Somers said the X-ray was unlike anything he had ever seen. The key was clearly outlined in the picture, located just to the right of the spine.

"I've seen all kinds of things. This is the most bizarre," Somers said Thursday afternoon as he held up the X-ray to the light.

"It's a perfect silhouette."

Using the image, Somers made two new keys in just a few minutes, based on the visible notches in the original key and the type of keys used for the vehicle.

Allen grinned as he fit the first key in the ignition and started up the pick-up truck.

"I can drive my truck," he said, gleefully.

The 19th Century fort - complete with a couple of cannons - dates back from the time of Napoleon, when it was initially built as a defence for the river Haven.

But it has nowhere to sleep at present, and the new owner will have to sort out sewage, water and power.

Update: Some more photos of the fort here and here (Thanks, Lazarhat and Jesse!)

Update: Douglas sez:

So, I was wondering just what the heck motivated Honda to do this wonderfully surreal game, and did some digging. I learned that:

1) Those are actually ear protectors the bunny is wearing (from having to deal with nasty old diesel engines), not headphones, as some people have posted. This explains why they are burned up in the BBQ at the end of the game. (I initially thought perhaps he was giving up recorded music on some sort of principle.)

2) It's part of a Honda campaign for a new, improved type of diesel engine. There's an ad that goes with it featuring Garrison Keillor, which is every bit as surreal as the game (and with better production values).

3) The theme of the game and the lyrics of the recurring song (hate something/change something) comes from the backstory Honda is promoting about how their chief engineer hated diesel engines, and refused to consider using them unless they could be vastly improved.

STOP BUGGING ME If newspaper marketers think they are receiving reliable user information via those annoying site registrations, they should run their Web addresses through bugmenot.com, which offers quick user names and passwords to people who click on a link only to be confronted by a mandatory registration page. Some examples of usernames: thisisannoying; iwantnews; thisisjustsilly; whydoyoudothis. DAN MITCHELL

LA is big. Big enough for an "illegal space race". We will place the planets true to scale (sun, 4 meters in diameter, Pluto, one centimeter in diameter, about 20 miles away) throughout the LA cityscape. Then we will conduct a car race. The team that makes it through 'LA space' fastest wins the interplanetary trophy. In conclusion, of course, the speeds of the cars will be calculated, for example, how much faster than light they were. Patrick Dondl of Caltech will be on hand as astrophysical guest commentator to comment on the events.

June 25, 2 PM @ Machine Project

"I don't want to condone piracy," says Hayden of Tor Books. "But in general I find it not so much appalling as encouraging. We're the genre that the readers care enough about to be this obsessive about. I want to do something with this, not fight against it."

Doctorow agrees. "Think about the care that goes into pirating a book!" he says. "That person has not done that because he hates the author and wishes to do the author harm, but because he loves the work and loves the author. Calling that person a thief is about the most suicidal thing you can do." And, as Stross points out, "the availability of a free e-book actually undercuts the profitability of pirate paper or electronic editions."

Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, the leading publisher of computer books in America, says his company certainly does encounter piracy, the more so since their work attracts the most technically savvy people in the world. The books of theirs that sell the best are the books that are most often pirated (and the most shoplifted, incidentally), but this doesn't stop those books from selling well. "I'm sure there are people who pass around the links and use the pirate links," says O'Reilly. "But in our experience they're not the people who are likely to buy the books anyway."

I'm all for buying music, making sure the artists are compensated and the major labels get their cubic meters of money to continue suing their customers. What I (and everyone else O know) will not stand for is a product that uses a protection scheme that ruins the experience. If the service used standard compliant MP3 files, I'd have signed up and filled my 2 gigs of storage on my handheld, yes it's a windows mobile device, it has mobile media player 10 that can handle the crippled files you hare selling. The fact is while my device can use your DRM, I won't. Simple as that.

Thanks for the attempt, man you guys almost have the ideal business model, once you support a non crippled file format, Holy smokes, you guys will be huge.

CommonBits and Broadcast Machine are both excellent platforms for delivering the coming wave of citizen media content. And there are others.

Prodigem offers a BitTorrent hosting service that allows people to sell their content. OurMedia and Archive.org offer a similar hosting service without BitTorrent but neither service has a particular community focus e.g. politics or music. Al Gore’s new company Current.TV is also making an effort to involve citizen media producers albeit more commercial.

The community aspect of these sites is important. CommonTunes was created to support the online music community and CommonFlix to support video sharing. OurMedia has a lot of community features as well.

To create the mold, I first had to construct a bit. I used a lathe to turn a steel rod into a bulletlike shape, then used a milling machine to cut away a quarter-circle wedge of the rod, leaving a sharp cutting edge. Basically I had built a router bit shaped like a bullet. (I've fabricated bits like this freehand with a file; which works fine, it just takes longer. Much longer.) After using the bit to machine the graphite bullet mold, I used an electrically heated graphite crucible to pour in 0.999 fine liquid silver at about 2,000*F, which is 230*F above its melting point. The mold must be preheated with a blowtorch to keep the silver from solidifying before it fills the whole cavity. One of the benefits of using graphite is that it keeps the silver from oxidizing, so bullets come out bright and shiny.

"All his notes, manuscripts, speeches, letter, and all his published works are included in the project which is supposed to be finished in 2008, it will also be added a lot of comments to his works. Before they are published on the net, it will all be printed. The printed version of the Ibsen compilation will fill up 31 books! The texts will be coded by the standards of the Text Encoding Initiative to make it easy to search through." Link (Thanks, Forteller)

Thank you for writing to me about the digital broadcast flag. I appreciate hearing from you.

I feel strongly that we must prevent the theft of copyrighted works, and that includes digital television (DTV) programming. As we move forward in the digital age, it is increasingly easy for unauthorized copies of copyrighted works to be made and illegally distributed. Over-the-air digital content is the easiest to pirate.

As we contemplate the use of new technologies to protect copyrighted works, we must pay careful attention to ensure that a balance is struck between competitive protections and individual consumer interests. It is important to allow for the continued fair use of copyrighted material, even while we seek to stop unauthorized reproductions from being illegally distributed outside the home and over the Internet.

Again, thank you for writing. Please know that as the Senate considers legislation of the broadcast flag, I will be sure to keep your views in mind. If you should have any questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, DC staff at (202) 224-3841.

As we move forward in the digital age, it is increasingly easy for unauthorized copies of copyrighted works to be made and illegally distributed.

Lie: Steps needed to put analog-broadcast video on your computer: 1. Install capture card; 2. Press record. Steps needed to put digital-broadcast video on your computer: 1. Install capture card; 2. Press record.

It is important to allow for the continued fair use of copyrighted material

Lie: TiVo's TiVoToGo service -- designed to comply with the broadcast flag -- limited the number of devices you could watch your recorded videos on to a set number. Nothing about fair use says that n devices is permissible, but n + 1 isn't. TiVoToGo was one of the more permissive services -- systems like 5C and 4C have no consideration for fair use (for example, you can't tell a 5C device that you need to the ability edit a show that you plan on using in connection with criticism or classroom use).

even while we seek to stop unauthorized reproductions from being illegally distributed outside the home and over the Internet.

Lie: because the broadcast flag does not restrict analog outputs, there is nothing about the broadcast flag that prevents Internet redistribution of digital television (steps needed to put broadcast flag content on the Internet: 1. Connect tuner to PC via analog cables; 2. Press record.)

Update: Erik sez, "The TV/music/movies sector is the 4th highest contributor to her campaign, with lawyers being number 1 (two bad tastes that go great together!). Maybe that's why Feinstein is so willing to disregard the opinion of 2600 of her constituents and toe the MPAA's line."

One of my earliest memories of my uncle, whom I love very much, is through his photographs -- haunting images of historic railways and elegant old trains throughout Appalachia and Pennsylvania. Documenting these endangered machine beings is his lifelong passion, so he's launched a gallery with words and images on this subject from various shooters.

Uncle Kev sez: "I've been trying to encourage photographers to do a little writing to give a backstory on their images. So far I've had a pretty good response from a wide range of people. Make sure you check out the Archive page for M. Ross Valentine's and Mel Patrick's photos, my favorites so far."

Link to The Photographer's Railroad Page. Above: Pure Serendipity, by Mel Patrick: Link.

Previously on Boing Boing: Kevin Scanlon's heavy industry photography

Start here and work back. (via Warren Ellis)

Previously on Boing Boing: Homer Simpson computer key car, Car covered in computer keys

The male participants exposed to androstenol rated Men’s Health as significantly more masculine and more appealing compared with the control group. They also had a higher tendency to report that they might buy the magazine. Women appeared to be completely unaffected by the pheromone...

“This opens up the possibility of using odours to give specific emotional meaning to products – and creates ethical issues about whether this should be done if they are used at imperceptible levels,” (says University of Ulster professor Michael Kirk-Smith).

[T]oday, I found a frog in my salad from the company cafeteria.  Rest assured, I did not eat any of the frog, but it certainly was...erm- startling to say the least.  I returned the lunch to the cafeteria and got a refund.   The general manager will be contacting me later (he was not there when I returned the lunch).  My co-workers have reminded me that I have totally blown it since I could have sold it for big bucks on eBay to some casino.  Anyway, beware of the "organic" salad greens from Bon Appetit! 

One thing I should point out, is that the bids from these companies that I have seen often quote you by cubic footage not by weight. If you get a quote that is priced by cubic footage, that should raise a red flag right away. The reason for this is that if they charge you by weight, they have to provide proof of the weight of your belongings at no charge to you. Current laws regarding the moving industry do not cover moves based on cubic feet.

Once the movers show up and most or all of your things are in their truck, they will hit you with the real price of the move. By then it's too late. Your things are on their truck, and they won't get anything off of it without full payment in cash. They will tell you that if you don't pay up, that they will take the truck and sell everything you own to cover the contract. In my case, I put down a $150 deposit, and was told before the movers showed up that the rest of the $1869 would be due on delivery. When the movers showed up, the price jumped to $5012.50, and the movers demanded half of that on the spot or else there wouldn't be a delivery!

The game takes place on a 5 meter cushioned playfield suitable for martial arts and acrobatics training. Using custom computer vision technology, you are taken inside an artificial reality where the normal laws of physics no longer apply. Your movements are exaggerated so that you can easily dodge your opponent's bullets by jumping five meters in the air and landing behind his back. Using the dual projected screens, one at each end of the playfield, you can also continue by counter-attacking your stupefied enemy from the behind.

According to Stringer the Queen told him: "I have a lot of trouble with your remote controls. Too many arrows."

The Cadillac of current official offerings, the Quantum Super VII is the ultimate in e-meter artifacts, priced at over $4,500 new. From e-meter.org.uk's Quantum Super VII page, which may or may not be an official outlet of the Church: "Using the meter, the auditor ensures the process covers the correct area in order to discharge the harmful energy connected with that portion of the preclear's reactive mind. When charge lessens, the person heightens his ability to think clearly in the area being addressed and his survival potential increases proportionately. As a result, the preclear discovers things about himself and his life – new realizations about existence, the milestones that mark his gains."

The Advanced Developers Hands On Conference (ADHOC) is an annual event that provides a unique environment for computer programmers, engineers, students, and technology enthusiasts. At ADHOC they learn the cutting-edge technologies of the day not only from experts in classroom and conference sessions but also from each other in intense coding marathons. The conference is well rooted in the Macintosh platform - it is also called MacHack - but over the last few years the conference has grown to encompass other technologies, such as UNIX, open source, mobile devices, and more...

The showcase is an intensive, multi-day contest where you try to make something to impress everyone else at the conference. Ideally, you start it when you arrive, and you finish sometime before you go on stage to show it. Many of the coolest bits of software that came out for the Mac started in the Showcase. And, because everyone wants to see something cool, if you need the help from a programming expert who just happens to be at the show, you can ask them, and you'll learn what you need. You can learn more about the Mac OS in a very short amount of time just by trying to write a showcase entry.

What is proposed here that differs radically from what now exists is to scale up the concept of indoor farming, in which a wide variety of produce is harvested in quantity enough to sustain even the largest of cities without significantly relying on resources beyond the city limits. Cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and other large farm animals seem to fall well outside the paradigm of urban farming. However, raising a wide variety of fowl and pigs are well within the capabilities of indoor farming. It has been estimated that it will require approximately 300 square feet of intensively farmed indoor space to produce enough food to support a single individual living in an extraterrestrial environment (e.g., on a space station or a colony on the moon or Mars)(35).

Every evening, about 300 people gather on a roadside in Biratnagar, 500 kilometers (310 miles) east of Katmandu to listen to Keshav Bhattarai read out the news from an open air studio on the roof of a narrow, three-story building.

As well as spreading the news, the service stands for a free media, Bhattarai tells his audience, a motley collection of politicians, teachers, students, traders and anyone who just happens to be passing.

Update: Cristian sez, "The scientists are the Quartetto Cetra, an italian famous vocal quartet established during 1940. They were famous too for their spoof of musical hit singles of 50/60, in RAI (italian Broadcasting Television)."

Update 2: Cristian has graciously provided a mirror of the file.

The Screen Actors' Guild has rejected a work agreement with the video game industry -- but its sister union, AFTRA, has accepted. I talk with host Alex Chadwick about the contentious relationships between both unions and game publishers, and the debate over whether voice actors are entitled to a share of electronic game profits. What will SAG's rejection mean for actors? What effect will the dispute have on next year's crop of games?

Link to archived audio. Link to more archived "Xeni Tech" segments on NPR. (Special thanks to Wil Wheaton and Lazlow)

Previously on Boing Boing: SAG nixes video game work contract, SAG/AFTRA video game strike on the way for Hollywood?, Strike Looms Against Game Makers, Game biz coders want fatter paychecks, too

UPDATED: Not so fast. The Screen Actors Guild just issued this surprise announcement:

SAG President Melissa Gilbert and National Executive Director/CEO Greg Hessinger will convene a special meeting of the national board on Wednesday, June 29, to consider the tentative Interactive Media Agreement with video game companies that was rejected this past Tuesday by SAG’s National Executive Committee.

“When the NEC rejected the tentative contract earlier this week, we said we’d explore all our remaining options,” said Hessinger. “Since then, we have received feedback from enough of our membership to conclude that this matter must be brought before the full board for its consideration.”

The previous three-year agreement with video game companies expired this past May 13 after several months of bargaining with the companies. Over the course of the subsequent weeks, SAG issued a strike referendum to its affected members, before reaching a tentative agreement on June 8, which is set to expire next Thursday, June 30. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which negotiated jointly with SAG, approved the agreement last week and it will go into effect for their members on July 1, 2005.

Schriever was the primary architect of U.S. strategic capability, for better or worse. He was a radical force in government at a time when intercontinental ballistic missiles seemed farfetched and manned spaceflight was a fantasy. He died on June 20th yet no obituaries have appeared in any general-interest publications. A well-balanced tribute is here: Link

Thirty-five years ago, on June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirate and future Texas Rangers pitcher Dock Ellis found himself in the Los Angeles home of a childhood friend named Al Rambo. Two days earlier, he'd flown with the Pirates to San Diego for a four-game series with the Padres. He immediately rented a car and drove to L.A. to see Rambo and his girlfriend Mitzi. The next 12 hours were a fog of conversation, screwdrivers, marijuana, and, for Ellis, amphetamines. He went to sleep in the early morning, woke up sometime after noon and immediately took a dose of Purple Haze acid. Ellis would frequently drop acid on off days and weekends; he had a room in his basement christened "The Dungeon," in which he'd lock himself and listen to Jimi Hendrix or Iron Butterfly "for days."

A bit later, how long exactly he can't recall, he came across Mitzi flipping through a newspaper. She scanned for a moment, then noticed something.

"Dock," she said. "You're supposed to pitch today."

Ellis focused his mind. No. Friday. He wasn't pitching until Friday. He was sure.

"Baby," she replied. "It is Friday. You slept through Thursday."

Fantasies about chatting up legendary figures have come closer to reality in Japan where researchers have developed a mannequin with a built-in projector that can resemble a face of one's choice. The life-size, made-to-order (...) mannequin [has] a face that is an empty screen until turned on to play DVD images from inside the body. If one is in the mood for conversation, sound can come from a separate speaker. "It is a device that can show a person's face, looks and mouth movements," said the developer, Ishikawa Optics and Arts Corp. of Tokyo. "It forms realistic images as if he or she were really talking to you."

While porn producers (and audiences) in the US have been gearing up for the new 2257 regulations that go into effect next week, fans of Japanese erotic art have an additional thing to worry about: a Tokyo court upheld a conviction yesterday against a publisher found guilty of distributing a comic title found to be obscene in what Japan Today calls “the first major case in some 20 years in Japan to focus on printed pornographic material”. Better stock up on all those tentacle porn hentai while you still can, folks.

Digital Human Body Communication was first unveiled to the public. It is also called as BAN(Body Area Network), as it handles communication between devices using the human body as a medium.

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) said that although only a small amount of data, such as information on a name card, can be transmitted at the moment because the data transmission speed is just to be 2.4Kbps, the speed will be improved to 1MB within the yearend.

ETRI explained that BAN can be utilized in numerous ways, such as touch based authentification service, electronic payment service, e-business card service, and touch based advertisement service.

"Today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of loosening this law and extending the definition of 'publlic good' allowing local governments to seize private property for private companies to build on.

"Yet another example of corporate gentrification with those who cannot afford proper protection susceptible having their homes condemned and seized. This is one of the few times I actually agree with Justice Scalia and Thomas." (Me, too. -- Mark) Link

An American Flag? Hardly. It has only 49 stars! There's a circle where a star should be. Certainly an American Flag had 49 stars, but it didn't look like this (it looked like this).The true 49-star flag would likely be covered by the Amendment, but this one, not so much. Use it for kindling!

[E]ach brick was also found to contain a second, internal brick, wrapped in brown tape and cellophane, which contained an unknown, compressed, tan colored powder. Analysis of the white powder confirmed 85 percent cocaine hydrochloride adulterated with caffeine, while analysis of the tan powder indicated a mixture of 72 percent heroin hydrochloride and 7.2 percent cocaine hydrochloride. This is the first submission of heroin mini-bricks inside cocaine bricks to the Laboratory.

The robot will portray Dick in both form and intellect through an artificial-intelligence-driven personality. The hardware will manipulate Hanson's proprietary lifelike skin material to affect extremely realistic expressions with very low power. Cameras in the eyes will allow the robot to perceive people's identity and behavior through advanced machine vision and biometric-identification software. The robot will track faces, perceive facial expressions, and recognize people from the crowd (family, friends, celebrities, etc).

The visual data will be fused with some of the best speech recognition software, advanced natural language processing, and speech synthesis in the world. All of this will run in sync with Hanson Robotics' highly expressive robot face to emulate a full human-conversational system.

IIS will create the artificial intelligence personality of the robot by mathematically deriving it from Dick's life and works in a manner very similar to that described by Dick himself in his book We Can Build You (published in 1964).

"Night" evoked Vietnam-era bloodshed and, with its black male lead trapped in a farmhouse, echoed civil rights hysteria. "Dawn" poked fun at soul-deadening consumerism. And "Day" addressed ethics in science. With "Land," Romero tackles issues of safety and boundaries, showing a community fortifying itself against a murderous horde while its wealthiest keep alive class divisions separating them from the powerless.

"It's the folly of saying, 'Everything's OK, don't worry about it,' " says Romero, who wrote "Land" before the events of Sept. 11. Its focus then was about "ignoring social ills, setting up a synthetic sense of comfort."

He says he didn't have to tweak it much to reflect new fears of terrorism. When told that it's hard not to think of Iraq watching an armored car of trigger-happy humans roll through a zombiefied suburb shooting anything they see, Romero smiles. "That's one of the things I put in there afterward."

TheFeature: What have you learned over the course of your research?
Poisson: People think of the cameraphone as a more convenient tool for digital photography, an extension of the digital camera. That's missing the mark. The mobile phone is a communications device. The minute you attach a camera to that, and give people the ability to share the content that they're creating in real time, the dynamic changes significantly.

TheFeature: Aren't providers already developing applications to take advantage of that shift?
Poisson: Well, we have things like the ability to moblog, to publish pictures to a blog, which is not necessarily the most relevant model to consumers. Those tools are developed by people who understand blogging and apply it in their daily lives. But it ignores the trend that we and Mimi Ito and others are seeing as part of the evolution of photography. If you look at the way people have (historically) used cameras, it started off with portraiture and photographs of record -- formalized photographs with a capital "P." Then as the technology evolved, we had this notion of something called a snapshot, which is much more informal. People could take a higher number of pictures with not so much concern over composition. It was more about capturing an experience than photographing something. The limit of that path was the Polaroid. It was about taking the picture and sharing it instantly. What we have today is the ability to create today is a kind of distributed digital manifestation of that process.

Various pictures of Jennifer Aniston elicited a response in a single neuron inside the medial temporal lobe of another patient. Interestingly, images of her with her former husband Brad Pitt did not sway this cell, the authors of the paper report...

Quian Quiroga also found that a lone neuron in one subject responded selectively to various pictures of the actress Halle Berry - as well as drawings of her and her name written down. Other cells were found to respond to images of characters in The Simpsons or members of The Beatles.

The team thinks that these brain cells probably respond to a range of different items, but that this limited study didn't include all the various pictures that might make a particular cell light up.

Update: AV sez, "The site is going really slowly and feels like it is about to crash so I made a Coral Cache mirror here.

This site is dedicated to the glory years of Canadian True Crime magazine publishing in Canada -- lovely stuff. Link (via We Make Money Not Art)

In anticipation, porn sites and others that offer adult content are preparing to make their sites compliant -- or taking them offline. Today, several sites in the Rotten.com family are going dark for that reason, including ratemyboner.com (like amihotornot for amateur snapshots of a particular male anatomical part in a particular state) and gapingmaw.com (which you could call an industrial-strength grossout blog).

Section 2257 is ostensibly aimed at preventing the exploitation of minors in pornography. However, some free speech advocates argue it provides the conservative Bush administration with the power to silence other websites deemed offensive. Here's the full text of the law: Link to U.S. Code : Title 18 : Section 2257.

And here is the full text of the enabling regulations which are more widely contested than the US code itself: Link. The amendment was signed into law last month by US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

A message on gapingmaw.com -- which wasn't a porn site, per se, but did include some sexually explicit images -- says:

CENSORED BY US GOVERNMENT 18 USC 2257

Yes, that is correct. The things that used to be here, the very funny things that you want to read, have been made retroactively illegal by the US government, in a side-handed attack on the pornography industry.

We might mention that the material here isn't even pornography as you normally think of it -- this site is just adult humor, in essay format, with some illustrations. The government is mandating that we meet certain bookkeeping requirements, ones impossible to meet for this site. Never mind that those requirements do not actually gain the public anything. This is the strongest attack on free speech since the passage of the CDA, and oddly, the media seems to have hardly noticed. The penalty for not abiding by these bookkeeping requirements is five years prison.

The regulations were promulgated by Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General appointed by George Bush. If you voted for Bush, this is your fault. If you think this country is free, you are sadly mistaken. No nation has freedom when it is run by religious zealots.

The adult biz advocacy group Free Speech Coalition (FSC) filed a lawsuit last week challenging 2257, and AVN has more on that: Link. Here's an article on adult news site XBiz about last-minute compliance preparations in the porn world: Link

Previously on Boing Boing: Porn Law Draws Adult Sites' Ire

Reader comment: Race says,

In terms of the bookkeeping requirements for Adult film distributors -- each distributor has to keep records on site. That includes social security numbers, driver license scans and other personal information. So lets say you're Paris Hilton (in red light's "one night in Paris"), your personal information is then has to be carried by every distributor that carries that film ( which could be hundreds if not thousands of locations, increasing the likelihood of identity theft, etc -- and not to mention privacy issues). It used to be that the studio producing an adult film would carry that information at their studio. (...) This law is a way for the goverment to control porn.

I'm just coming up to speed on this whole 2257 issue, but I just read the full text of the enabling regulations, and concerning who must keep these records, the text clearly states: "The record-keeping requirements apply to ``[w]hoever produces'' the material in question ... but ["produces"] does not include mere distribution or any other activity which does not involve hiring, contracting for[,] managing, or otherwise arranging for the participation of the performers depicted.'' And so it seems to me that if you are not directly involved in the actual "creation" of the work -- i.e. a web site that displays images someone else created, or a film distributor -- then the record keeping requirements do not apply to you. Am I missing something?

Mark is right that the only ones responsible for keeping the records are those who produce the material, but this amendment makes it unlawful for anyone to "knowingly sell or otherwise transfer" any pornographic material made after the effective date in 1990 without being able to show where the records are held. So while websites with such material are not required to have the records, they are required to know where they are.

Section 4 of the amendment contains the relevant text on this issue:

(4) for any person knowingly to sell or otherwise transfer, or offer for sale or transfer, any book, magazine, periodical, film, video, or other matter, produce in whole or in part with materials which have been mailed or shipped in interstate or foreign commerce or which is intended for shipment in interstate or foreign commerce, which -
(A) contains one or more visual depictions made after the effective date of this subsection of actual sexually explicit conduct; and
(B) is produced in whole or in part with materials which have been mailed or shipped in interstate or foreign commerce, or is shipped or transported or is intended for shipment or transportation in interstate or foreign commerce; which does not have affixed thereto, in a manner prescribed as set forth in subsection (e)(1), a statement describing where the records required by this section may be located, but such person shall have no duty to determine the accuracy of the contents of the statement or the records required to be kept.

There's an aspect to this I haven't seen discussed. Immediately after the Patriot act was in force, there were uses of its provisions against criminals other than terrorists. John Ashcroft defended this, saying that "prosecutors should use all the tools available to them." It seems a small stretch to argue that these new regulations could apply to p2p transfers of adult material. This would open the door to morality based prosecutions of individuals. The Government's Bible Belt equivalent of RIAA suits.

You are missing the part where "distributor" is redefined to include posting on an internet web site. Re-read the enabling regulations more closely. Yes, it really does that. Specifically the term "secondary producer" is defined to include anyone who posts a digital image on an internet site, under 75.1 (c)(2). Secondary producers are the ones who are now being required to maintain this information. It is no over-reaction.

In addition to ratemyboner.com, another rotten site, ratemyboobies.com has also been censored. Of interest, a site generally considered to be in far worse taste, ratemypoo.com is excepted from the new porn regulations.

Joe says, "Annalee Newitz has a neat article on 2257... in her classic style."

But wait - there's more. Any site affected by 2257 must also publish a physical address that serves as its "place of business." Someone must be available at that address 20 hours a week just in case a law enforcement officer wants to gain access to those 2257 records. This doesn't seem too onerous if you imagine a Penthouse.com or Vivid Video type of operation. But consider all the mom-and-pop adult Web sites run out of private residences, or Webcam girls who don't turn the cam off when they take someone to bed. These rules mean that your local Webcam girl and our friends over at sex blog Fleshbot.com must publish their physical addresses online, thus leaving performers and writers vulnerable to stalking and harassment. But hey, it's a great full-access wank pass for cops who can't afford to pay for really primo porn sites every month.

I came across the story about these dolls about a year ago after a Canadian researcher sent an email around asking whether anyone knew anything about this doll apart from what it said on the (now mostly defunct) site borghild.de.

After reading your post, i researched the matter a bit further. The origin of the information that led to your post (via Fleshbot and other blogs) seems to be an article by the widely read but often less-than-accurately-reporting German daily Bild. All the information given is what can be found on the rather odd website borghild.de - the "information" given there can still be found here in an English translation.

Independently of each other, Jens Baumeister and I have concluded from the information available to us, that the "Borghild" story is quite probably a fake. (The German posting on my research is here. Jens has posted his results here. Some of his findings are translated here: Link).
The main problems with "Borghild" are:

- There is no evidence that any of the documents the text talks about ever existed. The Deutsche Hygiene Museum says that of course most records were destroyed in an attack in 1945, but that still no one they talked seems to remember anything about this project. The photographs on borghild.de are clearly fabrications, and the site even acknowledges that.
- The author of borghild.de, "Norbert Lenz", claims to have worked for a number of German magazines - all of which claim not to know a journalist by that name. He is not listed in phone directories, and the only book currently available in Germany by a Norbert Lenz is a book about - ducks.

So in the end it seems like the Nazis were not, after all, planning to equip their soldiers with sex dolls. That hardly comes as a surprise.

Yours truly,
Rochus

Previously: Nazi sex dolls

From the editorial summary: "The city was bursting with creative activity and things were happening all over. The Arab Oil Embargo was affecting the economy, and the Vietnam War was eroding respect for government." Huh. Wonder what that's like.

Shown here: Rules at the entrance to the orgy room at Plato Retreat's swing club. Link to gallery, contains sexually explicit images (via Fleshbot, where there's more background on where to buy the book: Link)

An initial impression upon viewing the drawings is the realist documentation of the folk history of Southern Appalachia. Upon reflection however, the viewer discovers the interwoven influence and roles that serpents and snakes have played throughout the course of both Christianity and art history. This interaction is strikingly demonstrated by the use of classical and Renaissance poses for the contemporary realist figures in the drawings. Numerous allusions are made to famous Renaissance and classical works which depict scenes in the history of Christianity and mythology in which serpents played a predominant role. Images and poses of the snake handlers were appropriated from works by Michelangelo, Rubens, Titian, Bronzino, Caravaggio, as well as the sculptors of the Laocoon group. Adding to the eclectic nature of the drawings are the subtle influences of Jackson Pollock, Kasimir Malevich, and Hopi Indian culture.

I received an incredible working steam engine, made by Jamie our plumber, which was not only spectacular to watch in action but a work of art too. I made a brass weather vane for Steve which powered a moving figure digging the melt tank. It took a lot of polishing but I'm pleased with the result!

Update: Reader Ashfaq Talajawala says, "Dariya-Dil means big-hearted or generous. Literally, Dariya means a river (signifying big) and dil means heart."

Raja Sen says,

The Dariya Dil cover you feature is an awful b-movie with a song called Too Mera Superman (You are my Superman), which features the leading pair, hero Govinda thrusting pelvis in Supe-suit, and 'heroine' Kimi Katkar dressed as (sacrilege!) Spidey. The song takes them from the typical running around trees to a supermarket and finally to a dance floor, with a lot of very badly chromakeyed flying thrown in. Grotesque.

In a brave attempt to surpass a Guinness record--"The World's Largest Popsicle"--Snapple mixed and froze a gargantuan icy doppelganger of its new kiwi-strawberry flavored Snapple on Ice. Then the frozen treat was hauled by freezer truck from Edison, N.J., and raised with an enormous crane in Manhattan.

Alas, like James Arness in the 1951 alien thriller "The Thing From Another World," the giant Snapsicle began to melt. Soon pedestrians were fleeing in not-quite terror, fire trucks were converging, and the police were closing off streets to contain the publicity stunt gone wrong.

At the beginning of this week, we learned that a Broadcast Flag amendment might slip past the gates in an appropriations bill. It's easy to see how this could happen. Despite strong opposition to the flag in the Internet community, in many circles it's still considered "non-controversial."

But that was Monday evening.

Within the space of a few hours, the committee was Slashdotted, BoingBoinged and Instalanched.

By 6 p.m. on Tuesday, the 27 members of the Senate Appropriations Committee received more than 11,000 emails and faxes. That's nearly 500 faxes an hour. Dianne Feinstein alone received more than 2,600 messages in her inbox. Kay Hutchison, the senior senator for Texas, received 1,441 letters.

And these are just the numbers EFF has. We don't track telephone calls. But we do know that many of you listened when we joined Public Knowledge in urging you to call your senators directly. If you tried to call and the line was engaged, it was likely occupied by someone else griping about the same amendment. Staffers say they were "swamped."

Today, the phone calls, email messages, and faxes continue to flood in. This is a mass protest even without voices from many of the more populous states, which don't have senators on the committee.

Suffice it to say that you don't get that kind of reaction except for very controversial bills. You did it. You got the attention of every senator on the Appropriations Committee.

And so far, it's working.

"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," (police sergeant Wondimu Wedajo) said, adding he did not know whether the lions were male or female...

Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert with the rural development ministry, said that it was likely that the young girl was saved because she was crying from the trauma of her attack.

"A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they (the lions) didn't eat her," Williams said. "Otherwise they probably would have done."

I'm sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming to long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don't.

This is a classic example of bogus statistics. The two figures have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The 30% of people using legal downloads might be mutually exclusive or totally overlapping with the 40% that use illegal downloads. The numbers need not total to 100% (and could total to more than 100%). At best we can conclude:

1. No greater than 70% of music listeners download music (legal or illegal) -- i.e., as much as 30% of music listeners simply don't download music.
2. No fewer than 40% of music listeners download music (legal or illegal).
3. At most, 30% use both legal and illegal downloads.
4. It's possible (based on this limited data) that no one does both illegal and legal downloading.

In next month's survey, both numbers could go up or down since the survey does not ask "do you ONLY download music from legal/ illegal sources." Moreover, the survey provides no estimates of volumes -- illegal downloaders could be downloading 10X or 10X less than their legal-downloading counterparts. Or people that download legal music could be the biggest "pirates" and this survey would be none the wiser.

Update: More dodgy stats! AV says, "the MPAA released an annoucement about how they, along with a 'California High Tech Task Force' shut down a Southern California DVD processing plant seizing $30 million worth of DVDs.

"However, the processing plant issued its own press release showing how everything was exaggerated.

"The plant claims that the DVDs taken were worth a grand total of $10,540. The DVD copying equipment seized was worth about $15,000. In other words, MPAA's claim of $30 million worth of product seized was exaggerated by a mere 2,000%."

"Suppose you have permission to photocopy the picture of Paramecium, and you enlarge it to twice its size. Would the magnification of x110 still be correct? Explain."

Note how it says, "suppose you have permission to photocopy the picture," instead of, "suppose you photocopy the picture," or even, "photocopy the picture."

Derrrrrr. Somehow the issue of copyright infringement has made its way explicitly and incongruously into a children's science booklet.

High above the streets and courtyards of New Orleans Square, hidden from public view and the bustle of a typical day at Disneyland, is a page out of old New Orleans that even the proud Creole society might have chosen and cherished as its own.

Here French doors open onto balconies that overlook Disneyland's own muddy Mississippi, the Rivers of America. Here, in the tradition of the good host, Walt Disney and his staff planned and executed Disneyland's most exclusive setting - part elegant dining room, part relaxed refreshment center, part distinguished art gallery, part meeting room and part private showplace.

Everything - from plush furnishings to crystal chandeliers, from original paintings and sketches to a personalized Audio-Animatronic show for members and guests only - has been chosen or specially created for Club 33, by the staff of WED Enterprises and by other Disney artisans.

Here, away from the general public, adult beverages will be available, including the finest of wines to match the food specialities of the house.

Update: Jen points out the club33 Flickr tag for photos of the contemporary Club 33.

I report and produce news explaining the facts as fairly, thoroughly, accurately and openly as I can.

* Fair: I'm always listening to and taking account of other viewpoints;
* Thorough: I learn as much as I can in the time I have, and point to original sources when possible;
* Accurate: I get it right, checking my facts, correcting errors promptly and incorporating new information I learn from the community;
* Open: I explain my biases and conflicts, where appropriate.

Now consider this hypothetical literary patent: Claim 1: a communication process that represents, in the mind of a reader, the concept of a character who has been in jail for a long time and subsequently changes his name...

These patents would all cover the story of one character in a novel. They overlap, but they do not precisely duplicate each other, so they could all be valid simultaneously - all the patent holders could have sued Victor Hugo. Any one of them could have prohibited publication of Les Misérables.

You might think these ideas are so simple that no patent office would have issued them. We programmers are often amazed by the simplicity of the ideas that real software patents cover - for instance, the European Patent Office has issued a patent on the progress bar, and one on accepting payment via credit cards. These would be laughable if they were not so dangerous.

While Bill C-60 therefore contains extensive provisions to cover uploading, downloading on peer-to-peer systems remains largely untouched (with the exception described above). Many experts believe that peer-to-peer downloading is covered by the private copying levy, though CRIA disputes that interpretation.

Pride is traditionally the day queer folks take a break from designing and catering other people's parties to have a party of our own. I'm still debating whether I’ll go to the Gay Pride Pride Parade this year. I usually go, but I'm a little hesitant this year. I think it’s because I'm reaching gay middle age, which can begin as early as 25...

Stand proud Gay Parcheesi Players with Hay Fever! You are not alone. Soon, you too will have a float in the parade. And a special flag. This is how we got the new acronym GLBTIQQ. We used to be the gay community. Now, we are the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transexual, intersex, queer and questioning community. If we really want to be genuinely inclusive, we should add FSP for friendly straight people. And then add some vowels, because they're feeling oppressed and excluded from the acronym. Then add T for Tired, because you're exhausted by the time you get to the end of it. GBLTIQQUOEFSPAT. This is how the Parade got so long.

No one will be left out! Except the numbers. Maybe the genderqueer folks can be the numbers. Or maybe we can just use ?. The Parade is now as long as ?. They should have a halftime break. They can have straight men come out and play football for us.

At the crack of dawn this morning, Mojave witnessed yet another First Flight, this time of the Boeing/NASA/DARPA X-37 ALTV (Approach and Landing Test Vehicle) carried on a captive-carry flight by Scaled Composites' White Knight. It was exactly one year ago that we were gathered here to witness the first space launch of Scaled's SpaceShipOne. What a way to celebrate an anniversary! The morning started spectacularly, and just as the sun cleared the horizon, the engines started on White Knight. Chase service was performed, as on the SpaceShipOne flights, by Robert Scherer's Starship and Chuck Coleman's Extra 300.

SAG's current three-year Interactive contract expired on May 13, 2005. SAG's National Executive Committee had been designated by the Guild national board to consider the tentative agreement, which was reached on June 8. The agreement had been jointly negotiated with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). AFTRA's National Administrative Committee approved the deal last week, and it will go into effect for their members on July 1, 2005. (...)

Negotiations on new Interactive Media Agreements began between the unions and video game companies in February 2005, before breaking off on May 13 when a strike authorization vote was called. Before the authorization vote tally was concluded on June 8, a tentative agreement between the producers and unions was reached. That tentative agreement would have covered the next three-and-a-half years, and included a 36 percent increase in minimum pay over the term as well as increases in benefit contributions. However, the producers refused the unions' demands for implementation of a residual model that would allow actors to share in the enormous revenues generated by the video games they perform in.

Previously: SAG/AFTRA video game strike on the way for Hollywood?, Strike Looms Against Game Makers, Game biz coders want fatter paychecks, too

#1 Advil tablet 50 ct
#2 Advil tablet 100 ct
#3 Aleve caplet 100 ct
#4 EPT Pregnancy Test single
#5 Gillette Sensor 10 ct
#6 Kodak 200 24 exp
#7 Similac w/iron powder - case
#8 Similac w/iron powder - single can
#9 Preparation H 12 ct
#10 Primatene tablet 24 ct

• Ketchup
Unopened: 1 year (After this time, color or flavor may be affected, but product is still generally safe to consume.)
Opened or used: 4 to 6 months (After this time, color or flavor may be affected, but product is still generally safe to consume.)

• Pickles
Unopened: 18 months
Opened: No conclusive data. Discard if slippery or excessively soft.

• Tabasco
5 years, stored in a cool, dry place

• Batteries, alkaline
7 years

• Lipstick
2 years

"Most physicians are not aware of this potential aspect of sedating drugs and anesthetics," said Dr. Robert Strickland, anesthesiologist at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. "In the patient's mind, such hallucinations can seem very real upon waking from sedation. In several recent, well-documented cases, physicians have been accused by patients of sexual misconduct, even though witnesses were present throughout the entire procedure."

Although it is almost impossible to verify how often sexual hallucinations occur, some studies indicate it happens in 1 percent to 3 percent of anesthetized patients, Strickland said. With some anesthetic drugs - such as ketamine or propofol - the incidence is up to 5 percent...

(Steven Barker, head of anesthesiology at the University of Arizona Medical Center,) was not alone the day he put a female patient under moderate anesthesia for a minor surgical procedure. He wanted her deeply sedated, but not completely out, so he could maintain verbal contact to check her breathing and other signs.

"At one point, I asked her if there was anything I could get for her, and she said, 'Yeah, a man,'" Barker said. "She then proceeded to describe the sexual characteristics of what she wanted, in a pretty direct way.

"I knew it was the drug, so I just sort of tried to change the subject. We all know these things can happen."

The FCC has busted NBC for unliscensed radio transmissions. NBC was using transceivers that were broadcasting on New York's public safety frequencies while filming an episode of Law and Order.

"There is evidence that whoever is doing it knows what they're doing," (city spokesman John) Pilger said. "The evidence suggests they're an electrician or have that background. This isn't a high school prank."

Further puzzling investigators is the fact the traffic trickster used a cherry-picker truck to reach an overhead signal spanning a busy intersection -- apparently without anyone being any the wiser, Pilger said. What's more, the practical joker has effortlessly opened the control boxes that contain the signals' electronic guts.

Some cool early color Roth waterslide decals that I hadn't seen before. If the '63 copyright is to be believed, these are some early stuff, and definitely pre-Ed Newton art work, too. (...) Most of the catalog is devoted to pages of T-shirt designs, juxtaposed with goofy pictures of The Man hisself.

Reader comment: Steve Smith says,

For more Finkabilia, check out the Ed "Big Daddy" Roth official site: Link. Rat Fink Lives!!

Here's an idea for the Disneys of the world: include a single-use license coupon with every DVD/CD/stuffed animal/whatever sold to the consumer. They would give have this coupon filled out by the business that is making the potentially infringing item--cake, piñata, decoratively carved watermelon--which can then be sent in, just like your standard registration card.

Offer monthly drawings for prizes. Indemnify businesses for custom items thus licensed.

Offer special licenses for businesses with a high number of "referrals" by these coupons. Security features could include serialized bar-codes or RFIDs. Everybody wins. Kids get to eat (or bash) anthropomorphized fish; parents get to have some peace (though no necessarily quiet); small businesses can keep doing what they do without having to hire an IP lawyer for every other order; trademark holders get another means to track and target customers; and most importantly, trademark holders get to maintain, if not increase customer good will.

It's not rocket science. Sigh.

-- Paul TS Lee

I too was a victum of google and got to this thread. I am not really lonely just wish I had better friends. one of my good friends told my x-girlfriend(we were still friends after we broke up) a lie that I cheated on her while we were together. the girl was pissed because I told my best friend (who she was dateing) about how she was bragging that they weren't dateing anymore. I turned out that my best friend thought they were still dateing and they argue. girl gets pissed. screws up my friendship with my x (who I had known and cared about for about 2 1/2 years) and now she never looks at me the same. Worst of all my best friend backed up her story (this is a week after I talked to my best friend abut his girl). so my best friend (who I was trying to help in the first place) betrayed me. Limp bizkit once said " it's all about the he said she said bullll sh1t." and now I beleive him.

I run my equipment quite hard, and if you're like me then ICP's PowerFlex is the only solution that you should consider. It is constructed of lightweight, ultra-flexible CIGS solar cells and designed to take a beating. ICP produces 5, 10, 20 and 40 watt versions of the PowerFlex, all of which are capable of being daisy-chained together via plug & play side connectors. These would be great for draping over the rear of your backpack, providing you on-the-go charging of all your electronics or batteries.

[snip]

CVS has introduced a new single use DVD-quality video camera system. The innovative camera allows up to 20 minutes of DVD-quality video and sound recording, as well as playback and deletion of recorded clips via a 1.4" color screen. At $30 these little cameras could be indispensable to the average adventurer or traveler. The $30 price tag and one-time use means you don't have to feel bad about strapping it to the front of a car or motorcycle--or worry about the Vietnamese humidity ruining a nicer camera.

Update: Treknologies publisher Beau Gunderson says: "I am talking to Erden Eruç tomorrow and would like to give boingboing readers a chance to ask him a few questions. Erden is the man behind Around-n-Over and the Six Summits project. He is using human power to cross six continents and the oceans between them -- and climbing the highest peaks on each of the six continents he will visit. I'm not sure how many I'll get a chance to ask but I will do my best to get the best ones answered."

"So, anyway. What did he do?" I picked at the hem of my sweatshirt, looked just to the right of her face. I couldn't meet her eyes. I felt nervous. I felt underdressed. I wondered where 8 was.

So she told me what he did. And as she told me, I started to laugh. I didn't laugh a little, either, but I belly-laughed and grabbed my stomach. My son stood with his class this morning, put small right hand over heart, faced the American flag, and recited his own personal pledge of allegiance:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Federation of Planets, and to the galaxy for which it stands, one universe, under everybody, with liberty and justice for all species.

"Mrs. Jaworski. This isn't humorous. The Pledge is an extremely important and patriotic moment each morning in the classroom. I am ashamed of your son's behavior, and I hope you are, too."

As a birthday celebration, the Creative Commons folks have gotten copyfighters around to the world to sing Happy Birthday -- a song that is, incredibly, still in copyright and controlled by Warners -- created a techno-mix, and posted it.

Creative Commons wanted to find an appropriate way to celebrate. So we put together this version of "Happy Birthday," sung by, we might say, some of the leaders of the free world (The EFF Staff, Mitch Kapor, Dan Gillmor, Brian Behlendorf, Ian Clarke, Jimmy Wales, Brewster Kahle, and Gigi Sohn). Of course, to do this, we had to license the rights from Harry Fox (who represent Warner Chappell Music, the copyright owner of the composition) — yes, "Happy Birthday" is still under copyright — but the folks at Harry Fox were willing to give us a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, that deal does not transfer, so while you're free to download this version and play it "for personal use", and free to engage in any "fair use" of the song, the rights we have to give don't include much more than that.

Nobel laureate Jack Kilby, whose 1958 invention of the integrated circuit opened the way for the microchips that are the brains of today's computers, video games, DVD players and cell phones, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 81. Kilby died Monday, according to Texas Instruments, where Kilby worked for many years.

Ken Arnold, Leon Bambrick. Michael Bean, Rory Blyth, Adam Bosworth, danah boyd, Raymond Chen, Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi, Cory Doctorow, ea_spouse, Bruce Eckel, Paul Ford, Paul Graham, John Gruber, Gregor Hohpe, Ron Jeffries, Eric Johnson, Eric Lippert, Michael Lopp, Larry Osterman, Mary Poppendieck, Rick Schaut, Aaron Swartz, Clay Shirky, Eric Sink, why the lucky stiff

The software development world desperately needs better writing. If I have to read another 2000 page book about some class library written by 16 separate people in broken ESL, I’m going to flip out. If I see another hardback book about object oriented models written with dense faux-academic pretentiousness, I’m not going to shelve it any more in the Fog Creek library: it’s going right in the recycle bin. If I have to read another spirited attack on Microsoft’s buggy code by an enthusiastic nine year old Trekkie on Slashdot, I might just poke my eyes out with a sharpened pencil. Stop it, stop it, stop it!

Falk Bergman was the first to bring me by to have a look at his prototype in development, a giant book positioned next to a seat. Sitting on it automatically fixes your camera position in place, to give you the best possible view of the book.

"The viewer in-world itself is very simple," Falk tells me modestly. "It is basically a shopping agent with two displays that hooks into Page Up and Down [on the keyboards] for changing the pages."

Update: Dragonpage radio have recorded a podcast with me about the book and it went live today. Here's the MP3 link

Retail & Entertainment World will provide a critical mass of retail facilities providing a wide variety of global brands but also unique boutiques and discount stores, all within the biggest mall in the world - the Mall of Arabia. Entertainment and dining facilities will complement the retail facilities through encouraging tourists to extend the length of their stay at Dubailand, thereby creating further opportunities for purchases....

How many people would be working at Dubailand when it is fully operational?
Dubailand will seek to employ around 300,000 working individuals by 2018 from the various projects in it.

How many visitors a day are you expecting when fully operational?
At peak operational capacity, we have forecast a footfall of some 200,000 visitors a day.

What kind of per capita spend is projected for visitors?
The rates will be an average of USD 100 per day per person not including hotel stay.

Has any study been done on the environmental impact of such a large project in almost virgin desert?
The masterplan has been based on a philosophy of maintaining as much as possible the environmental integrity of the land designated for Dubailand’s development.

How will you maintain the law and order of large crowds?
Dubailand will be coordinating with Dubai Police on relevant security issues.

We walk through a series of curving white hallways punctuated with oddities -- remnants of spaceships over here, posters from turn-of-the-century traveling magic shows over there. We enter a dark room that vibrates with a quiet, electronic purr. In the middle stands a table covered with a vivid, full-color map bathed in light from an overhead projector.

"This is something I've always dreamed about," says Hillis, grinning widely. "I always loved big paper maps I could spread out on a table, but later I loved computer screens because you can make them dance for you. This combines both."

He taps the map surface and sweeps his hands apart, as if he's swimming. The Earth zooms closer. North America becomes California, then Los Angeles, then we see tiny parking spaces with human silhouettes. He drags a finger, and the map sweeps east; he drags it another direction, and the world follows.

Both hands scoop together, and we fly back out again. He squeezes the world into a ball and spins it. He pauses, and looks up at me. "Your mouth is dropping open!" he laughs.

A few paces away, Hillis demos another high-tech map table -- at the flick of a button, this one bursts into life. Mountains rise up, valleys drop down, seas flatten. Underneath the map's synthetic material surface, a system of pins raise or lower in groups to dynamically form shapes. I pet a mountain, then trace down a bumpy ravine with my index finger, and caress a smooth riverbed. My jaw remains open. The "Earth" feels alive.

Hillis explains that this device is called the 2.5-D display, and was developed with Northrop Grumman. "They've used the first ones internally," Hillis shrugs. "We don't know what we're going to do with it yet."

We're announcing 3 new job openings at Participatory Culture to help us develop our video player application and the web applications that will dovetail with it. You'll be joining a small but awesome team of developers.

The other day we blogged about some early adopters of the platform that are getting video channels ready, including Current (Al Gore's new cable channel), Pancake Mountain (amazing DC kids show), and SEIU (fastest growing union in the US). There's a bunch of others under way as well. One of the channels we're most excited about is a new independent music video channel called telemusicvision that a friend of ours is putting together.

My colleague Ren Bucholz was there are took extensive notes. Link

BLOND and buff, Cameron Clapp is a teenage star. Dressed fashionably in a faded T-shirt, baggy shorts and sneakers, he recently strolled the crowded sidewalks of Times Square. He walked confidently, flashing the megawatt smile that brightens his Web site and various photographs in newspapers and magazines that have chronicled his story as he travels the country.

Few, if any, of the onlookers had little idea that he is the poster manchild of a new generation of people who are not only embracing all types of breakthrough technologies but also incorporating them into their bodies. For people who see Cameron Clapp for the first time, he is an object of wonderment: a young man walking and talking tall on shiny robotic legs.

"I make it look easy," said Mr. Clapp, who is 19 and still shows flickers of the cocky skater boy he was before he became what he calls "a severe case."

Mr. Clapp lost both his legs above the knee and his right arm just short of his shoulder after falling onto train tracks almost five years ago near his home in Grover Beach, Calif. After years of rehabilitation and trying a series of prosthetics, each more technologically sophisticated than the last, he finally found his legs.

"I do have a lot of motivation and self-esteem," Mr. Clapp said, "but I might look at myself differently if technology was not on my side." In the last few years, technology has definitely been on his side, in the form of the C-Leg. Introduced by Otto Bock HealthCare, a German company that makes advanced prosthetics, the C-Leg combines computer technology with hydraulics. It literally does the walking for the walker.

And a friend of the Clapp family shares this link to Cameron's newly-minted flickr account, where he'll be posting snapshots from all the places his "robo-legs" take him. Link (thanks, Richard Boult!)

Previously on Boing Boing -- Xeni on NPR: Computer limbs help trilateral amputee run again, and After saturation coverage of Olympics, why no Paralympics TV coverage in US?

Reader Comment: Kevin Cantrell reminds us that "Cameron was a major character in HBO's tragically cancelled Carnivale. Cameron played "management." Just another accomplishment for him. Link to show website, and it's also on his news blog." (Ed. note: why oh why oh why was that show nuked? ‹le sigh›.)

MX-3 is a multifunction drive kit which works as USB2 Hard Drive/ 7in1 Memory Card Reader/ USB2 Hub in one unit.

It can read and write 7 types of memory cards including MMC, SD, MS, MS PRO, CF and MD.

You can use the extra USB port as a Hub connecting any kind of USB devices. As the USB port provides 5V- 500mA, you may use bus-powered USB devices without external power adapter.

Update: Stewart says that you can get cases like this in all shapes and sizes in Hong Kong, and provides a link to info about one he scored. Sounds like a sweet device: "Functionally, it couldn't be simpler: it displays the amount of free space on the hard drive when you press the On/Off button. Insert a card, and it displays the amount of data on the card. Press Copy and it copies the data from the card to the hard drive (note: it creates a new directory on the hard drive every time, so there’s no risk of filename clashes and unintended overwrites). It leaves the card intact, so I delete the photos off the card using my camera."

The central idea here is basically 'Let's apply error correcting codes to BitTorrent'. This isn't a new idea, everybody comes up with it. In fact I saw fit to mention that it's a dubious idea before. (Some people will point out that 'error correcting codes' isn't the right term for the latest and greatest of this sort of technology, to which I say 'whatever'.) The main reason that this is a popular idea is that recent work in error correcting techology is very cool. While it is very cool, and very applicable to sending information across lossy channels, the case for using it in BitTorrent is unconvincing.

* Patriot Act Two and Debate on Gitmo Torture
* Interview with Flynt Leverett author of Inheriting Syria
* Bill Frist retracts his diagnosis of Terry Schiavo
* Jon Stewart on using Hitler to slam your opponents
* Interview with Kenneth Timmerman author of Countdown to Crisis, the coming nuclear showdown with Iran
* Interview with Larry Diamond author of Squandered Victory (you guessed it - about Iraq)
* Guantanamo Baywatch - more Gitmo Torture

This excerpt deals with the presentation that Intel VP Donald Whiteside made to Congressional panels on the way in which copyright is limiting the technology industry, and how he had to break federal law to do normal, everyday things.

"I used a program to copy a few seconds from the DVD of the movie Rudy," he said. "It's the scene showing the final game of the Notre Dame season with Rudy's family in the stands cheering wildly when he got to play. I then spliced in some snippets of pro players doing a touchdown dance from NFL Films, and I overlaid it with audio from 'Who Let the Dogs Out?'

"I stitched this all together with video of my son, and it turned out to be the piece of home video that gets watched the most in our house. When relatives or members of the football team come over, we pop it in and we just laugh. The added scenes and music really bring it all to life."

There was just one problem. "It turns out to do this, I violated the DMCA. I used the DeCSS program to circumvent the encryption and access the movie clips on the DVD that I own," Whiteside told the aides. "The end product is a DVD that I don't sell or distribute but is considered a derivative work under copyright law."

There is simply no denying that the lobbying efforts of the copyright owners, particularly the music industry, have paid off as they are the big winners in this bill. The bill focuses almost exclusively on creating new rights for this select group including a new making available right, legal protection for technological protection measures, legal protection for rights management information, the ability to control the first distribution of material in tangible form, new moral rights for performances, a reproduction right for performers, and an adjustment in the term of protection for sound recordings. The bill also includes a statutory notice and notice system that will virtually compel Internet service providers to notify subscribers of alleged copyright infringements and to retain relevant personal information for 6 months.

At the Plenary Day on Wednesday 28 June, delegates will hear the latest results from the CRN and CFP working groups on Broadband, QoS, Viral, DoS-Resistant, Core-Edge, Spectrum, Security and Photonics. The Plenary day will be of particular interest to CEOs, CTOs and board level decision makers, looking to get up to speed on the communication industry's cutting-edge in the shortest possible time.

Text message consumer rights group TXTpower said its site (www.txtpower.org) had been overwhelmed by demand for the clip taken from a recording at the centre of allegations Arroyo tried to fix the result of last year's election...

In the full conversation, which the government says was illegally wiretapped and then doctored, a woman who sounds like Arroyo asks senior election official Virgilio Garcillano whether she would win by more than 1 million votes in a southern area.

We've heard rumors that the Broadcast Flag that Cory, the EFF, and a coalition of pressure groups have fought so hard against (and beat in the courts) will be sneaked back via an amendment to the giant Senate Appropriations Bill in a sub-committee at 2PM EST on Tuesday 21st. This week is Hollywood's last chance to ram the flag past Congress, and they're working hard to get it under the radar.

There's no time to write letters or start a media campaign: but folk in the states below have just enough time to warn their senators, who are all on the sub-committee. People of Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin - it's up to you!

There's a sample script after the phone list. Remember: be cool, collected and polite. Most of these senators won't know a thing about the flag, until one of them makes it a throwaway amendment tomorrow. Make sure their ears twitch when they hear "broadcast flag" today.

ALABAMA Senator Richard Shelby (202) 224-5744
ALASKA Senator Ted Stevens (202) 224-3004
HAWAII Senator Daniel Inouye (202) 224-3934
IOWA Senator Tom Harkin (202) 224-3254
KANSAS Senator Sam Brownback (202) 224-6521
KENTUCKY Senator Mitch McConnell (202) 224-2541
MARYLAND Senator Barbara Mikulski (202) 224-4654
MISSOURI Senator Christopher Bond (202) 224-5721
NEW HAMPSHIRE Senator Judd Gregg (202) 224-3324
NEW MEXICO Senator Pete Domenici (202) 224-6621
NORTH DAKOTA Senator Byron Dorgan (202) 224-2551
TEXAS Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (202) 224-5922
VERMONT Senator Patrick Leahy (202) 224-4242
WASHINGTON Senator Patty Murray (202) 224-2621
WISCONSIN Senator Herb Kohl (202) 224-5653

"Hello, Senator _________'s office"

"Hi, I'm a constituent. [Remember: Only say 'I'm a constituent' if you really are -- if you're calling the Senator from _your own state_] I'm registering my opposition to the broadcast flag amendment being introduced in the Senate Commerce Justice and Science Appropriations subcommittee mark-up on Tuesday, and in full committee on Thursday."

(*** You can give your own reasons for opposing the flag here. Here's a sample: ***)

"The Broadcast Flag cripples any device capable of receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts."

"It give Hollywood movie studios a permanent veto over how members of the American public use our televisions."

"It forces American innovators to beg the FCC for permission before adding new features to TV."

"It will prevent fair use of copyrighted works: critical review, and use of material in distance learning"

"This is an important issue which will affect all Americans, and should not be inserted in a large bill, at the last moment, with no debate."

"Please oppose the broadcast flag amendment. My name and address are ___________________."

"Thank you for your time."

Good luck!

Update: You can now fax and email appropriation committee members for free at the EFF's action center. Do it tonight, or live with the consequences of a Hollywood veto over your PC forever.

Global Frequency screenwriter John Rogers has been posting a series of bittersweet and amazed entries to his blog about what it's like to have a burgeoning fan-base for a show that never got picked up, never aired, and only exists as illegal art:

I'd also like to remind you that illegal file-sharing is a bad, bad thing, and I in no way encourage it. All references to downloading sites will be immediately deleted from the this website. You, despite your enthusiasm, should be ashamed of yourselves. Ashamed.

Now, for a small sample for the suits (no links, and I think you know why) of responses from your emails, comments, and websites and messageboards around the world:

"one of the smartest and stylish pilots I've seen in all my years of watching the goggle box ... [If] the DVD comes out I'll have link to Amazon and a write-up on the show."

"Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank everyone for me, will you. Thank you all so much. Thank you. If you haven't noticed, I cannot stop saying this: thank you."

Consider this: "As police in full riot gear moved in to torch shacks using petrol, many residents tore down their own homes to salvage some of the building materials." Victoria Muchenje, whose shack in Mbare, a densely populated township just outside Harare, was destroyed in the government pogrom, told the IWPR, "We are suffering, we have nowhere to go. Our children are not going to school, we are sleeping outside everywhere. If you walk, everywhere you see people sleeping in the road."

The two men browsing in Benjamin Santoyo's downtown Los Angeles produce store acted like many of his customers, not so much interested in fruit and vegetables as in the enormous pinatas of Winnie the Pooh, The Incredibles, and an orange fish named Nemo, all bobbing from a string tied to the ceiling. But theirs was an undercover visit on behalf of Disney Enterprises Inc. and four other entertainment industry giants aiming to stop the sale of counterfeit pinatas just as the bust-it-up party activity has become about as mainstream at Southland kids parties as cake, streamers and tortilla chips.

Disney and the other companies, in what experts said was an understandable move to protect their popular cartoon and character properties, filed copyright and trademark infringement lawsuits against Santoyo and another nearby shop owner for allegedly selling the counterfeit pinatas.

Although Santoyo settled last month for an undisclosed sum, word of the legal action against these two small Los Angeles vendors — who peddle their wares in an informal pinata district centered along Olympic Boulevard and Central Avenue — has reverberated through the garages, backyards and warehouses of pinata makers as far away as Santa Ana, who worry that they too will be targeted. But will they stop making the images of Cinderella and Dora?

"Without that, we don't have much of a business," said South Los Angeles pinata maker Marta Garcia. "We need to be careful, but it's hard because the demand is for the characters on television and in the theaters."

A sekrit Boing Boing source in Hollywood says, "A USA network show I used to work on has distributed a screensaver to fans of the show that secretly logs their keystrokes." Link to a discussion board thread in which fans of the show who downloaded the screensaver discuss this allegation. According to reports, the file has since been removed from distribution by USA. Anybody out there have a copy of the file, or have proof whether this is true or hoax?

Reader comment: Joe Moore says:

I downloaded the Season 3 screensaver from The Dead Zone show, and found something strange. I pulled the setup file for the Season 3 screensaver (available here) and ran it through a program called ICY Hexplorer, and saw something weird. There's a reference in the install file to a parody site of Marisleysis Gonzalez (Link), who is a cousin of Elian Gonzales, the kid a few years ago who was deported back to Cuba. Why was this site in the .EXE file for the install of The Dead Zone Season 3 screensaver, I have NO idea at all!!! You can see a screenshot of me having the file open in ICY Hexplorer here: Link. It lists the parody website, then her first name. Just strange! No idea yet on if there's a key logger or not, though.

Update: Dan Kaminsky is one of several Boing Boing readers who've taken a close look at the code and say there is no keystroke logger within. "Move along, nothing to see here," says Dan.

Special thanks to Dave Maynor of Internet Security Systems who completed the reversal.

When MTV Networks’ new gay channel LOGO debuts this month, it will join a kicky set of companies whose trademarks — intentionally or not — are a little light in their serifs.

“At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings,” says Gert Holstege of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands....

As the women were stimulated, activity rose in one sensory part of the brain, called the primary somatosensory cortex, but fell in the amygdala and hippocampus, areas involved in alertness and anxiety. During orgasm, activity fell in many more areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, compared with the resting state...

In one sense the findings appear to confirm what is already known, that women cannot enjoy sex unless they are relaxed and free from worries and distractions. "Fear and anxiety levels have to go down for orgasm. Everyone knows this but we can see it happening in the brain," (Holstege) explains.

From an evolutionary point of view, it could be that the brain switches off the emotions during sex because at such times the chance to produce offspring becomes more important than the survival risk to the individual. Holstege points to the extraordinary behaviour seen in some animals during the breeding season, such as March hares, when the urge to mate seems to override the usual fear of predators.

"I've been having a lot of fun with the Portable Rotary Phone from Spark Fun Electronics. It's a GSM cell phone built inside an old rotary phone. You pop your SIM card in, it dials out, rings and acts just like an old fashion phone, but it's now my full time cell phone. I'll have a full review of it up soon, and will be using it at Gnomedex this week in Seattle. For now- check out the photos and video I shot so far..."

As with my first and second novels, I've posted the entire text of this book online under a Creative Commons license that allows the unlimited, noncommercial redistribution of the text. You can send it around, paste it into a chat, beam it to a friend's PDA, or print out a chapter to hand out in the university common room. Like Woody Guthrie said, "Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

The whole point of giving away electronic books is to experiment with electronic text and spot where the new opportunities for earning a writer's living lie -- working with my audience, not against them. So with every release, I've tried some experimentation. This book is no exception.

This book is the first novel to employ the new Creative Commons Developing Nations License. That's a license that lets anyone living in a country that's not on the World Bank's list of high-income countries treat the book as if it were in the public domain. If you live in a developing nation, you can print your own editions of this book and sell them, you can make your own movies, radio plays, translations and whatever else you can think of, charge whatever the traffic will bear for them, and never give me a penny or ask my permission (though I hope you'll drop me a line and let me know what you're up to so I can keep up on the book's spread!). The only limitation on this right is that you may only export your works to other developing nations: the rich nations where my paying customers live are strictly off-limits.

I'm doing three signings for Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town in the first two weeks of July. The first two are in the Detroit region (I'm spending July 4 week in East Lansing, Michigan teaching at the Clarion Writers' Workshop), and the third is in Toronto, at BakkaPhoenix books, the oldest sf bookstore in the country, where I once worked. I hope to see you at these!

July 5, 7PM: Archives Bookshop, 517 West Grand River, East Lansing, MI, 48823, (517)332-8444

July 7, 7:30PM: Schuler Books and Music, 1982 West Grand River Avenue, Okemos, MI, 48864, (517)349-8840

July 11, 7PM: BakkaPhoenix Books, 697 Queen St West, Toronto, ON, M6J 1E6, (416)963-9993

Also, Second Life players can attend an in-game signing on Sunday, July 24 at 2pm PDT/5pm EDT/10pm London time.

Here's the spanking-new website for the book. I hope you'll spare a moment to take a look. This is the longest thing I've ever written, and the early reviews have been stunning. I'm as proud of this as I could be, and I sincerely hope you enjoy it:

SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN, SOMEONE LEAVES TOWN is a glorious book, but there are hundreds of those. It is more. It is a glorious book unlike any book you've ever read.

- Gene Wolfe

The government "wants to create a cyber-island but they haven't changed their regulation and infrastructure enough to create the climate," Rahim said. If Mauritius doesn't act quickly, he warned, it may well see its cyber-island idea stolen by competitor countries...

Still, Mauritius' courts have shown signs of holding the government to its competitiveness policies, which may ease the way for future investors.

"If any investor had called me three months ago and asked about investing, I would have told them to go somewhere else," Rahim said. Now, he said, "you have to come in with open eyes and an African mentality of patience, but if you persevere you can get results."

During a short funeral service at the weekend attended by 13 nuns who showed no emotion, Father Corogeanu said: "God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil."

Romanian reporters present at the ceremony said strangle marks were clearly visible on the corpse, which lay in an open casket.

Claps of thunder were heard as the coffin was lowered into the ground, a sign "that the will of God has been done", Father Corogeanu said...

Sister Irina joined the order three months ago, after visiting a friend who lived there.

According to medical reports she had been treated for schizophrenia.