Entertainment Media Research's bogus study on music downloading concluded that "35% of music listeners are using legal download services, and that the percentage will soon surpass illegal downloads, currently at 40%." A Slashdot reader trashes the bad statistical comparisons here, with remarkable acuity:

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.

Link

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%."

Matt picked up a National Geographic science booklet for kids and discovered that it contains subtle propaganda for copyright maximalism:

"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.

Link (Thanks, Matt!)

Check out this scanned-in 1967 prospectus for membership in the then-new Club 33, the secretive exclusive members' club over Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean.

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.

Link (Thanks, Kirby!)

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

Dan Gillmor's visionary, compelling Citizen Journalism experiment continues. He's created a sign-up for citizen journalists who want to participate in Bayosphere that is as sweet a code of citizen journalist conduct as you could ask for:

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.

a href="http://bayosphere.com/cjregister">Link

The Onion has posted a science fictional edition from the year 2056. There are some fantastic gags here, a few that fall flat -- by and large, though, this is some funny futurism ("Abraham Lincoln's DNA now available over the counter!" "47th Amendment grants iPod Sufferage!") Link

Richard Stallman, creator of the Free Software movement, has written a tremendous essay for the Guardian on the risks of software patents. Richard undertakes a gedankenexperiment about "literary patents" and the impact they would have had on Victor Hugo as he sat down to pen Les Miserables.

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.

Link (Thanks, Phil and Eloisa!)

On the heels of the introduction of Canada's Bill C-60, a Made-in-Canada version of the DMCA, Michael Geist has posted several long, thoughtful blog posts about the bill's effects on different interests: search engines, ISPs, and P2P users:

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.

Link (Thanks, Steve!)

Ernest sez, "DRM proponent and Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg has grown so frustrated with the DRM on Microsoft Reader files that it would appear he has violated the DMCA in order to strip the files of DRM. He only wanted to read the files he had legitimately purchased. 'Our research shows clearly that DRM is only an issue to consumers when it's technology they keep bumping into.' What does that make the DMCA?" Link (Thanks, Ernest!)

With San Francisco Pride 2005 coming up this weekend, geek comedian Heather Gold has written an essay about her sense of pride and Pride:

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.

Link

The first test flight of the X-37 went off without a hitch today at Mojave airport/spaceport in the California desert. Mojave aviation author and photographer Alan Radecki took some great photos, including the shot here.

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.

Link to entry on Radecki's blog.

The Screen Actors Guild's National Executive Committee has voted to reject a new agreement with electronic game publishers. Snip from SAG press release, in which CEO Greg Hessinger is quoted as saying that the union will "now explore [its] options."

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.

Link

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

The Food Marketing Institute has ranked the fifty most frequently shoplifted products snatched by organized retail thieves. Organized retail theft (ORT) is "separate and distinct from petty shoplifting in that it involves professional theft rings that move quickly from community to community and across state lines to steal large amounts of merchandise that is then repackaged and sold back into the marketplace." The Top 10 shoplifted items:

#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

Link (via Fark and Mahalanobis)

Real Simple provides a useful guide to how long dozens of products last. Some examples:

• 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

Link (via MAKE: Blog)

The American Society of Anesthesiologists is warning physicians and nurses that patients might experience intensely vivid sex dreams while under anesthesia. From the Arizona Daily Star:

"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."

Link

Boing Boing reader Ralph says,

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.

Link

A prankster in Sunnyvale, California has been toying with traffic lights across the city for three months. Police say he or she has turned them to face the wrong way, altered the timing, and made them flash red in all directions. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

"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.

Link (Thanks, Dr. Maz!)

I was browsing Coop's website in search of devil-babes with which to anoint my eyeballs after today's evangelical sandals and holy snackage -- and stumbled on this. Snip:

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.

Link to Coop's Rat Fink snapshots. He found something else at the swap meet, too...

Reader comment: Steve Smith says,

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

Shoes of The Fisherman sandals have treads in them that leave the message JESUS LOVES YOU in the sand.
Link (thanks, Janet!)

Among the many colorful solutions proposed by Boing Boing readers to reports of I.P. enforcements against small-time cake bakers and piñata stuffers who fashion kids' goodies without license:

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

Drop the piñata: Hollywood cracks down on unlicensed characters, Copyright cops crack down on cooks over cakes, Hollywood foots bill for LAPD spy cams

Here's a more realistic version of a thumb-shaped thumbdrive, which Cory wrote about last November.
Link (thanks, Bonnie!)

Randomly, the top Google result for "I am lonely" is a message board on a site for video codecs. People who typed "I am lonely" into Google have taken over the board and formed an ad-hoc community. Seven Sixty-seven pages of posts!

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.

Link (via Waxy!)

Treknologies is a blog that covers equipment, books, and resources for amateur explorers. Recent posts include a round-up of portable solar chargers, and looks at GPS-based speedtrap detectors, travel guitars and ukuleles. The stuff they write about would be of interest even to people whose idea of an adventure is a walk around the block.

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.

Link

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."

Gavin sez, "This group called LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots) took over an abandoned delicatessen and have installed lots of miniature musical instruments, all run by remote control from a laptop. Some of them are as simple as a mallet hitting a bucket, while others are more elaborate. Every few minutes, they spring to life, playing a really cool percussion symphony of miniature bot music. They have a lot of cool audio and video downloads, although they don't communicate the full flavor of walking around in an environment populated by these clattering bots. They've taken over the former MVP Deli in the financial district of New York City (43 John Street), and will have the display up through the end of the week." Previously on Boing Boing: GuitarBot Strums Classics at Juilliard Link (Thanks, Gavin!)

When Linsday was at the Orlando airport on her way home from TechEd 2005, she took photos of some snacks featuring characters from the Old Testament. It's a pretty good idea. For one thing, I imagine Florida has a lot of fundamentalist Christians, and for another, the company doesn't have to pay anyone for character licensing fees. The products' names include Noah's Nuggets, Abraham's Bosom, Rachel's Delight, Sweet Shalom, and Bar of Judah. I suspect the manufacturer of these snacks has a pretty good sense of humor.
Link (thanks, TAD!)

A young Star Trek fan was suspended from school for reciting his own version of the Pledge of Allegiance, in which he pledged to the United Federation of Planets. His mom has posted the hilarious story:

"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."

Link

In April 2004, a group of Swarthmore students got politicized when they were threatened with copyright lawsuits for posting a leaked whistleblower memo that documented Diebold's voting machine malfeasance. They founded the Free Culture movement, which is now a honest-to-goodness global phenom at campuses all over the planet.

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.

Link (via Lessig)

Snip:

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.

Link (Thanks, Woozle)

Joel "on Software" Splosky put together a Best of Software Writing anthology filled with articles he's cadged from blogs and other web-writing (he kindly included my Boing Boing post on Notice and Takedown regimes in Canada). The contributor list is fantastic:

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 book is out now -- I'm looking forward to getting my copy!

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!

Link

On July 24, I'll be appearing in the online world Second Life to do a book signing/launch for my new novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. The Second Lifers have been conducting a contest to see who can come up with the coolest in-game programmed book-object to decant the novel into, and they've picked a winner:

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."

Link (Thanks, Ernest!)

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

Dubai, a city that is practically a themepark already, is building the world's largest, most expensive, most luxurious themepark, EVAR, called "Dubailand" (what else?). You can tell from the website alone that this is going to be something: vacuous, content-free Flash site, with all the major info hidden behind PDFs and (ugh-ptui!) a Real video. Now notice the "worlds" of Dubailand: "Downtown," "Eco-Tourism," "Retail and Entertainment," "Attractions and Experience," "Sports and Outdoor" and "Themed Leisure and Vacation." Retail and Entertainment? Now that's some forthright theming! Check out the bumpf, especially the FAQs!

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.

Link (Thanks, Neal!)

Garth sez, "This a flickr photo set of wax-printed fabric that my girlfriend just brought back from Ghana. The Ghanaians that she bought the fabric from tended never to notice the objects that were printed on the fabric--they all served as abstractions. She wasn't able to track down her holy grail--a fabric printed with roasting chickens! You'll have to settle for batteries, umbrellas, lipstick...and a first aid kit." Link (Thanks, Garth!)

Allegations that a keystroke logger was embedded within the promotional screensaver for the USA Networks show "Dead Zone" have been debunked by a few knowledgeable Boing Boing readers who examined the code. Link, and a post-mortem is coming soon on why the code triggered a false positive. Special thanks to Dave Maynor of Internet Security Systems who completed the reversal.

I filed a report for Wired News today on the goings-on inside R&D firm Applied Minds, founded by former Disney Imagineers Bran Ferren (at right in the snapshot I took below) and Danny Hillis (left).

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."

Link

Downhill Battle's Nicholas Reville sez,

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.

Link (Thanks, Nicholas!)

Today, WIPO (the UN body in charge of copyright, patent and trademark treaties) met for the second time to discuss the "development agenda" -- a proposal to use copyrights and patents to improve the lot of developing nations. India, Brazil, Argentina and others have proposed substantive reforms to the organization, and the delegations spent the day wrangling over how -- or whether -- to tackle them. The proposal, called the "Friends of Development" proposal, is designed to put developing nations front and center at WIPO, but some countries (like the UK), are calling for this vital document to be buried in a committee that meets every two years, which lacks any read mandate. If the UK and its allies win, no progress will be made on turning WIPO into a real humanitarian agency until this moribund committee is brought back from the dead and made effective.

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

A recent New York Times profile about a young man named Cameron Clapp. At the story link, you'll find photographs of the high-tech robotic prostheses that this teen amputee uses for greater mobility. Below, a photo I took of Cameron at Wired Magazine's NEXTFEST last year (more pics).

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.

Link to story, and here is Cameron's website. (Thanks, Berny Clapp, and Susannah Breslin!)

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›.)

This hard drive enclosure doubles as a USB hub and triples as a multi-function card-reader. If only it were about half the size and bus-powered, it'd go straight in my gadget bag.

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.

Link (via Red Ferret)

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."

A couple days back, Microsoft announced Avalanche, a made-in-Redmond alternative to the wild-and-wooly BitTorrent, the protocol that now takes the lion's share of Internet traffic. Bram Cohen, BitTorrent's creator, has posted an in-depth debunking of the assumptions made by the Avalanche paper.

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.

Link (via /.)

Eirik sez, "Gunhild Sørensen of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation just did a spectacular ride in a paraglider. All the way she posted directly to the blog at the Norwegian Broadcasting Coropration's web site." Link (Thanks, Eirik!)

I've never met a Flash website interface I liked — until now. Artist Esao Andrews' site is fast loading and fun. He's also a great artist.
Link (Here's an interview with Esao) (thanks, Angstrom!)

Fans of Castle Infinity, an early, defunct massively multiplayer game, brought their virtual home back from the grave by sneaking into the company's dumpsters, rescuing the servers that the game lived on, and starting them up again. Link

CommonBits is hosting a fresh bunch of Daily Show clips as torrents:

* 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

Link

A reader writes, "Jimmy Palmer [ed: editor of the fine DRM Blog] combined 2000 census data with Google maps. The result is that you can now see how many people live in any area in the United States. You can even see how many people live on a single city block." Link

JD Lasica is the author of Darknet, an excellent new book on the copyfight (the cover blurb I provided for it: "The entertainment companies are stealing your future -- robbing you blind with locks and laws and rhetoric that tunrs anyone who makes and shares culture without their permission into a crook. Get mad, get even, get on the darknet and *fight back*."). He's posting excerpts from the book on his site.

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."

Link

The Canadian government has introduced a Made-in-Canada version of the US DMCA, a sweeping copyright law that creates a thicket of new rights for entertainment companies, reserving precious little rights for the public.

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.

Link (Thanks, Michael!)