The full opinion is available on the VA Supreme Court website. In short: Virginia singles now have a right to Due Process under last year's Supreme Court sodomy law decision -- and that makes the Virginia law unconstitutional. The state's anti-sodomy laws are still intact (limiting the sexual freedom of gay folks), but some believe a test case will soon follow, in an attempt to challenge that stature.

"I can't say we're pleased we made Virginia safe for fornication," said Neil Kuchinsky, Martin's attorney. "Though some will thank me, I'm sure.' "

Update: BB reader Myles says, "Xeni, I just wanted to point out the irony in your post about Virginia sexx laws; Virginia has always billed itself as Virginia is for Lovers." That one's been remixed a few times -- see this snapshot I took at Burning Man a couple years ago. BB reader Noah reminds us that the tourism motto of the state's capital has long been "Richmond: Easy To Love," and the observant will also note that the tagline on the state's travel website tagline is: Meet Virginia: She's open year 'round. Perhaps now that people actually can fuck freely there, we'll see a round of new state tourism slogans extoling the virtues of cold showers, chastity belts, and the notion that true love waits.

A while ago one of my writer friends sent me a 40-page-long account of his cross-country driving trip to Florida to take a job. His tale enthralled me. He had to drive through a nasty hurricane to get there, which was interesting, but that's not the best part of the story. The best part is his observations and interactions with interesting characters along the way.

I asked him if he'd like to try selling it on Boing Boing as an ebook, and he agreed. So he made a nice PDF file that includes the story and a couple of color photos. For personal reasons, he wishes to remain anonymous. About all I can say about him is that he has written many fiction and non fiction books and magazine articles.

As an experiment, we are selling the ebook for $1.50. The title is A Transcontinental Odyssey to the Dysfunctional Appendage of North America: Cowboy Gasoline in the Eye of the Storm.

You can buy a PDF version of the book with a credit card or PayPal here.

If you prefer, a plain text version is also available here.

A very funny & appealing character. One of the old school mad men. Here's hoping we get to read a lot more of his adventures. -- SK

Here is a free excerpt to whet your appetite: A Transcontinental Odyssey to the Dysfunctional Appendage of North America: Cowboy Gasoline in the Eye of the Storm

High in the Hurricane’s Eye

Traffic thins on the divided highway as I approach the oncoming edge of the hurricane. Behind me the sky is still blue; ahead, it looks like a clumsy india-ink wash drawing. I didn’t expect this. Foolishly I visualized a hurricane as a delicate swirl of white and cyan—the kind of picture transmitted by weather satellites. I didn’t stop to think that from ground level, looking upward, the picture would be somewhat . . . dim.

As I continue toward Birmingham the afternoon light diminishes to a level normally found only in Finland in the winter months. Then the wind starts. Since the hurricane is south of me and rotating counter-clockwise, it buffets my truck with relentless easterly blasts that do not impede my southerly progress but do try to knock me off the road. Fortunately the possessions heaped in the load area behind me inhibit the normal tendency of my Chevy to dance around like a puppy with a restless rear end. The back of the truck is anchored firmly to the asphalt by a ton of documents, storage media, books, computers, and peripheral devices.

The presence of such a great mass of cargo in such close proximity to my head provides a powerful incentive for caution and concentration. Still, if I allow the 50-mile-an-hour wind to overturn me into the ditch, being crushed under a load of computer hardware and personal effects will not be my greatest concern. I will have to face the prospect of police arriving and finding a hideously embarrassing diversity of items scattered around my truck, including old VHS porno movies, unsold manuscripts, psycho-killer DVDs, diary pages from my distant childhood, and gruesome 1960s posters by Robert Williams, greatest of the grossout 1960s underground artists, depicting glue-sniffing teenagers, an ogre chopping the arms off small boys, and other themes liable to surprise even the most tolerant liberal, let alone an Alabama Baptist. I can almost hear the State Trooper asking, “This here picture of a little kid dreaming about Hitler’s head transplanted onto an octopus—this here belongs to you?”

I will have no luck pleading that a writer needs all kinds of extreme source materials to feed his muse. Any good Alabama cop knows that writers are effete liberal card-carrying ACLU members who stay up all night doing drugs with their decadent friends, desecrating the flag while performing satanistic sex rituals. It goes without saying that such people should be punished appropriately.

The gusts intensify to the point where all the big trucks abandon the highway. Each time I pass an exit I see truckers lined up along the offramp, waiting for the storm to pass—which will take a considerable time, probably twelve hours or more. Since I am already bored to distraction by my cross-country drive I can’t imagine sitting and doing nothing for half a day. It may be prudent, but it is not acceptable.

The wind brings shotgun blasts of fine rain, causing me to pull onto the shoulder and check the integrity of my tarp. I’m pleased to find that my work in Texas is still secure. The intricate web of knotted twine has not loosened, and the tarp has not started flapping. My separately wrapped bicycle, tucked in at the side of the load as an afterthought, also seems to be okay. With confidence buoyed by my stash of gas and water, not to mention my food supply of nuts, raisins, and so forth, I press onward at a steady 70 while hoping that the newly aligned front end will stay aligned, the overloaded rear wheel bearings won’t collapse into fragments, and the overloaded rear tires won’t spontaneously explode.

Highway 78 is now almost totally empty. The disconcerting perpetual twilight creates a monochrome landscape. Twin black asphalt ribbons curve gently through gray valleys and over low knolls dimly silhouetted against the ripped sky.

As the storm intensifies the windshield becomes so heavily drenched that I feel as if I am trying to see through rippled glass. It looks as if a giant tank of water is being emptied perpetually over my truck. The new wiper blades are overwhelmed and the mechanism starts making an ominous clunk-clunk noise as it labors to throw the deluge aside. I start worrying that the linkage or the motor will fail. Without windshield wipers I could be stranded out here indefinitely.

I am forced to reduce speed, to 60 and then to 50, as I navigate my vehicle through the torrent beneath racing clouds that are now so thick and low, they obscure almost all light from the sky. Fortunately my headlights pick out a sign that warns me, “Highway Ends Ahead.” Just as predicted by my map, the divided highway terminates pending completion of additional construction work, and I find myself ejected onto a two-lane blacktop through a small Alabama town. To make things more interesting the road degenerates to a patchwork of botched renovations where warning signs lie flattened by the wind and more blasts of rain create tantalizing moments in which absolutely nothing is visible. My main concern now is that I won’t reach my Best Western and will be stranded somewhere, searching endlessly for a room among motels where all rooms are occupied by hurricane refugees. Clearly I have to press on and get through Birmingham as quickly as possible, but other drivers on the two-lane road are not similarly motivated. They seem indecisive, dousing me in spray as I follow them with mounting impatience.

I manage to pass the worst offenders and up my speed to around 65 as I race onward toward the center of the storm. An errant leaf, torn from one of the trees beside the road, somehow becomes trapped under my left wiper blade and creates a water-streak that makes forward vision even more problematic. If I pull over to pluck the leaf from beneath the wiper the slow vehicles are likely to catch up and overtake me, so I lower the window, lean forward (ignoring the rain that blasts in), reach my wrist around, and just manage to grab the leaf from beneath the sweeping blade on the third attempt. As the road widens to four lanes the rain eases off to a drizzle and I realize I must be close to the eye of the storm. I have passed through the worst of the northern half of the cyclone, and in the outer regions of Birmingham I discover the mischief that it has wrought. Here the asphalt is littered with bits of trees and stray vegetation. Businesses along the highway are all locked and abandoned. According to a local radio station, half of the city has lost its power.

I enjoy a delicious feeling of unreality as I cruise the deserted highway through gray-dead suburbia, past minimalls with their windows covered in plywood and homes where no lights are glowing.

Lifeless traffic signals encourage a feeling of liberation. A few elderly drivers proceed with caution, but others seem happy to cast aside the ritual dictates of red, yellow, and green as they speed through intersections with exuberant defiance.

After decades of fantasizing about future scenarios involving the destruction of civilization I am finally seeing a mild sample, and the transformation is a delight. The most powerful recurring symbol is the abandoned gas station, boarded up, with wind-torn fragments of yellow DO NOT CROSS tape fluttering like the banners of a defeated nation. Yesterday giant illuminated signs proclaimed the price of fuel via movable numerals, like hymn numbers to lure a discriminating congregation. Now the signs are dark, the numbers have been taken down to prevent them from being blown away, and the members of the flock have been plunged into a state of dismay and confusion, deprived of the fossil fuel that empowered so many odysseys to Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot. A world without gasoline is inconceivable in this suburban landscape, yet clearly the gas has gone. Overnight, the mere movement of air has caused it to disappear.

Cars circle abandoned gas stations like thirsty coyotes eyeing dry water holes. I wonder if the drivers will try to steal my red five-gallon polyethylene gas can if they see it. Clearly my best strategy is to continue driving as fast as possible.

The wind lessens as the eye of the hurricane moves to meet me and I drive into it. Finally the rain ceases altogether. And here in downtown Birmingham, near Interstate 20, I find a sight like a mirage. It is a glowing object, a sacred beacon for the faithful: An emporium calling itself Cowboy Gasoline, flamboyantly competitive and still—somehow—receiving electric power so that it can remain open for business.

I stop to refuel, happy that I don’t have to consume any of my gas stash. The eye of the hurricane is not completely tranquil as has been described so often. Random breaths of wind blow from unpredictable directions, tugged by the shifting dynamics of the huge storm system around me. Tiny water droplets are borne on the air like dust motes, sparkling in the glare from Cowboy Gasoline’s banks of fluorescent tubes in the canopy above the pumps. Breathing the air is like drinking a liquid high in electrolytes. It seems charged somehow, and everyone is a little giddy. I see smiling faces. Strangers are chatting with each other and making jokes.

A woman at the register inside Cowboy Gasoline’s Food Court gives me precise directions to I-20, warning me that the usual on-ramp has been closed by flooding. With reluctance I leave this haven of bright lights and good cheer and continue into the inevitable southern half of the storm, as the last remnants of daylight are swallowed by the deeper blackness of night. The rain restarts and since the eye of the hurricane is moving away toward the north-west, the circulating wind now blows from the south-west.

Some truckers emerge from their hiding places and try to make up for lost time, driving at 80 on the principle that law officers will have better things to do than issue speeding tickets. (Their supposition is correct. I see no police vehicles during my entire transit through hurricane-torn Alabama.)

After another two hours, finally I reach my motel out at the edge of the storm. The streets and buildings look freshly washed, with pools of water standing everywhere. As I check in I notice a news program on a TV in the lobby and realize with confusion that it is depicting a suburban area which I drove through just three hours previously. The news anchor delivers the usual litany of human misery: Tens of thousands deprived of basic amenities, streets impassable, homes reduced to heaps of undifferentiated wreckage.

“But it wasn’t like that,” I say to the woman behind the front desk. “There were a few tree branches on the road, a few deep puddles. I didn’t see any homes damaged. Everything will be back to normal soon enough.”

The woman frowns at me. I have committed the sin which I managed to avoid at the Tennessee Tire Company. I have belittled the catastrophe and spoiled the pleasure that comes from feeling secure and watching others whose security has been violated. She gives me a vexed, skeptical look and says nothing.

Well, it doesn’t matter. I am secure in my own pleasure, which is less transient—the pleasure of remembering a singular moment in the eye of the storm, where laws of human behavior seemed to be suspended as radically as the laws of physics in a black hole. I will always remember my visit to Cowboy Gasoline.

Artist Kathy Weaver says, "In my work,the robot's setting is that of a tilted stage or shadow box and in this environment the robot is central as a translator of events, an alter ego, a doppelganger. The robot can also be an observer, a soothsayer, a malcontent or a destructor."

Me, I'm partial to the destructor kind. What say ye now, great oracle of gingham, googly eyes, and cute li'l buttons?
Link. See also Ms. Weaver's "Guns Are Us" quilt series. (Thanks, Rob).

Click on the bookmark, and a small prompt will appear asking for tags. Once you enter the tags, another box will appear with the code written for the technorati links. Copy this code and paste it into your blogging software of choice.

The links will be surrounded by a <span>, with a class attribute of “technoratitag". This way, you can add rules to your stylesheet to style the links differently than normal links. If you don’t add any style rules, the links will look like any normal links on your blog.

There's still a desire and a market out there for PDAs--particularly when they're well integrated with your mobile phone, like on the Treos. The problem is that there's a practical limit to how many little boxes you can lug around everywhere. Since the iPod has caught on, I think digital music players have displaced a lot of folks' PDAs from that coveted number two spot (right after mobile phones, of course). Carrying more than two or three digital devices requires either a bag or a relaxed disposition about looking like a bit of a dork.

Disney has hired screenwriters Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal to fashion a remake of Tron, the 1982 film about a computer programmer who gets sucked into the parallel world of a computer program, Variety reported...

Sternthal told the trade paper that the new conceit is that the computer programmer gets trapped in a cyberworld, so that the film can utilize the Internet.

BB reader Angela Rosin says, "Viewers in the UK have already seen half of this series on Sky One." And reader Jonathan Dabian says, "Viewers all over the *world* have seen the first eleven of thirteen episodes in the first season via Bittorrent. :) Best sci-fi on TV since Farscape/B5/Firefly/DS9. Take your pick. Best sci-fi on TV right now. Period."

Swiss banks published on the Internet Thursday the names of 3,100 World War II-era account holders who might have been victims of Nazi persecution and are entitled to millions of dollars in deposits.

Holocaust survivors or their heirs have six months, until July 13, to submit formal claims before a resolution tribunal in Zurich, Switzerland.

This is yet another use of DRM that has nothing to do with copyright infringement. Nobody who wanted to copy the report as a whole would do so by cutting and pasting -- the report is enormous and the whole thing is available for free online anyway. The only plausible use of cut-and-paste is to quote from the report in order to comment, which is almost certainly fair use.

This sort of thing should not be a public policy problem; but the DMCA makes it one. If the law were neutral about DRM, we could just let the technology take its course. Unfortunately, U.S. law favors the publishers of DRMed material over would-be users of that material. For example, circumventing the DRM on the CBS report, in order to engage in fair-use commentary, may well violate the DMCA. (The DMCA has no fair-use exception, and courts have ruled that a DMCA violation can occur even if there is no copyright infringement.)

Worse yet, the DMCA may ban the tools needed to defeat this DRM technology. Dmitry Sklyarov was famously jailed by the FBI for writing a software tool that defeated this very same DRM technology; and his employer, Elcomsoft, was tried on criminal charges for selling fewer than ten copies of that tool.

The result, though, has been a round of incredible ire, bile and moaning from locksmiths and safe-maker, who have filled Usenet with angry recriminations with Blaze, who has committed the cardinal sin of explaining that their products don't work as advertised.

The real problem is that people like Blaze are in positions of trust in society. Then he abuse it by publishing trade secrets in the name of research.

When they do things like this and get away with it it gives other peoples like him the idea that this is OK. We have to nip it in the bud or soon there will be no security left after these intellectuals get through with us.

StoppedClocks is a site I set up to generate some interest in repairing clocks around the UK.

However, images of stopped clocks and their locations, is the right start point, so we began the stopped clocks moblog at moblogUK - It's open to the public, and we'd really really appreciate people sending their Stopped Clocks Finds in to build the library. If people have a stopped clock in their area they can send it to stopped at moblg dot net.

(one thing too, we will be building a desktop clock made up of all the times displayed on stopped clocks, when we have enough of course.)

"Certainly, the mouth, as the biggest breach in the body's integrity, holds its own terrors (What's this big hole in the middle of my face?! What if something falls out? What if something falls in?). Not for nothing has the face of mythic horror been a slavering maw (Alien), a toothy portal welcoming you to the afterworld (Jaws).

Teeth are scarier still. TV dramas such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and police-procedural fiction such as Patricia Cornwell's novels about the forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta have forged an ubreakable link, in the mass imagination, between teeth and death. In such narratives, teeth and dental records are often all that remain of the murdered; mute witnesses to their owner's last moments, they testify to the victim's identity and, ultimately, help finger the perp.

Teeth are by definition uncanny, the point at which the skull beneath the skin erupts through the body's surface. It's the Return of the Repressed (© Sigmund Freud; all rights reserved)—in this case, the death we do our best to forget while we're busy living. A bony reminder that mortality is the subtext lurking just beneath the human comedy, teeth are the skeleton's insistence that it, too, is ready for its close-up."

Trial co-ordinator Dr Pauline Raynor said: "Patients will have the chance to take part in an exciting study which will find out whether maggots really do heal ulcers more quickly.

"We need a total of 600 patients to come forward to take part in this important research.

"Of the people who have volunteered so far, squeamishness does not appear to be an issue at all."

A lot of photos have the time written on a crummy cardboard sign, while other photos might have the current time in a more edible format, such as olives. There are photos below sea level and ones over two miles above sea level.

Many people viewing this website end up sending in their own clock pictures, be they in an airplane, installing brakes, or on a playground. There are clock pictures from all over the world ranging from Outback Australia to Canada to Pakistan to Antarctica to Italy to Brazil. Other people travel around the American Southwest and end up taking a clock photo on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.

Their goal is not to authenticate or necessarily even endorse these paranormal accounts. The ghost stories are merely a device through which the book will examine the romance and mythology of baseball, its many traditions, its history, the legacy of some of its more prominent and colorful figures, and its ever-present connection to its past. Dan Gordon would greatly appreciate hearing about any stories, leads, or referrals you could share. Anything having to do with ghosts, curses, eerie phenomena, and unexplained events in ballparks or associated with baseball teams is welcome.

Technorati Tags are keywords that map to category names, keywords, and other cues in blog posts. When you bring up a Technorati Tag for "computers," you get all relevant blog posts that Technorati knows about, presented on a page with relevant Del.icio.us links and relevant Flickr images. Technorati Tags blend three different Internet services and three services' worth of tags to tease meaning out of the ether. Brilliant.

The photos come from our friends at Flickr. Flickr is a great photo sharing community. If you'd like your photos to appear on our tag pages, join Flickr and post your photos there. And remember to tag 'em!

The links come from the nice folks at Del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is a web-based bookmarks manager. If you'd like to contribute links to Technorati Tag pages, you can join Del.icio.us, post and tag some links.

The rest of the Technorati Tag pages is made up of blog posts. And those come from you! Anyone with a blog can contribute to Technorati Tag pages. (Don't have a blog? Give TypePad a try!) There are two ways to contribute:

* If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom (like Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, Blogware, Radio), just use the included category system and make sure you're publishing RSS/Atom and we'll automatically include your posts! Your categories will be read as tags.

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Dear GTC Telecom Customer,

A recent attempt to charge your credit card was unsuccessful. As a valued GTC Telecom customer, we are concerned about your current unpaid balance.

If you have a new credit card that you would like to use to pay your bill, or if your credit card on file with GTC Telecom needs to be updated (such as an expiration date), please log on today to our secure website, https://www.mygtc.com/ccupdate.asp, to update your credit card information.

If you have any questions about your GTC Telecom account, please feel free to email us at service@gtctelecom.com.

Thank you for choosing GTC Telecom.

Online Services
service@gtctelecom.com

So I tried sending email to service@gtctelecom. Every time I've sent email there it has been like throwing it down a mineshaft. But this time, something different happened. The email bounced.

I just sent email to the FCC and the California Public Utility Commission to complain about this lousy company.

I'm wondering if anyone has had a good experience with GTC telecom. I hate them.

Blue Origin is hiring, by the way. On its jobs page, it lists its hiring criteria:

1. You must have a genuine passion for space. Without passion, you will find what we're trying to do too difficult. There are much easier jobs.

2. You must want to work in a small company.

3. We are building real hardware -- not PowerPoint presentations. This must excite you. You must be a builder.

Folks who read this blog also read that one," for example. Or "Blogs who link to this blog also link to that one." If we put a sophisticated interface with some dials and levers, it could really be a neat tool for exploring relationships in the blogosphere. I could imagine some cool slices that might parse this wildly growing ecosystem in interesting ways.

UPDATE: Robert sez: "Saw your post on BoingBoing, so I have to forward you a link to a "real" Tsunami Simulator here in my town. It's a pretty kick-ass facility, supposedly the only one of its kind in North America." Link

Specifically, Paan is made by taking a betel creeper leaf, adding some ingredients -- the masala-- and then folding it up into a triangle for chewing/consumption. The ingredients can be a wide range of things, but generally Paan falls into two main categories: Mitha (sweet) or Saadha (with Tobacco). The Mitha Paan (I didn't try the tobacco variety) usually has betel nut, lime paste, almond powder, grated coconut, pistachio powder, and sometime a very sweet cherry jam or chutney. The combination of all these ingredients makes for a very tasty and refreshing after dinner treat; the plant enzymes, lime paste, and mild stimulant from the betel nut acts as a digestion enhancer and breath freshener.

UPDATE: Kevin Kelly took this photograph while traveling in Asia. It appears in his book, Asia Grace. He sez: "This is a cool ornate paan shop in southern india. That's it. That is the entire shop. A shelf about three feet deep and maybe 8 feet wide, with two guys sitting all day on the shelf (about waist high). In many ways it is the ultimate walk-up  service set up. No bending, reaching, or waiting. Imagine it as an ATM for treats, or a gonzo vending machine, only with live human animation, mirrors, beveled glass. Maybe by now they could have LEDs at night."

UPDATE:Kurt sez: "Coincidently, last night I stumbled across Benjamin Feen's photo album from his current trip to India, where he has a step-by-step photo sequence of the creation of "sweet paan" on page 3. Link

UPDATE:Farhad Manjoo points out this old BBC article that warns of oral cancer in paan aficionados. Link

UPDATE: More McKenna lectures (not very good sound quality) here.

Even more trippy MP3s here! (Thanks, Robai!)

The ridge is conspicuous in the picture as an approximately 20-kilometer wide (12 miles) band that extends from the western (left) side of the disc almost to the day/night boundary on the right. On the left horizon, the peak of the ridge reaches at least 13 kilometers (8 miles) above the surrounding terrain. Along the roughly 1,300 kilometer (800 mile) length over which it can be traced in this picture, it remains almost exactly parallel to the equator within a couple of degrees."

"Formed primarily to throw house parties in their hometown while they work on their respective individual projects, Uptown Lights revisits the days of dressing uptown and throwing downtown. Armed with a setlist featuring the songs of their heroes, like O.V. Wright, Joe Tex, the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and many, many more, this show is not to be missed..."

(Nancy) Mackenzie, the voice of Marge, has been with the union for about 40 years, dubbing television shows that include "Dallas" and "The Dukes of Hazard."

Losing the part in "The Simpsons" would be hard to take, she said.

"You get to the point where you care deeply for your cartoon character," Mackenzie said. "You love them. You go to bed with them at night. It's a sad state, and not because of the money. It's for love."

(Researcher Natasha) LeBas explained that cheating with token goodies does not hurt the species overall, but instead reveals the battle between the sexes over how much males and females wish to invest in reproduction.

"Each sex wants to invest less and wants the other sex to invest more," LeBas told Animal Planet News. "This study is an example of a species in which males who invest a lot, by giving nutritious gifts, seem to have a successful way of investing less, by giving tokens, because females seem to take some time to give up trying to feed from the token."

TheFeature: What do you mean by "visual Google"?

Neven: You take a picture of something, send it to our servers, and we either provide you with more information or link you to the place that will. Let's say you're standing in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. You take a snapshot with your cameraphone and instantly receive an audio-visual narrative about the painting. Then you step out of the Louvre and see a cafe. Should you go in? Take a shot from the other side of the street and a restaurant guide will appear on your phone. You sit down inside, but perhaps your French is a little rusty. You take a picture of the menu and a dictionary comes up to translate. There is a huge variety of people in these kinds of situations, from stamp collectors, to people who want to check their skin melanoma, to police officers who need to identify the person in front of them.

Mentions of the “pox,” the “malady of France,” the “infinite malady,” and the “hoar leprosy” in his writings seem to indicate that the Bard knew--perhaps from personal experience--how torturous venereal disease could be. “Shakespeare’s knowledge of syphilis is clinically precise,” said John Ross, MD, author of the study. A line in Sonnet 154, “Love’s fire heats water,” apparently refers to an STD causing burning urination.

Dr Who executive producer Russell T Davies said: "It's very difficult to employ persons of restricted growth when, as our producer Phil Collinson says, `Bloody Gringotts and the Chocolate Factory are filming at the same time'."

The first step was the procurement, through eBay, of three and half pounds of solid sodium metal for about a hundred dollars. This is a decent price for a small quantity like this. Small being a relative term: It's used by the ton in industry, but anything more than a few grams is a dangerous quantity if found in your home. Three and a half pounds is enough, for example, to blow your home to bits under the right conditions.

It's kind of intriguing, isn't it, when the MPAA and RIAA is to scaring us into believing that the world of unauthorized copying is filled of dodgy-dealers stuffing the files with all kinds of polluted malware and pop-ups, that they're also paying the people who do the stuffing?

I'm really hoping that in their next batch of cinema adverts, the MPAA addresses this, and shows a grumbling adware developer instead of a Hollywood set-painter. "The piracy issue, it affects us all: the construction guy, the lighting guy. And me, the guy who installed all that crap on your mum's computer. And also an awful lot of Los Angeles-based cocaine dealers. Why doesn't anyone think of them?"

Inside a bombproof vault a few blocks from the White House, Dan Sheehy is surrounded by audio ghosts: the clickety-clack of typewriters, the tumble of glass bottles inside a soda machine, a 1960s-era telephone ring.

Here, sonic blasts from the past are entombed in a hodgepodge of vinyl records, compact discs and reel-to-reel tapes. “We are a museum of sound,” said Sheehy, whose job is to preserve America’s acoustic heritage for an obscure branch of the Smithsonian Institution.

Sounds are like smells, he says. They can transport the listener to another time and place. The buzz of an airplane propeller sends Sheehy’s mind back to hot afternoons in 1950s Bakersfield, Calif., playing in the yard while aircraft sputtered overhead. “The sound immediately triggers memories of time and temperature,” he said.

Police today arrested a man from Transport Nagar area here for allegedly selling duplicate ball bearings under a known brand name.

French customs officials said Tuesday they had seized nearly 10,000 meters of fake Louis Vuitton monogrammed canvas, enough to make several thousand...

[C]ustoms authorities in Piraeus seized two containers containing some 800,000 packs of contraband cigarettes...

Apparently, Haeckel sort of made up certain details in his illustrations to bolster his wacky theories about evolution (he pushed the idea that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," that is, as na unborn animal develops in the egg or womb, it goes through all the evolutionary stages that its ancestors went through). The book Bruce showed me is called Art Forms in Nature, first published in 1904. I was knocked out by the beautiful drawings of sea creatures and other weird animals, and the way Haeckel arranged several life forms on the page is wonderful. Here's a page with a bunch of Haeckel drawings (There's also a link on the page to a 261 MB PDF file, which I assume contains a bunch of his work.) Thanks for letting me know about this incredible artist, Bruce!
Link

We see the need for a strong, feature-rich text editor at a low price. In the past two years since TextWrangler's initial release, we have observed the crowding of the landscape with products which don't meet our standards for quality and thoughtfulness.

By making TextWrangler 2.0 available at no charge, we're answering the call of Mac users who need a powerful, professionally executed product, and raising the bar for Mac text editors.

Better yet, you can use Corsair's Memory Dashboard to program the memory to display your own personalized greeting (or obnoxious salute). Type in a message, you can have three messages of up to 23 characters each, click a button, and your message gets sent to some spare bits on the memory. (Where exactly? According to Corsair "the default message is stored in a microcontroller on the DIMM; user programmable messages are stored on the hard drive and loaded in Startup.") And from then on, that message will scroll across the display like your very own tiny Times Square Zipper...except it won't be giving you the latest news headlines and sports scores.

[S]ometimes [it's] easy to forget that the era also produced truly horrifying Cold War schemes like Project Pluto: a low-altitude cruise missile, powered by an atomic ramjet that carried multiple hydrogen bombs and puked out chunks of radioactive debris, killing everyone along its flightpath.

Reviews should be anywhere between 100 and 300 words, and should be written in the first person. Think more "recommendation" and "experience" when you write these than "review." We want to hear about your involvement with it.

The old Wired guidelines for reviews went like this: “Write your review. Then write us a letter explaining why we should devote space to your item. Throw away your review and send us the letter.” That's the way to do it.

David Soleimani-Meigooni sez: Curcumin also has many other clinical properties such as anti-cancer/anti-tumor, anti-inflamatory, and anti-oxidant properties.

I have had the opportunity to research (and publish) on the anti-cancerous properties of curcumin on prostate cancer cells, both from the direct application of curcumin and use of curcumin as a radiosensitizing agent, in-vitro. Curcumin was found to induce cell death of prostate cancer cells, and a 2 microMolar concentration of the curcumin coumpound combined with radiation enhanced the effect of the radiation by a factor of 2.61 on the prostate cancer cells.

This combined (radiosensitizing) effect theoretically means that the application of 2 microMolar of curcumin would allow 2.61 times less radiation to be utilized to achieve the same biological effect as a radiation-alone treatment. Because radiosensitization utilizing curcumin can allow smaller doses of radiation to be theoretically used for treatment, there is a much lesser effect of radiation to the surrounding normal tissues that receive radiation when treating a cancerous target (ultimately there could be less complications to a patient following radiation therapy).

I would just like to emphasize once more that the research that I performed has only been performed in-vitro on tissue cultures, and is far from being applied in a clinical setting. A simple pubmed search of curcumin could give you a greater idea of the all the academically researched, medical applications of curcumin.

I also wanted to point out this epidemiological sudy of the Indian population that shows that their extremely low rate of digestive tract cancers can be attributable to "the presence of natural antioxidants such as curcumin in Indian cooking": Link

Copyright infringement is a problem, but the radical political agenda of copyright holders is far beyond what normal Americans want. We need constructive proposals for how to pay artists, protect technical innovation, and end the record & movie companies' crazy litigation campaign. That's why we need your help.

Congress isn't listening to the public, and we need to be loud if we want to be heard over the Hollywood lobbyists and record label flunkies. Make a stand for sensible copyright law and sign up for IPac's free mailing list. We'll keep you up-to-date on ways that your time and money can impact Congress. And in 2006, we'll support candidates who agree with us - and fight candidates who have chosen Hollywood's special interests over yours.

The Sub Pop Singles Club was a legendary mail delivery service that provided the subscriber with one 7" single per month by one of the most talented and physically attractive bands of the day.

The madness began in November 1988 with the now mythic Nirvana 'Love Buzz' single and continued through five years of unadulterated bliss, finally reaching its end with Lou Barlow's 'I Am Not Mocking You'. Beginning in April 1998, Sub Pop Records unhesitatingly re-launched the Singles Club and once again provided a reason to live for the countless morbidly lonesome shut-ins of this generation. Since then, we have, without pause, released one magically delicious single per month to divert, delight and enjoy.

For a good indication of the caliber of music you will be receiving just take a look at some of the bands that participated in the first incarnation: Smashing Pumpkins, Fugazi, The Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Rapeman, Unrest, Rocket From the Crypt, Jon Spencer, Ween, Soundgarden, Afghan Whigs, Poster Children, The Muffs, Reverend Horton Heat and lots more. Subscribers to the re-launched club in April 1998 have received singles from the likes of Luna, Modest Mouse, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Team Dresch/Longstocking, Creeper Lagoon, The Get Up Kids, Beachwood Sparks, Dot Allison, Bonny Prince Billy, Pedro The Lion, Crooked Fingers, Mudhoney, Dead C, Death Cab For Cutie, To Rococco Rot, The Yo-Yo's, The Creatures, Trumans Water & Zeke among others, with many more yet-to-be announced sonic delights.

If you're saying to yourself 'I haven't even heard of any of those bands', then perhaps you would do better to join our Ass-Kick of the Month Club, in which a large, burly man will come to your home each month and give you a severe boot to the rear until you come around and start listening to some good music for a change!

Let's imagine how this system might provide security in the event of a kidnapping. If a kidnapper -- assume it's someone the child knows -- goes onto the school bus and takes the child off at the wrong stop, the system would record that. Otherwise -- if the kidnapping took place either before the child got on the bus or after the child got off -- the system wouldn't record anything suspicious. Yes, it would tell investigators if the kidnapping happened before morning attendance and either before or after the school bus ride, but is that one piece of information worth this entire tracking system? I doubt it.

You could imagine a movie-plot scenario where this kind of tracking system could help the hero recover the kidnapped child, but it hardly seems useful in the general case.

Like Leonard T. Bayard, the only named principal in Keeler and Tate, one Tyler Edward Tate, also appears not to exist in any public records accessible by the Tribune. Premier Executive's only listed executive is its president, Bryan P. Dyess. A person with that name does appear in commercial databases, but his only addresses are two post office boxes in Arlington, Va., not far from CIA headquarters. Premier Executive purchased or leased the new Gulfstream V in 1999, FAA records show. The plane's original registration number, N581GA, would later be changed by the FAA to N379P, and again to 8068V.

The first public mention of the Gulfstream appeared six weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, when a Pakistani newspaper reported that Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, a 27-year-old microbiology student at Karachi University, had been spirited aboard the plane at Karachi's airport by Pakistani security officers in the early hours of Oct. 23, 2001.

There is no information about where Mohammed was taken. But Pakistani officials said later that Mohammed, a Yemeni national, was believed by the U.S. to belong to Al Qaeda and to have information about the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

Since Sept. 11, unnamed U.S. officials have been quoted in several publications discussing the U.S. practice of "rendition," which involves sending suspected terrorists or Al Qaeda supporters captured abroad for interrogation to countries where human rights are not traditionally respected.

Update: BB reader Mike says,"Two more photos of the CIA gulfstream, one taken july 21, 2004 in Stuttgart, the other from May, 2002 in Portugal: Link. If the query URLs don't persist, just go to the search page of airliners.net and enter the tail number. Link."

And reader Marcus in Stockholm says, "Swedish news corp TV4, who broke the gulfstream story back in may, has made translated transcripts of their reports available on their website: Link."

The recipe and the whole brand of Our Beer is published under a Creative Commons license, which basically means that anyone can use our recipe to brew the beer or to create a derivative of our recipe. You are free to earn money from Our Beer, but you have to publish the recipe under the same license (e.g. on your website or on our forum) and credit our work. You can use all our design and branding elements, and are free to change them at will provided you publish your changes under the same license ("Attribution & Share Alike").

China’s most recent novel, Iron Council was published in August. Michael Dirda of the Washington Post describes it as “a work of both passionate conviction and the highest artistry.” A few months ago, the Mieville Fraktion within CT decided that it might be fun to put together a mini-seminar around Iron Council, and to ask China to respond. He very decently said yes; you see the result before you. We’ve invited two non-CT regulars to participate in the mini-seminar. Matt Cheney blogs on literature and science fiction at The Mumpsimus; he also writes for Locus magazine and SFSite. Miriam Elizabeth Burstein blogs at The Little Professor, and teaches Victorian literature at SUNY Brockport. Miriam very kindly agreed to join the project in its later stages, revising a long comment/review that she had already written (and that China had independently cited to).

IBM has more patents than any of them. And if they have decided to carve out a protected zone for free and open source software, then it will happen. If the proprietary software world is enamored of patents and wishes to continue that system, at least for now, while making an exception for GNU/Linux software, I call that a positive move.

I know some would naturally argue that all software patents are bad. NoSoftwarePatents.org has taken that position and are critical of IBM's pledge.

I think software and patents need to get a divorce myself, but I also see that we are in a period of transition. Old business models are dying, and new ones are coming into being. And if there is a way to allow everyone to make money the way they want to, that may be, for now, as good as it gets. This is a creative response to the particular issue that GNU/Linux faces with patents, and I applaud it.

In the exhibition, as well as discussed in the symposium, will be the finest examples of cryptozoological art, including native works, eyewitness drawings, forensic sketches, paintings, models, and sculptures of the representations of cryptids, thanks to artists and cryptozoologists from around the world. Items used in the exhibition will include art on loan, from artists' and personal collections, and tangible evidence of cryptids from cryptozoologists.

The symposium will consist of invited speakers, and the exhibition shall highlight invited and selected artists. This is a call for artists who may wish to have their forthcoming or already existing art reviewed by the selection committee, as evidenced via photographs, drawings, and related illustrative material of their work, for inclusion in this exhibition.

"A magic lantern consists of seven functional sections: the lamp, reflector, condensing lens, lens tube, body, base, and smokestack. The lamp is the sole source of illumination, which often came from burning oil or gas, a burning piece of calcium, or later, electricity. The reflector reflects the light from the lamp toward the condensing lens, which focuses the light onto the slide being projected. The lens tube serves to magnify the illuminated slide, so that projected images from 6 to 12 feet wide can be obtained. The body is often made completely of metal, and houses all of the previous components except the lens tube. The base lifts the magic lantern above the surface of a table. This is important because the body will become intensely hot from the illuminating lamp, and the base helps to prevent table burns. Finally, the smokestack serves to vent the smoke coming from the lamp, so that the smoke doesn't accumulate inside the lantern and put out the fire."

t's a powerful and easy-to-use email encryption client that was designed for non-technical users. Most people don't realize that sending email across the Internet is like sending a postcard written in pencil in the real world. That's a pretty scary thought. And even if you've got nothing to hide, you've got plenty to protect, like personal photographs, medical and financial information, and maybe even love letters.

Ciphire Mail was three years in development and has been peer-reviewed by some of the world's leading cryptography and security experts. The whole purpose of the technology is to bring the highest level of security to all email users, regardless of computer skills. Once Ciphire Mail is installed it operates something like a virus scanner, just working quietly in the background.

Bob, Joe, Ted, and Ann spend eight hours a day, five days a week, at tiny desks in tiny cubicles in a giant room packed with countless similar cubicles in a giant building filled with countless similar rooms.

Each set has one 2-3/4" posable plastic figure and all the necessary plastic parts to build a classic corporate cube: four walls, desk, chair, file cabinet, in/out box, phone, and computer. Comes with a sticker sheet of decor for your cube, complete with graphs, charts, screens for the computer and pithy office posters.

Also includes a job title sticker sheet so you can create a convoluted and meaningless position for your employee.

Dip in to any part of the page and it's like lifting a rock off a hill of sleaze. The girls are unreliable. The johns are dumb. The male madame is driven to extremes of emotion over office messiness. A rival escort agency tries to steal the talent. Everyone is hustling, and not just in the obvious ways.

I found this site while researching the obscure bubblegum musical "Toomorrow," an uncommon mispelling which appears on this page. What a treat! Link

UPDATE: (Following links might not be safe for work) Anonymous sez: Fascinating stuff from the shift diary. The site mentions they have an 800 number. Googling for it, I found this old and broken site for "Riga Escorts."

Also this listing for "Anne Marie and friends" escort service:

And this listing for "Amy" (last one on the page)

A little further tracking, and I found the old site on IA."

Then Jimmy Joe Jenkins's DNA proved he was the primary descendent of the translators of the King James Version of the Bible. At first, Jimmy was satisfied with ten percent of the price of every KJV sold and 10 percent of every collection plate passed by any church that used the KJV. But when some churches switched to newer translations, Jimmy sicced his lawyers on all translations based on the KJV. That got him a cut of every Bible and every Christian service in English. Some translators claimed their work was based on older versions and should therefore be exempt, but none of them could afford to fight Jimmy in court.

So the churches grumbled and paid Jimmy his tithe, except for the Mormons, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists, Quakers, and Unitarian Universalists. Jimmy said their teachings hurt the commercial value of his property and refused to let them use the Bible. All of those groups dissolved, except for the Unitarian Universalists, who didn't notice a change.

Snip from a BBC News story on the campaign: "It stressed the 'negative effects' of long hair on 'human intelligence development,' noting that long hair 'consumes a great deal of nutrition' and could thus rob the brain of energy."

This is really funny, for a number of reasons -- first, Pyongyang's logic flies in the face of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, an elite alliance of demonstrably smart dudes who all have very long hair.

Secondly, I met several young men in Richmond, Virginia this past weekend who identify themselves as Socialists. Each were in their 20's, none of them shave, and one -- Silver -- even ran for mayor on the seemingly contradictory "pro-labor, pro-marijuana" platform ("I came in fifth -- out of five candidates," he told me, "I'm demanding a recount... they said I only got two votes, and I know for a fact I got at least ten.") Long hair seemed to be totally de rigeur in this faction of the Party. Clearly, there's a disturbance in the force.

Link to BBC story on North Korean TV PSAs, via William Gibson's blog, which also features a snapshot of a NSFW snowman in Vancouver today.

Update: A dose of sociopolitical hair deconstruction from our pal Kourosh Karimkhany of Wired News.

Why doesn't anybody point out that Kim Jong-Il has the full-on bouffant action going? What, he doesn't want competition? Or are the REAL North Korean power-that-be tweaking their leader indirectly by outlawing his haircut? Where are the retired Kremlinologists when you need them?

In 1841, Charles Mackay published a wonderful book on "The Madness Of Crowds"; strange behaviour by societies, or groups, covering everything from the South Sea Bubble and the Tulip craze to fly-by-night London slang. One of the things he touched on was the various approaches to hair - the way long, flowing locks have shot from being a sign of Real Masculinity to Shocking Effeminacy and back over time. Here is an extract of that chapter.

Some of it is amusing - the Papal edict that wearers of long hair were to be excommunicated, or the Russian beard-taxes - and some simply strange, like his theory that the Haircut Issue caused the Hundred Years War. But it certainly seemed apt in respect of this; can we ever out-surreal history?

Boing Boing reader rogueleader says, "More open network cameras -- these are Canon's network attached cameras that have pan, tilt and zoom controls. Java based applet." Link

Reader Flemming says,

I couldn't resist making a little thing that picked up a bunch of them from the google API, and then grabbed the first picture from each of them, and geocoded the IPs a bit to see where they were from. Makes it much easier to access, and it was pretty easy. So, see here, and my blog post about it here.

I put together a list of all the axis webcams google had in an easier browsing way if you're interested. I'm going to do the other types soon. See large compiled lists of cams here and here.

Hey, you might be interested in a hack for grabbing shots from those webcams. It creates a html page showing a snapshot and links back to the cam.

On December 13, Apple filed suit against "Does 1-20" in a Santa Clara court. The company obtained a court order that allows it to issue subpoenas to AppleInsider and PowerPage for the names of the "Does" who allegedly leaked the information in question. EFF is defending the publishers against these subpoenas, arguing that the anonymity of bloggers' sources is protected by the same laws that protect sources providing information to journalists.

"Bloggers break the news, just like journalists do. They must be able to promise confidentiality in order to maintain the free flow of information," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Without legal protection, informants will refuse to talk to reporters, diminishing the power of the open press that is the cornerstone of a free society."

"I am very disappointed by Apple's behavior and its new policy of issuing legal threats to its best customers," added Jason O'Grady, publisher of PowerPage. "Is corporate paranoia really more important than the First Amendment?"

On the more mind-blowing and unusual side, is the new Wow Wee Robotics Alive Series. These are life-like, animated, remote-controlled robot heads that include stereoscopic hearing so they can track your position and even your distance away. Wow Wee's first demonstration of this technology is a frighteningly real looking monkey head with a fully articulated face. The real stunner, though, is the expected price: $129. George York, Wow Wee's chief designer on the project said he's been working with the company's divisions in Hong Kong and China to have the robots ready for a 2006 release.

Robert Corr website buttons (thanks, Tama), Kill Sapo's printable graphics, Andrew Mike's Internationale lyrics remixed, a "creative commies blog, Eugéne Roux's desktop graphic shown here -- link to fullsize ("My modifications to the original XP background are, of course, Creative Commons licenced" he says).

Boing Boing reader Dylan Herbert says,

"This is an article posted on OSNews last August. It addresses concerns the author of the piece - David Adams, the man behind the launch of OSNews in 1997 - has with what he labels (and I paraphrase here) the internet-wide 'open-source = communist' meme. It is a brilliant, 9-page essay in which he explores 'why this idea is wrong and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of economics.' While Adams does not 'deny that some proponents of free software do, in fact, share some ideological common ground with Communist thinkers,' he clearly lays out the stark differences between them." Link.

Wired News also covered the blogosphere brouhaha over Redmond's red scare. Snip:

Glenn Otis Brown, executive director of Creative Commons, wondered whom Gates was referring to when he made the remarks. Certainly not Creative Commons, which is a "voluntary, market-based approach to copyright," Brown wrote in an e-mail.

"I get sad when people cheapen words like 'communist' or 'fascist' by throwing them around recklessly, especially given what those words meant in the not-so-distant past," Brown wrote. "My father was a CIA Cold Warrior for 35 years of his life; he wasn't fighting against GPL'd software. Stalinist purges, the Berlin Wall, tanks in Budapest -- that's communism.

"And let's not forget just how many creative people's lives were ruined by irresponsible name-calling not too long ago. Remember the Hollywood blacklists?" he wrote.

See also this item on Dan Gillmor's blog about Gates' remarks, and this subsequent post.

Update: BB reader John Rambow of the Fodors blog says, "It seems to me that that fur Starbucks holder is a riff on one of the famous objects of surrealism, Meret Oppenheim's creepy-but-I'm-not-sure-why fur tea service, Breakfast in Fur." Link, and another link.

BB reader Christopher Hyson says, "Actually, there is a local firm in the Rochester NY area that has been making these, and the fur is synthetic!" Link

Reader Bryce says, "I was really excited to see the post about the furcozies on boing boing. they were designed by Shannyn Rivera, who graduated from my school (cranbrook academy of art, in michigan) last year. The grad book, published at the end of each school year, features one or two pieces to represent each artist, and the furcozie is hers! The Javawear thing that a reader referred you to looks like a knock-off."

Update 2: Shannyn Rivera tells Boing Boing:

The images on your blog was from our company website, XS Couture xscouture.com or furcozie.com, owned by myself and my design partner, Wil Ayers, who originally designed the Furcozie TM (or what you would call the furry coffee sleeve). It was designed in 2002 as a Cranbrook Academy of Art Graduate project and introduced at the Milan Design show in April of 2003. The Furcozie TM is made of synthetic faux fur and leather trim. There was an article in Dwell that told everyone that it was real fur- which lead everyone to believe it was real fur, but it has NEVER been real fur that we used. It's just really great looking high quality faux fur.

We are in the process of manufacturing a variety of Furcozies TM (in different faux fur colors, trims and and faux fur patterns) to sell this year. As for the JavaWear product, we have no relationship whatsoever to the company or to the design of their product. It seems that their product came out after ours.

As for the JavaWear product, we have no relationship whatsoever to the company or to the design of their product. It seems that their product came out after ours.

1. Dance in a provocative way.

2. Have sex.

3. Person who practices the above things; sexually aggressive female (never missing a beat).

4. To take out the filter paper from a Black & Mild pipe-tobacco cigar. "I'm going to freak this Mild"

The presentation Weirdo Deluxe is excellent. Each artist is briefly interviewed about his/her obsessions, collections, influences, and thoughts on lowbrow (most don't seem to like the term -- I like pop surrealism better, too).

Both books are worth having if you're a fan of this genre. Link

UPDATE: Mike Essl, the designer of Weirdo Deluxe, has a nice little write-up about the book. Link

Put the search words "Enron scandal" or "Ken Lay," or even this Enron reporter's name, "Mary Flood," into any of the above search engines and one of the first things you will see is www.kenlayinfo.com. If you hit on Lay's Web site from there, then Lay pays between roughly 5 cents and 12 cents.

Update: Clicking this link will bring you to Ken Lay's page while costing him one click's worth of traffic. Click early, click often! (Thanks corps_no_play_nice!)

While digitally scanning more than 10 million Canadian books and documents is a daunting task, the Google project illustrates that it is financially feasible. Reports suggest that it will cost Google approximately $10 to scan each book.

Assuming similar costs for a Canadian project and a five-year timeline, the $20 million annual price tag represents a fraction of the total governmental commitment toward Canadian culture and Internet development.

In fact, the most significant barriers to a national digital library do not arise from fiscal challenges but rather from two potential copyright reforms currently winding their way through the system.

"We're looking at everything from government entities, universities and private schools to church groups, resorts and spas as potential owners," (said Christopher T. Bannon, general manager of Decisions Investment Corp.) "We'd love to see the Biosphere 2 used as a research activity, but we know that may not be the end result."

But researchers admit that if nano-machines are to have a future, ways must be found of getting different parts to interact as a functional whole.

"Rotational motion is at the heart of many conventional machines, such as rotary engines, screws and clocks," said Professor (Geoffrey) Ozin. "However, these machines clearly need more than just a rotor."

"Last year, a video circulated around the Internet depicting a delighted German Shepard sniffing at a fine cut of beef on the floor while a Sony AIBO robotic dog watched curiously.

It was a cute scene, until the AIBO became a bit too interested in the steak. Without warning, the real dog viciously attacked the AIBO, while off-screen human witnesses shrieked in fear.

Who pitted the canine against the computer? Sony researchers themselves, in collaboration with Hungarian animal behavior experts. And that's just one of the myriad experiments conducted by Sony Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) Paris, a commercial laboratory where research and development don't always go hand in hand."

Hello there an welcome to another edition of Alberto Gonzales Versus A Baked Potato! Today we'll rate the president's nominee for attorney general against a plump oven-hot starchy vegetable.

BACKSTORY
Alberto Gonzales: Risen from humble roots, member of oppressed minority
Baked potato: member of the Solanaceae family
Advantage: GONZALES

EVIL
Alberto Gonzales: No longer pro-torture! Still pro-omnipotent executive branch.
Baked potato: Product of the corrupt agribusiness industry
Advantage: POTATO

The rats were trained to respond to either Dutch or Japanese using food as a reward.

Then they were separated into four groups -- one that heard each language spoken by a native, one that heard synthesized speech, one that heard sentences read in either language by different speakers and a fourth that heard the languages played backwards.

Rats rewarded for responding to Japanese did not respond to Dutch and rats trained to recognize Dutch did not respond the spoken Japanese.

The rats could not tell apart Japanese or Dutch played backwards.

OzymanDNS - Advanced exploration into the use of DNS as a general purpose communication medium. DNS is more hostile to this than any other protocol, so the solutions being built should be generalizable.

presenters Dan Kaminsky

history The first version of OzymanDNS was presented at Defcon, where I demonstrated SSH over DNS (and with that, general purpose VPN'ing using the dynamic forwarding discussed at Codecon in 2003) and live streaming radio over DNS. I also discussed in some depth the potential for bypassing firewalls using the proxying components of the protocol. demo "DNS is a routing, caching, globally deployed overlay network on top of the Internet. Last year's Black Ops of DNS discussed rudimentary mechanisms for manipulating that network to achieve low bandwidth but insidiously firewall-penetrating connectivity anywhere and everywhere. This year, we expand this research to show how extensive, bandwidth amplifying routes can be deployed across the two million DNS servers out there -- and demonstrate an aggressively loss tolerant protocol that can extract high speed connectivity from what's usually considered to be the lowest capacity protocol on the Internet." In other words, I'm trying for Video over DNS. I'll also probably demonstrate in greater depth my DNS-based solution to RSS overload.

future plans Once the DNS infrastructure is ready for demo, backport it to general purpose UDP, document the spec, and turn it into a NAT2NAT framework. The lack of a really good solution for this has been a thorn in all of our sides, and the TCP stuntage from years back turned out not to actually be deployable like this would be.

Anyone who has been a regular reader of the Gazette will know that I do occasionally mention my work life, although it accounts for a fraction of my written output. Like many folk I am not always happy at work (I have good days too, I don’t go in miserable all the time as I’m sure former colleagues would attest if they could) and me being me when I mention bad days or annoying occurrences I do so in my own satirical, sarcastic, comedic style. I often put many things into a basic narrative form, add characters etc. So I would coin terms such as ‘Bastardstone’s’ and have a character called ‘Evil Boss’ (my equivalent to Dilbert’s Pointy Haired Boss – in fact I compared head office directives to being in a Dilbert cartoon). I once referred to a chum and former colleague, Olly, when he found a full time IT job after his graduation as being a successful member of the Escape Committee at work. This was brought up at my hearing yesterday. My protest that this was (to me a bloody obvious) spoof on the Great Escape didn’t seem to cut any ice. This will give you an idea of what I faced.

1.) Delta Air Lines
2.) Wells Fargo
3.) Ragen MacKenzie
4.) Starbucks
5.) Microsoft (some say yay, some say nay)
6.) Friendster
7.) the Houston Chronicle
8.) the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
9.) Nunavut Tourism (Canada)
10.) the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard University
11.) Maricopa County Superior Court of Arizona Self Help Center and Library
12.) Mike DeWine, US Senator (R-Ohio)
13.) the Durham Herald-Sun
14.) Kerr-McGee
15.) ESPN
16.) Apple (according to this blog entry AND this article)
17.) Statistical Assessment Service (DC nonprofit)
18.) Minnesota Public Radio
19.) The Hartford Courant
20.) the International Olympic Committee (barred athletes from blogging during the Olympics last summer)
21.) Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (?)
22.) the National Basketball Association (NBA)