On the evening of blogger/actor Wil Wheaton's return to the small screen in CSI, this profile by the New York Times' John Schwartz. Snip:

The dark moment of the soul came in a Hooters in Pasadena. Mr. Wheaton wandered in one day in June 2000 with a buddy for lunch, and the waitress - her name tag, he swears, read "Destiny" - asked, "Didn't you used to be an actor?"

He responded at high volume. "Used to be?!" he shouted. "I still am!" The resulting funk lasted for weeks, and he emerged with a determination to let people know that there was more to Wil Wheaton than "Star Trek," that it wasn't a mistake to quit the show, that he is not just a former child star, and that life - his life - goes on.

Thus was born wilwheaton.net, a site that celebrates his current roles: husband, stepfather to two boys, member of a comedy troupe, technophile, writer and, yes, honest, still an actor.

Link to NYT story. Previously: Wil Wheaton to appear on CSI

Kim sez, "Lovecraft would plotz. Garage rockers with DV cameras are making a mockumentary about a sixties rock festival in Arkham that goes awry when the hippies open up the Necronomicon instead of the Whole Earth Catalog. With musical accompaniment from the Conqueror Wyrms and the Plasma Miasma."

Frank: I was just going to say that the Arkham sound is something new, something natural, something that grew out of the local scene, something that doesn’t sound like anything else...

Nancy: Organic.

Frank: Yeah, like Nancy said. Organic. Something that grew like a living thing, not something manufactured.

Nancy: But not something cultivated. Something that grew wild. A wildflower.

Cameraman: What sort of flower?

Nancy: (laughs) I don’t know. Christ, I can’t believe you’re going to hold me to that metaphor.

Frank: (thinks. answers very carefully) A moonflower.

Nancy: What?

Frank: It’s a type of morning glory. It only blooms at night.

Link (Thanks, Kim!)

A reader writes:

Interesting comparison by Ben Edelman of the bundle-ware and EULA payload of major P2P applications:

The study was commissioned by LimeWire, which proudly demonstrates that it has absolutely no bundle-ware.

eDonkey's EULAs fill 90 on-screen pages.

iMesh's EULA is 56 on-screen pages. (I assume this is the version of iMesh from before they shut down). v Kazaa's EULA fills 182 on-screen pages. The app writes 845 registry keys upon installation.

Morpheus shows you 44 on-screen pages of EULA for its bundle-ware, DirectRevenue.

LimeWire has no EULA and no bundle-ware. If you already have the Java Runtime Environment installed, it also has the smallest install footprint of any of the apps (cuz it's a Java application).

Link

My colleague Pedro de Paranaguá Moniz, a Brazilian copyright scholar, has drafted an excellent manifestor for braod reform in WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization. WIPO has been systematically undermining participation from pubklic interest groups through procedural games, as well as seeking to isolate countries like Brazil that stand up for their national interest in IP negotiations. This public letter invites you and yours to sign on and have your signature on the letter when we present it to WIPO:

We demand TRANSPARENCY within WIPO and strongly reject any kind of disproportionate representation.

Yet, we call for an immediate PARTICIPATION of civil society and consumer-interest non-governmental organizations (NGOs) within WIPO's activities. Specifically, but not limited to accepting applications from NGOs to serve as ad hoc observers at the upcoming Inter-sessional Intergovernmental Metting next 11-13 April 2005, and for the Permanent Committee on Cooperation for Development Related to Intellectual Property, next 14-15 April 2005, in order to provide a BALANCED discussion on the Development Agenda and on the IP system in general, observing an equilibrium between IP right holders and consumers.

Furthermore, we urge that WIPO, as a United Nations (U.N.) specialised agency responsible for promoting creative intellectual activity and for facilitating the transfer of technology related to industrial property to the developing countries in order to accelerate economic, social and cultural development, plays its role in making ACCESS to knowledge feasible for humanity, bearing in mind different needs (including, but not limited to, those of the visual and audio impaired) and stages of development.

Link

At next week's O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in San Diego, Boing Boing will experience an important and momentous first: for the first time ever, all four Boing Boing editors, and our band manager John Battelle, will be in the same place at the same time. It's not like we've never met, but we've never met all at the same time in the same place. Hope to see you there! Link

Though the hipsters wearing 'em may never know, these trendy purses made for non-Chinese speakers bear a message that would make Chairman Mao proud.
Link (Thanks, tian).

A mayor in the Mexico City district of Nezahualcoyotl is apparently now requiring police officers to read one book every month. (Officers who are only semi-literate will attend reading classes. Tests will be given on the books the officers claim they've read. Those officer who don't do their reading will not be eligible for promotion. From the BBC News:

Mayor (Luis) Sanchez says the reading scheme for his 1,100-strong municipal police force will make them better officers and better people.

The list of recommended titles includes such literary classics as Don Quixote, The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz, and, on a lighter note, The Little Prince.

Link

Bruce Schneier says: "More bad ChoicePoint news. They admit that there may have been more than 145,000 people who had their identity stolen, but they won't determine the total number because there's no law compelling them to do so." Link

Fred Durst sends flowers to blog-conglomerate Gawker, apologizes for including them in lawsuit over leaked sex phonecam video. Link to story.

Now, if only Apple would follow suit... Link to Dan Gillmor's editorial on why Apple's legal action against blogs is bad news.

If any Apple attorneys are reading -- I might suggest this particular arrangement for the blogger on your list, given our collective rep for navelgazing: link.

Previously: Fred Durst sues Gawker Media over much-blogged sextape

Update: Let the Fred-Durst-sextape / Soviet animation mashups commence! Can it get any more meta? BoingBoing reader Spinneyhead blogs:

Just a little experiment before I try any more complex lip-synching. Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst recently joined the long and boring list of C-list celebs to have sex tapes released onto the internet. Fleshbot claim to have been traumatised by his commands to "touch my balls and my ass", so I sampled this bit and used it to voice the parrot in a piece of Soviet animation found by BoingBoing.

Link to post including "Fred the Dursty parrot" on spinneyhead blog (3.2 MB *.mov), alternate direct link to movie on BoingBoing's server. (thanks fleshbot)

Charles sez, "The open access movement advocates free online access to scholarly literature with minimal restrictions on its use. This new bibliography presents over 1,300 selected English-language books, conference papers (including some digital video presentations), debates, editorials, e-prints, journal and magazine articles, news articles, technical reports, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding the open access movement. Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet (approximately 78 percent of the bibliography's references have such links)." Link (Thanks, Charles!)

Update: William of Occam sez, "the American Chemical Society (ACS) announced today that they are granting access to all of their 33 journals on a delayed-access plan (one year after publication it goes public). This is a pretty important addition to this movement because of ACS's size (largest professional scientific organization in the world) and the caliber of its journals."

The perfect antidote to those fired-for-blogging posts: Tim Bray explains why blogging is good for your career:

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.
2. You have to get noticed to get hired.
3. It really impresses people when you say "Oh, I've written about that, just google for XXX and I'm on the top page" or "Oh, just google my name."
4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.
5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
6. Knowing more also means you're more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
8. If you're an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.
9. If you're in marketing, you'll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.
10. It's a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

Link (via Waxy)

Boing Boing reader Brian sez:

Today Wilco released an 5-song EP that is supposed to only be accessible by those who purchased A Ghost Is Born. Turns out that all the CD does is give you a URL to the mp3s, meaning that anyone can get at them (in what I'm guessing is a legal fashion). I posted a link to the directory all the mp3s are contained in on my blog.

Link

Previously: Xeni's Wired News Interview with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco: "Music is not a loaf of bread."

Following up on yesterday's post about a worm-controlled synthesizer, BB reader Dav says,

Regarding worm music: I have a short video of a live worm controlled sonic sculpture displayed at a Bent festival (circuit bending, or hacking electronic music toys) in NYC last April. The guy took a flatbed scanner, replaced the sensors and hooked it up to this percussive rube goldberg-ish contraption. Then he dropped a bunch of live worms on the scanner to control it.

Link to 3MB .avi file. Link to larger still from video.

Jeremy Goldkorn of the group blog danwei (about Chinese media and culture) says,

This is a photo of an ancient Chinese dildo, and here are links to the source (on Sina, one of the big four portals of China). Chinese media is changing very fast, and a lot of weird stuff makes it into Chinese newspapers, websites and even TV. Boing Boing previously linked to a Danwei post about sex blogger Muzi Mei: link. There's also plenty of stuff about transsexuals: Link. Lastly, if North Korea actually declares war on Boing Boing, you might need the help of this man: Link

Link to danwei.org post about sex gizmos in Chinese protohistory.

Moment of antipiracy zen:

According to a Peoples Daily report on February 27, 2005 a televised anti-piracy concert watched by 150 million included one performer asking "A copyrighted CD for 200 yuan [$24], pirated one for 10 yuan, what will you buy?" "The pirated one," answered the thousands of people in the stadium.

Link (thanks Jason Schultz)

Simpsons episodes open with brilliant "couch gag" sequences where the family plunk down on the living-room sofa and trigger a surreal/funny animation. The best of these, hands down, is a riff on the Eameses' classic movie "Powers of 10" (a film where the camera zooms back in order of magnitude increments, going from cells to skin to city to country to planet to solar system and so forth. The Simpsons version of this is simultaneously trippy and hilarious. Link

Update: Andrew provides this torrent of the video -- thanks, Andrew!

The on-again/off-again European fight over software patents is confusing as hell -- what is the procedure here? What does the directive say? Why are software patents dangerous? This O'Reilly Network article brilliantly demystifies the process.

For example, article 4a of the Council document states that "A computer program as such cannot constitute a patentable invention. Accordingly, inventions involving computer programmes, whether expressed as source code, as object code or in any other form, which implement business, mathematical or other methods and do not produce any technical effects beyond the normal physical interactions between a program and the computer, network, or other programmable apparatus in which it is run shall not be patentable."

However, article 2a of their document defines the term "computer-implemented invention," which the document uses later to describe inventions that are patentable. It states that "'computer-implemented invention' means any invention the performance of which involves the use of a computer, computer network or other programmable apparatus, the invention having one or more features which are realised wholly or partly by means of a computer program or computer programs."

Confused? You should be. Some recitals in the proposal are phrased in such a way that they seem to indicate restrictions in patentability, while many of the legally binding provisions in the articles confirm the 30,000 software patents already approved by the European Patent Office and leave the door wide open for further patenting of software. The Parliament text of 2003 made the distinction close to watertight.

Link (via /.)

John Buckman is the founder of Magnatune, an Internet record label that sells its music under a CC licenses allowing free noncommercial use, but which requires you to take a license if you wanna make a commercial use. The most interesting thing about Magnatune is this one-click-upgrade thing, where if you like what you hear and want a commercial license to use it -- say, as part of a film project, Flash app or what have you -- you can do it all online in about ten seconds. It's a really new way of conducting a music business, focusing on extracting money from the kind of people who are accustomed to paying for their uses while enabling the public to act as a giant publicity machine for connecting your music with those licensors.

In this article, John presents a primer for British music pros on Creative Commons licenses, explaining how it all works:

Magnatune, like many businesses, exists to make money. As such, I wasn't willing to allow commercial use of our music for free. However, I reasoned that non-commercial use, such as our music appearing in a student film, or having the music appear on music recommendation web sites such as www.webjay.org, would serve as free advertising and create enthusiasm for Magnatune.

When uses of our music are non-commercial, no one is making money from it, and the likelihood of my being able to charge for that use is pretty low. Furthermore, Magnatune's music is widely distributed through these free non-commercial uses, essentially providing us with free advertising. And since Magnatune also licenses its music for commercial use, I reasoned that film students have to eventually graduate, and will then want to pay for our music because of our earlier generosity.

Link

MetaFilter has a short but amazing post about fore-edge painting, an entire genre of book illustration that's new to me. (Pictured is the fore-edge of a 1908 edition of The Wind in the Willows.) From one of the links:

Fore-edge paintings are watercolour decorations, painted on the ends of the pages of the fore-edge of a book. In most cases, a fore-edge painting is only visible when the pages are fanned out, expanding the panel formed by front edges of the book and exposing the painting.

The earliest records of fore-edge paintings date back to the 10th century, although the art did not flourish until the late 1600s. Fore-edge paintings are still being produced today and have evolved through the centuries to offer a complex and elaborate variety of paintings. In addition to the standard painting, sometimes known as a 'single', there are split, panoramic and double variations. Split paintings are those in which each half of fore edge bears a different painting. In 'Panorama' types the illustration covers not only the fore edge but the top and bottom edges of the book as well, giving a near-360-degree panoramic view. The 'double' type is amongst the rarest and most collectable. It shows an illustration when the fore edge is fanned out the usual way, and a completely different painting when the pages are fanned out in the opposite direction.

Link

This new robot at biscuit brand McVitie's laboratory in Buckinghamshire is tasked with testing the crumbliness of cookies. The plastic-toothed robot chews up biscuits to determine which baking techniques produce the desired amount of crumbs. From ThisIsLondon:

Liz Ashdown, brand manager at McVitie's, said: "Eating lots of biscuits is obviously an enjoyable prospect for most people but we haven't yet found a human who can test on this scale."

Link (via Near, Near Future)

Great Disney Insider article on Club 33, the semi-secret private dinner club above Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean. I've eaten here a couple of times and it's an amazing mix of piss-elegance, fine cuisine, and hammered Orange County uppercrusties who are nearly too drunk to stand (Club 33 is the only place in the park where you are allowed to drink).

Walt and Lily scoured New Orleans antique stores to find unique and lovely objects for his Club. He even had the Imagineers copy an old-fashioned elevator that caught his fancy in a Parisian hotel. "Walt and Lily wanted to buy the lift, but the hotel wouldn't sell it. So they had an exact copy made," Club 33 manager Jeff Plumb tells us.

Sadly, Walt never lived to see this piece of his dream become reality. Club 33 opened after Walt's death, but, except for the private apartment (that space, above Pirates of the Caribbean, is now the Disney Gallery), it's just what he envisaged.

The club's members (there are currently from 470 to 490 of them) enjoy gourmet cuisine like champagne risotto, roast muscovy duck, and lamb osso bucco in two lovely dining rooms. A staff of around 70 is on hand to cater to members and their guests. "We know what our members like, we try to remember everyone's preferences," Jeff tells us. "We have one member who visits every year from Australia – he loves salmon and when he comes, we make sure he gets his salmon – whether it's on the menu or not!"

Link (Thanks, Amanda!)

Stephen Colbert, the Daily Show's amazing straight-man, did a terrific interview on the whys and wherefores of political comedy with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. Lisa Rein has the audio in downloadable MP3 form. Link