GeekCorps founder Ethan Zuckerman has astutely noticed that there is almost no news about the effect of the tsunami on Myanmar (formerly Burma), which was surely in the disaster's path. It appears that news of the tsunami's effect has been supressed by Myanmar's military dictators.

There's two possible explanations for this story. One is that Myanmar, with 1930 kilometers of coastline, numerous fishing villages and huts on stilts along the coast, and a common border with Thailand - where over 1500 are reported dead - miraculously escaped the effect of the tsunami.

The other explanation is that Myanmar's famously secretive military government hasn't wanted to reveal the extent of the tsunami damage to the outside world... and especially to their own citizens. (As in many represive regimes, it's easier to to get news from outside the country than news from within it.)

Link (Thanks, Alex!)

This month's Wired Magazine features a long article on Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, written by BB pal Clive Thompson. It's a very good piece, and Bram gets some great licks in; the only place I took issue with it is where Clive talks about Microsoft DRM being useful to "keep content out of pirate hands" -- there is not a single piece of content in the history of the universe that has been "kept out of pirate hands" (i.e. kept off the Internet, or prevented from being stamped out in pirate CD factories abroad) by DRM. It's a weird kind of Big Lie strategy by the DRM people to talk about how DRM can prevent "piracy" when there has never, ever been an example of this happening.

Wired seems to be a little soft on DRM these days; the recent Wired spin-off, Wired Test, featured page on page of reviews of music players, media PCs, and PVRs with hardly a mention of the fact that all of these devices were fundamentally crippleware, and all controlled by entertainment companies who can and do arbitrarily remove functionality from them after they have entered the marketplace, so that the device that you've bought does less today than it did when you opened the box. If you're publishing a consumer-advice magazine, it seems like this is the kind of thing you should be noting for your readers: "If you buy this, your investment will be contingent on the ongoing goodwill of some paranoid Warners exec whose astrologer has told him that your pause button will put him out of business and must be disabled."

There's a strong tie here for the use-case for BitTorrent. I bought a Sopranos Season Three DVD set for a friend's Christmas this year. When the friend opened the gift on her Christmas holiday in France, the discs wouldn't play in her hotel's French DVD player; nor would they play in the on-site English PowerBook -- because the discs had DRM. At that point, the rational thing to do would have been to sell the discs on Amazon and just download Season Three using BitTorrent -- the studios have rigged the game so that you get a superior product (e.g., something you can actually watch) when you download bootlegs from BitTorrent, and they actively punish customers who buy their products instead of downloading them.

Which brings me back to Clive's casual note that Microsoft DRM can keep media "out of pirate hands." It's a statement that's so categorically untrue, it seems to come from a parallel universe with different laws of physics and economics. BitTorrent proves the futility of DRM as surely as DRM turns honest customers into studio-hating downloaders.

Cohen knows the havoc he has wrought. In November, he spoke at a Los Angeles awards show and conference organized by Billboard, the weekly paper of the music business. After hobnobbing with "content people" from the record and movie industries, he realized that "the content people have no clue. I mean, no clue. The cost of bandwidth is going down to nothing. And the size of hard drives is getting so big, and they're so cheap, that pretty soon you'll have every song you own on one hard drive. The content distribution industry is going to evaporate." Cohen said as much at the conference's panel discussion on file-sharing. The audience sat in a stunned silence, their mouths agape at Cohen's audacity.

Cohen seems curiously unmoved by the storm raging around him. "With BitTorrent, the cat's out of the bag," he shrugs. He doesn't want to talk about piracy and the future of media, and at first I think he's avoiding the subject because it's so legally sensitive. But after a while, I realize it simply doesn't interest him much.

He'd rather just work on his code. He'd rather buckle down and figure out new ways to make BitTorrent more efficient. He'd rather focus on something that demands crazy, hair-pulling logic.

Link (via Waxy)

Entertainment Weekly's Album of the Year is DJ Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, an album made by mashing up Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles' White Album. The resulting disc is very good, and also illegal, at least in the eyes of EMI, the Beatles' publisher, who pursued legal action against Danger Mouse for making the disc. Link (via Waxy)

In 1975, documentary artist Bruce Jackson found a bunch of old prison photos in a drawer in the Arkansas penitentiary.

The people being photographed have no interest in the photographs being made; the people making the photographs have no interest in the photographs they have made. 

Link (Via Sensible Erection)

Boing Boing friend Ken Sitz sez: "My CONELRAD project just received a holiday gift from the Library of Congress in today's announcement that DUCK AND COVER is being inducted into the National Film Registry, thus guaranteeing its perservation. We launched a campaign last March to rally our readers and interested parties to support our official nomination and we just published the first production history of the film." Link

Matthew is auctioning a grilled cheese maker that toasts the Virgin Mary's likeness onto a slice of bread. He sez: "I'm working on a super cheap wifi telecommunications project for the Pacific island of Bougainville. The sandwich maker is art experimant and half a hair-brain fund raising effort for the project." Link

Good news: Jim Leftwich has started blogging again! And to re-kick it off, he's assembled a gallery of non-six-sided snowflakes he's found in advertisements. Link

The Brunching Shuttlecocks once featured an hilarious choose-your-own-adventure game based on Harry Potter, by David Neilsen.

It turns out that iPods have a "museum" mode where text notes and audio clips can be combined so that museums and other venues can hand out iPods to patrons, who trigger narration by clicking the iPod's button based on signs at each exhibit. This is also well-suited to Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games.

So here's a choose-your-own-adventure Harry Potter parody game for the iPod -- wow! Link (scroll down page to 3/25/04 entry)

Bill sez, "I have a treasured first printing of Rudy's (out of print) short story collection that's been with me since college. It's a book full of mind-expanding (and funny) stories. I'm auctioning it off on eBay, and the proceeds will be given in the winner's name, to Oxfam America's relief efforts in area devastated by the 26 December earthquake and tsunami." Link (Thanks, Bill!)

Technology Review covers Kent Norman, "a cognitive psychologist who studies how people destroy their technology -- sometimes on purpose, but oftentimes out of frustration."

"Struck mid-size tower with car going 25mph, propelling it 15-20 feet forward. This causes damage to car but troublesome DVD drive finally ejected jammed disc upon contact with pavement. Still worked but HDD reported errors, and case wasn't attractive. Sold on eBay (with new case and HDD). Beware of this computer if you find it on eBay."

"Slammed keyboard with fists hard enough to pop most of the keys off. Lost the 'A' key and the top row of characters stopped working. Threw keyboard into the swimming pool. Kinda nice watching it sink."

"Smashing boards and plastic bits with a hammer is satisfying. Stomping on things that make a nice "CRUNCH" noise is even more satisfying. "

"I once shot a computer with a .50 cal BMG sniper rifle."

Link (Thanks, Brad!)

Virtual Apple is a library of old Apple 2 applications that you can run from the emulator on website. Unfortunately, you need Windows(!) and IE to run it. I checked -- they have Wizardry available -- the game that convinced me to buy my first Apple 2e in 1985. Link

Amazing, amazing images of beachfront in Sri Lanka before and after the tsunami hit. Also, hi-res satellite images of the tsunami itself. Snip:

"This is a natural color, 60-centimeter (2-foot) high-resolution QuickBird satellite image featuring the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka. Imagery was collected at 10:20 a.m. local time, slightly less than four hours after the 6:28 a.m. (local Sri Lanka time) earthquake and shortly after the moment of tsunami impact."

Link (Thanks, WW!).
Previous BB posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Classified Intelligence, a consulting firm has released a report that says craigslist.com has seriously hurt newspapers' classified ad revenue.

Craigslist - now partly owned by eBay - beat out the papers by being more customer friendly and by being quicker to act than its rivals. Other papers around the US should take notice of Craigslist' Bay area success, as the site continues its march into new cities.

Link

JeremyT sez, "Mike Brotherton has released a free downloadable version of his first science fiction novel, _Star Dragon_ on his website. Mike's first novel, published by Tor last year, is a great read. Star Dragon is a hard science fiction novel detailing a scientific expedition to investigate strange life forms living inside a star's accretion disk." This is great news -- Tor is my publisher, too and it's wonderful to see them experimenting with CC licenses for their other authors.

Unlike most first-time visitors entering the world headquarters of Biolathe, Inc., Dr. Samuel Fisher didn't pause at the moist cloying air that moved across the building’s threshold like breath. If anything, his pace increased; he threw his shoulders forward and his streaker-clad feet rushed as if to prevent a fall, sinking into the plush rose ruglings with each step. Unlike the sunlit diamond and gold, seemingly mandatory in corporate buildings, this lobby throbbed pink and organic. The entire building was alive. Despite the omnipresence of biotechnology, walking inside it rather than sitting on it still made most hesitate.

Not Fisher -- he was in the middle of five major projects. He didn't believe his life would be as transformed by the upcoming presentation as the Biolathe agent had hinted. He charged ahead, glancing about the nearly empty lobby for signs to guide him. What was this? He’d been here six seconds already! There was never enough time to waste any of it. He decided there was one thing he would hesitate over in the future: being talked into a physical meeting.

In the middle of the cavernous chamber Fisher stopped abruptly, brought up short by a bipedal mobile with wrinkled gray skin attached to the wall by a pulsing umbilical.

Link (Thanks, JeremyT!)

Following up on last week's BoingBoing post about a vintage, X-rated, Disney-inspired comic for auction on eBay (Link to post), BoingBoing reader Mercutio writes:

An entry on LJ prompted me to look at Boing Boing entry concerning the sale of Disney parody/porn on Ebay. Thought you'd appreciate knowing that Disney animators actually made an orgy scene using characters from Snow White.

I once worked at Facets Multimedia, an art movie house in Chicago. During the mid 1980s, I attended a lecture by famous animator Seamus Culhane. Mr. Culhane had worked for Fleischer, Disney and Warner Brothers at different times. And he was an animator on Snow White. (Mr. Culhane was fired by Walt Disney for trying to organize an independent union - but that's another story.)

During his talk, Mr. Culhane was asked if there had ever been any porn created that was like the famous picture from The Realist [Ed. Note: the "Disney porn" image auctioned last week on eBay]. He answered that, yes, the work was so long that the animators got bored and created very explicit orgy scene sketches and cells. He further said that when Walt Disney heard what was going on, he personally hunted down and burned all of the objectionable material.

Thought you'd like to hear this story. I don't know if Mr. Culhane or any other animators were ever quoted in a new source about this episode in Disney history.

As any regular reader of this site knows, my blog-colleage Cory Doctorow is BoingBoing's resident guru on all things Disney. Browse the results of this Google search string for some of his previous posts on ephemera from the mouse-o-sphere.

Chillits is an ambient music outdoor festival that takes place every fall in Northern California. It's sort of a scaled-down version of the UK's Big Chill. All of the DJ sets from Chillits 2004 are now online for our, er, blistening pleasure. The mixes by my musical mentors, San Francisco's Nick Philip and DF Tram, are just stunning. And yes, the Brian Behlendorf who also spun a really beautiful set is in fact the co-inventor of Apache. I have Brian to thank for turning me on to post-Eno ambient when we both interned at Wired in 1993. What DF Tram says about his own set pretty much applies across the Chillits board: this music is "best enjoyed horizontally." Link

From the people who brought you the inflatable church, an inflatable pub with inflatable fireplace and even a dart-board. Link

The FDA has approved research into whether Ecstasy should be used in palliative care of terminal cancer patients to ease their final days.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a pilot study looking at whether the recreational hallucinogen can help terminally-ill patients lessen their fears, quell thoughts of suicide and make it easier for them to deal with loved ones.

"End of life issues are very important and are getting more and more attention, and yet there are very few options for patients who are facing death," Dr John Halpern, the Harvard research psychiatrist in charge of the study, said.

The small four-month study is expected to begin early next spring. It will test the drug's effects on 12 cancer patients from the Lahey Clinic Medical Centre in the Boston area. The research is being sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a non-profit group that plans to raise 250,000 (-184,816) to fund it.

Link (via Fark)

Child's Play is EGM's recurring feature in which kids who play video games are sat down in front of game classics like Tetris and Adventure and Donkey Kong, then encouraged to deliver scathing hilarious commentary on the general suck of yesteryear's treasured games as compared to today's offerings.

Bobby: I've played this on my cell phone.

EGM: [Pointing to the humans on the ground] What do they look like?

Parker: They look like those little characters in the game Life, the little people you have to stick in your car.

EGM: Before this came out in compilations, we used to put quarters in arcade machines.

Parker: You wasted quarters on this?

EGM: Yeah.

Parker: That's so sad.

Link (via Foe Romeo)

Back in August, I blogged about Hugh Macleod's "How to Be Creative" project. Hugh draws cartoons on the backs of business cards and works in advertising; his How to Be Creative is a meditation on creativity, individualism and commercialism, and it's full of pithy, clear, no-nonsense advice.\

Now Hugh has expanded the piece into a short book, which is online in its entirety. He's found an agent and the agent is shopping the book -- I'd certainly buy a copy!

Chaos can be a positive thing. Chaos is inherently part of the creative act. To embrace creativity means you must also embrace chaos. Things don't happen when everything is neat and "just so". Creativity is all about distruption. The people who tell you that creativity is pain-free are liars. The people who tell you they've got a plan are liars. There is no plan. There's just you, God and the need to invent. And this uncertain world is what most of us now find ourselves entering, willingly or otherwise.

Creativity equals chaos. Chaos equals creativity. Embrace it or die. I've already done so. I know all about it. It almost cost me my liver but like I said, education is expensive.

The Creative Age is upon us. The Chaotic Age is upon us. We are scared. Damn right, we should be scared. But out of the terror comes the amazing opportunities for us to expand both on the material and spiritual level. The fewer safety nets there are to save us, the less choice we have to be anything other than ourselves, the less choice we have besides doing what is meaningful to us. And finding ourselves, doing what matters, becoming the person we were born to be, this is what God put on this earth to do.

We live in amazing and interesting times. If we're lucky, while on this earth we can do a damn good job proving i

Link

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology could soon be embedded in casino chips and tables. Casino supply company Shuffle Master recently shelled out $12.5 million for two patents on gaming-related RFID systems. Shuffle Master president Paul Meyer presents this scenario in Gambling Magazine:

"Say I sit down at a black jack table and I have a player's card. I place it and a $100 bill on the table. My card is swiped which places me at that table," explained Mr. Meyer. (A player's card is another way for casinos to track frequent gamblers. They earn points on the card for free meals, or other rewards.)

Without RFID, "as I play over time, the only way the casino can estimate the kind of player I am, is by using pit boss estimates. That's a pretty rough estimate. That's where table tracking comes in. Every chip is associated with me and is tracked using a reader. Exactly what I'm betting and losing or winning is tracked automatically. Without tracking, they (casino) don't know what I'm betting." In other words, the reasoning behind RFID utilization is that the casino will know what every player is doing at every table.

"Say you move away from one table with $500 in chips. You now go to cash in those chips. Those RFID chips can be read at the cage and associated with you. In your moment of generosity, you give a cocktail waitress a $25 chip. When she cashes it in, we know how generous a tipper you are."

Link (via The Wireless Weblog)

Kaden Harris builds exquisitely-crafted "Dangerous Things" for your desktop, such as miniature working guillotines, catapults, and the Hypnodisk (pictured here), a staple of evil mythical masterminds. Sensory Impact interviewed Harris about his "antiques from a parallel universe":

"I did a prototype of a ‘pitching machine’ sort of thingie powered by 2 sewing machine motors that was supposed to fire anything from pencils to Sharpies, but it turned out to be insanely over-powered…workplace murders would have gone through the roof if I’d brought it to market. I have a newfound respect for 2H pencils these days."

Link

Award-winning science fiction author China Mieville has written a wonderful Christmas story for the Socialist Review. It concerns itself not with the commercialization of Christmas, but with the privatization of it, with an era in which observing Christmas requires extensive license payments and agreements with the entities that hold the copyrights and trademarks in holiday traditions.

Don't get me wrong. I haven't got shares in YuleCo, and I can't afford a one-day end-user licence, so I couldn't have a legal party. I'd briefly considered buying from one of the budget competitors like XmasTym, or a spinoff from a non-specialist like Coca-Crissmas, but the idea of doing it on the cheap was just depressing. I wouldn't have been able to use much of the traditional stuff, and if you can't have all of it, why have any? (XmasTym had the rights to Egg Nog. But Egg Nog's disgusting.) Those other firms keep trying to create their own alternatives to proprietary classics like reindeer and snowmen, but they never take off. I'll never forget Annie's underwhelmed response to the JingleMas Holiday Gecko.

No, like most people, I was going to have a little MidWinter Event, just Annie and me. So long as I was careful to steer clear of licenced products we'd be fine.

Ivy decorations you can still get away with; holly's a no-no but I'd hoarded a load of cherry tomatoes, which I was planning to perch on cactuses. I wouldn't risk tinsel but had a couple of brightly-coloured belts I was going to drape over my aspidistra. You know the sort of thing. The inspectors aren't too bad: they'll sometimes turn a blind eye to a bauble or two (which is just as well, because the fines for unlicensed Christmas™ celebrations are astronomical).

Link (Thanks, Gavin and all the others who suggested this!)

Jamais sez, "WorldChanging interviews Naval War College professor Thomas Barnett. It's a lengthy, wide-ranging discussion of the differences between the 'Core' nations and the 'Gap' nations, the role of globalization in causing and fixing failed states, the need for a 'sysadmin force,' and the role of environmental collapse as a driver of conflict. You may not agree with all of his conclusions, but he makes a strong, insightful argument." This was a really thought-provoking peace; there's a seductive logic in the idea of replacing international Peace-Keepers with international System Administrators.

Well, it would be what I call the System Administrator Force. It would be a people-intensive, UN-peacekeeping-plus approach that could defend itself -- could do counter-insurgency, could fight and not be some ineffective, pussy UN force where you shoot at them and half of them run away. It would be a tough force. You shoot at these guys, or start committing atrocities in their presence, and they would stop you, and if necessary, kill you. It could not only keep the peace, but enforce it.

It would also have a highly-trained civilian component. You'd have international, inter-agency teams. It'd look like the Casbah bar scene in Star Wars -- you'd want to see loads of uniforms from all sorts of countries, and you'd want to see civilians from all sorts of NGOs and aid agencies: you'd want the whole package, acting in a Great Depression, FDR sort of mode, where the first order of business (after enforcing the peace) would be to get everybody busy. The government that would be there would be some sort of transitional organization, an international reconstruction fund, with the goal of getting things stabilized, an economy working and laws written.

Link (Thanks, Jamais!)

Update: Angus sez, "there's a tremendously compelling (albeit in .rm) presentation by Barnett at the CSPAN site that I watched a couple days ago. He's tremendously insightful, not just on military issues, but the nature of globalization the networked world."

Update 2: Jesse sez, "Here is an MP3 of Barnett's talk at poptech."