A followup to an earlier post on Steve Jackson Games's excellent new DRM-free PDF-game-publishing venture, check out RPG Now. They publish PDF-based role-playing games without DRM, and, like SJG, they give you the ability to download your games over and over again, meaning that you can play anywhere there's a computer, even if you've forgotten your copies at home. Link (Thanks, Jason!)

Update: Keeton sez, "Our website, 1KM1KT, accepts and distributes RPG's in .pdf format as well. The big difference between our site and Steve's is that our downloads are available free of charge."

Update 2: Joshua sez, "If you're interested in RPGs that are on the cutting edge, check out Anvilwerks, my friend Clinton R. Nixon's (yes, that's his real name) role-playing game site. Not only is his game The Shadows of Yesterday a great game, it was published entirely with open source software, as he documents. And all of his games are published under a Creative Commons license"

The LayerOne hacker conference is coming back to LA this April 23-24. They've put up a call for papers:

The second LayerOne conference is now officially accepting papers and presentations for speaker selection. We are looking for people to speak on a broad range of topics; however, we encourage all submissions. To give you an idea of the sorts of things that were covered last year:

- CryptoMail: mail encryption for all.
- Life Hacks and Hacked Lives
- How the DMCA is Threatening to Strangle Reverse Engineering and the Future of Interoperability
- Visual Deep Packet Inspection
- A User-Centric Distributed Social Software Architecture

Link

Clay Shirky continues to discuss Wikipedia, folksonomies, and other bottom-up collaborative knowledge-management tools.

But this is where the 'acceptance' half comes in. It doesn't matter whether we "accept" folksonomies, because we're not going to be given that choice. The mass amateurization of publishing means the mass amateurization of cataloging is a forced move. I think Liz's examination of the ways that folksonomies are inferior to other cataloging methods is vital, not because we'll get to choose whether folksonomies spread, but because we might be able to affect how they spread, by identifying ways of improving them as we go.

To put this metaphorically, we are not driving a car, with gas, brakes, reverse and a lot of choice as to route. We are steering a kayak, pushed rapidily and monotonically down a route determined by the enviroment. We have a (very small) degree of control over our course in this particular stretch of river, and that control does not extend to being able to reverse, stop, or even significantly alter the direction we're moving in.

These paragraphs could just as readily apply to changes in copyright, lossily compressed music, or spam: they are characteristics inherent in the ecology itself. The discussion needs to center around how to exist in their presence, not how to change them. Link

DJ Riko's "Whistler's Delight" is a mash-up that mixes together dozens of songs in which part or all of the action is accomplished through whistling -- Andy of Mayberry theme, Sweet Georgia Brown, Dock of the Bay, Whistle While You Work, and so on. Twenty-two songs in all, expertly pitch-bent to the same key and mixed together. I'm really digging it. 8MB MP3 Link (Thanks, Matt!)

Update: Spike provides this torrent for Whistler's Delight -- thanks, Spike!

Update 2: DJ Riko himself provides this alternate direct download link

Free World Dialup founder Jeff Pulver is launching a free peer-to-peer telephony service called Bellster.

Back in the Fall of 1995, with the help of some friends, Free World Dialup (FWD) version 1.0 happened. The original concept was to setup a computer, modem and let a friend (or a stranger) place a call over the internet via your computer. This was done on an experimental, non-commercial, voluntary basis and we had quite a number of people who contributed their own time, effort and energy to make it work. FWD was the world's first internet telephony network and was a pioneer in the field of PC to Phone communication services.

Back in November 2000 I once again looked at re-creating the spirit of the original FWD project but this time we tried to do it using the broadband internet. After several months of work we were able to get the underlying software to work pretty good, but our project became challenged once the hardware devices we optimized the software for, the Cisco ATA-182 were discontinued. We were live in beta in April 2001 when CNET ran the story: Can a peer-to-peer phone network fly?.

[...]With the beta launch of Bellster.net we are finally able to offer a peer-to-peer network where members of the network can share their PSTN access with each other. This "network" will only become a network once there is a critical mass number of people who are contributing to the success of Bellster. Bellster is based on a couple of underlying philosophies:

(1) "If you Build it They will Come" -- Field of Dreams (2) "The Love you Take is equal to the Love you Make" -- Beatles, "The End"

The Bellster challenge for 2005 is to find out whether or not there are still people in the world who would let total strangers place non-commercial phone calls for free in exchange for the ability to do the same thing themselves. At the moment we have a handful of active nodes around the world, and as the word of Bellster spreads, my hope is that our network will be able to deliver calls to the PSTN all around the world.

Link (via Seth Johnson)

The first federal obscenity case against an adult filmmaker in over a decade was dismissed yesterday when a federal judge ruled that charges against shock-smut company Extreme Associates were unconstitutional.

Because people have a right to view such material in the privacy of their own home, there's a right to market it, U.S. District Court Judge Gary L. Lancaster said in dismissing the case against Robert Zicari and Janet Romano, both of Northridge, Calif., and their company, Extreme Associates. Lancaster said prosecutors overstepped their bounds while trying to block the material from children and from adults who didn't want to see such material inadvertently.

The judge also found that the state cannot ban material simply because it finds it objectionable, based on the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2003 ruling that struck down a state ban on gay sex. The Supreme Court's ruled that the ban was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.

Link to AP story, Link to AVN's coverage, Link to PDF of case, Link to an interview with defendant Rob Zicari (aka Rob Black) on the PBS television show Frontline, Link to interview with co-defendant Janet Romano (aka Lizzie Borden), Link to the original AP report of charges, and link to case history on Extreme Associates website.

Link to related coverage by Xeni: Wired News, NPR (partial transcript published on AVN). (Thanks, Susannnah). See also this related coverage on Fleshbot: Link.

BB readers sent in a couple more pointers to books that could be on sleepless Fyodor Nesterchuk's nightstand.

Dan O'Donnell says:

Robert Forward - son of the late great science fiction writer Robert L. Forward - wrote a (now out-of-print) book "The Owl" featuring a private detective in Los Angeles who had a medical condition that allowed him to never sleep. This meant he didn't have to have a living space - just a small office for his secretary and phone. He spent nights by riding around the LA metro bus system musing about his cases. According to the author (who is a friend) this is a known medical condition, though rare. Link

And both Joe McMahon and Andrew Jankowich suggest Michael Gilbert's Smallbone Deceased. Andrew says:

(It's) a fun British mystery set in an old-fashioned law firm not long after World War II investigated by Henry Bohun, a solicitor who suffers from "para-insomnia." He sleeps for about an hour and a half a night so he isn't quite in Nesterchuk's league. In a more understatedly English way than Tanner, Bohun uses his spare time for reading and training to become a solicitor, statistician, actuary, and "almost a doctor" and also holds down another job as a night watchman to give him an excuse to indulge his passion for walking the streets of London at night. Link

RU Sirius (AKA Ken Goffman), author of Counterculture Through The Ages and editor of the NeoFiles , is launching the NeoFiles Public Forum this Thursday, January 27 in Mill Valley, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. I was honored when RU invited me to be part of a panel discussion about neurotechnology and "Twenty First Century Brains" with Zack Lynch, Wrye Sententia, and Will Block. Please join us if you're in the area!

NeoFiles Public Forum: Twenty First Century Brains
Mill Valley Community Center
180 Camino Alto
Mill Valley, CA
7:30 PM. Thursday, January 27
$10 at the door

TiVo's new DRM system allows you to move video from your TiVo to your PC, but not as a plain MPEG file that you can slice and dice and watch in the player of your choice. Here are step-by-step instructions for converting TiVo-to-Go video to MPEG files. Link (via Waxy)

Lisa Rein has posted the Daily Show's commentary on the Bush inauguration as an MPEG and an MP3. Link

My cow-orker Seth Schoen has started a mailing list for people planning to go to DC and camp out on the steps of the Supreme Court in order to get into the hearings on Grokster vs MGM, the case where we will find out if P2P is still legal. Link

Last week, a reporter I know at the BBC forwarded me a press-release announcing a new DRM system that Sony, Matsushita, Samsung and Philips have all agreed to. He asked me if I had any comment, and so I sent him an email with a bunch of stuff, some of which made it into his article. I think it was a good response, and so I've put it online:

Not one of these systems has ever prevented piracy or illegal copying. When pressed, these entities will surely admit that this technology is not meant to be proof against a skilled attacker, but rather it is meant as a "speed bump" that works on "average users" to "keep honest users honest." If they are particularly disrespectful of 52 percent of the world's population, they might even tell you that this is the kind of thing that their mothers can't defeat.

But counterfeiting gangs who engage in "illegal copying" and "piracy" -- that is, the sophisticated criminal enterprises that operate in the former USSR and elsewhere to stamp out billions of fake CDs and DVDs -- are unfazed by these systems, because they are, in fact, sophisticated attackers. They are, in fact, not average users. This commercial piracy is the only activity that clearly displaces sales to the studios and the labels, and it is precisely this kind of piracy that DRM cannot prevent.

As to average users engaged in file-sharing, they, too, won't be foiled by this. Rather, they will be able to avail themselves of songs, movies and other media that have had their DRM removed by sophisticated users. They need not know how to hack the DRM wrappers off their music, they merely need to know how to search Google for copies where this has already happened.

And that is exactly what they will do: they will bring home lawfully purchased CDs and DVDs and try to do something normal, like watch it on their laptop, or move the music to their iPod, and they will discover that the media that they have bought has DRM systems in place to prevent exactly this sort of activity, because the studios and labels perceive an opportunity to sell you your media again and again -- the iPod version, the auto version, the American and UK version, the ringtone version, und zo weiter. Customers who try to buy legitimate media rather than downloading the unfettered DRM-free versions will be punished for their commitment to enriching the entertainment companies. That commitment will falter as a consequence.

Link to BBC article, Link to my full quote (Thanks, Nick!)

Ryan called American Airlines to ask them why I was asked to produce a dossier of my friends' addresses when I flew from London to the US last week. They responded, in part:

Mr. Doctorow exhibited specific behaviors and cues before and during our initial security screening that caused our screener to initiate a secondary screening process...

That said, our contracted screener veered from standard procedure when she asked for Mr. Doctorow to write the addresses of his destinations in the United States. She did clearly state that once the interview was completed, the address list would be destroyed in front of Mr. Doctorow or that he could have the list to keep. American Airlines absolutely does not register or record that type of personal data.

Two things are wrong about this:

1. The supposed TSA policy requiring me to write out my friends' addresses wasn't just talked about by the screener, but also by her supervisor, who came by to lecture me about how this was for my own safety -- if this was one rogue screener overstepping her authority, then why didn't her supervisor overrule her instead of sticking to the story that "the TSA requires this of us"
2. At no time did the screener or her supervisor ever state that the list would be destroyed in front of me, nor that I could keep the list. In fact, all three AA security people I dealt with -- the screener, her supervisor and the terminal manager -- told me that they didn't know what would be done with the list after the interview, that they had no idea what AA's document-retention and data-privacy policies were

The letter Ryan received promised that I would receive a written response to my letter soon. I'll be interested to see if AA repeats these untruths in it. I'm also curious about the "behaviors" I exhibited: I went where I was directed and told the screener when I got to the podium that I had packed all my own luggage and kept it in my control since packing it. Is anticipating a security question a suspicious behavior? Link (Thanks, Ryan!)

At the end of a perfect night out with our dearest Parisian friends, DMD presented me with this in celebration of Boing Boing's fifth anniversary. I was touched. As he said, it seemed very Boing Boing to use trick candles. Thank you buddy! And thank you all!

The late Claude Shannon is recognized as the father of information theory, but he was also a juggling enthusiast (he liked to juggle and ride his unicycle up and down the halls of Bell Labs), as well as an animatronic maker. My mind is reeling after watching this movie clip of his juggling robots. It's my pick for "Wonderful Thing" of the week. Link

The weather has been excellent in Los Angeles these past few days. Perfect for snapping pictures of Johnny Ramone's beautiful grave marker. Four photos by X-8. Link (Via Eye of the Goof)

Enter your height on Tall or Not and you can compare your height to a long list of famous people. Veronica Lake was only 4' 11"! Link (Via Lonita's Links Log)

The back of Onkyo’s TX-NR1000 home-theater receiver looks like something from a stress-induced nightmare. Why so many jacks? Onkyo said it's to "future proof" the thing. My idea of the future doesn't involve cables. Link (Via Endgadet)

I've always enjoy Mark Dery's caustic cultural criticism. His pen's reservoir is filled with aqua regia and the nib is made from barb wire. Now he has a blog, called Shovelware. His latest entry, about the "Not One More Damn Dime" (NOMDD) boycott, is excellent. He let me know about it in an email message, in which he asked rhetorically, "Why, as a fellow traveler who heartily agrees that our ill-conceived adventure in nation-building has become a slaughterbench for army reservists and a recruitment tool for jihadis, do I find myself so wildly irritated by today's Not One More Damn Dime boycott?"

[T]he whole business reeks of bobo sanctimony and cultural elitism. Any member of the Adbusters-reading, Supersize Me-watching leisure class who honestly believes she can Stick It to the Man by keeping her dimes firmly in her hand-knitted Guatemalan rucksack, right beside her manically underlined copy of Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, is unlikely to be seen rolling a 55-gallon drum of Miracle Whip out of Wal-Mart or rejoicing in fried offal at the local McDonald's.

As one commentor posted on Dery's site: "NOMDD is a lefty's equivalent to the magnetic Support Our Troops ribbon."   Link

Of my post about Fyodor Nesterchuk's inability to sleep (a suspicious claim, I know), BB reader Andrew Pollock says:

Your post reminded me of a fun series of books by Lawrence Block called the Evan Tanner books. They're about a guy who gets injured and loses the ability to sleep when he's shot in the head in the Korean War. He makes his living writing term papers and dissertations before he gets recruited by a spy agency and sent all over the world by them. The gag of the books is that he belongs to a million differerent political groups and knows a million languages, so for instance, in one book I remember that he gets out of trouble by tapping into an underground PLO cell and a Mossad underground support group in the space of a few days.

In a weird bit of BoingBoing synchronicity, in one of the books there is an extended description of chewing betel nut, which was my first exposure to betel, when I was about 12 years old.

Link

Anon sez: "I was asking about Betelnut girls to friend of mine from Taiwan and she was saying documenting these girls is a popular subject for artists and art students in Taiwan. She sent me this link, as well as this other link to someone whose artwork is to take photos of fake Betelnut girls (girls pretending to be Betelnut girls for his artwork)." (Here's more from Boing Boing about the wonderful world of betel -- Mark)

Hey! Today is Boing Boing's fifth bloggaversary -- that is, it's been five years since Mark posted the very first post on the Boing Boing blog. In that time, we've posted a little more than 17,000 stories and entries here. To celebrate our first half-decade as a blog, we've put together a single html file containing 17,000+ posts (every post as of yesterday mid-day) in Movable Type export format. The whole file is released under a Creative Commons license that allows you to noncommerically remix and distribute it in whole or in part -- go crazy! We stole this idea from Tom Coates, who did the same thing first on Plasticbag's fifth bloggaversary, and we were lucky enough that Andy "Waxy" Baio (from whom we get many, many great links) agreed to host the Torrent file for us on his tracker. Click the link below to join the mesh. The file is about 7MB compressed and about 17MB uncompressed -- dag, that's a lot of text. Happy Bloggaversary to us, and thank all of you for riding along, suggesting great links, and giving excellent feedback. You're the best.

Waxy took advantage of his zero-day-warez crack at Boing Boing's postfile and created this amazing analysis of Boing Boing's busiest-ever days, keyword searchable. It's mindblowing. 4KB Torrent Link

"Happy slapping" is a bizarre phenomenon in the UK where teenagers suddenly slap strangers on the tube (and other kids at school) in the face and capture the action on video using cameraphones. I like pranks, but not ones that bruise. Link (Thanks, C-Lo!)

UC Irvine researchers have found that men and women have very different brain designs. Women have more much white matter and men more gray matter related to intelligence. Still, there are no real differences in general intelligence between the two sexes. From the UCI press release about the study:

Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of – or connections between – these processing centers.

This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests.

Link

Francisco Serrano, a 21-year-old homeless man in Minneapolis, was arrested after posing as a student at his old high school for several weeks. He spent his nights at the school too, showering in the locker room and sleeping in the theater. From the Associated Press:

The principal said Serrano was not a danger to students or staff. But he also said: "Obviously this raises the issue of security in the school. We're reviewing all of our systems to ensure it doesn't happen again."

Alyssa Luftman, 18, a senior, said she saw Serrano several times in study hall.

"We came back from Christmas break and there was this new kid sitting at our table," she said. "We just assumed he was a new student. ... He never said anything to anyone."

Link

Police Bristol, England are urging bar owners to spray the colorless oil WD-40 on toilet lids, sinks, and other "flat surfaces" that customers use to lay out lines of cocaine. From Reuters:

"A chemical reaction takes place with the cocaine that causes it to congeal and become a mess so it's unusable," a police spokesman said.

Link

Fyodor Nesterchuk from the Ukrainian town of Kamen-Kashirsky hasn't slept in more than twenty years. Doctors say there's nothing wrong with him but they have no clue as to why Fyodor can't get any shuteye. From Ananova:

"I used to read boring scientific periodicals in the hope they would send me to sleep. But as soon as I felt my eyes getting droopy and put the magazine down, I would find myself wide awake again. I thought it would just be a phase but its gone on for over 20 years now and I've simply had to get used to it.

"Now when everyone else sleeps I get stuck into a good book," said Nesterchuk.

Link

Just got in from the world premiere of James Cameron's new 3D IMAX film in Universal City -- Aliens of the Deep, which opens nationwide on January 28. It's a documentary on the foreign worlds at the bottom of the ocean, and what those worlds may have in common with distant planets.

Anyone who read the recent Wired Magazine "Exploration" issue guest-edited by Mr. Cameron will find a familiar thread here... he is enamored with exploration, and with the alien realms in space and sea to which technology brings us closer.

The film was an overwhelming sensory experience, in part because of the stereoscopic technique employed (shot in HD with specially-constructed 3D cameras), but also because of the dizzyingly beautiful life forms they found thousands of feet below the ocean surface. I still can't get one of these deep, deep, deep-sea creatures out of my head -- shown here. Looked like a giant diaphanous curtain of glass, rippling through the water. Amazing. And amazing because it is real, and alive, and not a product of CGI.

Link to movie website, and Link to more on "the making of" in Wired's recent Exploration issue. Should find an enthusiastic audience with young people (think: school groups), but there was plenty to keep adults glued to the 15/70 IMAX film frame, too. Yes, you have to wear the funny 3D glasses, but it's very much worth it.

(A personal footnote: Space Generation Foundation president Loretta Hidalgo -- a lovely and insanely smart scientist who guided me and a bunch of other nauseated journalists through our first zero-gravity flight experience earlier this year -- has a starring role in this film. This time, she's floating under the sea instead of 40,000 above the earth. What a rock star. Link to her first-person account, Link to her trip log, Link to previous Boing Boing post, and here's a snapshot I took of Loretta on the Zero-G plane.)

Update: Boing Boing reader and Rome-based astronomer Amara Graps says, "Here's a view on some of the scientific advice for the film by Kevin Hand, who traveled in the submersables to the hydrothermal vents with the film crew." Link.

And by "hydrothermal vents," Amara is referring to ginormous magma chimneys that belch smoke from the bowels of the earth, forming lead-melting plumes of boiling black firewater at the ocean floor, which hordes of see-thru shrimp teem around, fearlessly basking in chemical-rich spew. You know, no big deal.

Update 2: Here's a radio report I filed for NPR's "Day to Day" about the film: Link

The creator of Isohunt, a BitTorrent indexing service, has been duking it out with the Motion Picture Association of America's lawyers, in public. He's running circles around these bullies, too:

You repeatedly mention the "representative" list of works, which serves only to intimidate us as a search service. If you look at the Betamax vs. Universal case, the VCR was not deemed illegal since it is capable of legal use. isohunt.com is a content agnostic search service on indexing torrent links over the net, which is very much capable of legal use. While as a service we can filter content, and that is exactly how we cooperate by filtering identified copyrighted titles, we do not have the man power to manually verify the tens of thousands of torrent links, nor is it even technically possible without a complete list of copyrighted works to filter against. Since you seem to have trouble producing a complete list, a technical difficulty I can understand, you should also understand the same difficulty we have in making your copyrighted works magically disappear... somehow. So instead of calling it a complete list, which seems unfeasible, it should be referred to as a sufficient list. Without it, we cannot help you in filtering your works in our search results.

> Although you have suggested that you would like us to provide an index
> of copyrighted works to which you can refer regarding the torrents on
> your website, we simply do not find it credible that you are unable to
> identify as copyrighted material the many popular motion picture titles
> currently referenced on your website. To the extent you need further
> guidance, the United States Copyright Office maintains records of every
> motion picture and television program in the United States that has a
> copyright registration. Additionally, on-line databases provide
> information regarding who distributes motion pictures and television
> programs. You are already aware of at least one such source, the
> website imdb.com, to which you provide your users deep-links for motion
> pictures.

Read above. According to normal procedures of DMCA takedown, it is your responsibility to identify what maybe infringing your copyright, and then we will comply. Your notion that we should know every title MPAA owns, while you have difficulty producing such yourself, is absurd. Links to websites such as imdb.com is user submitted, while torrent links may be user submitted or indexed from other sources on the internet. We do not moderate this process, we don't have the resource to do so and it is not our policy.

(Man, did you catch the MPAA lawyers drop the "deep-linking" bomb on him -- Earth to Hollywood: "deep linking" is what the Web is for, and it's no crime!) Link (Thanks, Ryan!)

BoingBoing reader Tian says, "During a military news segment of Chinese Central Television's broadcast, it showed soldiers of Chinese army are been trained to be gaming geeks by playing bootlegged copies of Counter Strike, a popular first-person shooting video game."
Link

An anonymous inauguration coronation day gift from a friend of BoingBoing.
Link to full-size.

Following up on this Boing Boing post about the disturbing appearance of large, dying squids on California shores, reader John Jensen says, "Isn't it funny how sometimes you can hear about something in the media, and then just go right outside your house and see it? For me, this was a drive across town."
Link to full-size snapshot.

Caption this, please. More from designer Jefferson Kulig at today's installment of Sao Paulo Fashion Week.
Link (Thanks Susannah)

Apple's got a new iTunes-Pepsi promotion wherein a certain number of Pepsi bottles will have an under-cap coupon good for a "free" (that is to say, heavily restricted and 0wned by paranoid record companies) iTunes Music Store track. If that's the kind of thing that interests you, you can guarantee that you will get your "free" track every time by repeating the trick that was invented for the last one of these promotions: tilt the bottle until you see what's printed on the underside of the cap. Link

Models wearing, um, couture by designer Jefferson Kulig at Sao Paulo Fashion Week today.
Link (image: AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano) (Thanks Susannah)

Last summer, EFF won the landmark Grokster case, in which the Ninth Circuit court ruled that P2P systems are legal, even if some people use them illegally. The movie studios and record labels didn't like this, so they got the Supreme Court to agree to hear the case. Now there's a date for the oral arguments: March 29, 2005. In 2003, digital rights activists camped out all night on the court's steps to get in and hear Lessig argue the Eldred case. I wish I could go stay out all night for this one -- it's going to be a doozy.

Washington, DC - The US Supreme Court set the date for the oral argument in MGM v. Grokster for March 29, 2005, in Washington, DC. EFF is defending StreamCast Networks, the company behind the Morpheus peer-to-peer (P2P) software, against 28 of the world's largest entertainment companies.

The companies first brought this lawsuit against the makers of the Morpheus, Grokster, and KaZaA software products in 2001, hoping to obtain a legal precedent that would hold all technology makers responsible for the infringements committed by the users of their products. The entertainment companies lost in District Court, then lost again on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Link

Steve Jackson Games -- the venerable and excellent publisher of strategy and role-playing games -- is producing an amazing new digital line of products: games distributed as PDFs. What's amazing about that? Well, they're only available direct from SJG, and only by electronic cash. They come with "insurance" so that if you delete the files or lose them in a crash, SJG will replace them (this also means that if you find yourself at a friend's house and you want to play the game, you can login to the site and download any of your games). They come with software to help you build characters and otherwise relieve some of the tedious bookkeeping associated with paper-gaming. Finally, they don't have any DRM, because SJG believes that its customers are not crooks.

Q. Are the files in e23 copy protected?

A. No. That would interfere with your use of them. We just have to hope that we can sell enough to honest people to make up for what gets stolen by the kiddies and cheapskates.

I think that this might be the smartest digital publishing venture I've seen so far. My only suggestion would be to make the files available in something more malleable than PDF -- say, HTML, so that customers could reformat them for their PDAs and other non-PC systems. Link (Thanks, AkiZ!)

My cow-orker Ren Bucholz has written an excellent editorial for the San Francisco Bay Guardian on why 2005 will be the year of P2P:

1. The Supreme Court rules on P2P For better or worse, the biggest legal fight over file sharing will be finished by next Christmas. The Supreme Court is scheduled to decide whether makers of P2P software – and by extension other technology makers – are responsible for the sins of their customers. When its opinion comes down next fall, it will tell us what Napster's demise never did: whether or not it's legal to make and distribute file-sharing software. This won't stop the record labels from continuing to sue anything with a heartbeat and a DSL line, but that news will look silly next to the fact that ...

2. File sharing continues to soar The Recording Industry Association of America has sued more than 7,000 alleged file sharers since 2003, but P2P traffic has actually increased. By some counts, 60 million Americans have tried file sharing. New P2P programs are released faster than J.Lo can get engaged. There's no reason to think these trends won't continue or increase. The year 2005 will be the "best year ever" for P2P, and the medium's continued popularity means ...

3. Artists look for plan B When it becomes clear that the RIAA's slash-and-burn campaign hasn't stopped file sharing, musicians will start to wonder if there's a better way to move forward. Would it be possible to create a system in which P2P joins CD sales, concert revenues, and radio licenses as another way to pay the bills? The answer is yes, and the technology is finally available to make it happen. The trick is to make it feel free to the public while collecting money for creators.

Link (Thanks, Donna!)

From 2001: a Metropolis review of An Ideal Boy: Charts from India, has a few examples of these colorful and funny Indian education charts. Like Goofus and Gallant, only weirder.

Designed for the classroom, they cover every subject imaginable, from science and technology to guides on proper manners. Educational charts can be found posted across India in post offices and railway stations, among other public spaces. Although didactic in nature, many of them are riddled with errors that defy all logic. People and objects are often bizarrely rendered; the names of places and things are routinely misspelled. For example, a chart on insect life includes panels on the life cycles of frogs and chickens.

Link (Via Cynical-C!)

Meet Glurpo, "Aquarena's Famous Aquatic Clown from San Marcos, Texas." Link

UPDATE: Charles sez: "Aquarena Springs. the clown was minor. Ralph the Diving Pig was the main attraction. No, Seriously, they had a pig trained to dive, usually with pretty girls called 'Aqua Maids.' Also a fleet of glass bottom boats. In the '90s, the Southwest Texas State University bought the Springs, and in a fit of political correctness, turned it into a wetlands and museum. You can still ride the glass bottom boats, but Ralph is retired, and no Aqua Maids." Link

UPDATE: (I love it when I post something to BB and I get email from readers who tell me about the deeper levels of weirdness. Here's a great example -- Mark) Tim sez: "One more bit of Aquarena Springs trivia. A picture of "Ralph the Diving Pig" and the woman he performed with was published in Chic magazine. The woman successfully sued Larry Flynt for presenting her in a 'false light' because the story appeared 'amid stories of bizarre sexual exploits.' Braun v. Flynt, 726 F.2d 245, 10 Media L.Rptr. 1487 (5th Cir. 1984)" Link

The VersaLaser is a desktop computer peripheral that takes your drawings and spits out products made of "wood, plastic, fabric, paper, glass, leather, stone, ceramic, rubber." Look at the rubber stamps it produced. I can't wait for the price to drop down to $400 on these things. Link

I wanted to thank Dave Meefor cleaning up Boing Boing's CSS file. We really appreciate it!

Sony has admitted that putting DRM into its music players was a mistake that cost it the personal stereo market:

Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., said he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because the Tokyo company had music and movie units that were worried about content rights...

High-ranking Sony officials have rarely publicly said their proprietary views were a mistake. Kutaragi, who has long been viewed as a candidate to lead Sony, was unusually direct in acknowledging Sony had made an error and blaming proprietary concerns from its entertainment division.

Link (Thanks, Chris!)

Frank sez, "TThe European Software Patents Directive has AGAIN been snuck onto the agenda of the Council of Agriculture and Fisheries. This monday." Link (Thanks, Frank!)

I have been getting an awful lot of email from people about my posts on betel nut, the popular recreational stimulant sold in Southern Asian and Pacific countries. Part of its appeal appears to be the cute young women who sell it.

Here's a guy who has taken some videos of the girls who sell betelnut in Taiwan.

I have long been interested in the the scantily clad girls that you see on the side of many roads in Taiwan selling betelnut. Interested not just because of their obvious physical charm but also because this is a phenomenon that seems so uniquely Taiwan. Betel nut girls are a modern rendition of the drive inn restaurant girls that you used to see many years ago in Canada and the US - minus the french fries and a few inches of clothing. Betelnut is "enjoyed" throughout Asia and is best enjoyed when you don't want to sleep as they function as a mild (or not so mild) stimulant.

It can be difficult to photograph or interview these girls, which is something I have wanted to do, as for numerous reasons they do not trust your intentions. Their bosses need to be treated with care as well as it is rumoured that many are in colusion with the local mafia. We did manage one Friday morning at 2 AM to talk with one friendly and probably bored girl in Hsinchu.

(The image here is from a video depicting "Clark and Ruby try[ing] their first taste of unaltered betel nut at the betel nut stand.") Link (Thanks, Clark!)

Coming this March from Taschen: The Stanley Kubrick Archives. Edited by Alison Castle, who also edited Taschen's Some Like It Hot, the book will contain a wide array of material from Kubrick's personal archives.
Link (Thanks, Michael Backes)

(Note: Play the Butthole Surfers' Sweat Loaf really loud while you read this post). Jesus christ you people are fast. Boing Boing reader Grant Henninger sez, "Inspired by your post about Jenna Bush, and by David Czarnecki's suggestion, I made t-shirts of Jenna and her dad, in classic OBEY style. Or you can find the image on my site."
Link to T-shirt shop, Link to previous Boing Boing post. But wait, there's more (thanks John)!

According to this press release, the man behind those "Fitness Made Simple" TV commercials went missing in Phuket around the time of the disaster, and is presumed to be deceased. Link to PRWeb announcement by a publicist identified as "Paquita Jean-charles, MANTA COMMUNICATIONS, at phone number 703-276-1914" (thanks Colleen)

Tom sez, "According to the front page of his web site, John Basedow is not only still alive but has never even been to Thailand. Looks like another one for Snopes." Link

Mike Harris adds, "Interestingly enough, according to a Google search, the phone number given belongs to the Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI)." Link.

¡Que viva los fat burning workouts!

Reader Brad Topliff says, "I googled Manta Communications and it looks like the result is some other fitness program product. Competitive conspiracy?" Link

This surreal "Exploration into the Structure of Web Presentations" includes a database of dreams people had about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Karen and I are driving to “Inter-Zone” apparently where some obscure family members of hers live. She has a terrible headache so I can’t play the radio. Soon a voice comes through the speakers, much to her irritation. It says, “When I wrote Raw Deal, I meant to say, Raw Meal but the censors changed it.” Karen was annoyed because she thought I had secretly put a cassette tape in the player but I reminded her our van has no cassette player. She wouldn’t believe it was Arnold because he had been using this nasal falsetto bit I KNEW it was him.

Link (via MeFi)

At Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr on why the FBI "retired" the 'net surveillance project known as Carnivore:

The Fake Carnivore Debate, RIP: The Associated Press reports that the FBI has retired its "Carnivore" Internet surveillance tool. (It actually happened about two years ago, but no one knew about it until now.) The Carnivore debate was premised on a profound misunderstanding of Internet surveillance practices. With the Carnivore era over, it's a good time to look back at how the press was able to get the story so wrong.

Link (via politech, where you'll find lots of background on Carnivore.)

PC Magazine's John Dvorak follows up on a column he wrote two years ago about the inexplicable popularity of x-rated search terms in relation to non-porn content. Here on Boing Boing, you'll see that terms like "bukkake" and "anal" rank disproportionately high in our stat logs, relative to the number of times we actually use them in our posts (bats eyelashes innocently). Although -- it's worth noting that "tater" is gaining heavily now. Anyway, snip:

My editor, Lance Ulanoff, was shaking his head the other day over the column I had written called "Free Porn." The column, written nearly two years ago, was an exercise in propaganda, done to prove that the use of the word "porn" in a headline would jack up the readership of any column. This was an assertion promoted by my previous online editor, Don Willmott, who revealed the trick to me after looking at years of online stats. He'd used it himself when he needed to pump up his own numbers.

Ulanoff told me that I had to do a follow-up to the "Free Porn" column since it has consistently been in the top readership list since it was published. "It's unbelievable," he said. "Every month it shows up in the list of top page views. It's never at the top, but it keeps showing up." Perhaps it's never at the top because it has nothing to do with porn. Just the use of the word is enough to pump up the numbers. Are online readers so drawn to porn that they aggressively seek it out? No wonder the amount of pornographic e-mail come-ons has been slipping. Why bother with spam? Just set up a porn site and the readers will seek you out.

Link (Thanks, Roger)

Video game publisher NC Soft has filed to dismiss a suit presented by Marvel Comics, which states that the City of Heroes character creation engine makes it possible for players to create characters that looked similar to Marvel characters. Link (thanks, Chris Arrant)

Is it me, or is Jenna Bush holding up the sign of Satan next to her father's face in this photo? Choose picture #7 in this MSNBC slide show.
Here's the original MSNBC Link, and here's a link to a copy of the photo I saved locally (it's now offline at MSNBC) (thanks Jeremy)

Update: BB reader Charles Bestal says, "As a University of Texas student, we hear a good bit about the party animal around campus -- but it should be noted that she is most likely invoking the school's hand-sign (Hook 'em Horns, they say), rather than the devil, or her father."

Reader David Czarnecki says, "Just as quick as the horns were thrown up, they've been thrown down from the MSNBC slideshow. Slide 7 is now a picture of showing the 'Celebration of Freedom' fireworks behind the White House. That's unfortunate. But, since you've got the picture, maybe someone should start a CafePress site called "BUSH is Fucking METAL!" and sell t-shirts and other schwag with that picture, a la this. Proceeds could be donated to some charitable cause ... maybe the Church of Satan!"

Patrick says, "Isabella Rosallini was on the Daily Show a couple weeks back and noted that that particular hand symbol in Italy meant that a man was a cuckold. Maybe Jenna is trying to state something about the fidelity of her mother?"

John says, "This site has photos of many famous people throwing the devil's salute, aka the manu cornuta." Link

BB reader Dr. Wayne R. Husted sez: "Gentle lady: This harkens back to those famous devil worshippers and one of their more interesting albums. Oh, then again, maybe the sign is this."

Looks like the first lady and the president himself are also in allegiance with the lord of darkness (images via Wonkette and Google Image search, thanks to many BB readers who submitted updates including Conor, John, and Evan Bray).

Update: Less than 2 hours after the initial post, we now have t-shirts. The internets are fast. Link

Sex gadgets go open source: "Open Dildonics is a project started by the Brum2600 group to bring Open Source/GNU technology to Cyber Dildonics. It aims to bring Cyber D to the masses through the use of GNU software and a 'Build your own' ethic." Link (via Fleshbot, del.icio.us)

One of my favorite sources for political news deconstruction is signing off.

We want to let you, our readers, know that we have decided to stop updating Spinsanity. Since March 2001, we've poured vast amounts of our time into this site, writing more than 400 articles as well as a book. It has been a rewarding but exhausting process, and after much reflection, we have decided not to continue the website. We will make sure our complete archive remains online as a resource for citizens and journalists, and have completed a final update of our topical index that presents an annotated guide to our body of work. It is available here.

Spinsanity was on my short list of bookmarks since the day they launched. Ben Fritz, one of the site's co-editors, was a colleague back when we both worked at Jason Calacanis' Silicon Alley Reporter... Ben was sharp as hell then, and I understand he's got some other new and interesting stuff planned for 2005.

In another clear sign that all is well with the world, hordes of giant jumbo squid are beached and dying in SoCal this week.

The bug-eyed sea creatures, believed to be Humboldt squid, normally reside in deep water and only come to the surface at night. Why approximately 500 of them began washing up on the sands of Laguna Beach and Newport Beach on Tuesday isn't clear.

Link (Thanks, Dan Goldman)

Rolling Stone Magazine has refused to accept an ad for a hip new translation of the Bible aimed at young people.

On Tuesday, USA Today quoted Kent Brownridge, general manager of Wenner Media, as saying his staff first saw the ad copy last week, and "we are not in the business of publishing advertising for religious messages."

Lockhart said the ad features the face of a contemplative-looking young man and includes this copy:

"In a world of almost endless media noise and political spin, you wonder where you can find real truth. Well, now there's a source that's accurate, clear and reliable. It's the TNIV -- Today's New International Version of the Bible. It's written in today's language, for today's times -- and it makes more sense than ever."

Link

Moritz sez: "One of the Futuro Houses reported on earlier on Boing Boing (December 22, 2003) has been relocated in a spectacular staging - Futuro-House-owner Milford Wayne Donaldson had his home transported by truck into the mountains close to San Diego and then hoisted into its photogenic place by a giant crane. To make the last part look more like the landing of a UFO, he used a giant torch to illuminate his house while being lifted into place." Link to German language site.

UPDATE: Here's the story in English. Link (Thanks, Ben!)

UPDATE: jay savage sez: "I saw your post today on the futro house, and the link to the earlier article on the house. While the statements from http://home.wanadoo.nl/imagineer/mags/mag10.htm that "Finnish architect Matti Suuronen designed this UFO shaped dwelling in 1968" and "The idea behind the design reflects the optimism of the sixties. At the time people believed technology could solve all problems for the human race," may be true, your readers might be interested to know that Suuronen seems to have lifted both the design concept and the idealized vision of technology from R. Buckminster Fuller. Bucky designed the Dymaxion House (http://www.hfmgv.org/dymaxion) in the late 20's and built the first prototypes in 1945."

The Santa Ana house of pop surrealism artist Shag is profiled in today's LA Times. He lives in a tiny, cluttered, windowless shack much like the one Ted Kaczynski lived in -- no, just kidding. Of course he lives in a fabulous mid-century modern dwelling tastefully decorated with iconic period furniture.

Josh AGLE, the artist popularly known as Shag, doesn't just draw from life. He paints from his living room. Using the architecture and interior design of his own home, he creates the candy-colored, acrylic-on-Masonite works that have made him an art world double threat — gallery star and hip commercial brand. Populated with groovy ingenues, Rat Pack roués, cute animals, tiki gods and the occasional mythical creature, Shag's art, which also pops up on stationery and housewares, is an inventory of the furnishings in the 1960 Modernist ranch that Agle decorated for his wife, theater director Glendele Way-Agle and their two children.

Link

Cyborg researcher Steve Mann has produced a piece of conceptual art called "License to seat." It's a chair with "magnetic stripe card reader and spikes that retract when a seating license is downloaded from a license server in response to input from the card reader incoroprated into the chair. The license server is in the 19 inch relay rack behind the Internet Chair" The piece makes a point about the rentware world we're fast approaching, where individuals are stuck in a kind of feudal relationship with commercial entities, who reach into our homes and track and bill us for the use of our household goods. Link (Thanks, Ethan!)

Avi sez, "Am researching the orgins of an ancient folktale 'This Too Will Pass' or 'King Solomon's Ring' and collating all versions here:

"Here's Lincoln's version of the tale: "'It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! -- how consoling in the depths of affliction!' -An Address by Abraham Lincoln Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, September 30, 1859

"Have already found Jewish and Sufi versions of the Tale and would like to use the collective intelligence of Boing Boing readers to find versions from other cultures-I know that a Hindu version exists somewhere)

Send any leads on the tale to avisolo@yahoo.com

According to an Associated Press report from today, Francisca Ramos dos Santos gave birth to this 16.7 pound baby boy at a hospital in northeastern Brazli. After a Caesarian delivery, the boy, named Ademilton, and his mother are doing just fine. Link

DMD points us to a Tweney Report post about The Bentley Snowflake Collection at the Buffalo Museum of Science. In 1885, Wilson Alwyn Bentley made the first photomicropgraph of a snowflake. Capturing those crystals on film became his lifelong obsession. The Buffalo Museum of Science has a comprehensive collection of these startling images. From a 1922 article in The Vermonter:

It is indeed a delicate task to “catch” one’s snowflake and get it in position to be photographed. Mr. Bentley has a tray consisting of a board painted black with wire handles on either end, on which he collects the flakes: this he carries carefully by the handles with mittened hands, in order to keep off all animal heat: and to keep his hands warm too, no doubt: into his cold, unheated workroom. With a splint of wood, he painstakingly picks up the snowflake and places it on the slide of his microscope, being particularly careful that it is unbroken and perfectly flat so that all parts reflect the light equally.

“It takes me quite awhile sometimes,” Mr. Bentley explained, “and I have to breathe occasionally, but I turn my face away, take a quick breath and get to work again before the flake melts,” illustrating with a quick birdlike movement of the head.

Link

As documented in the film Project Grizzly, Troy Hurtubise is the North Bay, Ontario inventor who built a protective suit that would protect him in a mano-y-mano encounter with a bear. These days, Hurtubise has his eyes on an even more incredible project. He built a device called the Angel Light that he says can see through walls. From BayToday:

Hurtubise said (reps from the French Government) were so impressed with the eight-foot long device they paid him $40,000 in cash to put the finishing touches on it. The French, Hurtubise adds, have also agreed to pay him a “substantial” amount of money for the technology if it passes rigorous tests in France.

“They couldn’t believe what they saw,” Hurtubise told BayToday.ca.

“One of them told me it was as if I’d discovered a new universe.”

Gary Dryfoos, a consultant and former long-time instructor at MIT, said "there's a Nobel Prize" for Hurtubise if the Angel Light really performs as described.

"There are laws of physics waiting to be written for what he's talking about," Dryfoos said.

Link (via MetaFilter)

UPDATE:BB pal Dr. Maz points to more discussion of the truth/fiction of Troy Hurtubise's claims at the Museum of Hoaxes. Link

Jack Boulware is one of my favorite magazine feature writers typing today. His forays into New Journalism remind me of the stories that writers like Daniel P. Mannix told in the pulp men's magazines of the mid-twentieth century. Just take a glance at the archived work on Boulware's new Web site and you'll see what I mean: Sumo In Prague, Poker-Crazy America, World's Largest Collection of Pornography, Ice Golfing In Greenland, Haunted Hawaii, Church of John Coltrane, Wild Boar Hunting, and plenty more. Link

We've posted quite often about the Dreamachine, invented by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville in 1959. Today's New York Times has a nice feature about the Dreamachine and one writer's "review" of its effects.

"Mr. Gysin and Mr. Sommerville built the first Dreamachine after learning of research by John Smythies and W. Grey Walter, scientists who had noted in experiments that light flickering at 8 to 12 flashes a second against a subject's closed eyelids seemed to slow the electrical pulse rate of the subject's brain to a state of semiconsciousness known as the alpha state and produce rich dreamlike imagery.

Although his fellow Beats were excited about using the device, Mr. Gysin had broader ambitions for it and tried to distance himself from their enthusiasm, says John Geiger, the author of "Chapel of Extreme Experience: a Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine" (Soft Skull Press, 2004).

"He was focused on its commercial potential," Mr. Geiger said. "He imagined a Dreamachine in every suburban home, in the spot formerly occupied by the television set, but broadcasting inner programming."

Link (Thanks, Vann!)

Boing Boing uber-buddy Gareth Branwyn sez: "I'm going to be on WPRK 91.5 FM tomorrow (Thursday) as part of their 110-hour broadcasting marathon. DJ Dave Plotkin is trying to break the Guinness World Record for longest continuous broadcast by a single DJ. He's 54 hours into it and is now punchier than a pissed-off kangaroo in a sideshow boxing ring. Should be interesting. I'm on at 1pm Thursday and will be talking about what's happened in the world of DIY media since I wrote my 1997 book Jamming the Media. The broadcast is not only an attempt at breaking the record, but also a way of raising money for this great college radio station (Rollins College, Winterpark, FL). You can listen to Dave sleeptalk here." Link

This little Iraqi girl seems upset that her parents were shot to death by US soldiers when the car she and her family were in failed to stop at a checkpoint. (I'm sure she'll get over it once they tell her it was a mistake.) Meanwhile the LA Times reports that "the percentage of Americans who believed the situation in Iraq was "worth going to war over" has sunk to a new low of 39%."
Link

I wrote a story for TheFeature about a bunch of public-servant and domestic robots that will go on sale this year.

Later this year, the Korean government will put wireless broadband robots into 200 post offices around the country. Instead giving the robots on-board cognitive capabilities, the researchers are outsourcing the sensing and processing work to central computers via a wireless link. They'll come in "male" and "female" models: the male will serve as a guard and will be armed with a projectile net that it can deploy to immobilize troublemakers, and the female will help customers and display entertaining video clips to people waiting in line. The project, which is part of a larger "Ubiquitous Robot Companion" initiative, is being spearheaded by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which also plans to put 100 domestic robots into houses in the next couple of years.

Link

In other Jenna Jameson news, she's, er, climbed into bed with Wicked Wireless to create a brand for mobile phone services. The company will start offering content from Jenna's Web Girls in Latin America first. Looks for the porn images, video, and "moantones" to come to the US later this year. From the press release, via MobileMag:

"Everyone needs a moantone," says Ms. Jameson. "And we'll provide them in the universal language of sexy sighs recognized around the world but with our own personal touch. The technology is way beyond most of us, but the bottom line is that you'll able to hear the other Jenna's Web Girls moan and me when your phone starts to ring. We'll also provide audio content in Spanish plus photos and text features."

Link (Thanks, C-Lo!)

My pal Farah Mendlesohn is putting together a book on children and science fiction and she's put together a survey on the subject to help her with her book. If you read sf as a kid, take a sec and help her out.

The purpose of this questionnaire is to provide material for a book called (provisionally), The Inter-Galactic Playground of Children's Science Fiction to be published by McFarland Press. The research is supported by the Eileen Wallace Children's Library (University of New Brunswick), Middlesex University (London) and the British Academy.

Who am I? I am a science fiction fan and a critic. I'm co-organizing a British Eastercon, Concussion, and I edit the academic journal Foundation. The original article behind this research can be found at “Is There Any Such Thing as Children’s SF: A Position Piece” in The Lion and the Unicorn, A Critical Journal of Children’s Literature Vol. 28, no 2, April 2004, pp. 284-313

Link (Thanks, Farah!)

Benjamin Rosenbaum is one of the best new science fiction writers working in the field today. He's just released his story "Start the Clock" (originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike license that allows you to mix your own versions. It's a fine story and a brave experiment:

The real estate agent for Pirateland was old. Nasty old. It's harder to tell with Geezers, but she looked to be somewhere in her Thirties. They don't have our suppleness of skin, but with the right oils and powders they can avoid most of the wrinkles. This one hadn't taken much care. There were furrows around her eyes and eyebrows.

She had that Mommystyle thing going on: blue housedress, frilly apron, Betty Crocker white gloves. If you're going to be running around this part of Montana sporting those gigantic, wobbly breasts and hips, I guess it's a necessary form of obeisance.

She said something to someone in the back of her van, then hurried up the walk toward us. "It's a lovely place," she called. "And a very nice area."

"Look, Suze, it's your mom," Tommy whispered in my ear. His breath tickled. I pushed him.

It was deluxe, I'll give her that. We were standing under the fity-foot prow of the galleon we'd come to see. All around us a flotilla of men-of-war, sloops, frigates, and cutters rode the manicured lawns and steel-gray streets. Most of the properties were closed up, the lawns pristine. Only a few looked inhabited -- lawns bestrewn with gadgets, excavations begun with small bulldozers and abandoned, Pack or Swarm or Family flags flying from the mainmasts. Water cannons menacing passerby.

Link (Thanks, Ben!)

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's multimedia zine Nerve features an article this month about Frederik, a teen who committed suicide last February. The piece is very moving, part documentary and part reportage, and it's pitched at teenagers. Well worth a look. Link (Thanks, Ted!)

Last week on a trip from London to the US, American Airlines demanded that I write out a list of the names and addresses of all the friends I would be staying with in the USA. They claimed that this was due to a TSA regulation, but refused to state which regulation required them to gather this information, nor what they would do with it once they'd gathered it. I raised a stink, and was eventually told that I wouldn't have to give them the requested dossier because I was a Platinum AAdvantage Card holder (e.g., because I fly frequently with AA). I have written an open letter to AA asking for details on this -- see the link below for the whole text.

The security officer then handed me a blank piece of paper and said, "Please write down the names and addresses of everyone you're staying with in the USA."

I actually began to write this out when I was brought up short. "Wait a second -- since when does AA compile a written dossier on the names and addresses of my friends? Why are you asking me this? Do you have a privacy policy and a data-retention policy I can inspect prior to this?"

The security officer told me that this was a Transport Security Agency (TSA) regulation. I asked for the name or number of the regulation, its text, and the details of the data-retention and privacy practices in place at AA UK. The security officer wasn't able to answer my questions, and she went to get her supervisor.

After several minutes, her supervisor appeared and said, after introducing himself, "Sir, this is for your own protection."

I think it's pretty hard to argue that making passengers produce written dossiers on their friends' home addresses makes planes in the sky secure. I asked again if this was really a TSA regulation and what AA's privacy and data-retention policies are.

The officer said, "This is a TSA regulation."

I said, "Why didn't I have to provide this information when I flew out of Gatwick on US Air in December then?"

He said, "Well, you know that American Airlines has had some terrible things happen to it in the past."

I asked "So the TSA wrote a special regulation for AA? What is the name of this regulation, and what is your data-retention and privacy policy?"

Link

Brendan Themes is a punk-folk musician whose stuff is like Billy Bragg's best music crossed with a little Beck and some Leo Kottke. His CD is available for free under a Creative Commons license from the Internet Archive. Link (Thanks, Brendan!)

The German library system has recieved a copyright exemption that allows it to crack the DRM on the media in its collection, "after it became obvious that copy protections would not only annoy teenage school boys, but also prohibit the library from fulling its legal mandate to collect, process and bibliographic index important German and German-language based works." This is fantastic news -- and it should be a lesson to libraries, schools, institutions that serve the disabled, archivists, and others that they needt o fight for their own exemptions. We need to riddle the ban on circumventing DRM with so many little holes that it simply deflates upon itself. Link

Update: Martin sez, "Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to the German libraries as a whole, but only to the Deutsche Bibliothek, the German analog to the US Library of Congress."

My friend Nicole in Paris is a super-talented Web designer who just started her own clothing line called Locher's:

"Perverts , degenerates, and nasty bitches can finally rejoice because now you can parade your hidden thoughts right out in the open."

I know quite a few people who would wear this t-shirt design with pride. Link

A prison in Bangkok, Thailand has installed Webcams on death row. Once the Webcasts begin, the actual executions won't be part of the programming. Prison officials say they hope the approach will deter potential criminals. From the BBC News:

Prison spokesman Nathee Chitsawang told the Associated Press news agency that the internet "will show how we treat convicts in their last minutes, including the preparation process". But, he said, viewers will only see snippets of the final moments leading up to an execution.

Still, Amnesty International is rightfully pissed. Link to BBC report, Link to TNA article

The Funhaler is an asthma medicine delivery device for kids. Traditional asthma inhalers scare kids into misuse (or non-use), but the Funhaler apparently "overcomes these difficulties by motivating the child to inhale willingly and effectively by the use of breath-driven incentive toys attached to the device, such as whistles and spinning discs." Link (via Gizmodo)

My brother found this mysterious proto-porn gadget while cleaning out a neighbor's garage. I'm trying to figure out what the hell it is. Can you help me? Click on thumbnails for full-size; link to movie at end of post.
Here's what I know. She's blonde, nude, stacked, made of gummy polymer, and her name is "Lily," as you can see from the stamp on the back side of the petri dish thing in which she resides. But what's totally insane about her is that there's this tiny metal crankshaft sticking out of her ass. When you turn the handle, she gyrates a seductive little gyro-dance. The images sketched on the reverse side depict bottles of perfume and bubbly scented girly stuff -- trapped inside this transparent disc, she's doomed to endless command performances from her bathtub.
The date on the back -- 1952 -- indicates this tease toy might have been manufactured for GIs during the Korean War. Remember, there were no internets. Lily was a sort of analog hothot camgirl -- only with better tit bit depth and finer frame rate than free adult site previews of today.
Using the "record movie" feature on a Canon Powershot S50, my mom helped me stage and shoot a short movie of Lily dancing her "come-hither-beeg-sailor" dance. I realize that's kind of weird. And if you knew how respectable and unlike me my mom is, you'd *really* think that's weird. But I discovered that shooting a gadget porn movie with your mom can be an oddly bonding experience. Like when she drove me to my first big punk rock concert, Bad Brains and the Dead Kennedys, way back when I was 12. She knew that was weird, too, but she loved me. So, thanks mom.
Anyway -- have you seen another Lily before? Do you know where she came from? Whose pockets she lined?

Link to DiVX movie. (2.4MB). I have a larger (13MB), higher-quality AVI original if anyone feels like converting it more artfully and torrenting it or whatever.

Jim Leftwich sent me the URL to the short story he wrote for the bOING bOING zine, entitled "Farmer Bob's Good Life." It's a wonderful read.

As if on cue, the daily procession began. From each pen emerged half a dozen or so Colorado River Toads, of varying sizes. Hesitantly at first, as if still half asleep, they hopped out into the dimly lit hallway, pausing before turning and following Farmer Bob down to the feed trough at the far end of the barn. With the last of the thirty pens opened, there formed a surging river of toads streaming down to take up their places in the little stanchions arrayed along the long galvanized metal feed trough. As they were bellying up, Farmer Bob busied himself filling two five-gallon buckets with feed pellets from a small chute protruding out of a storage bin. Walking along the backside of the trough, he poured out the contents of the first bucket, stopping when it was empty to retrieve the second bucket and finish filling the remaining length. He walked back to peer up the hallway, making sure there were no stragglers. Seeing that all the toads were now enthusiastically enjoying their morning repast, he reached up and threw the first switch on a grimy control panel mounted on the wall behind him. A creaking mechanical noise accompanied the slow, gentle closing of the little stanchions around each toad, holding them firmly and comfortably in their places as they continued their unabashed munching.

Link

I'll be host Kevin Pereira's in-studio guest on tomorrow's edition of the G4TechTV show "The Screensavers." We'll be talking about Boing Boing, which may mean in-depth analysis of betel nut blogs, Picasso gone Costco, hallucinogenic toad e-commerce, and the tenuous links between Microsoft, commies, and awesome butt sex. Should be fun.
Link to show info and your local air times.

Snipped from Red Herring's coverage today:

A bill introduced in the California Legislature last Friday seeks to do what U.S. federal courts have so far refused to do: criminalize selling, advertising, and distributing peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software. Written by state Senator Kevin Murray (D), a longtime lawmaker from Los Angeles with close ties to the entertainment industry, the legislation is aimed straight at the business plans of file-sharing companies such as Grokster, Morpheus, and Kazaa. The bill would make it a crime to sell file-sharing software without taking “reasonable care” to prevent copyright infringement and pornography swapping.

Link to story, and link to PDF of bill text. (Thanks, Jason!)

Update: The EFF's Jason Schultz weighs in:

Goodbye innovation; hello regulation. "Reasonable care" could mean anything from the forced design and/or redesign of software to mandated filtering and digital rights management (DRM) -- even the forced installation of spyware to monitor user behavior. Moreover, SB 96 would effectively overrule the Betamax protections that the Supreme Court has provided technology companies for more than 20 years. That kind of seismic shift would destabilize some of California's most successful companies.

From the birth of the Xerox machine to the modern web server, every technology that enables people to copy or disseminate content has had the capacity to be used for some illegal activity. Under Murray's logic, we should have stopped the manufacture and sale of VCRs, dual tape decks, postal services, carbon paper, and any other service or device that could potentially be used in a crime.

Link.

Also, Cal-INDUCE could put Ed Felten in Jail for writing 15 lines of code as an academic experiment: Link.

The following business analysis was submitted by Boing Boing reader Buck Thighmaster

I thought you might perhaps want to throw up a more detailed business analysis of why HP's region coding defense is completely bogus. So I figured I'd write one out to try and save some time...

Sure it's true that a global multi-national company like HP has to worry about currency fluctuations, but their region-coding strategy is exactly opposite to a true objective currency fluctuation defense.

If a company is doing business in two major regions of the world and the currency is sinking in one region (the U.S.) and rising in another (Europe) then the company has to worry about the fact that it might be buying things in the more expensive currency while being paid in the sinking currency. In simple terms, HP has to worry about being paid $1US today, then try and buy $1EU of stuff next week, when that US dollar is only worth 80 cents in Europe - they just lost 20% on that transaction.

However, there's a simple defense for global companies in this situation - price in a larger profit margin on goods sold in the sinking currency, as a buffer against the value being lost in that currency. HP's printer cartridges should be more expensive (comparatively) in the U.S., to make up for the fact the the $40US (!!) you pay for a cartridge might be only worth $38 in global purchasing by next week. That's not what's happening here though.

(Some people might complain at this point that HP raising prices in the US would not be a good thing, because it's promoting US inflation. Duh!! Why do you think all the economists are so upset about the sinking US dollar and America's huge debt?!)

Instead, HP is charging more in Europe where the currency is rising and becoming more valuable. In effect, HP is double gouging here, because they're getting a bonus from the rising value of the EU currency. Every EU dollar they get paid this week might be worth $1.20 by next week in global purchasing, in which case HP just made extra profit! If HP was a fair dealer then print cartridges might be LESS expensive in Europe, not only because of the price premium people in the US would pay as a hedge against the sinking US dollar, but also because HP should prefer to be paid in Euros which they know are going to rise in value.

Another example in simple terms - if you were selling a car and someone offered you $1000, or $900 in gold bullion, and gold was rising in value so that gold bullion would be worth $1100 next week, you'd take the gold bullion. You offer a slight discount now because you know you'll benefit in the near future. Instead, HP's making people in Europe pay $1100 in gold for the 'car' - both gouging them extra, and profiting on the fact that the gold will be worth $1200 by next week.

HP's other stated defense for their region-coding is that this somehow protects them against Grey Marketers. This is also bogus.

Grey Marketers can be a problem with some products. These are importers who bring product across border into markets where it wasn't meant to be sold. This can be a problem, particularly with support costs.

For example, if HP Canada is selling Deskjet printers, and estimates they'll sell 10,000 printers, then HP Canada will budget the warranty support costs for 10,000 printers (let's say $5000). If some Grey Marketer then imports an extra 20,000 printers from the US, where they were on sale, and sells them in Canada then all of a sudden HP Canada is looking at an extra $10,000 in warranty costs on printers that HP Canada didn't even get paid for, since they were originally bought in the US!

One problem with that scenario in this case - there are no real support costs for an ink cartridge! They're practically a commodity product. There's no difference between an ink cartridge sold in Europe and one in the US. They all come out of the same factory. Ink cartridges WOULD be a commodity product if the printer manufacturers didn't silently collude on price. There is no way a print cartridge imported into Europe from North America costs HP Europe any extra support costs.

HP shouldn't care where their print cartridges are bought and sold, assuming HP has priced the cartridges appropriately. If HP prices the US ink cartridges properly with a premium to take into account the sinking US dollar, then they shouldn't care if some Grey Marketer buys a bunch and imports them into Europe. HP already got paid for the ink cartridge at that point. They have their money and their profit. HP should be happy to have sold the cartridges, period, and they didn't even have to pay for the shipping to Europe! Grey Marketers for printer cartridges ONLY 'hurt' the global manufacturer IF the manufacturer is price-gouging in the more expensive market.

In the end, there's two explanations for the current situation. Either HP is determined to gouge it's European customers, using the region coding to enforce the price gouge, or HP is so badly managed that their current US products are underpriced and they're losing money on them because of the sinking US currency. Possibly both are true.

I'm writing a historical non-fiction book and I am having a hard time figuring out how much specific sums of money from the old days would be worth today. I came across this nice calculator at the Economic History Services site. The thing I learned is that there isn't one answer to the question "How much is $100 from 1960 worth today?" From the site:

In 2003, $100.00 from 1960 is worth:

$621.65 using the Consumer Price Index

$502.09 using the GDP deflator

$761.26 using the unskilled wage

$1,297.73 using the GDP per capita

$2,086.61 using the relative share of GDP

Link

This upper-back Zelda tattoo took nine hours and was done in one sitting. Link (via Waxy)

I did an interview with NPR's What the Tech?, a radio station that broadcasts out of Rochester and is affiliated with the Rochester Institute of Technology. The MP3 is linked below -- my interview starts about two-thirds of the way through. I talk about science fiction, the Singularity, copyright and what have you. 50.6MB MP3 Link

(See update at the end of this entry) An anonymous HP employee emailed me in response to yesterday's post about HP printer cartridges that have been crippled to work only in printers sold in specific countries:

Re: "Region Coding Electronics and Ink Cartridges", consider that this is truly about the effect of currency fluctuations on an international business. A company incurs expenses (R&D, manufacturing, etc.) in one currency, and sells in another. When the exchange rates change significantly between when the expenses are incurred and when the sale is made, the financial results of the company will also be significantly affected (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively). This creates instability in the stock price because fickle Wall St. analysts can't handle surprises (and may also lead to gray-market activities like re-importing product from a cheaper region of the world to sell in a more expensive one, but I don't know for sure about that).

You may have a valid issue with respect to how the company should try to manage the effects of currency fluctuations, but I think the conspiracy theory about a one-time gouging of Europe to make a fast buck is a red herring. The only real solution to this might be truly dynamic, global pricing -- which might work if HP only sold direct over the web, but real world sales channels consist of a web of retailers and resellers who cannot support it (a customer wants to know that a pen costs 1.49 whether he walks into 7-11 on Monday or Friday...).

One thing is for sure, the average customer will not understand, or care to understand, the issue of currency fluctuations! The HP bean counters should be smacked for that short sightedness and the bad press it will bring. Sigh.

Update:: Cory notes: "Yeah, and by that reasoning, we need region-coded cement, tee-shirts, baby-powder and oatmeal. Currency fluctuations, riiiight."

UPDATE: The HP employee who emailed me earlier would like to point out that his original email contained the following sentence: "Not speaking for my employer in any official capacity!" I forgot to add that to the post. It's an important thing to remember when you read this. -- Mark

The Clarion Writers Workshop -- an amazing bootcamp for science fiction writers that I graduated from in 1992, and which I will be teaching this summer -- is holding a silent auction fundraiser. Former instructors and students as well as friends of Clarion have donated a stunning array of science fiction books and memoribilia, much of it signed by the author (I donated a spiral-bound home-made galley of my next novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town -- one of ten ever made!).

AMERICAN GODS: The Author’s Preferred Limited Edition
By Neil Gaiman
A beautifully bound signed limited edition of the novel, with 12,000 additional words included in the text.
Retail Value: $200
Generously donated by Neil Gaiman and Hill House Publishers.

NIGHT OF THE COOTERS
By Howard Waldrop
A rare, out of print, limited numbered edition featuring nine thought-provoking tales. Hardbound in leather slipcase. Signed by Howard Waldrop. Ursus, 1990. New. Approx. Retail Value: $79 Generously donated by Leslie What.

Link

Larry Flynt's estranged daughter Tonya Flynt-Vega is demanding that the Justice Department take tougher action against porn sites, particularly those depicting incest or pedophilia. Note: the Hustler mag mastermind has more than one daughter. Ms. Flynt-Vega is not to be confused with Theresa Flynt-Gaerke, who is credited with having developed the popular chain of Hustler retail stores.

I'm not sure what exactly is news here, if anything -- it seems that the specific variety of rogue sites she's complaining about are already defined as illegal under existing law, and already the target of ongoing Justice enforcement efforts. Perhaps her publicist was just having a slow day.

Tonya Flynt-Vega, whose recent autobiography called porn the greatest menace in America today, was reported by the Agape Press as saying that - with Adult Internet purveyors “always look(ing) for new ways to stretch norms and push the cultural envelope” - she believed a Justice crackdown would not come until citizens become outraged enough, especially over adult-child and incest sex sites she thinks proliferate far more than the general public realizes.

“For me and my family, there is no turning back. Larry Flynt is my father, and his empire is the enemy. I am fighting what may be the greatest menace in America today, one that threatens women, children, and ultimately, the soul of our society. My journey has been long, and it has not been easy. I have been threatened. My faith has been challenged. But I have persevered…”

Link (via Warren), and link to previous BB posts about Xeni's interviews with Larry Flynt: one, two. Also, more in this story: Link (via Fleshbot).

(This reminds me of a great story Jim Leftwich wrote for bOING bOING about a psychedelic toad farmer. I'll see if I can dig it up.)

Anonymous sez: "I was interested after reading your post on the Betel Nut essay and since I'm always in the mood to try something mind altering, went in search of sources. It turns out that there's a very interesting purveyor of botanical products called Bouncing Bear Botanicals. Not only do they sell betel nuts but they've also got everything from mildly hallucinogenic mushrooms to wildly hallucinogenic live toads (sold in breeding pairs no less!). I've never ordered from them but I think I will!" Link

UPDATE: Ron sez: I've got a few red flags off the toad story.

I've been a very active member of the Entheogenic community for over the past decade having worked for different magazines and forums over the years as admin and mod. There's somethings that I've got to point out:

Firstly, bouncing bear doesn't list the animal on their products page nor, could I locate it anywhere on their site. (Yes -- it's on this site, but listed as out of stock. Here's the link -- Mark.)

Secondly, although, the animals do contain 5 MEO DMT ( a dubious "psychedelic"), but they also contain a few other "toxins" in their poison glands that if "licked" injected or "whatever" can cause serious problems -- including rapid heart failure. These and related toads kill many wild and domesticated animals yearly that are either too inquisitive or aggressive with them.

In general there has to be at least some mention of safety IMHO, they're not a item that is "safe" for the general public Use of these animals coupled with a nonchalant attitude will only "cause problems".

Lastly, there are some ethical and legal issues as the animal is endangered in the wild with laws in effect regarding trade.

I did locate a site that does offer the animals for a very high price. The bouncing bear may be a front for the second site. (very common) as the provided images are the same.

If you could please place a red text notice with the entry saying something to the effect of :

"Bufo Alvarius: are a endangered species that may be illegal to buy and sell. These animals can be very dangerous as they do have poison glands that secrete a highly reactive poison -- do not lick or consume."

UPDATE: Anonymous sez: "The 'Update' post on Sonran desert Toads is not particualrly accurate. The writer calls 5-MEO-DMT a 'Dubious Psychedelic.' If being strapped to the front of a rocket and propelled across several dimensions constitutes a dubious psychedelic, what is this person taking, and where can we get some?

He is accurate in saying that Bouncing Bear is 'Out of stock' on these toads. They have been out of stock on thier website for over a year now. I doubt that they will ever be for sale on thier site again. The poster is highly inaccurate when he says that the Sonoran Desert Toad is an endangered animal. While anyone should take the proper care and consideration into the ownership of any pet, the Sonoran desert toad is not endangered. Certain desert areas are hopping with them at the right time of year. For more information click here.

I've got the payment system working for the Boing Boing e-book we started selling on Saturday. Link

Ward Jenkins is an animation director in Atlanta, GA. On his blog called, The Ward-O-Matic, he wrote a couple of lengthy posts about The Polar Express, in which he included some of his Photoshop tweaked fixes to the famously zombie-like characters in the movie. He says that folks from Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, Vinton Studios, and other sites are commenting on his work.
Link

I like to bring nail clippers with me when I fly, because it drives me crazy when I get a hangnail and I don't have any way to clip it off. I usually end up ripping it off, which hurts.

On two occasions, TSA employees at the airport security screening area have taken my nail clippers away. They were ordinary nail clippers, no knives or scissors attached.

So I was surprised to see that nail clippers and nail files are not forbidden items, according to the TSA's own published list. You can also bring metal butter knives, knitting needles, blunt-tipped scissors, and toy weapons ("if not realistic replicas") in your unchecked baggage.

Maybe I'l bring a copy of this list with me the next time I travel. It might come in handy. Link

UPDATE: Bill Ballantyne sez:

"1. Corkscrews are allowed?! I noticed this when I was checking the list for a trip last summer (wanted to make sure my 13 year old daughter didn't get mistaken as a terrorist!). I think a corkscrew could inflict way more damage than nail clippers or other prohibited items. It turned out she made it through the checkpoint with her folding embroidery scissors (which did not have rounded tips!)

"2. TSA employees can determine specific articles may be prohibited, even if allowed according to the list. Even though you and I and most intelligent people wouldn't waste the time or mental effort to determine the dangerous potential of nail clippers, most TSA employees probably consider (or have been told that) nail clippers (and hopefully corkscrews) are dangerous enough to prohibit them.

"3. Furthermore, you can be prosecuted for bringing prohibited items to a checkpoint, even accidentally. Horrific conclusion: Any passenger can be subject to prosecution for almost any reason, since the TSA employee can make call prohibiting any specific item."

This page contains the winners and runners-up from Bleach Eating Freaks' "office bricolage" contest, in which contestants were asked to construct the most lethal weapons that thye could from everyday materials that could be found in their offices. Link (Thanks, Ben!)

These "keychain plants" are said to be all the rage in Japan, though if I had a pair of vending-machine knickers for every time I've heard that, I'd be a very panty-rich person indeed. Link (via Gizmodo)

BoingBoing reader Tim Farley says:

Don't know if the explanation for this is similar to those Target items from a few weeks back, but check out this entry at the CostCo website. "Original Crayon Drawing by Pablo Picasso -- $39,999.99 -- Item # 872759 Shipping & Handling included" And strangely enough, it still has the box to set quantity. I'll take three!

Link

Reader Daniel Geduld adds,

I just thought you might like to know that despite their reputation as a place to find deals, the Costco's Picasso drawing is ludicrously overpriced. In his later life, Picasso became the most obnoxious sort of celebrity- one who uses his fame to never have to pay for anything. He used to make these little sketches, 10 to 12 a day, and tried to pass them off to pay for his luxurious lifestyle. More than one very expensive restaurant was conned into receiving one of these in exchange for a banquet for Picasso and his friends.

Currently, you can get a much larger and, in my opinion, more interesting Picasso on eBay for 250 British pounds. Link. There are also endlessly available hand-signed picasso lithographs which can be bought on eBay for a few hundred dollars. Now if Costco had something from the blue period, I'd be impressed.

And reader Matt Richardson says:

In regard to the comment made by the reader about Picasso making sketches to use as currency: John Lovitz played the part of Picasso in a Saturday Night Live sketch where he tries to pay for everything by sketching on napkins. I saw the sketch a while back and thought it was funny, but didn't realize how true it was.

Link

BB reader Oblivia says,

Chosun Ilbo reports that Korean OEM manufacturer Reigncom (manufacturer of the iriver device) has enlisted Jenna Jameson to snare the testosterone set. Pornography can be an effective fuel in the uptake and advance of new technology (still photography, VCR, the Intarweb) and can represent the shortest path to profitablity - this is no news. I find it interesting that they make the connection so explicit with their Personal Media Player (PMP) ads. But the ad is a bit icky. The portability of the PMP has allowed this loser the freedom to watch porn at a really well lit bar or cafe when, really, he should go back to his mom's closet from whence he came? And is that a total look of disdain on Jenna's face?

Why yes, dearie, of course it is. Does Jenna Jameson's face ever *not* bear a look of total disdain? Looks like this pre-dates her new brunette 'do, though. Link

Who's Who of Victorian Cinema is a comprehensive collection of obscure info about filmmaking at the end of the 19th century. The site contains biographies of several hundred pioneering directors, a technical essay, and a really interesting survey of the first cameras and projectors. I really dig the categories that the pioneers are grouped into, such as magicians, engineers, propagandists and evangelists, scientists, astronomers and chronophotographers, and fairground exhibitors. I only wish the site had clips from the movies to watch! Link (via MetaFilter)

Physician Jan Bondeson, author of such excellent books as Buried Alive and A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, wrote an overview for Fortean Times about "two-headed babies" of the past and present.

The sad story of the ‘Two-Headed Baby’ (born in the Dominican Republic in 2003) was a five-day wonder all over the world. From Maine to Mexico and from Stockholm to Sydney, newspapers gave their views on this singular event. Some papers tried their best to present a factual account, although struggling hard to understand the medical facts, while others painted a gory and sensational picture of the brave little girl and the horrific operation she was to undergo. Without exception, the press coverage was ill-informed, indicative of the failure of modern ‘medical journalism’ in which the reporters appear to understand very little of what they are writing about. In this unfortunate situation, they have a tendency to rely on dubious authorities, like a local ‘expert’ on conjoined twins who held a press conference after what must have been a very brief session reading up on his subject.

Following this dubious authority, the world’s press unanimously regurgitated the false information that although there had been some previous instances of this malformation, none of them had been live-born.

Link

From my journal at TheFeature:

Grafedia is a new form of multimedia graffiti developed by John Geraci, a student at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, that transforms graffiti tags into hyperlinked tags for the real world. Grafedia is a word written on any physical surface that is linked to rich media content online. If you see a grafedia tag, you send an email message to that word "@grafedia.net" and the related content is emailed to your mobile device, or anywhere else you receive mail.

Anyone can become a "Grafedia artist" by sending a word and the media file to the Grafedia server. For example, I created a Grafedia tag for the word "mahole." Just email manhole@grafedia.net and see what comes back!

Link

British computer scientist Aubrey de Grey is convinced that human beings can live forever. So he taught himself natural science to figure out the scientific steps he believes must be taken to make that happen. Sherwin Nulan, author of How We Die, has written a long, deep profile of de Grey in the new issue of Technology Review.

"As he surveyed the literature, de Grey reached the conclusion that there are seven distinct ingredients in the aging process, and that emerging understanding of molecular biology shows promise of one day providing appropriate technologies by which each of them might be manipulated—“perturbed,” in the jargon of biologists. He bases his certainty that there are only seven such factors on the fact that no new factor has been discovered in some twenty years, despite the flourishing state of research in the field known as biogeron­tology, the science of aging; his certainty that he is the man to lead the crusade for endless life is based on his conception that the qualification needed to accomplish it is the mindset he brings to the problem: the goal-driven orientation of an engineer rather than the curiosity-driven orientation of the basic scientists who have made and will continue to make the laboratory discoveries that he intends to employ. He sees himself as the applied scientist who will bring the benisons of molecular bi­ology to practical use. In the analogous terminology often used by historians of medicine, he is the clinician who will bring the laboratory to the bedside."

Link

Dory sez, "The folks at Spacing Magazine (the publication of the Toronto Public Space Committee) have just released their line of snazzy one-inch buttons dispalying the name and tile-work from all the Toronto subway stations. They're beautiful." Link (Thanks, Dory!)

This hacker wired his PS2's controller into his PC, then wrote software that had the controller step through every possible move in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, so that he discovered every Easter Egg and cheat. Link (via Waxy)

Kim sez,

In the early 1850s, "Punch" journalist Henry Mayhew began visiting London's poverty-stricken East End and documenting the lives and careers of folks eking out their livings on starvation's edge.

These in-their-own-words descriptions of daily toil are all the more fascinating for the ingenius services provided. Want an exotic bird? A clever con-artist will hand paint a drab domestic peeper, which will sing in your window until overwhelmed by its toxic coat. Or perhaps you require chemicals with which to tan leather? Just hire an old lady to come by every few hours with a can full of dog crap, the #1 substance for the job. (This was one of the better paying occupations of the lower classes.)

The University of Virginia has digitized Mayhew's rare and fascinating work, illuminating the secret histories and practices of costermongers, ginger beer men, love song sellers, lucifer match dealers and all their colorful, forgotten peers.

Link (Thanks, Kim!)

Update: Phil sez, "Further to your post about the University of Virginia digitising Henry Mayhew's excellent 1850s accounts of London's poor... They only appear to have the first volume. Tufts have had the full four volumes available online for at least a couple of years. They also include scans of images from the books -- example.

"In case the full volumes are a bit daunting, I blogged a couple of my favourite extracts a while back, one about a man fighting rats for money (with his mouth!) and one about the hilarious tricks early photographic shops used to get up to with customers who weren't accustomed to seeing photos."

BoingBoing reader Adam Hirsch says,

The offices of the State of Mississippi Tax Comission were closed Monday, and they left a helpful message for any telephone callers curious as to why they were closed. I recorded this (short, 100k mp3) myself, my mouth hanging open. (The number for the office is 601-923-7000)

Link to MP3. For those unable to download the file, here's the punch line (which should come as no surprise to anyone who's ever *been* to Mississippi): the state evidently refuses to observe a day of remembrance for Dr. Martin Luther King without dedicating the very same day to the memory of Robert E. Lee.

This reminds me of a joke that a white, southern-born, high school pal used to say over and over again, in an effort to ridicule the ubiquitous racist idiocy that makes the aforementioned voicemail possible.

person A (in heavy drawl): "The South's gonna do it agin!"
person B: What, lose?

Update BB reader Waldo Jaquith adds, "Virginia doesn't just make sex illegal -- we also celebrate "Lee-Jackson-King Day" every year. You know that old trio! Three peas in a pod, they were! Crazy old law? No -- we just started the tradition in 2000." Link, and link to WaPo story.

And reader AJ Johnson says,

A correction: Lee-Jackson Day and King Day have only been *split* since a law was passed in 2000. Lee's holiday dates back to 1889, and Jackson was added in 1904, because both of them were born around that time of January. Martin Luther King Day happened to be created on the same day (another birthdate coincidence), so he was simply added on to the holiday Virginia had been celebrating for years. To reiterate, it was King who was lumped in with the Confederates (and Virginians) rather than the other way around.

As of 2001, however, to prevent misunderstandings, Lee-Jackson Day was moved back to the previous Friday, upsetting many who felt that it moved the holiday further from the Confederates' birthdays, and were afraid that with two holidays in the space of a week, the Friday, non-national holiday would be overlooked, particularly since adding a new holiday apparently costs the state $900,000.

Link

Just announced: the "F2C" conference, which takes place in DC on March 30 and 31:

[F]or all who care about -- and are affected by -- network connectivity, economics, applications and policy. F2C is where communications policy meets networking technology, network economics, networked applications, and network construction and operation. F2C is dedicated to the proposition that strong networks build strong democracies, and vice versa.

The future of telecommunications starts now; there's a new U.S. Telecom Act in the works, there's unbundling in Europe, fast fiber in Asia, wireless across Africa and networks a-building in cities and villages around the world. Lead the discussion. Shape the debate. Assert your Freedom to Connect.

Link

Picasa -- the free photo-sharing service recently bought by Google -- just went live with version 2.0 about an hour ago. Included in the new edition, a collage-generating tool (an example is shown at left), photographic editing features, CD burning, sending pictures with Gmail, and a Blogger button for automated publishing to your you-know-what.
Link

The fine print on this satirical tee reads: "She wanted to stop reading it- but she had nothing better to do! Produced by average people who seem to think their lives are interesting. Filmed in thrilling HTML-O-Scope with exciting new fonts!"
Link (Thanks, Wayne Correia).

Major networks are changing the way they schedule TV shows, adding an extra minute or two at the end of their programs so that TiVos and other PVRs miss important sections, and so they can charge extra for advertising:

The padding also discourages viewers from clicking their remotes, under the theory they'll be less likely to switch channels if they've already missed the start of a competing program.

ABC is unapologetic. "It's not my job to make it easy for people to leave our network," says ABC scheduling chief Jeff Bader. "Our whole goal is to get people to stay with us from 8 to 11."

Link (via JWZ)

Today's Globe and Mail contains an amazing, disturbing article about documentary films that are disappearing from the world because the filmmakers can't afford to re-clear copyrights to the archival footage they contain.

The makers of the series no longer have permission for the archival footage they previously used of such key events as the historic protest marches or the confrontations with Southern police. Given Eyes on the Prize's tight budget, typical of any documentary, its filmmakers could barely afford the minimum five-year rights for use of the clips. That permission has long since expired, and the $250,000 to $500,000 needed to clear the numerous copyrights involved is proving too expensive.

This is particularly dire now, because VHS copies of the series used in countless school curriculums are deteriorating beyond rehabilitation. With no new copies allowed to go on sale, "the whole thing, for all practical purposes, no longer exists," says Jon Else, a California-based filmmaker who helped produce and shoot the series and who also teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California, Berkeley.

Link (Thanks, Mom, and everyone else who submitted this!)

The Committee to Protect Bloggers is a new clearinghouse for information on bloggers who are punished, threatened or otherwise disadvantaged for what they post on their blogs.

The Committee has four primary spheres of activity.

* CPB will serve as a clearinghouse for information on incarcerated members of our community, as well as those whose lives have been taken from them because of their enthusiasm for the free exchange of information that blogging allows.

* CPB will serve as a pressure group to force unrecalcitrant governments to free imprisoned bloggers, and make restitution for tortured and murdered ones.

* CPB will bring to bear the formidable communicative power of the blogosphere to keep pressure on governments to stop

CPB will act as direct agents in negotiations to free imprisoned bloggers.

Link (Thanks, danah!)

Jeff Van Bueren wrote an article for DirectCreative about sending unusual things through the mail to see what would happen.

We sent a variety of unpackaged items to U.S. destinations, appropriately stamped for weight and size, as well as a few items packaged as noted. We sent items that loosely fit into the following general categories: valuable, sentimental, unwieldy, pointless, potentially suspicious, and disgusting. We discovered that although some items were never delivered, most of the objects of even highly unusual form did get delivered, as long as the items had a definitely ample value of stamps attached. The Postal Service appears to be amazingly tolerant of the foibles of its public and seems occasionally willing to relax specific postal regulations.

Link (Thanks, Ivy!)

Better link with photos here. (Thanks, Andrew!)

Here's another westerner's take on betel nut, a popular recreational stimulant in Southern Asian and Pacific countries.

What is it like to chew betel? Enthusiasts recognize three delightful aspects of the experience: the exhilarating lift; the mysterious flavor; and the cleansing, compelling salivation.

In the rare instances where scholarly literature mentions its subjective effects, the news about betel is uniformly good: "It imparts the... repeatedly described sensation of well-being, good humor, excitation, and comfort...The consciousness, of course, remains unimpaired, and the chewer's capacity for work is in no respect affected." (Hesse). "It creates a feeling of energy, appeases hunger and assuages pain." (Henry Brownrigg, Betel Cutters from the Samuel Eilenberg Collection).

These authors don't lie: betel makes you feel strong. Your chest feels broader, your inhalations deeper, your back straighter; and an almost electric invigoration seems to run through your bones. This is a good, healthful, and positive sensation.

Link (Thanks, John!)

More Boing Boing betel coverage here:

Taiwanese betel nut vendor girls told to put clothes back on

History of betel chewing

Interesting Indian delicacy: paan

Betel is bad news

After Bill B. read my entry about my trouble with GTC telecom, he sent me his own horror story:

I had an experience close to yours. I received a letter from ATT Wireless (with whom I have NEVER had an account) saying I owed around $45 . I called and was told it had been passed to a collection agency. Never mind I hadn't had an account with TT&T Wireless.If I had I still never would have received a bill because during the time I was supposedly billed I WORKED for AT&T and got free AT&T calls!) I called the collection agency and I told them the story-they didn't care. They wanted their money. I ended up checking my credit report and they had reported it on my report! I was livid. So I researched the BBB (http://www.atlanta.bbb.org/) and found that the collection agency was a scam outfit that was doing this to everyone they contacted (they had over 350 bad entries in the database). I demanded the credit reporting agency remove the entry (after telling them the story ).I then contacted the Attorney General for Georgia and told an legal aid what had happened. The credit reporting agency removed the entry and the Attorney General is investigating the collection agency.

I have been noticing more instances of red tape than ever before. Technology doesn't seem to be helping.

Mister Jalopy sez: These sinister bastards have region coded HP inkjet printers to only accept region appropriate ink cartridges. Like a $56 Bic pen, restricting use to a single country and then saying you are not trying to make money on it.

...H-P ink cartridges sold in Europe are becoming much more expensive than equivalent ones in the U.S. "We are not trying to make money on this," Mr. Holm says...

May 1,000,000 hardware hackers descend on your tent. Link

Lucas Emery sez: "I have seeded a torrent file of all the "Trip Receptacle" mp3s you guys linked to yesterday to test out my Blog Torrent server (thanks downhillbattle!). Lots of good stuff from Terence McKenna, Alexander Shulgin, Timothy Leary, etc. -- not to mention great sample material for your next psytrace epic. Get it while it's hot!" Link

More than fifty years before the Huygens probe landed on Saturn's moon, Titan, Time magazine had a cover story about the possibility. Great illustration by one of the best illustrators ever, Boris Artzybasheff. Link (Thanks, amber figbee!)

Researchers at Cornell University have devised a process to make plastic from citrus fruits and carbon dioxide. They developed a catalyst to cause a reaction between oil from orange peels and carbon dioxide that produces a new polymer with characteristics similar to polystyrene.

"Almost every plastic out there, from the polyester in clothing to the plastics used for food packaging and electronics, goes back to the use of petroleum as a building block," (professor Geoffrey) Coates observes. "If you can get away from using oil and instead use readily abundant, renewable and cheap resources, then that's something we need to investigate. What's exciting about this work is that from completely renewable resources, we were able to make a plastic with very nice qualities."

Link

After weeks of hearing footsteps and slamming doors in the middle of the night, a wealthy Austrian man became freaked out that his castle was haunted. So he called the cops. The ghost turned out to be the wife of one of the man's employees. It's not entirely clear why she was trying to scare the hell out of her husband's boss. From The Independent:

An unexplained grievance had provoked her campaign of ghostly disquiet. Police said she was motivated by "a personal rancour" against the manager of the cultural centre in the estate.

She was convicted on Friday of harassment and damage to the castle, Italian newspapers reported.

Link

Several years ago, artist David Hockney published a controversial book claiming that some famed Renaissance painters may have used optical projection systems to achieve the amazing realism achieved on their canvases. Stanford university physicist and art historian David Stork calls bullshit on Hockney's theory. Stork used computer imaging software to determine the source and intensity of the light depicted in the painting. In a scientific paper, Stork claims that the only light source was a candle. From a New Scientist report:

(Stork) also says that given the type of lenses or concave mirrors available at the time, the brightness in the scene would have been reduced around 1000-fold at the canvas, making any projected image all but impossible to see and trace, unless several dozen oil lamps or hundreds of candles lit the scene.

As well as showing that the shadows cast can be plotted back to the candle, Stork's software indicates that the way light rays are reflected off Joseph's head are consistent with the candle being de la Tour's only light source.

The physicist Charles Falco, who collaborated with Hockney on his research, argues back that the artist probably painted the shadows the way they wanted them to look, not how the projector casted them. Link

When Mark linked to David-Michel Davies' blog post about his paan experience in India, a bunch of readers wrote in to warn us of the danger of cancer associated with betel treats. The new issue of Science News has a feature article about that very thing. Recent studies have linked betel chewing to oral cancer. Meanwhile, the habit is rising in popularity.

"Aggressive advertising, targeted at the middle class and adolescents since the early 1980s, has largely enhanced the sales," notes Beatrice Secretan, a health researcher who contributed to the 300-page Monograph on Betel-quid and Areca-nut Chewing published in October 2004 by WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer, based in Lyon, France.

"The situation," she says, "is similar to the real start of the tobacco epidemic, with industrially manufactured cigarettes, at the beginning of the 20th century."

Link

Tireless wireless pundit Glenn Fleishman says:

Verizon Wireless is being sued because they disabled access to Bluetooth file transfers on their version of the Motorola v710. Mind you, I'm not sure they ever promised that Bluetooth file transfer would be enabled; seems a little obvious, but Motorola doesn't think so. Essentially, Verizon has said, "Those photos you took? Ours. Unless you pay for a data plan or photo plan or some kind of plan to get your photos off your phone. Ta-ta!" Subscribers may be disgruntled, but unless Verizon Wireless misled, this may be a perfectly reasonable stance. As it would be for subscribers to only purchase cell phones with Bluetooth that's unlocked from other cell providers...

Link

Update: An anonymous reader says, "Here's a workaround. Mobile PhoneTools version 3.0 software CD plus USB Cable - 98653H. It's compatible with the V710 (according to the page) It's a data cable and the software to link your phone to a PC. I use it to back up my phone book, keep my calendar up-to-date, pull photos off my phone and put in MP3 files for ringtones." Link

Boing Boing reader CJM says,

I'm a subscriber to the Hollywood Video MVP program. This is something similar to NetFlix, but is limited to movies that are 4-6 weeks past DVD release. I'm tired of going into the store not knowing what has been recently added to the MVP list. Which means that at times it can be a waste of time to stop in. One thing that is nice, is that they provide a list of new items to the MVP on their front site. So, I thought I'd whip up a quick RSS generator for what they are adding to the MVP. I also decided that it'd be easy enough to do the rest of their sections as well. The list is below, parsed from the main Hollywood video website. Hollywood video, you'd be very cool if you would do this yourself. Since the lists off of Hollywood Video won't be changing too often, I will only be re-generating these files once per day (noon PST).

Link

And reader mediamelt says,

On the subject of custom RSS feeds, I'm a huge movie news nut (as noted by my film-geek centric blog) that grew tired of scouring tens of movie-news websites a day for the latest tidbits. Unfortunately, most movie news sites are extremely behind the times in terms of web technology and don't provide RSS feeds, so I wrote myself a little link ripper to be fed onto my blog for all to read and enjoy. The result? Headlines from over 70+ movie news websites, updated hourly, displayed on one page, most from sites that don't provide RSS feeds themselves. Version 3 is already in development and will feature independent RSS feeds for each site, as well as "keyworded" RSS feeds, "genre" feeds, and one massive feed containing every headline from every site. If that's not information overload made easy, I don't know what is. PHP/MySQL programmers with free time who want to pad their portfolio needed :)

Link

In what is hailed as a possible first step toward self-assembling devices, cells from rats grown on tiny silicon chips acted as tiny robots, researchers announced yesterday.

They described a new method for attaching living cells to silicon chips. They then and got the combined entities to move like tiny, primitive legs. Writing in the journal Nature Materials, Jianzhong Xi, Jacob Schmidt and Carlo Montemagno of the University of California Los Angeles said it is possible to make such devices, starting with a single cell "seeded" on a specially treated silicon chip. They used rat heart cells in one experiment and created a tiny device that moved on its own as the cells contracted. A second device looked like a minuscule pair of frog legs. "A microdevice had two 'legs' extending from the body at 45-degree angles; each leg had a 'foot' extending at a 45-degree angle," the researchers wrote. It may eventually be possible to grow self-assembling machines using the method, they said.

Link (Thanks, Cowicide)

BoingBoing pal Jen Collins points to this Geocities webpage offering a series of songs by the Algebra class at Valley View High School -- the first of which is sung to the tune of MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This -- and says:

I am the last person to be suggesting anyone try to improve their math skills... but this just reminds me of a couple of really fantastic teachers I had when I was a kid. My Latin teacher played Latin Jeopardy with us! At the time I thought she was batty but she's the reason I never forget my Latin prepositions.

Link to Math Music performed by the Math Boys of Denville, NJ (replete with splendid animated gifs)

Dig these slinky photos of Bill Gates from Teen Beat, circa 1983 1984 1985. Link (Thanks Aurgasm!)

UPDATE: Mark was the first to point out that the Macintosh on the desk behind him would indicate that this photo was taken in 1984 at the earliest.

UPDATE: BB reader Jennifer Dickert points to a Museum of Hoaxes post stating that celebrity photographer Deborah Feingold snapped these images in 1985. There's no evidence they appeared in Teen Beat. Link

Colorado construction worker Patrick Lawler visited a dentist about a toothache a few days ago. It turned out that a four-inch nail was embedded in Lawler's skull and he didn't even realize it. The nail entered his brain through his mouth when a nailgun backfired the week before. After a four hour surgery, Lawler is recovering just fine. From an Associated Press report:

"This is the second one we've seen in this hospital where the person was injured by the nail gun and didn't actually realize the nail had been imbedded in their skull," neurosurgeon Sean Markey told KUSA-TV in Denver.

Link

On the 24th, I'll be participating in the launch of the Spanish Creative Commons licenses in Madrid, appearing on a roster with a number of speakers who will talk about how CC licenses can be used and what good they are to Spain.

On Monday the 24th there will be a double presentation of Creative Commons Spain in Madrid: a press conference and a conference-panel. As the "real" presentation took place in Barcelona last October the 1st, the Madrid events will be a party and an accounting of the first 100 days of the CC-es licenses. In the morning we wll have a press conference, at 12,30 at the Residencia de Estudiantes (Calle Pinar, 23). The speakers will be collaborators in the licenses and users, and our special guest Cory Doctorow (applause). In the evening, at 19.30 at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Cory Doctorow will give a speech with a very long title about the copyright techology wars, and we will have a animated debate with a not so long title about "what will artists live on?". The list of participants follows below.

Link (Thanks, Javier!)

The JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank is an open-ended custom-made, Star-Wars-oid personal tank that carries up to five people at 40mph over sand. It comes with a giant 400w stereo and a camera for recording the reactions of the people you drive past. Only 20 grand! Link (via Gizmodo)

Mark sez,

There are some gems on the Internet Archive. I just watched the 1964 film, "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" and it is amazing.

Santa's weapons of choice include toys, maniacal giggling, and the "Christmas spirit."

The film is actually highly educational. Here are some things I learned from watching "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians": The children of Mars are addicted to Earth television which makes them stop eating. Martian women refer to their husbands as "master." There are good Martians and there are bad Martians. (Good Martians are trying to spread the Christmas spirit while Bad Martians have mustaches and try to stop them.) Earth children are resourceful.. when kidnapped to Mars they can disable Martian radar cloaking systems. Santa Claus is also resourceful.. he can crawl through ducts to escape being ejected out of airlocks. Also, Martian kids are just like Earth kids. They want dolls and baseball bats!

Being a firm believer in Martians and Santa Claus, I thought I was watching a piece of historical documentation. Then the film simply became too unbelievable. After Santa was kidnapped, the leaders of the countries of Earth met at the UN to work together to come up with a solution!!!

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

When Walt Disney World's Mr Toad ride shut down to make way for a Pooh ride, diehard fans were heartbroken. One fan set out to recreate the entire ride as a 3D computer-generated environment. That project is bearing fruit now, with amazing ride-through videos of parts of the ride appearing now. This is very promising indeed. Link (via The Disney Blog)

Deliciously stark nude studies and some sort of mass kiss-in with Pepsodent ads on flags are part of what you'll see in this gallery of work by Chilean photographer Maria Gracia Subercaseaux.
Link, horrible flash interface with annoying sound, but the photos are sublime. (via indienudes)

A 150-kilometre-long iceberg is expected to smash into the end of an Antarctic glacier sometime within the next couple of days.

It is an event so large that the best seat in the house is in space: a massive iceberg is on a collision course with a floating glacier near the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. NASA satellites have witnessed the 80-mile-long B-15A iceberg moving steadily towards the Drygalski Ice Tongue.

Link to NASA website with groovy animation, Link to BBC story, Link to a more recent item in Vermont's Times Argus. (Thanks, michael)