Link to movie. New Links to Movie: Torrent (thanks, Prodigem!), 5.7MB .swf (thanks Jason!), swf mirror (thanks, metroblogging!). Update below.

Read more about the rockin' vacation destination nation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea newspaper, which today accuses the South Korean Authorities of possessing a "sycophantic treacherous mentality." Link. Life imitates Team America.
(Thanks, Hans)

Update: North Korea upset with Boing Boing.
We knew Kim Jong Il's regime rationed rice and soybeans from time to time, but -- bandwidth? An hour after this Boing Boing post was published, the KFA movie was replaced with a message scolding yours truly for having had the audacity to link to it:

[click image for full size]
Access to the requested object was denied.

Due to some inconsiderate people linking directly to our multimedia we were forced to take the content offline since it generated too much traffic.

This kind of careless linking to high-profile sites is typical of the internet where people no longer respect that such links could make free content less available.

We will never charge money to pay for the bandwidth, so if people are going to expect high-quality content they should make their own copy of the large file and share it from their own server.

Questions can be sent to support@korea-dpr.com for technical advice.

Thank you and have a nice day.

(c) Juche 92-93 (2004, 2005) Korean Friendship Association Official Webpages of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea All rights reserved. Copying and redistributed prohibited.

Wired Magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson says:

Wouldn't it have been spooky if they had put up a .torrent instead? Then the MPAA really would have had some basis for the file-sharing = communism case.

If Dear Leader's home page seems like a fanboy shrine, that's because it is. It's built in Barcelona by Alejandro Cao de Benos, a twentysomething Spanish IT contractor who frequents Pyongyang. ("It's so different from what people say," he claims over the phone.) By crossing Karl Marx with the Cluetrain Manifesto, Cao de Benos convinced DPRK cultural officials that to garner support from the Google generation, an amateur site beats no site at all. He maintains it as a volunteer project for North Korea's Committee for Cultural Relations With Foreign Countries.

But it may be the one national home page not visible to its own nation. Inside North Korea, local intranets aren't allowed to plug into the Internet's corrupting content. The country's Web site, served from an ISP in Texas, is for foreigners—it's a digital, pro-Communist equivalent to Radio Free Europe.

Here's the WHOIS data, and Here is how the KFA website describes itself:

This page was created by the Korean Friendship Association with the support and official recognition from the government authorities of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea.

"We are an arm, but with many western people, given that we are a volunteer organization run on the internet towards the west, and not many North Korean people live outside the DPR of Korea. Our president of the KFA, Mr. Zo Sun IL, formerly known as Alejandro Cao de Benos, from Spain, now has dual citizenship and is a DPRK citizen also, apart from working for the DPRK government as Special Delegate. (...) We are not state sponsored, but we are totally state approved. We are a non-profit organization called the Korean Friendship Association who works for understanding of the North Korean culture. Our ministry which we cooperate fully is the Committee For Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries in Pyongyang, DPR Korea (...) You can even find pictures both of me, Alejandro (ZO), and other people in our organization from our last delegation to the DPRK, where we met with DPRK officials: Link. But I can say immediately we are not a hoax. An objective (but definitly not authoritative) source is wikipedia."

Membership is free, and open to all people regardless of nationality, race, religion or political orientation. There are only two conditions for joining:

1. You respect the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and its leaders.
2. You respect the other members in the KFA and the goals of the KFA.

The membership may be cancelled at any time by each party, by one party informing the other. They also have a cute little flash karaoke where members can sing along to the song 'Let us advance the people's army': Link

Wil Wheaton says:

Luckily, there is another fantastic source for DPK propaganda: shortwave radio. The DPK sends out an English-language broadcast via shortwave that will blow your mind. A typical broadcast is filled with Personality Cult ramblings about how great Kim Jung Il is, bookended by some music that's actually pretty cool. Anyone who misses the cold war propaganda of Radio Moscow will not be disappointed. Listeners in North America can tune in daily at 1500 UTC on 9335 or 11710 kHz, while Europeans can listen on 11335 or 15245 kHz. The European broadcast repeats at 1900 and 2100 UTC on the same frequencies.

Update 2: We get signal. Main screen turn on. The mysterious KFA have updated their denial notice to read, in part:

We encourage people to share files on the internet to conserve resources, and we are considering expanding our selection of free multimedia content (Flash, MP3 and MPG/ASX/ASF) to make as much as possible available to as many as possible so that they may learn about our culture. The logical course of action is to use P2P technology such as found in the Bit-Torrent system. We will announce when the use of such system is available. In the mean time, we have to restrict access to some areas. Please check back in one week. Thank you for your attention and letters of support. (...)This webpage and its images is released to the internet community under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation Licence."

One thing is clear: the KFA know how to rock! out! BB reader Will says:

I yanked the kickass soundtrack from the North Korean Delegation animation. Quite frankly, I'm sticking this in iTunes and keeping it on repeat on my iPod as I ride the Greyhound to New York City for 8 hours. Meanwhile, remixers, start your engines! Link to MP3.

David Frazer says:

The soundtrack to the Korean Friendship Association video sounds like the work of the DPRK's own easy listening outfit, the Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble. Anyone with the time and inclination to identify the piece can try searching through the twenty-seven volumes of MP3s by the Pochonbo boys on the Korea Computer Centre website. A lot of the songs are slow ballads expressing love for the country and/or party, but there are also some annoyingly catchy pop-ish songs that would be ripe for remixing. And if you like the song from the video, you'll love "Reunification Rainbow" with its electric! guitar! solo!

But every once in a while, a rare and precious IP lawyer job opens up at EFF, and now is one of those occasions:

EFF is seeking an intellectual property staff attorney for its legal team. Responsibilities will include litigation, public speaking, media outreach, plus legislative and regulatory advocacy, all in connection with a variety of intellectual property and high technology matters.

Qualified candidates should have roughly three years of experience with litigation in at least one substantive area of IP law (patent, copyright, trademark, or trade secret) and a solid knowledge of the litigation process. Candidates should also have significant experience managing cases, both in terms of overall case strategy as well as day-to-day projects and deadlines. Candidates should have good communication skills and interest in working with a team of highly motivated lawyers and activists in a hard-working nonprofit environment. Strong writing and analytical skills as well as the ability to be self-motivated and focused are essential. Tech savviness and familiarity with Internet civil liberties and high tech public interest issues preferred.

Interested applicants should submit a resume, writing sample, and references to ipjob@eff.org.

"Of course, the scientific seriousness of the study in question does not at all change the fact that I so very want one." Link

There’s nothing like some hot and heavy celebrity lawsuit action to spice up a slow sex news day, especially when it’s your company being served the papers: The Smoking Gun posts all the juicy Xeroxed goodness regarding Fred Durst’s lawsuit against Gawker Media (along with nine other named defendants and “Does 1 through 100, inclusive”, whoever they are—we only remember seeing one girl in the tape) for our roles in disseminating what had already been posted in approximately umptyjillion other places before we even rolled out of bed last Friday. We’ll let the mothership handle the official response, although we should add that we are never, ever going to be able to get that “touch my ass and balls” soundbite from replaying in our minds while we’re lying there in the dark trying to go to sleep every night, and who can put a price on that kind of damage?

Warner Brothers, which owns the rights to the Harry Potter movies, has pulled the plug on screenings of "Wizard People, Dear Reader" scheduled to take place here in New York and in Boston this weekend. Each theater had rented a print of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, which they had planned to screen with the volume off while Brad Neely (who created Wizard People) narrated. But when the powers that be at Warner Bros. found out, they called the theaters and made them cancel.

The 2 x 8-ft. three-dimensional eyeglasses probably date to the turn-of-the-century. When the sign was acquired, it had plastic lenses in place of the original glass lenses, which would have had goldleaf and/or painted "eyes." The electrode housing holes around the bridge indicate that the sign had later been retrofitted for neon-probably in the 1930s. The sign is currently undergoing restoration by David Benko, the Museum's Electric Sign Curator.

Today, I received a response. It's a nice letter, but it doesn't answer most of the questions I had about why AA wanted a written dossier on my friends' names and addresses -- what's more, it contains outright lies about what happened at the airport.

So I've sent AA a reply, and posted it as well:

Alas, nearly every question that I raised in my last letter remain unanswered. Additionally, your letter contains an element that is factually incorrect, and I would like to correct the record on this point.

Factual incorrectness: I was never, ever informed that the information that I was being asked to give over -- the names and addresses of the friends in the USA with whom I would be staying -- would be disposed of immediately. Quite the opposite: I repeatedly asked what the document retention policy was for this material, and was given no answer to this question. If one of your employees has informed you that this was the case, they are not being truthful with you. Had anyone told me that this information was to be immediately destroyed, I would have had a very different response to the one I had.

I'm alarmed that this falsehood was part of an account that was given to the press. Please ensure that future communications with the press do not include this misrepresentative fabrication; AA has a legal and moral duty to faithfully adhere to the truth in its communications to the public.

New questions:

1. Your letter states that "specific behaviors" triggered my secondary screening. What were these behaviors? I would like to know so that I can avoid a repeat of this unfortunate and frustrating incident.

2. If this indeed was an isolated incident caused by a single screener's inadequate training, why did the screener's supervisor affirm that her request was both AA policy and an (unspecified) Transport Security Agency regulation?

As an A-item, the directive had once again been expected to be approved without debate, but it emerged late on Friday that Denmark will attempt to have the directive listed as a B-item at a later meeting instead. This means the text of the directive could be renegotiated, according to Florian Mueller, an anti-patent campaigner.

"If it works out like that this will be EU history. It is without precedent that anybody can specify that the EU council at the stage is unable to ratify a decision. But we have to understand that nothing is ever stable. We have to see what happens on Monday," said Mueller.

Denmark's representative at the meeting of ministers is compelled to ask for the change because of a vote by the Danish Parliament's EU committee that came out in favour of seeking to reopen discussions. Denmark's government is legally bound to adopt any parliamentary decisions regarding the EU.

I recently blogged (HERE) about an industrial shredder I found online. Check out the demo videos--this thing tears right through a massive load of paper... and tree stumps, and oversize tires, and a couch, and a 55-gallon drum of hardened concrete.... and a boat... Somebody had WAY too much fun taking these videos. If you're looking for the single most over-the-top method for shredding paper, I think this is it.

In a case with implications for the freedom to blog, a San Jose judge tentatively ruled Thursday that Apple Computer can force three online publishers to surrender the names of confidential sources who disclosed information about the company's upcoming products. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg refused to extend to the Web sites a protection that shields journalists from revealing the names of unidentified sources or turning over unpublished material.

BoingBoing reader Mark Palmberg says:

The ruling here doesn't cast the pall you might think over the blogging community. Consider that all Apple is after from ThinkSecret is the name of the person who broke his or her NDA with the company. Apple doesn't even want damages from ThinkSecret.

Compare the case to the Watergate scandal. That was all about reporters protecting sources in the pursuit of making news that would contribute to the public good. In the ThinkSecret case, and as this judge has correctly ruled, the issue does not concern the public good, but rather Apple's ability to compete in their market. The issue of journalistic protection to which you allude in the bOING bOING post does not apply to Apple's case against ThinkSecret, though this will make for an interesting footnote in the annals of blogging's ascension (decline?) into the arena of "real" journalism.

I am disturbed by the reader comment you added to the recent boingboing.net article about Apple going to court to unveil anonymous sources. The comment seems awfully cavalier about the importance of anonymous sources to journalism. The fact is, such a lawsuit would never fly if applied to old-fashioned print media, and Mr. Palmberg seems to bend over backwards to defend Apple.

Excusing this behavior by saying they're only after the sources and don't seek damages from the journalist is pointless, because the first amendment would prevent such a thing. It's like saying, "but I only shot him in the leg. At least I didn't shoot him in the head." Shielding sources from powerful interests has always been viewed as an important first amendment goal.

Of course there are different levels of "public good." But the law doesn't think that way, and that's the whole point. Whether it's the New York Times or the National Enquirer, courts are supposed to be prevented from interfering in the practice of a free press.

I have a shredder, but it chokes if I try to feed it more than six pages. When I have a lot of paper I want to shred, I put it in the sink and pour some water on it, and shape it into a giant ball, kind of like a gargantuan spit wad. If an identity thief wants to try to unpack it, more power to them.

Despite having very small brains—roughly the size of a chimpanzee's—they appear to have hunted animals twice their size, made stone tools for hunting and butchering, and used fire for cooking.

"It's remarkable. We've always been taught and thought that as humans evolved, the bigger the brain, the better they are," said Charles Hildebolt, a physical anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

"If this little creature actually made the tools and was using the tools, built the fire and was using the fire, then that really tips human evolution upside down and changes the way we have to think about brain evolution. It may indicate that the reorganization of the brain was just as important and may be even more important than size."

Copy-and-paste this link into your Podcast application. When you synch your MP3 device, you'll automatically receive any new commentary that's been posted. Start playing each episode's file when the words "The Cylons Were Created By Man" appear on your TV screen. Beeps will indicate when to pause for commercial breaks.

"(Boing Boing) has been testing Yahoo's long tail RSS ads. It's tough to find ads that are relevant to Boing Boing's content, and often the program fails - defaulting to pretty random ads. But when this combination hit my RSS aggregator, I had to note it....

After all, it is Friday. Plush toys, indeed."

Telecommunications companies have taken notice as cities, nonprofit organizations and startup companies have begun using these technologies to offer free or steeply reduced Internet access, said Bill Gurley, a Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist with Benchmark Capital who closely follows the issue.

Legislators in a dozen states, including Texas, have filed bills to remove competition for telecommunications companies, he said. Most are pending, but an Indiana effort failed, while a similar law in Pennsylvania passed, although it omitted Philadelphia because of that city's existing efforts.

"These are very disruptive, low-cost technologies, and it's not in the incumbent telecommunication companies' best interest to embrace them," Gurley said. "But these are technologies that can be very beneficial to communities."

The company that syndicates Bill O'Reilly's newspaper column has sent a cease and desist to the blog Newshound for merely linking to an O'Reilly column! On Stay Free! Daily, we're encouraging other blogs to link to the offending O'Reilly column.

And a postscript from Xeni: Q-Burns Abstract Message.
Image: Just as "air guitar" exists for those who love electric guitar but suck at it -- there is air scratch for ones-and-twos wannabes. web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

How does your brain work? Why do people have a ‘special mug’ for their morning cuppa? Why do faded jeans do wonders for your legs? In Mind Hacks at Foyles Tom Stafford and Matt Webb will explain how experiments, tricks and tips related to each specific operation of the brain, from motor skills to subliminal perception, can help us to learn a little more about this fearsomely complex nerve centre.

No previous neuroscience experience necessary. Please bring a pen – and your brain.

6.30pm
The Gallery
2nd Floor
Foyles Bookshop
113-119 Charing Cross Road
London WC2H 0EB

Tickets £4 redeemable against purchase on the evening of any book from O’Reilly, publishers of Mind Hacks.

RNIB is compiling a report on how Digital Rights Management (DRM) can impede access to information for people with disabilities. We're looking for your examples of how widely used DRM systems block access by blind or partially sighted people.

If you can help, please contact: David Mann or Dan Pescod at eurocampaigns@rnib.org.uk

I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.

But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.

As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.

Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.

Smithsonian Global Sound is to world music what iTunes is to popular music. Just like iTunes, each song is 99 cents. You can search in the normal way (by text string) But you can also browse by geographic location, instrument, and cultural group (which is pretty cool). And, of course, you can hear samples before you buy. Take a look at their Synchrotext feature, which allows you to follow real time translation and commentary of oral performances.

Update: BB reader Tom McMillan says,

I read the fine print at the site (under customer support), and it sounds like they're doing it the right way (except for the prices themselves, which are still too high - with one proviso that I'll mention below.) The cool things? 1. No DRM. You're free to play the tracks anywhere you want. Good for the Smithsonian. 2. They offer either MP3, or, get this, FLAC files! FLAC files! This makes their prices almost ok. You can of course decompress them and burn them to CD, and get the best sound quality that you're going to get. I like this. 3. You can download the original liner notes as a PDF file (Ok, maybe other services do this too - it was new to me.) One other point that is a little new, I think: a price scale < 3 min := 99 > 3 && < 15 := 1.49 > 15 := 3.49 But if I can download FLACs, I'm happy to pay a bit more.

If you want inexpensive "world" music (particularly afropop), Calabash Music now have a deal where you can get the first 20 songs for 50 cents each. After that it's something like a buck a song. Also see www.afropop.org, which has 99 cent songs and free streaming documentaries about old and new music from Africa and around the world.

Campaign finance reform is coming to the internet, and the Medium Lobster must say it's long overdue. No longer will bloggers simply be able to freely link to a candidate's website, or wildly and irresponsibly endorse one politician's views over another, or corrupt the democratic process with an overpowering onslaught of HTML-borne free speech. Thanks to John McCain, Russ Feingold and U.S. District Court judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, political speech on the internet will be as the Founding Fathers always wished it would be: bottled up and controlled.

The Medium Lobster's one complaint is that the judge's ruling doesn't go far enough. Certainly the excesses of the blogosphere will now be held in place, but how can there be true campaign reform when the spoken word goes unchecked? Every day, millions of Americans make unchecked and unregulated political contributions by making political endorsements on sophisticated verbal logs - or "verblogs," if you will - comprised of billions of currently untracked sound waves transmitted through the atmosphere. Until these words are properly tracked, counted, and restricted by the FEC according to the arbitrary limits of McCain-Feingold, American democracy will forever remain a prisoner of Big Speech.

[Somewhere, under the mountains]
Gandalf [Glamdring] Balrog
Gandalf [Glamdring] Balrog
Gandalf [Glamdring] Balrog
Gandalf [Glamdring] Balrog
Gandalf [Glamdring] Balrog
Gandalf [Glamdring] Balrog
Gandalf: "U. R. PWNED!"

[Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are running across Rohan]
Gimli: "FFS speed hax!"
Legolas: "LOL, N00b!"
**Aragorn spots the fallen broach
Aragorn: "Sif teh leaves of Lorien fall. They give +2!"

[At Isengard, Saruman is with a group of Wildmen of Dunland]
Saruman: "Teh Rohirrim are tards!"
Dunlander: "Sif leet! Damn retards!"
Saruman: "Joo bring teh pwn. Go and pwn those n00bs!"
Crowd of Dunlanders: "WOOT!"

"Apparently there is another Bill Graham out there somewhere who did something to get his name on an American watch list," the paper quoted an aide as saying. "Mr. Graham was obliged to prove that he was the other Bill Graham, the one in charge of the Canadian (armed) forces."

battleship - a high-sided steel coal car usually with a hopper or dump bottom
bazoo - mouth
beagles - hot dogs
bedroom of stars - a city park
to beef on - to inform
beefer - a) one who whines b) an informer
belly of a drag - the underside of a slow freight train
belly robber - a boarding boss who tries to save money on food
ben - a vest
benny - an overcoat
biddies - hen's eggs

Now, you may or may not know that I am a cigarette smoker. I often roll my own cigs, as I have off and on for years, especially when I'm trying to quit. The night before (Friday 2/18), I had rolled myself a couple of cigs, and smoked one before going to bed. On Saturday, there was a full rolled cig and a half smoked one on my bedside table. Apparently, Wes had seen these and, thinking they were pot, freaked out. Instead of confronting me directly, he ran out of my room to call Alison on her cell (I was oblivious to all of this, as I was sitting at a laptop with headphones on, happily editing video). Alison came back into the room and said to me: "Listen, Wes is freaking out because he thinks he may have seen a.... substance.... in your room. I told him to chill out, that it's probably just a cigarette, but I'm worried that he's going to call back to NY and make a big thing about this so we're just going to give you the afternoon off and we'll deal with it tonight after the cd is finished".

A high school student at Brick Township High School in New Jersey used a video camera phone to record his teacher screaming at kids. The teacher wanted the kids to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance National Anthem, but one kid refused to, so the teacher pulled the kid's seat out from under him.

The kid who brought the camera phone in was hoping to catch his teacher doing something awful enough to get him fired. As it turns out, the kid was suspended and the teacher has gotten off scotch free.

Hey, no offense, but a 22 pound lobster isn't all that big. What's more remarkable is that it survived so long in captivity. Check out (Trevor Corson's) Atlantic article on Dr. Bob Steneck, the lobster king, who routinely comes across specimens like this four foot long, 40 pound female when he's out in his sub. Link

Armed with searchlights, video cameras angled both forward and down, four whirring propellers, and a pair of lasers, the Phantom was likely to dominate an encounter with any lobster, no matter how large and antagonistic.

Or so Bob hoped. A few years back he'd been aboard a nuclear submarine owned by the U.S. Navy, cruising the sea floor off the continental shelf, when the sonar operator had reported a target at two hundred meters. Bob had slipped into the cramped observation module belowdecks. There, through a six-inch-thick glass portal, he'd been faced with the largest lobster he'd ever seen. She was a four-foot-long female, probably weighing thirty or forty pounds. She had turned toward the submarine and defiantly raised her claws.

As she began to learn music more formally, she found that when hearing particular tone intervals she experienced a characteristic taste on her tongue. For example, a minor third tasted salty to her, whereas a minor sixth tasted like cream. She started to use the tastes to help her recognize different chords.

Talking to news@nature.com, she says: "I always had the synaesthesia, but really became conscious of it at 16. Then I started to use it for the tone-interval identification. I could first check it by counting the space between the notes, and second by 'feeling' my tongue."

The Power Tool Drag Races are an annual series of attractions in San Francisco -- machinists and hippies building drag racers powered by various hand tools and then racing them for fame, glory, and small cash prizes. Last year, the races were filmed for the Discovery Channel, and the episodes are being aired now. This in itself is already pretty damn cool, but I am specifically submitting a link to a race entry that the Discovery Channel refused to film. Entered in the "sex toys" division of the race (which was entirely edited out of the TV episodes), it's two plush Toys 'R Us dogs which propel themselves down the track by way of humping, powered by an internally concealed hand drill. There is a lovely amateur video of it on the site.

(Library assistant director Joe) Latini said that most titles on CDs cost the library around $75, whereas in MP3 format, they range from $15 to $25.

"In the end, obviously, we're literally saving money," he said. "The units are paying for themselves."

The library even throws in a cassette adapter and an FM transmitter for use in a car. Patrons do, however, have to provide their own headphones for sanitary reasons.

Assistance Wanted.

You can call me Amy. I'm a reporter for a prominent Los Angeles newspaper. My friend was kidnapped last month while we were working on a story on drug-runners in Mexico. The authorities have given me the run-around. In short, I have a problem, and no one else can help. Can I hire you?

I'm looking for a crew of approximately four -- a pilot, a veteran with leadership qualities, a bouncer-type who knows his way around a welding torch, and a face-man. Crack commando experience a plus. Own van and car a plus. Access to cropduster a definite plus.

UPDATE: Tamu says: "Actually the second panel is not unintentional. The creator of Wonder Woman often used bondage imagery in Wonder Woman comics, because he felt it was an excellent example for women to folow. He endorsed woman engaging in bondage games, as they would eventually be the dominant sex on the planet. He thought bondage was healthy for strong women to engage in.

"Check out Wonder Woman: A Complete History for a look at William Moulton Marston, the psychologist who created the Wonder Woman character. He was quite a character himself.

"For the record, it's not that I am really into bondage. I'm really into comics.

"Honest."

In developments straight out of GATTACA's handshake scene, A Kansas City Star report indicates that the suspected "BTK" killer was tentatively linked to crime scene evidence by acquiring genetic material from the suspect's daughter's medical records - the tissue samples being taken without her knowledge.

The article goes on to give a brief but factually accurate explanation of how a request for "medical records" is entirely within the framework of the federal medical privacy laws (HIPAA), and also gives a likely source of the tissue - a routine pap smear. The article suggests that a judge issued a secret order for the records, though the article does not state if it was a formal 4th Amendment "probable cause" warrant, or some lesser standard subpoena, or even go into whether the police were required to acquire an order under HIPAA (there are circumstances where agents can just the recordholder.)

BUT the article also doesn't raise the fact that what was apparently requested was NOT "health information" - what HIPAA protects - but _actual tissue_ from the suspect's daughter's file samples.

See also this New York Times story about the role of "undeleted" data on a floppy disk in the BTK suspect's capture, which was blogged a few days previously here on BoingBoing: Floppy disk among clues leading to BTK capture .

Only the first four volumes of the new translation—from Swann's Way through Sodom and Gomorrah—are available here. For this we have Sonny Bono to blame. Just before he died in 1998, the congressman sponsored a bill to extend the term of copyright by 20 years: According to the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, passed later that year, rights would expire 95, rather than 75, years after an artist's death. Since Proust died in 1922, only those four volumes first published during his lifetime had passed into the American public domain by the time the Bono Act became law. It will therefore be at least 2018 before readers in the United States can find the final three installments of the new translation (The Prisoner and The Fugitive, and Time Regained) in their local bookstores.

In 2002, the FEC decided that the law should not apply to Internet communication, but a U.S. District overturned that decision last fall. Smith and two fellow Republican commissioners wanted to appeal, but because the commission's three Democrats refused to join, what Smith calls a "bizarre" regulatory process is not taking place.

Technically, McCain-Feingold applies to political partisanism and the way grassroots internet activity amounts to virtual campaign contributions. But critics say the law could be extended to cover many forms of politically-related comments or opinions on the internet, since generally all such expressions are by definition partisan. Does McCain-Feingold herald the beginning of government-mandated internet censorship?

McCullagh: What happens next?

Smith: It's going to be a battle, and if nobody in Congress is willing to stand up and say, "Keep your hands off of this, and we'll change the statute to make it clear," then I think grassroots Internet activity is in danger. The impact would affect e-mail lists, especially if there's any sense that they're done in coordination with the campaign. If I forward something from the campaign to my personal list of several hundred people, which is a great grassroots activity, that's what we're talking about having to look at. Senators McCain and Feingold have argued that we have to regulate the Internet, that we have to regulate e-mail. They sued us in court over this and they won.

McCullagh: If Congress doesn't change the law, what kind of activities will the FEC have to target?

Smith: We're talking about any decision by an individual to put a link (to a political candidate) on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet.

Smith: Again, blogging could also get us into issues about online journals and non-online journals. Why should CNET get an exemption but not an informal blog? Why should Salon or Slate get an exemption? Should Nytimes.com and Opinionjournal.com get an exemption but not online sites, just because the newspapers have a print edition as well?

Update: Greg Klass says,

You might want to alert your readers who aren't famiar with Bradley Smith that he is an arch foe of campaign finance regulation, whom the Republicans managed to put on the Federal Election Commission. Link to background. I would take any scary predictions he spreads about consquences of recent major changes to the campaign finance law (a.k.a. McCain-Feingold) with more than a few grains of salt.

Now a study has concluded the same thing: the thing that made The Da Vinci Code, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night and Memoirs of a Geisha into best-sellers was word-of-mouth: not advertising, not cover design, not marketing. Friends telling friends about the book.

"Publishers often stand accused of becoming ever more sophisticated and cynical in their pursuit of creating instant author brands, when ultimately it is as likely to be good old-fashioned personal recommendation that really sells," he said.

The World Book Day's campaign to encourage people to recommend their favourite books to family and friends includes the circulation of eight million postcards carrying the message "spread the word".

At the heart of Petitioners' argument is an arrogant and unreasonable claim--even if made to the legislature empowered to determine such a general issue of social policy--that the Internet must be designed for the convenience of their business model, and to the extent that its design reflects other concerns, the Internet should be illegal.

Petitioners' view of what constitutes the foundation of copyright law in the digital age is as notable for its carefully-assumed air of technical naivete as for the audacity with which it identifies their financial interest with the purpose of the entire legal regime.

Despite petitioners' apocalyptic rhetoric, this case follows a familiar pattern in the history of copyright: incumbent rights-holders have often objected to new technologies of distribution that force innovation on the understandably reluctant monopolist.

My friend Lydia Lam stumbled across this link, it's a 1999 Ira Glass NPR “This American Life” show with Spalding Grey. In the intro to the story Ira reads a poster I put up in San Francisco (in 1989, as I recall) offering “Guitar LESSON, not lessons. I only teach you one lesson. I will teach you three chords for five dollars.” (This pre-dates Found Magazine, but really reminds me of Found Magazine a lot somehow.)

In some way, I think that the poster eventually morphed into my “$30 School” book series.

There’s a funny story with this. When I put up the posters, I fancied that I’d be inundated with students, but only got one. He was a dimwitted 15-year-old Nazi skinhead dude. His hippie mother dropped him off, paid me the five bucks and left. The kid had brought his mom’s 12-string acoustic guitar and wanted me to teach him to play punk rock.

I had been up all night tripping on LSD, was trying to drink myself to sleep and had completely forgotten he was coming.

I was living with and sleeping with two women. We all three lived in a big kitty pile in one hippie room. The fat little skinhead didn’t like that at all. And I didn’t like that he was a Nazi, and kept laughing at him out loud about it. My lysergic mind was finding the idea of Nazis and skinheads not threatening, but unbelievably utterly ridiculous and farcical. And even funnier was the fact that this farking cartoon character was in my home for some reason.

But, being a man of my word, I tried to give the lesson anyway.

I was bragging to the kid about my alleged punk rock cred because he kept calling me a fucking hippie. It’s embarrassing now, because it’s so trite, but, I tried to impress him by telling him I knew Ian MacKaye. The kid didn’t believe me. I called Ian on the phone, so Ian could tell the kid what time it was. I said, “Hey Ian, I’m tripping on LSD and trying to teach some kid to play guitar, and he doesn’t believe I know you. Will you talk to him?” Ian said, “Michael, don’t waste my time with bullshit like this” and hung up. (The fact that Ian never brought up this incident again is a testament to how cool and reasonable a man he is.)

I was getting drunker and drunker and could only teach the kid two chords before passing out. Doug Hilsinger, the guitar player in my band “Bomb”, showed up to drop off some tapes to me, and ended up teaching the kid the third chord.

Doug wanted one third of the five bucks, which I think I still owe him to this day.

1. Renamed the page that handles form submissions to stymie any bots that just assume it’s in the default location.

2. Preceded the form where you enter comments with two dummy forms - an empty one (for really stupid bots) followed by one that looks identical to the real one. Both these forms submit their info to the wrong page. They’re hidden from real people using the magic of CSS.

3. Did the same thing after the form, in reverse order, in case any bots start at the bottom of the page and work their way up.

4. Added a hidden field to the form which gets sent along with the other stuff. When a comment’s submitted, it checks that this field has been sent, and that it has the correct value. The value is based on the current date, so changes every day. To get this far, then, bots would have to parse the HTML to locate the correct form (and not be thrown off by the dummy forms surrounding it), and extract the names and values of all the fields. But - and here’s the evil part - the value of the hidden field in the html is wrong. It’s replaced by the correct value after the page has loaded by javascript...

Steve Winwood, rapper Chuck D and the band Heart, said in court papers to be filed today that it condemns the stealing of copyrighted works. But it argues that popular services such as Grokster, Kazaa and others also provide a legal and critical alternative for artists to distribute their material.... [Grokster] threatens that monopoly by providing a near cost-free distribution mechanism, which supports far more content than even Web-based distribution systems.

"It looks like a regular cell phone, but it's got capabilities other phones don't; fill this 3 oz flask with your favorite hooch and take it anywhere; complete with clip, leather case and funnel!"

This energy-efficient composter breaks down and “digests” organic food waste at room temp with its proprietary Composting Bio Mix--a blend microbes and yeast cells, which conveniently also suppress odors while they work via Plasmacluster Ions that inactivate airborne mold and effectively clean the air in kitchen spaces. We know that sounds like science fiction, and here’s why: These suckers are yet only available in the land of the rising sun. Ah-ha. That explains it.

Previously owned items by director Tim Burton and his former girlfriend Lisa Marie. Designer furniture (Herman Miller, Noguchi, Knoll, Ashland & Hill), clothing (Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, YSL), lamps, ceramic kiln, fine crystal, make-up, electronics, Tiffany & Co. Sterling Silver, movie memorabilia, props from movie sets and tons more. This sale will be held in a warehouse in Azusa, CA, a 45 minute drive from Studio City. (via Cartoon Brew)

EMI FINGER RING CUTTER. So I put on a few pounds after I got married. I can deal with that. But when I found I could no longer wedge my wedding ring off my finger, that’s when I started to panic. I heard all the folk remedies: butter, soap, Crisco, and even a dental floss technique that my doctor devised, but nothing would get that ring off. It had to be cut. But much to my surprise, no one cuts off rings for fear of taking off fingers along the way. Only emergency rooms have the tools to do it, and no way was I going to pay that kind of cash for such a simple job. It took months before I realized I could do the job myself by buying a cutter online — they cost less than 10 bucks! The device is fearsome, with a spinning blade powered by a thumbscrew, but I was undaunted. After 20 minutes of work, I had that sucker off. Fabulous. Now I can eat all I want.

UPDATE: Mark D says: "Too bad the Marines don't have those ring cutters. (They make such a nice cut that you can have the ring soldered and never know it was cut.)" From USA Today:

When Marine Lance Cpl. David Battle learned he'd either have to sacrifice his ring finger or the wedding band he wore, he told doctors at a field hospital in Iraq to cut off the finger.

The 19-year-old former high school football star suffered a mangled left hand and serious wounds to his legs in a Nov. 13 fire fight in Fallujah. Battle, who is recovering at his parents' home in this desert city 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles, came under attack as he and fellow Marines entered a building. Eleven other Marines were wounded.

Doctors were preparing to cut off Battle's ring to save as much of his finger as they could.

"But that would mean destroying my wedding ring," he said. "My wife is the strongest woman I know. She's basically running two people's lives since I've been gone. I don't think I could ever repay her or show her how grateful ... how much I love my wife, my soul mate."

With his approval, doctors severed his finger, but somehow in the chaos that followed, they lost his ring.

(Professor Peter) Hurd said that it has been known for more than a century that the length of the index finger relative to the ring finger differs between men and women. More recently, researchers have found a direct correlation between finger lengths and the amount of testosterone that a fetus is exposed to in the womb. The shorter the index finger relative to the ring finger, the higher the amount of prenatal testosterone, and--as Hurd and (grad student Allison) Bailey have now shown--the more likely he will be physically aggressive throughout his life.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent Wholey a letter asking him to work with the group to release Bubba back in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine.

Another group calling itself People For Eating Tasty Animals reportedly offered Wholey a hefty price for the lobster. At Tuesday's price of $14.98 a pound, Bubba would retail for about $350.

I thought you might be interested in the German film Anatomie (Anatomy), a decent thriller with these corpse-sculptures as the subject. In the film, a clandestine brotherhood of doctors and med students perform these artistic autopsies and subsequent plastinations on living students. It's not a brilliant film, but might be entertaining for those interested in von Hagens' work. I've seen it around in US video stores. The film stars Franka Potente and Benno Fuermann, both of whom also co-starred in Tykwer's The Princess and the Warrior. Potente was Damon's sidekick in The Bourne Supremacy, in case you're not an avid viewer of German cinema.

Update: Shay sez, "there's a great documentary named 'Magia Russica' that tells the story of the Soviet animation studios."

A research team from Glamorgan University analysed 111 supposedly clean hard drives, bought for less than £1,000, and found that more than half still contained personal information. This included national insurance numbers, evidence of a married woman’s affair and detailed biographical information about children.

Ninety-seven of the hard drives were bought on eBay and four at car boot sales. As a control experiment, ten drives were also sourced from LCS Remploy, a company specialising in the destruction of data. All proved to be clean.

The original owners of the other 101 drives included universities, multinational companies and a Church of England primary school in East Yorkshire, all of which were breaking the Data Protection Act by failing to dispose of the information effectively.

Update: Stef sez, "Boing Boing readers may benefit from the free & open-source (GPL) application Darik's Boot & Nuke: it's a self-contained bootable floppy/CD that securely completely wipes the hard disks of most computers. There's even a Mac version now :) Works very well, I use it here at work to make sure that the drives of all the old machines we give away are securely wiped."

Update: BB reader Athelind sez:

This image is the Disney Concert Hall. This image is the Odeillo Solar Furnace in France, which can produce power densities of 12 megawatts per square centimeter. Notice any similarities? My comments on the story can be found here. Have a bright, sunny day!

The Gehry opera house is not Frank's most dangerous design. The Case Western Reserve administrative building in Cleveland has been threatening passersby with ice and snow fall for three years now: Link

Just wanted to let you know that The Gehry building in Cleveland is home to the Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management (e.g. the business school). It is not the administrative building of the University. Also, the Gehry building in Cleveland can be very bright and do similar things (e.g. fry your pupils, etc.) to the Disney building during the summer (when it's actually warm in Cleveland!)

The search is out for "The Sexiest Indie Gamer of all Time"! It's sponsored by Moonpod, The Behemoth, and Panic, who are all providing great prizes like free games and swag. The panel of judges includes the one and only John Romero, creator of Doom! We're trying to promote independent game developers with this contest.

Q: Ever wonder why adult bookstores don't display fully-inflated "realistic" love dolls modeled after porn stars?
A: Because in real life, they look ridiculous.

Link. NSFW. Fleshbot rediscovered this gem, and adds some helpful context here: Link

Amici are deeply concerned that recent legal, commercial, and political turmoil surrounding the proliferation and use of "peer-to-peer" communicative technologies threaten to chill legitimate contributions to teaching and research in this nation's institutions of higher education. This Court and the United States Congress have clearly articulated the value of education and scholarship to the workings of the Republic. Further, both acknowledge that teaching and research often require the unauthorized copying, distribution, re-fashioning, and performance of copyrighted works without permission from the copyright holder, and thus have cleared a space within the strictures of copyright law to allow for such publicly beneficial uses. The foundation of that space is "fair use," which, though an affirmative defense to the accusation of infringement, has granted educators a certain measure of comfort that they would not be sued by copyright holders for infringement. However, the penumbra of perceived "users' rights" that emanate from Sec. 107 of the Copyright Act has proven inadequate to protect many important acts central to teaching and research. Within this context, the academic utility of searching, indexing, and sharing of copyrighted materials remains in doubt among educators and scholars. Doubt creates a chilling effect, stifling the most creative uses of digital technology in the classroom or in academic research.

In the beginning, encyclopedias relied on the One Smart Guy model. In ancient Greece, Aristotle put pen to papyrus and single-handedly tried to record all the knowledge of his time. Four hundred years later, the Roman nobleman Pliny the Elder cranked out a 37-volume set of the day's knowledge. The Chinese scholar Tu Yu wrote an encyclopedia in the ninth century. And in the 1700s, Diderot and a few pals (including Voltaire and Rousseau) took 29 years to create the Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers.

With the Industrial Revolution, the One Smart Guy approach gradually gave way to the One Best Way model, which borrowed the principles of scien­tific management and the lessons of assembly lines. Encyclopædia Britannica pioneered this approach in Scotland and honed it to perfection. Large groups of experts, each performing a task on a detailed work chart under the direction of a manager, produced encyclopedias of enormous breadth. Late in the 20th century, computers changed encyclopedias - and the Internet changed them more. Today, Britannica and World Book still sell some 130-pound, $1,100, multivolume sets, but they earn most of their money from Internet subscriptions. Yet while the medium has shifted from atoms to bits, the production model - and therefore the product itself - has remained the same.

Now Wales has brought forth a third model - call it One for All. Instead of one really smart guy, Wikipedia draws on thousands of fairly smart guys and gals - because in the metamathematics of encyclopedias, 500 Kvarans equals one Pliny the Elder. Instead of clearly delineated lines of authority, Wikipedia depends on radical decentralization and self-organization - open source in its purest form. Most encyclopedias start to fossilize the moment they're printed on a page. But add Wiki software and some helping hands and you get something self-repairing and almost alive. A different production model creates a product that's fluid, fast, fixable, and free.

The bass player and father of two, who co-wrote The Sex Pistols' biggest hits, Anarchy In The UK, God Save The Queen and Pretty Vacant, hates it when his children, now 11 and seven, hear obscenities on the radio or TV. "It's pathetic when people just swear for the sake of it," he said in a carefully pre-recorded interview to be broadcast this Sunday.

Update: More photos courtesy of Remix Reading organizer Tom Chance

This is one of the finest pieces of fiction I've ever read online. Futurismic is doing an amazing job at picking lyrical, sharp, new sf from promising new writers. This volunteer effort run by a few writers in their spare time is as good or better than any fiction venue in print or online.

This story in particular is by turns mean, funny, and raunchy and clever.

t was like one of those antique mirrored disco balls exploded in my face. My fashions! Silver chips, like sequins scaled from a dying gown, fluttered around me towards the ground as I tried in vain to catch them. I was devastated. How could he have just flung my fashion discs out of the window like that? Probably drunk again on Red Stripe. Then his jerk-chicken-eatin' ass had to get all black and ignorant and shouted at me.

"And no come back in 'ere, man! You hear me? I told you before -- it's over and me no want you. Me just wanted your tight rass."

I felt like I'd been tripped on a runway by a jealous Thin Girl. I just couldn't believe it. I scrambled to pick up the FDs, but a gust of wind carried most of them into the street and another surge swept some into the gutter. At least three hundred holographic outfits lost. It had taken me weeks to design some of those programs.

420
666
2 ON 1
3RD EYE
3RD LEG
3RDEYE
3RDLEG
3SOME
4 TWENTY
4TWENTY
60 NINE
60NINE
A.S.S.
ANAL

Update: Dave provides this torrent of all tracks and cover art.

About 15 celebrities including Gwenyth Paltrow, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johanson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robin Williams, Orlando Bloom, Salma Hayek, Charlize Theron, Penelope Cruz, Morgan Freeman, Julie Delpy and Tim Robbins are all pulling up to the red carpet in hybrid cars. This is the third year Global Green, the American branch of Green Cross International run by Mikhail Gorbachev, asked celebrities to use their status to help the environmental cause.

Previously: Wilco's Jeff Tweedy: "Music is not a loaf of bread." (Thanks, Gary)

1 Indian Rupee ($0.02 U.S.)
15 Thai Baht ($0.36 U.S.)
11 Singapore cents ($0.06 U.S.)
1 Finnish Marka and 200 Italian Lira (no longer used, since the Euro came to town)

That only added up to 44 cents, so I threw in a couple of Chuck E. Cheese tokens as well.

When I went through this time, I heard the toll booth operator shout something that sounded like, "WALP!" I had been trying my little experiments at the same toll booth, so maybe he recognized my car, or maybe he was choking on a thick slice of ham. I didn't stick around to find out -- I got the WALP out of there. Link (via Cynical-C)

After completing a rigorous apprenticeship learning the most arcane of the pirate-hunting arts at the feet of master Jack Valenti, MPAA chief Dan Glickman has finally gained the power over life and death. We congratulate Glickman on mastering the complicated voodoo charm that resulted in his first long-distance kill; after all, it takes weeks of stirring the blood of an albino orphan to get the consistency for the pentagram-drawing paint just right. A lesser pirate-hunter would’ve paid someone in the Aryan Brotherhood with a carton of Marlboro Reds and a copy of Swank to snuff the guy with a pillow, but not Glickman. He’s got appreciation for craft.

Sprague was accused of copying 134 "screener" movies sent to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to solicit their votes for last year's Oscars, including "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" and "Seabiscuit." Films were made available for download over the Internet, authorities said. Prosecutors said he received the films from Carmine Caridi, an actor and academy member who appeared in "The Godfather: Part II." Caridi admitted in an affidavit he sent Sprague copies of several movies, but denied knowing about Sprague's criminal activities. He was never charged. In November Caridi was ordered by a federal judge to pay Warner Bros. $300,000 for providing copies of "The Last Samurai" and "Mystic River" to Sprague. A similar suit filed by Columbia Pictures against Caridi is still pending.

The best way to stop infringement is to tell the authorities and the owners so that they can follow up and arrange for a license and for royalties to be paid. Licenses for Happy Birthday are controlled by ASCAP. While monetary royalties will be negligible for a single restaurant performance, it is the principle that is at stake.

If you have seen someone singing Happy Birthday in a restaurant, a park, or at a school, you should tell ASCAP so that they can arrange for a license. If you are an offender, you should apologize and offer to pay whatever is due — a nickel, a quarter, a dollar — whatever ASCAP demands.

There is an overwhelming amount of copyright infringement of Happy Birthday. Let's right the balance and tell ASCAP about every one of these violations!

"While we British smile by pulling our lips back and upwards and exposing our lower teeth, Americans are more likely simply to part their lips and stretch the corners of their mouths."
Link (via
Neil Gaiman)

First we learn that Vioxx increases the risk of heart attacks. Now, we learn that Merck may have had research, as early as 2000, that uncovered these problems, but didn’t make it known to the public. It is time to end this secrecy. Lives depend on it.

Legislators have just introduced a bill--The Fair Access to Clinical Trials Act (FACT Act)--to require drug companies to make public all the results of their clinical trials so we’ll know about potentially harmful side effects. And Congress must create an independent office of drug safety in the Food and Drug Administration to ensure quick action is taken when safety concerns are raised.

Mr. Moss got his start in 1996 while working at a McDonald's in Southern California. "They were having a costume contest at my job and the prize was $200 and I thought, O.K., I'm going to try and win this," he said.

He bought a $12.99 wig, donned gray jeans and applied face paint he made out of baby powder. "It was kind of scary," Mr. Moss said. "But it worked and I was $200 richer at the end of the day."

Sensing he was onto something, Mr. Moss, a Los Angeles native, took his act on the road, well, actually, down the road, to Mr. Jackson's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There Mr. Moss would perform with little more than a boombox and a well-placed hat for tips. The tourists ate it up. "I would walk away from there in an hour with $100 to $200," he said. "I thought if they want me this bad, this is something that I should really get into."

This construction project started out as a, very low cost computer terminal for home use, but as it went together, we became aware of the many possible non-computer uses for such a device, particularly since it is priced right. What can you do with a machine that puts letters and numbers on an ordinary unmodified TV set?

Obviously, it's a computer terminal for timesharing services, schools, and experimental uses. It's a ham radio Teletype terminal. Coupled to the right services, it can also display news, stock quotations, time, and weather. It's a communications aide for the deaf. It's a teaching machine, particularly good for helping preschoolers learn the alphabet and words. It also keeps them busy for hours as an educational toy.

It's a super sales promoter, either locally or on a store wide basis. It's easily converted to a title machine for a video recorder. It's a message generator or "answer back" unit for advanced two way cable TV systems. Tied to a cassette recorder, it's an electronic notebook and study aid, or a custom catalog.

For visible-light shielding, says (scientist Nader) Engheta, nature has already provided suitable plasmonic materials: silver and gold. To reduce the scattering of longer-wavelength radiation such as microwaves, one could make the shield from a 'metamaterial': a large-scale structure with unusual electromagnetic properties, typically constructed from arrays of wire loops and coils.

(Scientist Andrea) Alù and Engheta's calculations show that spherical or cylindrical objects coated with such plasmonic shields do indeed produce very little light scattering. It is as though, when lit by light of the right wavelength, the objects become extremely small, so small that they cannot be seen.

Amici write to call to the Court's attention several computer science issues raised by Petitioners [i.e., the movie and music companies] and amici who filed concurrent with Petitioners, and to correct certain of their technical assertions. First, the United States' description of the Internet's design is wrong. P2P networks are not new developments in network design, but rather the design on which the Internet itself is based. Second, a P2P network design, where the work is done by the end user's machine, is preferable to a design which forces work (such as filtering) to be done within the network, because a P2P design can be robust and efficient. Third, because of the difficulty in designing distributed networks, advances in P2P network design -- including BitTorrent and Respondents' [i.e., Grokster's and Streamcast's] software -- are crucial to developing the next generation of P2P networks, such as the NSF-funded IRIS Project. Fourth, Petitioners' assertion that filtering software will work fails to consider that users cannot be forced to install the filter, filtering software is unproven or that users will find other ways to defeat the filter. Finally, while Petitioners state that infringers' anonymity makes legal action difficult, the truth is that Petitioners can obtain IP addresses easily and have filed lawsuits against more than 8,400 alleged infringers. Because Petitioners seek a remedy that will hobble advances in technology, while they have other means to obtain relief for infringement, amici ask the Court to affirm the judgment below.

The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) said that it views VoIP as a value-added telecom service and, as such, it should be regulated. At its most Draconian, the proposal would make Internet telephoning a crime.

One Costa Rican official of an agency seeking to promote the Central American country's software industry said last week that ICE's proposal would be "disastrous" to the country's efforts to grow its software development and outsourcing businesses. The official, who asked that his name not be used, noted that Costa Rica has been rapidly growing its outsourcing business and low-cost telephone service is crucial to the growth of that business.

It tells the spy everything he or she needs to know including about living and operating in London, from the best rendezvous points to tips for avoiding attention from the authorities.

For instance, a flat in South Kensington was "definitely an asset" as the area has a good reputation with the police, it said.

But central London should be avoided for meeting secret contacts because of the heavy police presence.

"Rendezvous should be arranged in the outlying districts. Thus one can pass through the central area with all its stores, museums, shops, subways etc to make sure one is not shadowed," the handbook warned.

Suggested rendezvous points included the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, the bandstand in Hendon Public Park, Chelsea Town Hall and the ABC Cafe opposite Ealing Broadway Underground Station.

Update: Mike Ryan sez, "this is from the 1930's. A pedantic point, but the KGB wasn't called as such until 1953."

Update 2: CMH sez, "You can look at picutures of the documents here."

Venue: South Street (http://www.readingarts.com/venues/southstreet.asp) arts centre, Reading, RG1 4QU. Map (http://www.readingarts.com/venues/howtofindus.asp)

Times: Turn up at 5pm for the press conference, 5.30pm for the soundcheck & warmup, and 7pm for the main event.

Price: We'll be charging £2 on the door, except for VIPs and those playing in the main auditorium. The venue is limited to 300 people, with 220 in the main auditorium at any one time, so get there early to avoid disappointment!

She says: It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness

He says: I wouldn't be so sure, maybe a candle would destroy your night-vision - without the candle your eyes could adjust to the lowered light levels (a process called adaptation, [Hack #26])

She says: But if you're in total darkness, there's no light at all to adjust to seeing

He says: Good point, so maybe it should be "It's better to wait for a bit, then, if your eyes don't adjust, you should light a candle rather than curse the darkness"

The words "not overwhelmingly antagonistic" are an interesting choice for a report that cheerfully concludes that "when given a choice between a normal music CD and a 'copy-once' CD priced $5 less, 33% of those who do not rip CDs and 27% who rip CDs preferred the copy-once CDs." So, to keep in the crude phrasing, two thirds of the (CD) users do not prefer a 'copy-once' CD, even at a lower price...

The distinction between rippers and non-rippers is interesting, if one takes it as a difference between users who do and do not make active fair uses (presumed that the do's keep from (subsequent) infringing uses). With a margin of 6% it seems that even the people that do not copy CDs (yet), are not so eager to hand over this possible (fair) use. I would say that there is an awareness with (these) users that copy-protection is not something to buy into under the current conditions. And I'd say that a median of 70% saying "No" could qualify as "antagonistic", overwhelmingly or not.

• My cow-orker Fred von Lohmann posts this great analogy: "Imagine I have a butler whom I task with going through what drops into my mail slot each morning. His job? To annotate my snail mail. He goes through the advertising circulars and researches whether better prices are available anywhere else. He gets me a map of every return address. Maybe I ask him to anticipate needs I don't even know I have yet. If he does something I don't like, I replace him... Of course, we have to make sure the butler doesn't try to take over and act like a jail warden (i.e., monopolists forcing you to take a butler). And we don't want the butler to sneak into your house when you're not looking (i.e., spyware). But Google's Toolbar seems to be a pretty good butler -- it's not like he hides his presence, and you can fire him anytime you like (it's not as though Google's leading position in search gives it much ability to force its butler on you; you can choose from lots of other 'toolbar' apps that can submit searchs to Google)."
• Plenty of Cowbell asks whether I like the sight of an ISBN corresponding to one of my books being rewritten. My answer: Hell ya! This shows how an authors' association like the Science Fiction Writers of America could collect its members' ISBNs and affiliate IDs for their favorite web-stores and provide plugins that would rewrite every single instance of my ISBNs on pages viewed through the plugin with a link to my affiliate account on Amazon, making me some serious coin. Wanna support an author? Install her plugin and help her feed her kids. Wanna support a charity? Install its plugin and have all the affiliate links rewritten to its benefit. Wanna support youself? Install the plugin that rewrites every ISBN with your own affiliate ID.

When you fight DRM for a living, it can seem hopeless. Then the greedy fools who make the stuff go and shoot themselves in the head with dumb crap like this and you realize that there is hope after all. Link (Thanks, Fred!)

This amazing ALIEN-like sculpture is made out of scrap metal and old auto parts such as nuts & bolts, connecting rods, motorcycle chains, gears, spark plugs, bearings, springs and whatever can be found in junkyards. Artists spent approximately 2 months to create this incredible piece of art by collecting different parts from the junkyards and welding them together piece by piece. It was polished and coated with lacquer to prevent it from rusting. This sculptre is about 7 feet in height, comes in 7 different pieces legs, body, left arm, right arm, head and tail with incredible details. Very easy to assemble just need some muscles. We never put him on a scale but the estimate weight is about 300-400 lbs. This will be a great conversation piece in any living rooms.

Two weeks ago, BTK dropped off a package at Kansas television station KAKE, which included a floppy disk linked to a computer at Rader's church. "They asked me if I had a list of people who had access to our computer and I provided a list of people for them," said the Rev. Michael Clark of Christ Lutheran Church. "Yes, [Rader] was [on that list]."

Update: Matt says, "I hope this doesn't come off as know-it-allish, but just FYI, the Japanese word for sushi served on a naked lady is not nyataimori but nyotaimori (女体盛り):

nyo (女) - woman
tai (体) - body
mori (盛り) - helping, plateful, serving, arrangement, etc.

The Duchess of Northumberland's controversial poison garden has been officially opened. Cannabis, opium poppies, magic mushrooms and coca - the source of cocaine - all feature at the centuries-old Alnwick Garden.

Herb Vest believes that true love should come with a criminal-background check. Vest is the chief executive of True.com, an online dating service that pledges to verify whether your dream date is a convicted felon or, worse yet, already married.

"Although criminal-background screening is not entirely foolproof, we owe it to our members to provide a truly wholesome environment for online courtship," Vest said last year.

This would be an engaging but otherwise unremarkable business plan, except for one twist. Instead of competing head-to-head with his rivals in the business world, Vest has veered into the political world by pressing for new laws that would put True.com's competitors at a severe disadvantage.

Vest has managed to convince legislators in states including California, Texas, Virginia, and Michigan to sponsor bills that would target rival dating sites like Match.com, Yahoo Personals, Spring Street Networks, craigslist and eHarmony...it would regulate far more than just dating sites. The California bill introduced last week covers any Web site offering "compatibility" or "social referral services"--a sweeping definition that encompasses everything from high-school reunion site Classmates.com to a matchmaking site for a tennis doubles tournament.

Under the California proposal, social referral services Friendster.com and Google's Orkut.com would be on the hook for fines of millions of dollars a day if they declined to post a warning similar to the one above on California members' ads or profiles.

The February issue of National Geographic Magazine has a comprehensive feature about Bollywood by "Maximum City" author Suketa Mehta. While he offers readers a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the hit film Veer-Zaara, the true gem of this package is a narrated photo essay by William Albert Allard. The magazine also delves into the Indian film industry's less-than-stellar counterpart in Pakistan, dubbed Lollywood.

While you're at it, check out Bollycat. Apul explains: "Watching Bollywood films can often strike you with a maddening case of deja vu. You think you've seen the movie before, but you just can't identify the what, when and where of your suspicion. Enter Bollycat, a new web site created by a team of students at SUNY Rockland, which aims to link Bollywood films to their Hollywood 'inspirations.'"

In 1991, the experimental sound collage band Negativland released a single called “U2”, which extensively sampled both U2’s hit single “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and colorful studio recordings of Top 40 disc jockey Casey Kasem. This offbeat recording would have languished in obscurity if weren’t for Island Records, U2’s record label, which decided to sue Negativland and their independent label SST Records for deceptive packaging and copyright infringement. After a protracted legal battle, Negativland’s legal funds were exhausted and they settled out of court. Today, it is illegal to produce the “U2” single in the United States. (U2, on the other hand, would go on to use unauthorized samples of appropriated satellite video in their Zoo TV tour.)

Now you can commemorate this ignoble episode in intellectual property history with the Unauthorized iPod U2 vs. Negativland Special Edition. From its packaging to its pre-installed content, this unauthorized iPod modification is an artful mash-up of the forces of corporate megarock and obscure experimental music, and a provocative symbol of the ongoing struggle between those who would confine culture and those who would free it.

Update: Damon Bacheller says,

I'm the web person for www.thecradlerocks.com. I noticed it appeared on boingboing today. There is an issue with the shared SSL, and getting the host to fix this problem. We're working on it, and hope to have it fixed asap. In the meantime, users can be assured their information is in a safe place, and orders can be placed securely.

Raskin is best known for starting the Macintosh project at Apple in the late seventies, though his later career as an expert in computer interfaces was overshadowed by controversy over who 'fathered' the Macintosh. Though Raskin conceived of the Mac, he was usurped by Steve Jobs, who put his own distinctive mark on the machine we know today.

Update: BoingBoing's founder Mark Frauenfelder says:

This is really sad. I saw Jef last fall, and he seemed to be in good health. Jef wrote many wonderful ideas for me when I was an editor at Wired. He also wrote some really funny (and true) stories for the print edition of bOING bOING under the nom de plume "El Jefe." He was a wonderful artist, musician, and inventor. He'll be missed.

He should give it all away to doctors...
He should crap blood and pus...
He should have a large store, and whatever people ask for he shouldn’t have, and what he does have shouldn’t be requested...
All his teeth should fall out except one to make him suffer...
I should outlive him long enough to bury him.

Update: Some readers report that this site trips their anti-spyware software. I use Firefox and OS X, so I am immune. You may not be so lucky. On the other hand, the anti-spyware could just be overzealous. Who knows?

Update 2: Ed Bott sez, "I am the author of the best-selling books Windows XP Inside Out and Windows Security Inside Out. I can tell you for a fact that this site offers to install a known piece of deceptive software (aka spyware) on the computer of anyone who visits. It uses social engineering techniques to trick the visitor into accepting the installation. In my opinion, you should remove this link as a service to your readers." Forewarned is forearmed.

Update 3:Ran Li sez, "The Alternative Dictionaries provides a similar service, with entries sorted alphabetically, PDF versions (the whole thing or for individual languages), and no spyware."

Update: Bug sez, "the BBC also does this. They have English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic, along with French, German, Italian and Spanish and a whole bunch of others at a variety of levels."

Four women and two men had electrodes planted deep into their brain to stimulate one of the areas involved in mood control.

Each underwent local anaesthetic before doctors drilled two small holes in their skulls. Then, using magnetic resonance imaging to guide them, doctors inserted two thin electrode wires into the brain area. The other ends of the wires were threaded under the scalp down to the lower neck area.

Next, the patients underwent a general anaesthetic to have a pulse generator implant, the "pacemaker", sewn in under the skin of their chest. The wires were hooked up to this to provide constant brain stimulation...

All six volunteers reported acute effects once the current was switched on. These included a sudden brightening of the room and a "disappearing of the void".

One question that arises from this is: how would Google feel if you were to provide a service that reformatted its pages for others to use? As it turns out, Google routinely allows it. Here are three examples:

1. W3C HTML Validator: Scrapes Google and reformats it, commenting on its use of html, linking to relevant elements of the spec
2. Bobby Accessibility Validator: Scrapes Google and reformats it, commenting on its adherence to accessibility guidelines
3. For Me To Poop On: Scrapes Google and reformats it with a large, floating pile of dogshit drawn over the screen

Update: Phil adds, "don't forget GooglePreview, the Firefox extension that adds dinky thumbnail views of websites directly onto the Google search results page."

Update 2: Nearly forgot my favorite: The Internet Archive scrapes Google, reformats it, and replaces all the links with links to cached historical versions of Google's pages.

Update 3: Two more gooduns: Scroogle "scrapes Google, discards the ads, removes cookie, and has access log deleted after 7 days" (Thanks, Philip!); and Gizoogle "scrapes Google entries...and reformats them from Snoop Dogg's internet perspecizzle" (Thanks, J!).

Update 4: Not always, though: George reminds us that "Julian Bond wrote a PHP script to reformat Google News searches as RSS and Google had him take it down. He was simply aggregating data from Google News, which is exactly what Google News does to other sites."

Update 5: Christoph sez, "Marcos Weskamp's excellent newsmap is remixing Google News for quite some time now and it's still running. Perhaps he has reached some agreement by now, but when he presented his project at Ars Electronica last year he mentioned that he's scraping Google News."

Update 6: Google Mirror scrapes Google result screens and reverses them (Thanks, John!).

Berry was named worst actress of 2004 by the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation for her performance in "Catwoman" and she showed up to accept her "Razzie" carrying the Oscar she won in 2002 for "Monster's Ball."

"They can't take this away from me, it's got my name on it!" she quipped. A raucous crowd cheered her on as she gave a stirring recreation of her Academy Award acceptance speech, including tears.

She thanked everyone involved in "Catwoman," a film she said took her from the top of her profession to the bottom.

"I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit," she said as she dragged her agent on stage and warned him "next time read the script first."