Kanamori-sensei is retired now, and can no longer take on such major projects as this kind of book illustration. But he does need to make a living, and wonders if there might be some way he could make use of this 'old' material. He reads and hears so much about Star Trek still, that he kind of thinks people might be interested in his illustrations, but beyond that vague impression, doesn't know how to go about getting them out into the world; he is - to put it politely - not so 'web savvy', nor does he have the resources or experience to get into business alone.

So that's what this page is all about - tossing this out to the Star Trek community at large, and looking for feedback, suggestions, business offers, you name it. I have to mention right up front that Kanamori-sensei isn't going to sell these things outright - there isn't going to be a big eBay blowout here. But he's open to having them reproduced, licensed, published...

Bronze sculpture based on Tim Biskup's Stack Pack Capsule Toy Series The work features six fully interchangeable smaller bronze sculptures that can be stacked to a height of six and a half feet.

Edition of 5
w: 18.00 h: 78.00 d: 12.00 in
w: 45.72 h: 198.12 d: 30.48 cm

The Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems is significant because one of the unanswered questions in nanotechnology circles has been, "How do we get from where we are today to the more robust forms of nanotechnology, those that hold the potential for truly disruptive change?" Nanotechnology trackers often look at current applications versus the envisioned capabilities of the future and ask how one will lead to the other. This project is designed to chart the course and provide some proposed answers.

Here's an excerpt from an interview the suit-happy bully did with Helsingin Sanomat:

Why are you basing your claims as a member of the bar, Antero Molander?
This is based on the idea that if someone maliciously puts something like this to Internet, there are damages, and we must at some point cash in on them. We are not going to just watch it.

Can other critics at bigger publications criticize your services?
Of course, if they are professional food critics, and of course if they are appropriate. We can guess what is behind this.

So what is behind this?
No comment.

Do you know what a blog is?
No I don't really know. What are they?

One of Internet's biggest growing medium of communication, sort of electronic diaries.
Well, anyone can do that sort of thing in their own paper notebooks.

My basic idea is that RSS makes a lot of sense in the mobile space to deliver information to devices. My first idea was movie listings: a user could set up a profile with their 5 favorite theaters, and then the showtimes for those would be updated via RSS every night at 3am, transparently to the user. That way, the current information is always available on the handset, without having to fire up the browser and connect to the network. Other information could be delivered the same way, using RSS to replace SMS sports score alerts and so on.

So what happens when audio content (or even video, down the road) is thrown into the mix? Instead of just having static content regularly updated to a device, now you've got multimedia. It also solves one significant hiccup for podcasting: to take content mobile, you've got to sync your MP3 player with your computer. Using mobiles over the network takes that out of the equation, making podcasting a little bit more exciting...

That way, a user's always got the latest content in a device that's always with them, and the only action required to get it is to subscribe. It becomes real radio on demand -- the shows you want to hear, anytime, anywhere, since they're delivered right to your mobile handset.

The repetitive impact of the ball hitting the gloved hand has been shown to lead to damage to blood vessels. Over time, blood flow can be significantly reduced and nerves may be bruised, causing numbness and tingling, reduced sensitivity to cold and bluish-colored skin...

The current design of catcher's mitts ensures that most pitches are caught at the base of the webbing, at the bottom of the index finger, where many vessels and nerves are located. Pitchers and field players tend to catch the ball in the webbing itself, away from the hand.

By passing an electric current (from the six D-size alkaline batteries) through a liquid solution composed of tap water and citric acid crystals (similar to lemon juice), the water molecule bonds are broken down into the primary elements of hydrogen and oxygen (this process is called electrolysis and takes place in the Fuel Generator). These separated hydrogen and oxygen molecules then bubble upward into the plastic ball (Reaction Chamber) where an igniter produces the heat necessary to ignite the hydrogen fuel. The expanding gases thrust the rocket high into the air. After the hydrogen ignites, it combines with the oxygen to form the by-product, water!

"DiCorcia rigged strobe lights to scaffolding and trained his lens on an "X" he taped to the sidewalk. From 20 feet away, he took shots of Nussenzweig and thousands of other unsuspecting subjects. Later that year, diCorcia exhibited this image under the title "#13" at a Pace Wildenstein gallery show called "Heads" in Chelsea. The photographer said multiple prints of Nussenzweig's picture sold for about $20,000 each. The picture also was published in "Heads," a book that sold several thousand copies, diCorcia said.

Now Nussenzweig, a retired diamond merchant from New Jersey, is snapping back at diCorcia -- and at the right of photographers to secretly grab pictures on the street and sell them -- by suing him, Pace Wildenstein, publisher Pace/MacGill and unnamed distributors and sellers of the image and the book. "We claim that to take someone's picture without their consent is bad enough," said Jay Goldberg, Nussenzweig's lawyer. "But to then hang the picture in galleries, put it in books and sell it around the city without telling the person or obtaining permission is unfair and outrageous."

Gavin sez,

We're celebrating publication day on Kelly Link's new collection MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS by releasing her debut collection STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN as a Free Download using a Creative Commons License. We've put the book up as in Plain text, HTML, RTF, & PDF files and are open to linking to other (more tech-savvy) people's conversions.

Link's new collection received a starred review from Publishers Weekly -- and praise from writers such as Michael Chabon and Alice Sebold. Her stories are published in everything from literary journals (Fence), genre anthologies (The Faery Reel), zines (One Story, Say) to McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and have been awarded the Tiptree, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards.

Publisher Gavin Grant says he and Link were inspired by author and copyright activist Cory Doctorow who had put each of his books online under a Creative Commons license.

"We're a tiny independent press," said Grant. "Of course we want to explore different methods of getting our books out to readers -- and in spreading the word about Creative Commons. We don't expect this to kill sales. If anything (fingers crossed), it may help. After all, the book is already available in hundreds of libraries, on print.google.com, Amazon.com's Search Inside program, and even on BookCrossing. None of these programs have stopped the book from finding readers."

1. Going to hell. Instructions and advice.

Listen, because I'm only going to do this once. You'll have to get there by way of London. Take the overnight train from Waverly. Sit in the last car. Speak to no one. Don't fall asleep.

When you arrive at Kings Cross, go down into the Underground. Get on the Northern line. Sit in the last car. Speak to no one. Don't fall asleep.

The Northern line stops at Angel, at London Bridge, at Elephant and Castle, Tooting Broadway. The last marked station is Morden: stay in your seat. Other passengers will remain with you in the car. Speak to no one.

These are some of the unlisted stations you will pass: Howling Green. Duke's Pit. Sparrowkill. Stay in your seat. Don't fall asleep.

If you look around the car, you may notice that the other passengers have started to glow. The bulbs on the car dim as the passengers give off more and more light. If you look down you may find that you yourself are casting light into the dark car.

The final stop is Bonehouse.

The latest versions of iTunes prevents you from using Pro Tools or other peripheral-based audio apps.I downloaded the new version out of habit from the Update, then went to open iTunes and it just bounced in the dock without opening. I went to the India-based email help on the Apple webpage, and the first thing they asked was "do you have any peripherals hooked up?" I wasn't sure exactly what they were talking about, but finally unhooked the MBox (the external hardware for Pro Tools, the audio production standard software), and bingo! iTunes opened no problem.

Apple is clearly taking steps to try to prevent piracy using audio production software with iTunes. It's a pain in the butt for an audio professional such as myself that relies on these tools. I've since found a runaround- if you set your computer to open iTunes automatically when a CD is inserted it will open when you insert a CD even if Pro Tools is open. But Apple is taking Draconian measures here, sabotaging other completely legal programs to protect their copyright!

Update: Robb sez, I'm running iTunes alongside several production audio applications and not one but two professional digital audio interfaces. As a matter of fact I'm using cycling74's soundflower virtual audio driver to record iTunes audio (yes including protected AAC files) into Ableton Live.

"Digidesign, the makers of ProTools (a closed, proprietary audio software package and the closed, proprietary audio hardware that they make you buy to use their software) are notoriously bad driver writers -- and their drivers for THEIR audio interfaces (one of which Tim is using) are the culprit: they are single client interfaces, which means unlike every other audio interface for the Mac, they can only support one application at a time.

"Apple, btw, has made it far EASIER to use applications together. Tiger features virtual audio interfaces that aggregate the ports on all your hardware into one, the ability to send audio and midi between machines over networks and, in general OSX rocks for audio production."

I believed all those government and scientific reports that laser rifles and hand-held force fields were decades away from reality -- if they were possible at all. Cloaked in the dull skepticism of a flat-earther, I naively thought that advances like "Electro-Hypnotizers" and "Ion Ray Guns" were the stuff of science fiction, or merely hoaxes. (...) Not only are these items for real, but a helpful Internet retailer -- "Information Unlimited," out of Amherst, New Hampshire -- has been thoughtful enough to sell them all under one electronic roof. Huzzah!

My only question is what to buy first. Should it be the "Telekinetic Enhancer"? The "Sonic Nausea Device" Or maybe I should go with the "Magnetic Cannon." Luckily, the plans for most of these projects are only $20. So I can afford to make some mistakes.

Justin Baeder says: "Blogspot spam blogs have gotten a lot more clever in recent weeks. Today I found a one that purports to be maintained by a real person, but upon further examination appears to be run by a bot that posts links to actual news articles (complete with excerpts). The spammy links are hidden using CSS, so you can only see them when you try to leave a comment or view the source of the page." Link

When wildlife officials caught wind of the catch they urged the villagers to release the adult male so that it could spawn, but it later died and was eaten, the groups said. They did not say when the massive fish was caught.

Yesterday BoingBoing reported the Google Map hack "Star Wars Imperial ATAT attack on Palo Alto". Today I created an *animated* hack: invaders move around the map! And this time invaders are mozillas and gnus converging towards Microsoft Offices in Redmond! ;-) Here is the animated map: Link. Be sure to check the HTML code (with the Javascript code that moves invaders around). In the blog post I also ponder that "It should be very easy to create real playable games on Google Maps. Here are some ideas: - playing Risk on the real world map (with the ability to zoom in/out to combat at different scales). Extend Jrisk or JavaRisk (code available on SourceForge). - playing FreeCiv on real world maps. Modify FreeCiv source code. - driving a car race on streets of the real world. - much more I guess.

Previously: Google Maps API released / Star Wars ATAT attack on Palo Alto

Reader Comment: Random_Tangent says:

More in the Darth Vader fetish line. The model, Malady, decided to do her own homage to the release of Revenge of the Sith by wearing Thigh-high boots, a Vader mask and little else. A surprisingly disturbing combination of Geek Icon and sexuality. Twists the brain just to look at. Almost Safe for Work (that is to say no visible nipples). The photography is fairly boring and kind of flat, but the subject is enough to shine past the high key/Full Housian fill.

The entire country has been without internet for the past few days, it's just now coming back, but VERY slowly

"My TV went out a few seconds before I got a shock," Robinson said, adding the current traveled through the television, the gaming system and into him through his game controller.

Robinson said he doesn't remember what happened next, but believes the electricity traveled from his left hand and exited through a toe on his right foot, part of which he shot off with a .32 caliber rifle during an accident in October...

"I was shocked myself that it (the electricity) traveled through his whole body and didn't damage it," (his mother Wendy) Smith said, adding there was a distinct hole and black spot in Robinson's left hand where the electricity entered his body. His body was also severely stimulated to the point of exhaustion...

"I was worried my Play Station was broken," Robinson said, adding the television, the video game and the Play Station were undamaged, but the controller was fried by the charge.

Beginning yesterday morning, the FBI and law enforcement from 10 other countries conducted over 90 searches worldwide as part of “Operation Site Down,” designed to disrupt and dismantle many of the leading criminal organizations that illegally distribute and trade in copyrighted software, movies, music, and games on the Internet.

What Is the Universe Made Of?
What is the Biological Basis of Consciousness?
Why Do Humans Have So Few Genes?
To What Extent Are Genetic Variation and Personal Health Linked?
Can the Laws of Physics Be Unified?
How Much Can Human Life Span Be Extended?
What Controls Organ Regeneration?
How Can a Skin Cell Become a Nerve Cell?
How Does a Single Somatic Cell Become a Whole Plant?
How Does Earth's Interior Work?
Are We Alone in the Universe?
How and Where Did Life on Earth Arise?
What Determines Species Diversity?
What Genetic Changes Made Us Uniquely Human?
How Are Memories Stored and Retrieved?
How Did Cooperative Behavior Evolve?
How Will Big Pictures Emerge from a Sea of Biological Data?
How Far Can We Push Chemical Self-Assembly?
What Are the Limits of Conventional Computing?
Can We Selectively Shut Off Immune Responses?
Do Deeper Principles Underlie Quantum Uncertainty and Nonlocality?
Is an Effective HIV Vaccine Feasible?
How Hot Will the Greenhouse World Be?
What Can Replace Cheap Oil -- and When?
Will Malthus Continue to Be Wrong?

Manager Hung Lin-wen said the original inspiration came from a toilet-shaped spaceship in a Japanese cartoon. The theme has attracted droves of novelty-seeking young people who come to play with their food and gross out their friends...

But no matter how delicious, a few customers still find the combination a little hard to swallow.

"The taste is good, but I still feel disgusted when I look at it," said diner Lin Yu-may.

It is simply unacceptable at this point in history that a citizen can use web services to track the movies he is renting, the weather around his house, and the books he's recently purchased but cannot as easily monitor data regarding the quality of his drinking water, legislation or regulations that will directly impact his work or personal life, what contracts are currently available to bid on for his state, or what crimes have recently occurred on his street.

As a step towards resolving this dissonance, the Rhode Island Office of the Secretary of the State has released GovTracker Services to provide RESTful access to public information. We hope that this set of web services is adopted by the developer community and is a step towards an era of community-developed applications that make it as easy for citizens to interact with their government as it is for them to interact with the rest of the networked world. With input from the developer community we look to add additional services and make the existing ones even better. You can reach us at rssonate@sec.state.ri.us.

Yellow rice gets its hue from curcumin, an herb that's a spice in curries and is believed by some to be an antioxidant that may help prevent cancer. Green rice comes from the nutritious bitter gourd, often used in Asian soups and stir-fried dishes. Pink comes from tomato, and purple from a mixture of vegetables. "We hope to develop up to 14 colors so people can have a different color of rice every day for two weeks," Lo said.

Snip from Graham's blog post:

I am constantly intrigued by the interplay between nature and technology. Which is partly why I love checking back in on the space station. As it falls more and more into abandon the signs of nature reclaiming that area become more evident. Grass encroaches more and more over and through the concrete and pavement, animals have clearly bunked down in some areas of the buildings, birds building their nests under disused walkways. Sometimes when I take a picture I'll try and eliminate the technological just to focus on the nature. Sometimes I'll try to show the interplay between the two. I know it can be a tired theme but it's one that grabs my brain.

Reader Comment: David Calkins says,

Someone posted your Nova Scotia Earth Satellite station for sale.

President Bush on Wednesday announced the "National Security Service," to be organized under the FBI: Link

Also, at the same time, he endorsed this proposal: Link

President Bush supports extending the duration of electronic surveillance in cases involving agents of foreign powers who are not U.S. persons.

More details: Link

The President should seek to have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) amended to extend the duration of electronic surveillance and "pen registers" in cases involving agents of foreign powers who are not U.S. persons. Extending the duration of FISA orders for non-U.S. person agents of foreign powers will result in a substantial savings of resources and permit the Department of Justice (DOJ) to focus more time and attention on other FISA matters where U.S. persons are involved. DOJ has already proposed legislation that would extend the duration not only for electronic surveillance and pen register orders, but also physical search orders in cases involving agents of foreign powers who are not U.S. persons. This proposed legislation has been shared with appropriate Committees of the House and Senate.

Hip hop mixtapes are dead -- long live hip hop mixtapes! With the copyright powers-that-be cracking down on unapproved use of music on mixtapes (premier hip hop site Turntable Lab recently took down their mixtape listings), the ones that emerge these days are more brazen. Case in point: "Blue Eyes Meets Bed Stuy" from DJ Cappel -- a mash-up/remix/mixtape created with vocals from Biggie and tunes (breaks?) from Frankie. It's not as brilliant as "A Night at the Hip Hopera" by the Kleptones, but it's very much worth owning (which means get it while you still can). It can purchased at SandboxAutomatic.com and TurntableLab.com.

Reader Comment: Andrew Austin says,

Turntable Lab only took down their "Mixtape" section because people aren't doing mixes on cassette anymore - not because of any panic over the unauthorized use of copyrighted music. They still have plenty of mix CD's of all types for sale, they're just in the CD section, under "DJ mixes".

Rapid search
1. From the bearing at which the hydrophone was left by the previous watch, sweep through 000 degrees and continue on to 180 degrees.

2. Then, reversing direction, sweep back around the full circle to 180 degrees. If no suspicious sounds are heard, shift to ...

Progressive search
Sweep forward two full turns of the handwheel and then one turn back. Continue up the same side, two turns forward and one turn back, until you have crossed the bow. Then train rapidly down the opposite side to 180 degrees. Reverse direction and train two turns forward, one back, two forward, one back, until you have crossed the bow again. Then train rapidly down the other side ... and so on. Continue this procedure for the duration of your watch, unless ordered to do otherwise.

Scheduled for release between Christmas 2005 and Easter 2006, Left Behind: Eternal Forces will put players in command of the apocalyptic battles raging in the streets of New York City between the angelic Tribulation Forces and the demonic Global Community Peacekeepers during the End of Days. Gamers will participate in events from the Left Behind book series in single player mode and battle to capture territory from other players in the multi-player online game mode.

The Left Behind game series will allow play in the same End of Days fictional world as the bestselling Left Behind(R) novels, which use the prophecies of the Book of Revelation as a framework. The first title, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, is set in the future when the faithful have been gathered up and ascended to Heaven during the Rapture. In the chaos that follows, the Antichrist has taken the reigns of power at the United Nations and is gathering the countries of the world under his banner. But a small resistance, the Tribulation Forces, have formed to oppose Satan's legions.

A dozen kiosks hosted by local and not so local Free Culture enthusiasts such as Debian, FreeCulture, KDE, île sans fil, Savoir-faire Linux; a press conference announcing the Semaine québécoise de l'informatique libre, a Free Software week; a Richard Stallman presentation on copyright; and finally, the answers to all your questions with Russell McOrmond (Flora), Daniel Pascot (Laval University) and Marcus Bornfreund (Ottawa University), responsible for the canadian adaptation of the Creative Commons licenses, Cyrille Béraud (Savoir-faire Linux) and Robin Millette (FACIL).

Sunday July 3rd 2005, from 13h until 22h
Université du Québec à Montréal
320, Sainte-Catherine east, room DSR 510
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Berri-UQAM metro

Meeting at the Beijing Film Academy yesterday, directors representing several generations of Chinese cinema discussed plans to shoot movies expressly for viewing on mobile phones. They believe that the time is ripe to take advantage of the technology, despite the graininess, high compression, and poor sound quality of most mobile phones. This follows the big cell-phone media story from last year, fiction serialized over SMS.

Footage of a salsa dancing competition in Korea. Hilarious because this couple's theme is Street Fighter II. They incorporate some key moves from the game as well as recognizable soundbytes.

wickerpedia is a parody of wikipedia.org, only with more of an emphasis on wicker (which is terribly represented by wikipedia). The site features a more wickercentric view of history, the news, and common wisdom, as well as a much improved searching engine.

The path of devotion offered by gurus is also a natural fit for those of us who are fed up with the relativistic haze of a world where there are no discernible rules, yet equally disillusioned by institutional religions that appear to have sold out to American consumerism. The guru offers absolutism. Certainty. A point of focus.

As one slick guru, chronicled on Guruphiliac explains on his website: "When you meet a master, you have two choices. Transform or walk away. You cannot be in his presence and remain the same." Uh, yeah. In other words, conform to his reality or scram. The guru is the starting place from which all other decisions are to be made. You start with the guru as the one perfect point in the universe, and from there everything else can fall into place. If the guru has instructed you to eat a certain food or do a certain practice, then - according to the logic of gurudom - everything else you have to do for this to happen is part of the perfection. Slowly but surely, surrender to the guru requires you to reject pretty much everything that doesn't fit whatever model of the world he's offering you.

But, honestly, that's what the devotee was after in the first place. An excuse to do or not do all that other confusing stuff in life like encounter people with different ideas, wrestle with the questions of existence, and accept that nobody really knows what happens when we die.

Within hours, she was labeled gae-ttong-nyue (dog-shit-girl) and her pictures and parodies were everywhere. Within days, her identity and her past were revealed. Request for information about her parents and relatives started popping up and people started to recognize her by the dog and the bag she was carrying as well as her watch, clearly visible in the original picture.

As far as bizarre Christian LPs, I gotta say, this is this most extreme thing I've ever heard. It's some full grown man with a munchkin voice, singing terrifying songs about drug use, abortion and being a fat kid and each fill me with a profound sense of dread, horror, and disgust.

Update: I nosed around this site a little more and learned that it is chock full of nightmare-inducing religious LP covers. Highly recommended.
Link

Reader comment: Clara says: "the post about the lil markie record reminded me of little marcy. little marcy was an incredibly weird evangelical christian ventriloquist. there's a page of MP3s here.

the creepiest song is "devil, devil, go away" and the most unintentionally hilarious is "i love little pussy."

Google have just launched their API to the fantastic Google Maps. There's some excellent thing people produced by hacking with pre-API Google Maps code. Let's hope the launch of the API opens the flood gates...

Jeffrey Warren adds, "Following the release of the Google Maps API, we spent an hour or so and put together this map depicting Star Wars Imperial ATAT attack on Palo Alto. Yay for remixing." Link

Reader comment: Erik says,

Snopes has this listed as "Undetermined" as to whether it's a hoax or not, but outlines some interesting corraborative info.

Bill Simmon says:

My girlfriend Emily's dad gave us a copy of the note the other day. He's a pilot for Continental, based in Houston. He says he pulled it off of an internal Continental site. I thought for sure I had myself a metablog exclusive and quickly posted it to my own site (and sent in a BB suggest-a-site note), only to find that you had it up on BB hours earlier. I don't know if a pilot at Continental claiming the note is the real deal adds weight to the veracity of the claim, but there you go.

Reader Michael Hohl figured out this wonderful way to make your computer Y10K compliant. That is, how to set your computer so that it displays the 5-digit date it will need when we reach the years after 9999: that is 10000 and beyond. In anticipation of that time, you can set this year's date to 02005 if you have Mac OSX Tiger. Here are step-by-step directions. Be first in your neighborhood to have all your documents and files future-proofed.

Reader comment: Patrick Gaskill says,

Maybe someone smarter than me can correct this, but I'm not so sure that this tip futureproofs anything -- think of that leading 0 as being hard-coded in. If your copy of Tiger makes it to the year 10000, it will just display 010000.

Sean Duffy says:

I read this article and Patrick Gaskill is correct. All this does is add a leading 0 to the Year, so if it were year 0, then the year would display as '00' instead of '0'. This does not prove whether your computer is Y10K compliant or not. Here is a short explanation about how the whole compliant thing works.

What makes a computer compliant is the number of bits the computer is running at. A 32-bit computer can calculate time (in seconds) of 2^31 (one bit remains for the return signal) or 2147483648 seconds or 68.04965 years. This means that a 32-bit computer can calculate time in seconds from its birth for about 68 years before this byte has to reset. Back when computers were first being programmed in 32-bit, programmers figured that by the time the year 2000 rolled around computers would be well past 32-bit and hopefully past 64-bits. So they set the computer's birth date to about 1932, therefore ending its life in the year 2000. So what did we do to fix this Y2K problem; well all we did was changed the computer's birth date to the year 1970 (since no digital data existed before this point in time). So therefore all we did was delay the inevitable with 32-bit computers. So in the year 2038 32-bit computers will believe the date is not 2038 but 1970. So what are we doing to fix this problem?

64-bit computers, as before 64-bit computers can calculate time in 2^63 (one bit remains for the return signal) or 9223372036854775808 or 292271023045 years. About 292 billion years after 1970 the byte will reset (as long as computers calculate system time in seconds). So if you have a 64-bit computer there is no doubt that it will be Y292271023.045K compliant.

Not to be a pedant, but I think Sean Duffy is conflating two issues. Y2K really *was* about the base-10 representation of the year, since programmers were using two integer fields to represent the year, rather than a single combined binary value as is done for Unix timestamps (seconds since epoch). In other words, it was just as the news described--YY rather than YYYY, where Y is a single 0-9 value. The *other* problem, the so-called 2038 problem, is what Sean is referring to with respect to seconds since a starting point ("epoch"). The problem there is pretty much just as he said, though I've never heard the terminology "return signal;" the 32nd bit is reserved for a sign bit (the bit is 0 for positive numbers and 1 for negative). As far as I know, but I may be wrong, there was never a prior "epoch" in UNIX timestampts of 1932.

So, in short, there are two distinct problems, and some of the trivia in Sean's explanation is slightly off. But the gist is right.

Adding a digit to your year is in line with the efforts of the Long Now Foundation [Ed. Note: the creation of Applied Minds co-founder Danny Hillis]. They count Brian Eno as a boardmember... and hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

"To longtime fans and supporters of Minor Threat and Dischord, this must seem like just another familiar example of mainstream corporations attempting to assimilate underground culture to turn a buck. However, it is more disheartening to us to think that Nike may be successful in using this imagery to fool kids, just beginning to become familiar with skate culture, underground music and D.I.Y. ideals, into thinking that the general ethos of this label, and Minor Threat in particular, can somehow be linked to Nike's mission." Link

Minor Threat's music and iconographic album cover have been an inspiration to countless skateboarders since the album came out in 1984 (sic). And for the members of the Nike Skateboarding staff, this is no different. Because of the album's strong imagery and because our East Coast tour ends in Washington DC, we felt that it was a perfect fit. This was a poor judgement call and should not have been executed without consulting Minor Threat and Dischord Records. Link

What you might hear -- reggae influenced punk (The Clash play Toots and the Maytals), a soul version of a rock and roll song (Wilson Pickett sings "Hey Joe"), a jazz rendition of a Spanish folk melody (Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain") -- they're all connected! Plus Japanese bluegrass, African salsa, French hip-hop, German reggae, Cambodian disco, and Colombian rock!

Link to his blog, with playlist info. link to info on one of his regular gigs in Richmond, VA, link to his radio show on WRIR in the same town, Sundays from 7-9pm EST (streamed online too).

A host cell that has reduced and reoriented metabolic needs can generate biological energy applicable to a broad range of industrial fields including energy, industrial organic compounds, pharmaceuticals, CO2 sequestration, fine chemicals, and environmental remediation. "We are in an era of rapid advances in science and are beginning the transition from being able to not only read genetic code, but are now moving to the early stages of being able to write code," said Dr. Venter.

"How It Works . . . The Computer is really charming. Ladies with anachronistic hairstyles and elegant manicures are furiously inputting data and slotting tapes into readers, while men in suits and glasses hack, hack, hack the night away on machines you would need a small cottage to house." Link (Thanks, Liz!)

The DEA is conducting this war like a guerrilla attack on the people of California. Private citizens who record their busts from public sidewalks are assaulted by DEA agents who try to erase their camera-memory. The press-conferences are closed to the public. The dispensary raids concentrate on computer records of patients and growers, and many of those arrested face ten-year minimum sentences.

Ann is bent on blowing the lid off of this. While the stories she files with newspapers get trimmed to "news haiku," on her blog she's publishing transcripts of the secret press-conferences, information on the use of local law to do the Feds' bidding, and the myriad ways that the DEA is cooking the process to wage its war on Americans.

Q: Does the California law that permits patients to use medical cannabis have any bearing at all on protecting the medical cannabis dispensaries?

Pena: Before I answer that question, one thing, and I think it is really important that I forgot to mention and I think it's a public concern. On these three grow locations that we visited, they all had illegal wires tapping into PG&E the outlets all over the houses, very unsafe. I'm sure that you have heard of the situations were houses have been burning down, this causes a great deal of concern for us.

Like I said once you see that CD which we are handing out you will see the wiring system which is what causes the fires that were all contained in the three different areas that we went to. So this is how some of our houses are getting burned down.

What is your question again?

Isn't anybody else concerned that Apple has introduced DRM into Podcasting? Adam Curry's headline PodFinder show is in ACC format! (and I can't link to it).

Update: Kirk sez, "I just checked my copy of Adam Curry's podcast from iTunes. It's standard AAC -- m4a. It's not the secure m4p format, and it lists no FairPlay information anywhere in the metadata for the file. Unless the simple fact that it's AAC is "DRM," there's no DRM here.

"In fact, several of the podcasts are in AAC (m4a) format -- it seems that all the ones made on Macs are AAC, as would be expected. Since Apple is linking to the original source servers for these files, not hosting them in house, unless the original producers of the podcasts are adding DRM, there's not going to be DRM on these podcast files."

Update: Teece sez, "In reality, most of the credit for cracking Enigma goes to a Polish man named Marian Rejewski (Wikipedia article).

"He led the Polish team that cracked the early Enigma machine, using machines they called bombes. It's a fascinating story. The Polish shared their intelligence with the British when the German switched to a beefed up system, which they didn't have the resources to crack, as it required a bigger machine. And then, of course, Poland was invaded (which is another reason the Poles shared their info -- they knew it was coming, as they had been reading German messages)."

It's tough to answer your question without coming off like a total douche, but I'll try: I think you see most celebrities carefully choosing who they talk to and what they talk about because a lot of their value is based on the mystique their publicists can create for them. In other words, some actors play a role when they're on the set, and another when they're talking to Oprah. I prefer to keep my acting limited to the set, and because I have a blog, I can speak for myself, so I don't really need or want to participate in the Mainstream Entertainment Media.

In real life (like, not on The Internets) I'm a very shy and private person. When I'm out with my wife, I really just want to be left alone, and I feel pretty uncomfortable when I get into big crowds and stuff. But I think I'd feel that way whether I was an actor, or not. I don't think of myself as a celebrity, either. When I hear someone called a celebrity, I think of someone who gets special treatment, never waits in line, and has had sex with Paris Hilton. And I wish my blog wasn't constantly framed as a "celebrity blog."

'DVD Jon" [Jon Lech Johansen] (known for his work on decrypting DVD security codes) has created a patch for the Google Video Viewer -- less than 24 hours after the search giant shipped the video playback plug-in, a tool based on the open-source VideoLAN media player. The patch, released on Johansen's 'So Sue Me' blog, effectively disables a modification Google made to the VideoLAN code to prevent users from playing videos that are not hosted on Google's servers.

Previously on BB: DVD Jon creates DRM-free iTunes interface "PyMusique", Airport Express crypto broken by DVD Jon, Li'l Jon meets DVD Jon (OKAYYYYYY!)

Update: "Modifies" might be a better word here than "cracks." Let us not lose sight of what was "cracked" -- a version of the VLC open source player, released by Googlefolk who believe strongly in the value of free access to information. IMHO the original product was not fundamentally eeevil.

There are any number of reasons why the company might find it wise to restrict their in-browser player offering to videos hosted on their own servers. IANAL, and IANAE (I'm not an engineer), but what was "cracked" here is not a DRM scheme or something that limits enjoyment of the content offered. Nor did DVD Jon imply any of that himself.

Chris Wells says,

Hey Xeni, An interesting spin on this was pointed out in this slashdot comment: Link. Basically noting that all Jon really did was modify open source code put out by Google. Now, Yahoo (arguably Google's biggest competitor) has posted a news bit making it sound like some grand achievement and throwing in references to DeCSS, Apple's DRM and the AE encryption crack.

An anonymous reader says,

The PC Magazine author didn't quite put this into the proper perspective. In fact, this is by far the simplest "crack" yet for DVD Jon. The source code to VLC (the basis for the Google video player) is already available online and Google had published their changes to it on code.google.com (Link). All that has to be done to remove the "feature" in question is to search for "video.google.com" and delete the block of code that surrounds it.

Darel Snodgrass says: "Old-time music is a fast-growing segment of the folk music performance hobby (mostly because it's actually pretty easy to play, unlike, say, bluegrass). Old-time banjo enthusiasts often start with two modern seminal teaching works, "The How and the Tao of Old-Time Banjo" and "A Book of Five Strings" (check any book-sales site for rave reviews). These are best-selling, in-demand books, admittedly within the small world of old-time banjo instruction works. The author, Patrick Costello, has just released both books under a Creative Commons license, and made web versions of both available for free on the ezfolk web site." Link

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."



Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans.



"This is not a prank" said Clements, "The Towne of Weare has five people on the Board of Selectmen. If three of them vote to use the power of eminent domain to take this land from Mr. Souter we can begin our hotel development."

This is my car. For anyone wondering, it's a 1993 Subaru Impreza covered with around 100lbs of colored keys designed for old Telex (teletype) machines.

The keys were attached with silicon caulk over a period of 4 years, off and on (mainly off). Later, we had enough left over to do the much-improved D'Oh Mobile [ed note: the Homer Simpson car] that belongs to a friend of mine. That one sports several mosaic designs laid out thru Tile Creator software.

You can see other artcars at www.artcars.com.

Feel free to e-mail me with other questions or if you have a computer key car idea (and available car)--- we have lots of pink and white keys left.

Previously on Boing Boing: Homer Simpson Computer Key Car, phonecammed in LA: car covered in computer keys, Computer key stool

According to parent testimony and confirmed by an otherwise vaguely-worded letter from the Kutztown Police Department, students got hold of the system's secret administrative password and reconfigured their computers to achieve greater Internet and network access. Some students used the newfound freedom to download music and inappropriate images from the Internet.

James Shrawder spoke on behalf of a group of parents of six of the accused at a June 20 school board meeting. He said the administration may have railroaded the process by not providing authorities with the whole story.

"That's absurd," Superintendent Brenda S. Winkler said after the board meeting, in response to Shrawder's allegations that the administration withheld information until the end of the school year.

Reader comment: Genie Ogden says:

The article on the high school "felons" really made me angry. I went to the newspaper site and sent them a comment. Kids are really being charged with ridiculous stuff these days! Arrested for pointing fingers at other kids (in kindergarten), etc., - it's not like they're planning Columbine type actions. And there are adults doing much worse things and getting away with it - Enron, a war in Iraq based on lies, etc.

My middle school daughter was doing a report about slavery and couldn't get to the book she needed on the internet because it had the word "bondage" in the title. She could have used a password like these kids -- but now she'd be in jail.

This model has the following features and capabilities:

* State of The Art Security - Almost Impossible To "Listen Into Encrypted Conversations"
* Optional On Hold System Can Be Utilized By Simply Hanging The Unit On A Nail In The Wall (Nail Not Included).
* Waiting On Hold Music Is Available By Placing Unit Near Radio or Other Audio Source (Radio Not Included).
* Beveled Edges To Prevent Harmful Cuts While Speaking Or Listening.
* Caller ID Could Be Possible, If Holes Were Drilled Into Each Side Of the Unit.

He has brought them some of his bird-slaughtering machines, such as the AED-100, which kills about 10,000 birds per hour, catching them by the feet and dragging their heads through an electrified pool of water.

Former BUFFY star SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR has moved on from slaying vampires to becoming the Queen of Hearts in a new movie adaptation of ALICE IN WONDERLAND. The actress will star in ALICE, a big-screen adaptation of a video game based on LEWIS CARROLL's classic tales, according to the trade publication HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. The popular electronic game, AMERICAN McGEE'S ALICE, has the famous fictional character returning to Wonderland as a troubled adult, seeking to confront her childhood fears and cope with her parents' tragic death.

Welcome to my site! My name is Simon 'Skunky' Morrison, and I very love animals. Probably it looks bizarre, but I very much like to see pregnant animals. I very much love to look at their huge, distended bellys. I have female dog named Marta, and each year she becomes pregnant, and I very like to observe her and touch her inflated belly. It's great!

This image of the magician getting the "secrets" from these underworld demi-devils apparently started with Harry Kellar (on his 1894 poster). Leon Hermann (nephew of Alexander) who overlapped the career of Kellar seems to be the first who copied the whispering imps. Not only did the Great Hermann include them, he used more imps! Several of the imitators have been satisfied with a single informant but the standard seems to be two - one per shoulder."

Technology may soon spell doom for the big blockbuster, predicted the king of blockbusters himself -- George Lucas. Speaking at the grand opening of his brand new Letterman Digital Arts Center here in San Francisco's Presidio national park, Lucas said the internet and digital distribution will force Hollywood to refocus on smaller projects.

Theatrical and licensing revenues from the six-part Star Wars series have topped $13 billion and continue to grow, but Lucas believes the days of such high-budget epics may soon be over. "I'm not doing $100-million movies anymore," Lucas said on Saturday. "I'm more interested in smaller ones. Each time you do a $100-million movie, the chances are greater that you're not going to make your money back."

He added: "Box office numbers have been going down since WWII. They're on a slide and will continue to be. The profitable areas are now television and DVD, and the entire paradigm is shifting dramatically," Lucas said. "People will always go to theaters, because they will always like a social experience, but I don't think it's going to be as big as it is now."

Lucas said he will not be alone in Hollywood. The growth of home theaters, new delivery mechanisms and alternative viewing devices like mobile phones will inevitably alter moviemaking. "The big tent-pole movies will be the first victim of the rapid technological changes we're seeing now," he predicted. "We're just not going to see those being made anymore."

Link to Wired News story with photos.

Link to NPR "Day to Day" radio segment, with additional photos -- "A Digital Film Studio on Prime S.F. Real Estate."

One thing that didn't make it in to either story: Senator Barbara Boxer's cellphone going off repeatedly throughout Lucas' speech to reporters at the press conference. It was kind of an obnoxious polyphonic ringtone of some awful song. She was right in the front row, like 5 feet away from him on the podium, so it was super awkward. Everyone else in the room heard it loud and clear, but she seemed to be having a tough time finding the device in her purse. Happens to the best of us.

See also Jessie Scanlon's Wired Magazine story, "The New Heart of the Empire": Link.

Reader Comment: Lloyd Fonveille says,

I heard your radio report about the opening of George Lucas's new studio in San Francisco and enjoyed it very much. I was surprised to hear Lucas blame the current decline in the box office on piracy. I have another idea about what's causing it, which the book The Experience Economy has helped me think about in a new way.

Channel 101 is a website where people make 5 minute tv show pilots that compete against each other for 5 "prime time" slots. But you probably already knew that. The NEWS is that they just got a "Cease & Desist" nastygram from Bill Cosby's lawyer over their awesome animated series "House of Cosbys" which WAS awesome, but will be offline by 5 pm today. Someone should put torrents of these up now! To see the past episodes (before 5 pm) go here. The description for the last episode reads: "This special final episode, which, in compliance with a cease and desist order, was not created by Justin Roiland, screened at Cinespace but won't be hosted at channel101.com out of fear of being sued by the attorney who is absolutely NOT portrayed sucking dick in this video."

Update: Reader Ed sez:

Channel101 seems to be suffering bandwidth issues. But the first episode of "House of Cosbys" is also up here in super-high resolution. I suspect it will also be removed soon. There are also some other really funny videos made by the same guys on there. I'd definately recommend "Hilarious Jokes" and "Documentary the Series."

And here is the .torrent: Link. Here's another: Link.

rwlange points us to another direct *.mov download link right here.

Eric Myerson witnessed local critic Jan Wahl throw a hissy fit over having to give up her bag during last night's screening of War of the Worlds, attempting to get the audience to rebel against the draconian policy. The revolution was short-lived and, sadly, not caught on film. Here's the report.

It is the same cackle that opens this song, which, with a vigorous, doo-wop melody and a muted, echoing chorus, tells an unexpectedly intrusive tale of sexual obsession. “You can’t even snap your fingers or wiggle your toes without the Shadow knows,” the singer informs us, and it’s meant as a warning to a straying girlfriend. Like many of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins recordings, the superficial occultism of this song is less interesting that the sense of sexual bewilderment and betrayal revealed by the lyrics. Here the singer expresses a rather queasy fantasy — that of being able to control, or at least omnisciently observe, his lover’s errant sexual behavior. This fantasy is made even more sinister by the band’s incessant chortling throughout the song and the lead singer’s audible mirth in explaining his extraordinary powers. “I know where you’re going, baby, long before you do,” he warns, and while the song is a fine one, with one of Lieber and Stoller’s catchier melodies, one can’t help but feel sorry for the girlfriend in the song, who is the victim of endless psychic stalking.

What about Google? Consider this: Google, like Grokster, is primarily a search engine. Its business model relies on advertisements. And the more we use Google, the more money it makes. Like Grokster, Google resolves communication queries. It generates a link from an information provider to an information seeker. And almost all of what it delivers is copyrighted.

The fact that no major copyright industry player has brought Google to court so far is merely a function of the fact that most copyright holders want Google to index and offer links to their materials. There is no explicit contract. You have to opt out of the Google world.

But there is one major difference between Grokster and Google. Grokster does no copying itself. It merely induces and enables.

If anyone infringes, it's Google: The company caches millions of Web pages without permission (again, giving copyright holders the option of protesting). And soon it will offer millions of copyrighted books in electronic form without payment or permission. How would Google fare in a post-Grokster world? The publishing industry no doubt wonders. And it just might sue to find out.

Brazil's Ministry of Health has demanded that Abbott Laboratories cut the price of its AIDS drug Kaletra by 42 percent, threatening to break the company's patent and produce generic versions of the drug if it does not comply.

The Abbott Park, Illinois-based company has 10 days from the time it received Friday's ruling to agree to reduce Kaletra's price to $0.68 per pill from $1.17. If Brazil follows through on its threat, the move would mark the first time the country has adopted compulsory licensing.

A California man facing life in prison for crashing his car into a UPS truck will not dispute that his actions resulted in the death of the driver when his trial opens Monday in Nevada County Superior Court. Instead, Scott Krause's defense will argue that the defendant believed he was trying to escape man-eating subterranean beings when he ran into Drew Reynolds' truck on Jan. 6, 2004.

Krause has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to five felony counts, including first-degree murder, carjacking, and burglary, stemming from a string of alleged criminal activities leading up to the fatal highway crash. In three court-ordered evaluations, the defendant stated he was fleeing subterranean beings he called "hemadrones" when he carjacked a commercial vehicle near a Nevada City, Calif., gas station and then crashed into Reynolds' service vehicle.

"Everything had to do with his escape from the hemadrones," said Nevada County District Attorney Michael Ferguson. "According to the defendant, he was afraid they were going to put him in cargo and ship him to China to be eaten."

It has a kind of offbeat intellegence you readers would like, and his story crosses paths with everyone from Mae West to Van Dyke parks, with 3000 commercial jingles in between..."

For his final LP, "The Sound of Speed," and in a sort of orchestral punkish act of rebellion, Thompson made an album entirely based on the noises of modern transportation. But it would be many years before the album, filled with jazz harmonies and swing arrangements, would be fully appreciated and understood.

Thompson's most successful music was heard by millions of people every day, even though most of them never knew who he was. From 1961 to 1978, Thompson recorded the scores to more than 3,000 television commercials, from "Get That Great GM Feeling" and "Go-Go Goodyear" to "King Cobra -- Silver!"

Stefan says: "Estes, the model rocket manufacturer, has announced the 'Simian Space Transport' kit, a rocket with a water-tight aquarium payload section for launching . . . Sea Monkeys."

A new kit announced by Estes! Prototype rocket was shown at 2005 Las Vegas NRHSA Hobby Show, and should be released in late September of this year. The design is a payload rocket powered by an B/C engine. The unique payload section can be sealed to make an flying aquarium for the included payload of sea monkeys.

"Apart from the head, all other limbs of the baby were developed," (said Dr. MA Mazid).

The condition is known as "foetus in foeto", or inclusion twin.

"In this case the foetus of the baby entered into the foetus of the boy and continued to grow like a tumour in the boy's abdomen," gynaecology specialists Nurun Nahar said.

This decision won’t kill P2P sharing. Engineering students write P2P software in 11 lines of code as class assignments. The majority of Internet users use file-sharing software, and that’s not going to stop, no matter how many lawsuits against customers and companies the labels win. P2P will outlast today’s generation of technophobic record execs who are steering their companies to slow, spectacular suicide.

But what today’s decision will kill is American innovation. Chinese and European firms can get funding and ship products based on plans that aren’t fully thoughtcrime-compliant, while their American counterparts will need to convince everyone from their bankers to the courts that they’ve taken all imaginable measures to avoid inducing infringement. This is good news if you’re an American corporate attorney worried about job security, but not if you’re about to invent a new way to enjoy content. Both sides went to the court hoping for clarity on what is and isn’t legal in P2P, and instead, the Court tipped a fresh load of claymores into the decade’s most perilous legal minefield.

Update: here's a torrent

Winchell had a long career as a master ventriloquist, inventor and children's TV host, but he may be best known for his work as the friendly tiger in the animated versions of A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books. Winchell, who gave Tigger the trademark lisp, voiced him from 1968 to 1999.

The 82-year-old was also the voice of other animated characters for Disney and Hanna-Barbera, including the character of Gargamel in The Smurfs. He brought dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff to life on television.

Winchell also held 30 patents, including one for an artificial heart, a disposable razor and a flameless cigarette lighter. He donated his early artificial heart to the University of Utah for research. Dr. Robert Jarvik and other researchers at the university went on to construct the first artificial heart implanted into humans.

Update: Kat sez, "thought you'd like to know the voice of Gopher from the original Winnie The Pooh animations, Howard Morris, died on May 21st this year, just a couple of weeks ago."

But knowing we were right legally really still isn't the same thing as being right in the real world. We had that euphoria with the first Napster decision. I hope my former colleagues remember that. The result was lots of back and forth and leverage hunting on both sides and continued litigation and then a great service shut down to make room for less great services. And more legal victories didn't bring more more market control no matter how many times it was hoped it would.

This is a composite image of five Purkinje neurons from the rat cerebellum, in the back of the brain. Each has been filled with fluorescent dye through a glass pipette, shown touching the cells. Images were taken on a two-photon microscope. Each Purkinje cell receives hundreds of thousands of inputs through its dendrite, the elaborate tree-like structure seen emerging from the cell body.

We have fallen afoul of censorware companies before, but they've always been able to remove us from their blacklist in a few minutes. SurfControl is the first one in the industry that we've encountered whose technology is so sub-standard that it takes 24 hours to correct their careless errors. Our apologies to the users who can't see Boing Boing right now. If you'd like to talk to SurfControl about this, you can call their customer service numbers:

US Support
Hours of Operation: 8:00 AM - 8:00 PM (EST) Monday - Friday
(831) 440-2700

European Support
Hours of Operation: 9:00 AM - 5:30 PM (GMT) Monday - Friday
+44 126 029 6259

Asia Support
Hours of Operation: 9:00 AM - 5:30 PM (Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, GMT +8) Monday - Friday
+65 6549 7613

# Richard Taranto, Farr and Taranto, argued the case before the Supreme Court
A few words, two different aspects to think about this case. What this means for the future of this litigation and how Grokster and Streamcast will fair under the remand directive. The decision is multi-faceted and the evidence burden is unclear so that it We think we will have the evidence to dispell the inference that the entertainment companies have the right to prove that there is sufficient evidence for liability. We were not in the Supreme Court of the unavailability of a theory of inducement for copyright liability.

The second and much more important aspect of what the courts did today was to write a set of standards, the most notable feature of which is the lack of clarity. Promoting infringement and knowledge of how technology will be used. The Court has provided a very difficult roadmap to follow. We have a multi-factored standard that you can't be sure how will be applied to you. The immediate impact for technology industry will be a ... one?

# Fred von Lohmann, Senior Staff Attorney for EFF, with Cindy Cohn
Will unleash an era of legal uncertainty for America's innovators. When we see the evidence in District Court, Streamcast will not be held liable. There is a new theory of copyright liability. Didn't clarify Betamax, didn't clarify vicarious liability. It will take courts some time to clarify this. By focusing on intent, the Supreme Court has opened the door to see the notes of engineering meetings, marketing plans, emails of executives. This is a high burden for technology companies.

# CEO of Streamcast
Another hurdle for this company. We are confident that Streamcast did not go beyond the letter of the law. We look forward to our day in court. We're staying in this fight.

# Gigi Sohn, President and Co-Founder of Public Knowledge
I see positive things for technology companies and consumers. The court reaffirmed the basis for the Betamax case. P2p as a technology can be The court focused on affirmative acts. We will see if there is enough evidence to prove viability. Sony has been preserved. There has been a lot of debate as to whether Congress will have to act to protect Hollywood's rights. It is clear that there is no need for Congress. There is nothing that Hollywood should want or need for Congress. Technology and consumers can be somewhat optimistic about this decision.

We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.

* Copyfight
* How Appealing
* SCOTUSblog, and here's their Grokster post.
* Ernest Miller's blog, where you'll find several posts: Wall Street Journal Roundtable on Grokster, Grokster Loses - Unanimously - Inducement Test?
* Freedom to Tinker

Link to the full text of the Supreme Court's Grokster ruling (PDF, 55 pages).

For today's edition of the NPR program "Day to Day," I spoke with host Madeleine Brand on the Grokster ruling and what it means for the future of tech development. Link to today's edition, archived audio will be available online after 12pm PT.

I'll also be talking with hosts of CNN's Showbiz Tonight later today about today's tech law rulings. The show airs at 4pm PT and 7pm ET.

FBI incompetence, CIA gardening and the hunt for Bin-Laden
* Rob Cordry on Global Tourism
* Bush on Iraq and Downing-gate
* Congress as a Reality Show
* Interview with Bill Moyers
* The Republican's Big Pornographic Tent
* Flame Retarded Republicans
* Interview with Howard Dean

I've confirmed that Monday Google will launch an in-browser video playback feature based on the open source VLC media player. This is the logical next step for Google's video search and upload function, which began taking uploads from anyone who cared to submit back in April. Google will not disclose the raw numbers of videos that have been uploaded to date, but the company will make all those which were tagged as "free" available for real time streaming through the VLC player, which Google has modified and will make available for download Monday morning. The company also intends to make its VLC code available to the open source community as part of their Google code project.

Now, before we start discussing how this represents the Death of Comcast/The Networks/Windows Media Player et al, this is not quite that, but it is the start of something big. For one, it's clear this will be integrated with the Google payment program which was revealed to be in process last week. Plenty of folks uploaded video to Google with a payment option, and that has yet to roll out, but you can expect that it will.

DO NOT BID on this auction if you plan to do the following:

- Use the unit for abruptive advertising (to traffic or people passing by your store / billboard / etc)
- Use this unit for malicious purposes (as a weapon or to make people think they're going crazy)

This technology has some amazing uses that will benefit it's users greatly, but all power requires responsibility and maturity. So please, do not bid on this auction unless you have a scientific or productive use for the technology...

Q: I know this device is near impossible to own, how did you get a hold of it and why are you selling it?

A: I am an audio researcher and sound technician for a variety of corporations, including my own. I recieved this unit about a month ago to test direct vibrations used for convolution and reverb impulse sampling in various places (in other words, advanced noise/echo reduction). However, this specific unit does not create extremely low frequencies, so I'm selling it and buying a much much more expensive one. It was used probably 3 times, and comes with original box and manuals.

This is a general social survey of the greater weblog community being conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our goal is to help understand the way that weblogs are affecting the way we communicate with each other. Specifically we are interested in issues of demographics, communication behaviors, experience with weblogs and other technology, and the meaning of various types of social links within the blogosphere.

The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him in television or newspaper pictures. They also provoked jokes about and criticism of the deeply religious Ashcroft.

If Kisses were the only Joys in Bed,
Then Women would with one another wed.

At the same Place.

Let Jove his Juno, and his Nectar boast,
Champain's my Liquor, and Miss K---g my Toast.

Rumford on a Window.

When full of Pence, I was expensive,
And now I've none, I'm always pensive.

Underwritten.

Then be at no Expence And you'll have no Suspence.

If Smell of T---d makes Wit to flow,
Laud 1 what would eating of it do.

From the Temple Bog-House.

If you design to sh--te at Ease,
Pray rest your Hands upon your Knees.
And only give a gentle squeeze.

When the judgement comes down tomorrow, whichever way it goes, there will be a lot of fooforaw about What It All Means. Here's EFF's pre-emptive crib-sheet, written by Fred von Lohmann, our Head IP Attorney, who won the initial Grokster case:

# It's not about P2P. The P2P genie is irreversibly out of the bottle, with the software already installed on hundreds of millions of computers and developers in countries beyond the reach of American laws. It's the rest of America's innovation sector that will be living with the Supreme Court's ruling. So, as you read what they have to say, ask how it will affect not just Apple, HP, and Intel, but also the next "genius in a garage," like Sling Media or the kids developing urban vehicular grid technology.

# No matter what, we've won. From the beginning of this lawsuit, the entertainment industries pushed the lower courts to adopt extreme, outlandish interpretations of copyright law. For example, they argued that the Sony Betamax decision doesn't apply at all to Internet technologies, and that simply knowing that somebody is using your technology to infringe triggers an obligation to redesign it. No matter what the Court may announce on Monday, it will not be adopting this extreme position. So remember what we've already won.

# Main Event #1: Sony Betamax. In 1984, the Supreme Court rejected contributory liability for Sony because the Betamax was "capable of substantial noninfringing uses." Everyone will be watching to see what this Court has to say about that phrase. What does "capable" mean? What does "substantial" mean? What role, if any, does the proportion of infringing and noninfringing uses play?

# Main Event #2: Vicarious liability. The Supreme Court has never spoken on the doctrine of vicarious copyright liability, which lower courts have applied where a defendant has the right and ability to control an infringer and receives a direct financial benefit from the infringement. Will the Court endorse, modify, or reject what the lower courts have fashioned?

# Main Event #3: Inducement? There has been much talk about whether any such thing as "inducement liability" exists in copyright law and, if it does, what its scope might be. Justices Ginsburg and O'Connor asked several questions about the idea during the oral argument; Justice Scalia expressed skepticism. Don Verrilli, arguing for the entertainment industry, said that inducement liability would not be enough to address the concerns of copyright owners. What will the Court have to say about this uncharted territory?

# Next Bout: Congress. The Court's opinion will set the stage for the inevitable fight on Capitol Hill. A big victory for either side will be characterized as an "extreme" result, potentially strengthening the hand of the opposite side in Congress. An intermediate outcome, on the other hand, may lead Congress to "leave well enough alone."

Reklamaatio, Ravintola Lehtovaara

Tarkoituksenani oli tarjota Lehtovaara ravintolassa 19.12.2003 kahdentoista hengen seurueelle pitkän kaavan mukainen illallinen. Olin varannut pöydän viikon etukäteen ja odotin voivani jakaa ystävieni kanssa Lehtovaaran kuuluisan tunnelman. Seurueeseen kuului asiallisesti pukeutuneita ja käyttäytyviä alle kolmekymppisiä akateemisesti koulutettuja kauppatieteen ja juridiikan ammattilaisia. Ilta ei kuitenkaan mennyt suunnitelmien mukaan. Minä ja seurueeni toistuvasti jouduimme ihmettelemään salihenkilökunnan palvelualttiutta ja käyttäytymistä. Seuraavassa tekemiäni huomioita illan varrelta:

Pöytämme ei ollut valmis seurueen saapuessa 19:55. Etujoukon päästessä pöytään istumaan heiltä ei kysytty tilausta. Tarjoilijan saapuessa hän ensi töikseen tylysti pyysi joukkoa näyttämään paperit. Joukon ihmetellessä tällaista menettelyä tarjoilija sanoi, että heidän pitää poistua ravintolasta, ellei henkilötodistuksia löydy. Joukon nuorin oli avovaimoni, joka on 26 vuoden ikäinen. Eteispalvelu oli moitteetonta.

When all the art is activated, the house hums, thrums, squeaks and squawks, gibbers, moans and shouts. In fact, the effect is so overwhelming that the Kramlichs are more or less forced to leave most of their expensive, impeccably chosen collection turned off most of the time. But when the pieces are on, as they were during lunch, Mrs. Kramlich says she savors the cacophony. "I enjoy having these works on," she said. "This is fun. It's playtime..."

When the Kramlichs buy a video installation, say one of Bill Viola's - they own several - they are typically buying one of an edition of anywhere from 3 to 10. They'll receive a master copy of the piece, in digital Beta or the highest-fidelity format available; a DVD home-viewing copy; the equipment needed to show the piece; and an archival box that includes setup instructions, blueprints and a signed certificate of authenticity.

It's only the box and its contents that they will save. The rest of the piece is essentially disposable, because it will probably grow obsolete over time and have to be replaced. "The work of art is the information," said Mr. Viola, 54. "That is what you own."