fin for her. From the AFP:

The company has yet to receive any request for an artificial fin or leg for other animals but spokesman (Shinichi) Kobori said Bridgestone is open to such requests.

"We make tires; we specialize in foots of sort. If we see offers, we will consider them," he said.

Link

I blogged the unbelievably awesome Grey Video the other day -- it's an amazing video mashup to accompany one of the tracks from DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album. The site's gone down, but Waxy's got mirrors and torents and bears, oh my.

The official site is down, likely a result of popularity or legality, and I don't know if it's coming back. Until then, I'm going to mirror the high-quality Quicktime version.

Download: grey_video.mov (Quicktime, 22 MB)
BitTorrent: grey.torrent (thanks, Kyle!)

Also, Matt Haughey is mirroring it.

Link

Donate a record player and help digitize 30,000 records!

Hello, my friend has recently come into approximately 30,000 records(!) many of which are old enough as to be public domain, i.e. their copyrights are expired. He has offered to let me digitize them so that they may be distributed, to undermine the record companies and their patterns of rereleasing albums periodically in a "remastered" cd so that the copyrights never expire. I have the computer and software necessary to digitize these records (which include crazy rare ethnic and folk music, as well as odd "mood" atmospheric music), but need a record player with component outputs, ie a linelevel output, so that i can hook it up to my soundcard. I can afford a needle, I just need a decent record player. Help the world, give me the old record player in your garage. Recordings will be distributed on an ftp site and on peer to peer programs (people actually do use these for legitimate purposes!).

Link (Thanks, Paul!)

I was looking at international long distance rates on Vonage, which are quite good (like 10 cents a minute to China), but was shocked to see that Inmarsat satellite calls are over $12 a minute! For fun, I did a search on Inmarsat and found this article about Inmarsat eavesdropping. Apparently, real pirates like to do this.

Pirates are the heroes of age-old adventure stories, but most of us forget that whole regions still depend on modern pirates. The coast around Malacca in Malaysia is such a spot, together with the Bay of Thailand and the Southern Chinese Sea. In South America the coast of Northern Brazil is another centre of pirate activity. On average every other day sees an attack, and whenever pirates strike they leave good manners at home. Typically all people on board of a ship are killed, unless they manage to escape with a rescue boat. Most pirates know in advance if the ship and its cargo is worth an attack, because they use state of the art equipment to monitor Inmarsat communications and even fax transmissions listing every single cargo item. Quite a substantial portion of Inmarsat reception units that are being sold in Germany or the United States are channelled to those regions where they are of invaluable service to modern age pirates. French journalist Eric Paquier managed to interview one pirate recently and when asked what pirates do with their victims he got the following response: 'We hang them upside down on one of the masts, then burn them alive and later eat their ears for dessert."

When is there going to be a movie about modern-day pirates? Link

UPDATE: Wes Phillips sez: "When there is, here's a really good novel they can use for a starting point."

UPDATE: Bill Berry sez: "That's a good idea: a movie about modern-day pirates. I'd see it.

I don't know if you remember the old 60s Hanna-Barbera show The Banana Splits, but they had a segment on the show that featured modern-day (er, 60s) pirates. If I remember correctly, they had modern boats and guns.

Danger Island. The show's main ongoing one live action serial. Directed by future Hollywood director Richard (Lethal Weapon) Donner, it centred on five people stranded on a remote jungle island: Doctor Hayden and his young daughter Lesley, Link (played by child actor Jan Micheal Vincent, later to play the character of Link in '80s TV series Airwolf), Morgan (who proved the muscles), and the silent native, Chongo. Together they faced deadly natives, pirates, landslides and earthquakes.

As Bingo says: "Oh-oh...Danger Island next!" Link

Jason Schultz points us to the following surreal slice of news and says, "Boy, I'd love to hear the expert witness testimony in this trial!"

Hooters of America and a rival restaurant chain began arguing in federal court over who has rights to the concept of using scantily clad women to sell food and beer. Atlanta-based Hooters of America accuses Ker's WingHouse of Kissimmee of poaching the idea coined when it opened its first sports bar in Clearwater in 1983, Hooters lawyer Steve Hill said in opening statements Wednesday in Orlando.

"The evidence will show WingHouse has copied the Hooter girl almost from head to toe," Hill said. "For want of a better expression, the Hooter girl is our Ronald McDonald."

But Crawford Ker said he based his chain on Knockers, a failing restaurant with an all-female staff in Largo that he took over after retiring from the NFL, according to pretrial deposition.

Link. You can get a "taste" of the allegations made by Ker's WingHouse here: Link. Couldn't we just settle this with a round of topless onion dip wrestling and some free draft pitchers?

Update: IANAL, but a knowledgeable BB reader who is quite familiar with the law (and requests anonymity) says: "The title for this entry is a tad incorrect. At issue is not copyright, but rather - I am not making this up - 'trade dress.' See the not dissimilar discussion (sans décolletage) here."

I've been burned by data loss before, so I know how important it is to back up my hard drive. The thing is, every back-up software I've tried has been a big hassle. They're all slow and complicated. As a result, I was lucky if I'd do a backup once a month, because I dreaded firing up the program and trying to figure out what to do. "Which checkboxes should I click?" "Which options should I select?"

On a lark, I searched Version Tracker for backup software and found a new program called Super Duper. It was getting excellent reviews there, so I decided to give it a try. And I love it! It's extremely simple to use, but very powerful. It's one of those great programs that seems to know exactly what you need, when you need it, without requiring you to do anything.

After the first back-up (I use a 200G Maxtor One-Touch drive), subsequent "smart backups" take just a few minutes. The backups are bootable - in fact, they're clones of the original.

Super Duper has made backing up painless. So painless that it's almost fun. I back up my eMac and my iBook daily now. Link

Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap. Link

This week is my bi-annual pilgrimage to Geneva, Switzerland, where I'm representing EFF at the negotiations over the "Broadcast Treaty" which lets people who send out shows claim a 50 year owenership over them, even if the shows are publi domain, copylefted, or of a non-copyrightable nature (like a C-SPAN broadcast). It requires signatories to protect DRM with laws that make it illegal to tell someone how to do more with his television. And there's even a proposed element ("the webcasting provision") that would bring this to the Web. This stuff is way bad news.

But we're part of the largest coalition of "public interest" groups in WIPO history. We're getting major face-time with the delegates and making a difference.

Here are some posts I've just made to EFF's Deep Links blog detailing what's going on:

Day one notes: One of the things were doing here is taking exhaustive notes on who says what, when, and what it means. We're providing the first-ever in-depth peek into how the treaties that will rule your life are getting made. On Day One, we saw the introduction of a brilliant proposal by Chile to set a minimum group of public rights under copyright -- like the right of the blind to turn books into Braille without permission or payment -- that would apply in every country, so that people cooperating on international education/research, archiving and disabled access projects could know that the stuff they sent to their collaborators was just as legal abroad as at home.

Statement on limitations and exceptions: I'm giving this statement tomorrow on the limitations and exceptions proposal: "It is in the nature of archiving, education and the provision of services to the disabled to be cooperative. Unlike commercial, competitive enterprises where labor may be replicated -- and charged for -- many times over; nonprofit public interest work to distribute a joint effort as widely as possible."

Day two notes: Day two was all about the Broadcast Treaty, and saw really tough debate on the Webcasting provision and the DRM stuff (WIPO calls DRM "TPMs" -- technological protection measures. Kinky!). Most notable, though, was that a saboteur took all of the literature set out by the public-interest groups and hid it/trashed it/threw it in the toilets.

Letter on stolen documents: Here's the letter we sent to the WIPO Secretariat (the administrative overseers) on our stolen literature.

On DigitalCopyright.ca, a good, sharp, short analysis of the pending Canadian version of the USA's rotten, hated, disastrous Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):

1. Education – Canadian schools currently spend millions of dollars each year on copyright licenses to provide students with access to educational materials. The Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled that teachers, students and schools do not have to pay for certain uses of these materials (including research, private study, and certain classroom instruction). Contrary to the Court’s ruling and despite the millions of dollars schools already pay for copyright materials, the committee would require schools to divert millions of dollars more from education budgets – from students, schools and taxpayers - to pay for publicly available material on the Internet.

Link, En Francais (Thanks, Ian!)

Update: Ian sez, "they also have posted a open letter to the members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, in reply to quotes seen in a Globe and Mail article."

The Internet Archive contains billions of snapshots of web-pages on different days since 1996. Using its "Wayback Machine," you can get the archive to show you what any page looked like on a day when it was copied by the archive's crawler.

So it was only a matter of time before the a page from the Archive would be used in a court proceeding to prove something about some date in history. It's happened, and the court has admitted the Archive's pages into evidence.

Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys rejected Polska's assertion of hearsay, holding that the archived copies were not themselves statements susceptible to hearsay exclusion, since they merely showed what Polska had previously posted on its site. He also noted that, since Polska was seeking to suppress evidence of its own previous statements, the snapshots would not be barred even if they were hearsay. Over Polska's objection, Judge Keys accepted an affidavit from an Internet Archive employee as sufficient to authenticate the snapshots for admissibility.

Link (Thanks, Sean!)

Damn, these "R2-DJ" tee-shirts are bad ass. Limited edition of 150, too! Link (Thanks, Derek!)

On November 19th, 2004 8-10pm at Machine Project in Los Angeles, "Garnet Hertz will be showing his most recent prototype: a cockroach-controlled mobile robot system. The system uses a living Madagascan hissing cockroach atop a modified trackball to control a three-wheeled robot. Infrared sensors also provide navigation feedback to create a semi-intelligent system, with the cockroach as the CPU. This work will be framed within the contexts of intelligence, embodiment, artificial life, the history robotics, and Michael Jackson." Link (Thanks, Dan!)

UPDATE: Jenifer Tidwell sez: This is a scene right out of a 1993 SIGGRAPH animation piece called "Grinning Evil Death," about a giant robotic cockroach going down in defeat to a kid empowered by a cereal-box prize. In the climactic scene, the intrepid kid pulls the lid off the robot to find it powered by... a cockroach. Link 1, Link 2

UPDATE: Bill sez: "A friend of mine wrote to Garnet concerning the treatment of the cockroaches he uses in his robot. I was impressed with how well he treats the little guys and thought you might like to know. Here is his reply:"

I appreciate your comments, although I take some comfort in knowing that the cockroaches I use aren't in pain or even annoyed: they're a Madagascan Hissing species that hiss loudly when irritated.

The insects are only in the device for a few minutes at a time, and lead very normal lives otherwise.  I feed them organic lettuce and top-grade Purina dog food.

You should compare this to the way that insects are cut apart and routinely chopped to bits by standard scientific research (let alone the Orkin man).

All the best - and I actually appreciate your feedback.

Garnet

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders has a great list of ways to break through writer's block.

Write crap - Accept that your first draft will suck, and just go with it. Finish something.

Unplug the router - Metafilter and Boing Boing aren’t helping you right now. Turn off the Interweb and close every application you don’t need. Consider creating a new user account on your computer with none of your familiar apps or configurations.

Write the middle - Stop whining over a perfect lead, and write the next part or the part after that. Write your favorite part. Write the cover letter or email you’ll send when it’s done.

Link

My latest article for TheFeature is about Noppa, a neat project in Finland to help blind people navigate through cities with the aid of GPS-enabled mobile phones.

The basic user components of Noppa are a mobile phone that's loaded with speech-recognition software and a Bluetooth GPS unit. The Bluetooth connection is used to get real-time bus and train data (the kind that appears on bus stop signs and train platforms to users know when their vehicle is about to arrive). The GPRS connection accesses a custom information server that manages route planning, guidance and speech recognition. The information server also accesses maps, weather information and municipal databases from the Internet. The speech-recognition software allows the user to make verbal requests, and the system uses speech synthesis to tell the user how to get to the correct bus stop or train station and tells him or her which vehicle to board.

Link

BoingBoing reader Dano says, "She was a physicist in a time when women just didn't do that, and [her passing should be of interest to BoingBoing readers because of] what she did for the world community with regard to the Federation of American Scientists and anti-secrecy."

Physicist Melba Phillips, among the last of a vanishing generation of activist scientists who founded the Federation of American Scientists and fought the political battles of the early cold war, died last week. A 1947 policy statement on "military secrecy and security" that she co-authored for the FAS leadership complained that the personnel security practices of the Atomic Energy Commission were "extra-legal, arbitrary, and often subversive of every right of the individual in a democracy" ... FAS in its early years was sharply divided between liberal anticommunists, who eventually became dominant, and popular front liberals. Dr. Phillips was among the latter.

Link

You had me at "Use of our client's trademark to identify enema equipment in erotic fiction is likely to cause confusion." Link (via Fleshbot)

My latest article for TheFeature is about the development of incredibly flexible displays for mobile devices:

"Flexible displays are a staple of science fiction. Imagine unrolling an electronic newspaper that’s automatically updated via the wireless Web. Or unfurling a screen stored in your location-enhanced mobile device so you can consult a digital map without squinting. These kinds of applications -- promised for more than a decade -- have almost become clichés of futurist hype. Indeed, as one reader of TheFeature points out in response to a flexible screen announcement by Philips, “Every industrial design student has some (mock-up) PDA with a roll-out display in their portfolio.” So why the hell can’t you buy one?"

Link

New Scientist has a really intriguing and intense interview with Michael Koubi, the former chief interrogator for Israel's Shin Bet.

How do people behave when they are interrogated for the first time?
Every detainee behaves differently. It depends whether he's from the city or the village, or a Bedouin from the desert. It depends whether he's educated or not. Prison is unimaginably different to normal life. People behave in unexpected ways. People who talk tough in public often submit in interrogation.

I once interrogated a Bedouin who said nothing at all for a few days. He was a very tough man. During one session I was playing with a stick, and this idea came to me: I said to him, do you realise there's a snake hidden in the stick? And suddenly he became very afraid. He said he'd tell me anything. This man was used to dealing with snakes in the open, but in a cell it was a different matter.

Link

Church leaders in Cambridge, England are madder than hell because David Vanian and Captain Sensible of seminal punk/goth band The Damned were invited to switch on the city's Christmas lights. From a BBC News report:

Reverend Dr Peter Graves, of Wesley Methodist Church in Cambridge, said: "We should not give a major function over to a group that goes out of its way to deny what Christmas is about. "

Er, presents? Link

Mark Cuban -- maverick television and sports executive and generous supporter of EFF -- has been fined by the NBA for blogging his criticism of the league's decision to hold its opening game on election night, the one night of the year when no one gave a rat's about basketball.

The NBA held its opening night on election night last Tuesday, a dumb move because Cuban thought (correctly, I might add) that the kickoff games would get zero TV coverage the day after the election. So Cuban decided to inform his readers of his opinion on his weblog, and the NBA fined him for this. That's right everyone, the NBA fined Mark Cuban because of a weblog entry he wrote.

Link

The National Endowment for the Arts Humanities is working to put 30 million newspapers online in digital format.

The first of what's expected to be 30 million digitized pages from papers published from 1836 through 1922 will be available in 2006.

"Anyone who's interested - teachers, students, historians, lawyers, politicians, even newspaper reporters - will be able to go to their computer at home or at work and at a click of a mouse get immediate, unfiltered access to the greatest source of our history," said Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He announced the project in a speech at the National Press Club...

The National Endowment for the Humanities is working on the project with the Library of Congress, which has embarked on a broader project to preserve records of American newspapers dating from the late 1600s...

The span of the joint project is limited because type faces of printers used before 1836 are too difficult for optical scanners to read, and copyright restrictions are in force on papers published after 1923.

Link (via Whole Lotta Nothing)

War-themed ASCII / Flash hybrid animation. This has nothing to do with red and blue states, or Iraq. It has everything to do with WTFclouds, TTYLnukes, LMAOplanes, and German gothrock ennui kthxbi. clicky ROFL. (via MeFi)

Phillip Torrone's issued a call-to-arms for citizen engineers to share their tips and techniques for creating mashups, so as to enable widespread civil disobedience. Click through for his contact details.

the solution to end this madness?

more mash ups. millions of them.

this is where you come in, i'm going start a how-to series on making your own mash ups, so if you make these, please drop a note on how you do it, what software you use and all that.

let's unleash a flood of millions of mash ups. with podcasting really taking off, p2p networks, mp3 players everywhere and the nature of music always wanting to be sample, mixed and heard it'll be hard to stop everyone turning on, tuning in and mashing up.

Link