In one case here, a church's pickup was towed from its own parking lot; in another, a 4-year-old boy was towed away in his mother's car after she went inside her apartment for a few minutes to drop off groceries and a younger child.

And a man who ran alongside a tow truck, pleading to get his vehicle back after it was towed from a fire lane, died when he slipped and was run over by the truck and then his own Chevrolet Suburban.

Update: Sean notes that the onebushstreet Flickr tag has tons more pix from the day.

WIPO -- the World Intellectual Property Organization -- is the UN's most captive agency. WIPO was originally a stand-alone organization, essentially an industry consortium for rightsholders' interests, and they got brought in under the umbrella of the UN thirty or so years ago, with the understanding that they would change their practices to make them consistent with other UN instruments like the Universal Declaration on Human Rights -- humanitarian instruments -- and that it would become a humanitarian agency for development.

Which makes sense. Information goods are a critical piece of the development picture. Every successfully developed country made use of free information goods. More accurately, they all went through a stage when they were a pirate nation. America spent a century as a pirate nation, ripping off the intellectual property of every country around it, and in particular, of Britain, because when you're a net importer of intellectual property, signing on to multilateral copyright and patent agreements is signing on to exporting your wealth off-shore. When you're a net exporter of intellectual property, it makes economic sense.

The choice is not simply one of piracy or monopoly. There is a whole rich middle ground of public domain and open information regimes which could give developing world countries the tools they need to serve humanitarian purposes, while protecting the legitimate interests of authors, performers and inventors. WIPO could have created a global knowledge goods regime which protected both the commercial and the humanitarian fairly.

There's a legal-defense fund for Lynn that's gearing up now. Paypal your donations to Abaddon@IO.com. Money that is collected and not used will be donated to EFF. Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, eMule Link (Thanks, Anniqa, Andrew, Brad, Aaron, CiscoLover, Brian, Bruce, David, John, Steve, Marie, David, Gregory, aab3w, Stephen, Foofango, Adam, az, John and others!)

"One the coolest projects I've seen so far at DEFCON was the kegbot, a linux based keg that dispenses beer as long as you have an iButton key. The system keeps track of who you are, how much you're drinking and in team mode- where you rank. the Kegbot crew built and deployed a kegbot on site at DEFCON, we were lucky enough to get there and document the building of it!"

I received a message from the brain eating master today: "We're trying to create a self perpetuating Zombie Mob in the streets of San Francisco on Saturday (Saturday, July 30th). A seed group of zombies will start at St. Mary's square, and as we march up Market St. we'll attack Willing bystanders, converting them and giving them ingredients to make more zombies. We'll end up at Union Square, Eat tourists, then eventually hop a train to Colma for a Picnic in the Cemetary. There's a reception afterword at Launchpad with Blood Wrestling and Zombie Olympics, then Movies and Music. See eatbrains.com to get involved."

UPDATE: The event is done, brains were eaten, photos were taken, and all the links you need are here

Avidd says:

I thought you might get a kick out of the videos from our mob last weekend- one is an attack on market street, and the other shows 50 of us invading the apple store!

Bonnie Burton says, "Here at Lucasfilm, it's well known that if you find a Star Wars collectible, chances are Director of Fan Relations Steve Sansweet already has it in his museum aptly titled, 'Rancho Obi-Wan.' Steve's museum is home to not only endless Star Wars toys, costumes, model kits, action figures and posters, but also classic film artifacts such as speeder bike and snowspeeder models, pieces of the krayt dragon skeleton, Mos Eisley Cantina creature masks (made from the original molds) and a Han Solo stunt pistol, to name just a few. It was an honor to be let in to his amazing toy habitat, and thankfully this time I ventured in with my camera." Link

Thomas Hawk says, "There was a bomb scare that shut down Market Street and the Embarcadero MUNI/BART station in San Francisco yesterday during rush hour from about 4:00pm to 5:00pm. The City remains on high alert and this is the third time in the past few weeks that transit stations have been shut down over suspected bombs. Turns out the suspected bomb was just a trash can. I took photos of the shutdown that include a close up of one of the bomb robots as well as an officer in bomb gear checking out the suspected bomb." Link

John Ulaszek says, "Here is the aftermath of a semi trailer load of squash hitting a overpass in Pennsylvania. I saw this while I was on a road trip two weeks ago." Link

Kurt says, "I saw this Dodge Diplomat low-end DIY car mod on the streets of West Los Angeles yesterday. The spoiler on the back is a wooden board attached to the trunk and painted blue to match the peeling body color. Perhaps it's a prototype." Link 1, Link 2.

The Purple train ran into the back of the red train that sits to the right of the image. They are in a braking zone. The railing on the right of the track is an emergency unloading zone if a train has to stop in a braking area. From what I can tell this is the next to last braking zone before the train enters the station. Trains entering this braking zone would not generally come to a full stop. But they would if there was a train ahead of them waiting to enter the station.

...Las Vegas developer Mark Advent's "East Village" retail complex plan, complete with faux Washington Square and an entertainment zone called the "Meat Packing District." But ever since stumbling across this ultimate show of hubris we've been hungering for more. Other than calling it the East Village, what will make the 44-acre commercial playground identifiable as such (CBGB hasn't packed up for there, yet)? Well, if this promotional electronic pamphlet is to be believed, it's a Ray's Pizza, a traffic cop, a hot dog cart and some roadside banners.

Two American Airlines mechanics didn't like having to toss out $200 drill bits once they got dull. So they rigged up some old machine parts - a vacuum-cleaner belt and a motor from a science project - and built "Thumping Ralph." It's essentially a drill-bit sharpener that allows them to get more use out of each bit. The savings, according to the company: as much as $300,000 a year.

And it was a group of pilots who realized that they could taxi just as safely with one engine as with two. That was instituted as policy has helped cut American's fuel consumption even as prices have continued to rise to record levels.

Last week, someone from Quick Boys tracked Joey down on his work phone. They tried to intimidate him with legal threats into taking down the comment. At the time, the comment was the second result on Google for "Quick Boys Movers." Joey took the comment down temporarily and contacted the poster, a friend of his, who confirmed the story. Then he reinstated the comment and wrote a long entry explaining that Quick Boys is not only unqualified to help you move house, they're also thugs who try to censor their critics.

Joey's an engaging writer and many people are linking to his post, which has now risen to the number one spot for "Quick Boys Movers" on Google. There's a moral in there, somewhere.

Me: And you say that this comment is not true?

FV: It is a lie. Let me put my boss on the line.

Gruff Male Voice with Eastern European Accent: Remove that comment. That's all I'm going to say. (click)

Now Forno has replaced the presentation with a cease-and-desist letter from the aforementioned candyasses at ISS, in which they whinge about the "misappropriation" of their "intellectual property" (that would be the presentation that they tried to suppress). Please send links to mirrors of Lynn's presentation and I'll put 'em up. 204K PDF Link (via Schneier)

A SF Chron article states:

Informally, the astronomers have been calling it "Xena" after the television series about a Greek warrior princess, which was popular when the astronomers began their systematic sweep of the sky in 2000. "Because we always wanted to name something Xena," Brown said...

Reader comment: John Parres says, "Water ice in crater at Martian north pole! Cool pic, check it out! Where there is H2O there is life." Link

Aki Zeta-Five says,

It's confusing, but they've actually discovered /two/ planets this week: 2003 EL61 and 2003 UB131.Link 1, Link 2. And a moon. And here's some orbital diagrams: Link 1, Link 2.

It is a statue with a title something like "Family Goes Bowling" and it is a group of 7 foot high family members running at full speed getting ready to bowl. However, in their mad dash to go bowling, the young boy is being left in the dust. The aging dad is being pushed back and looks like he is falling, while his bowling shoes are flying. The mom looks like she partially insane the way she is smiling, running fast and staring into space. And the freakiest one is the little girl who is running ahead of the rest.

She has the horrific look of gleeful uncontrolled frenzy on her face as she runs with her cheek romantically pressed against the bowling ball. Her eyes are fixed straight ahead, I assume at the bowling lane she is running towards, but in her eyes there was a sense of almost possessed evil. It was as if nothing could get in her way of going bowling. She pushes her own dad down out of the way, she leaves her little brother behind, nothing matters to her. All that mattered was that she would bowl and she would use violence if anyone tried to get in her way.

Previously on Boing Boing: Unicorn porn, And now, we pause for a unicorn moment.

Allow me to geek out for a moment.

Cory's post today on how to disable the Microsoft GA program was the first real slashdotting I believe BB has had since the move to the new server.

The old server could handle 500 simultaneous connections at once, and we only very rarely reached that cap.

I had (somewhat conservatively) set the server to handle 750 connections, and, to date, we'd used about 450 max at any one time.

Before it even left the Subscriber-only status on /., the server was 100% pegged, all 750 slots used. So, I kept raising it until it could meet demand.

It's now running *1500* slots for connections, and the traffic rate is holding steady at about 1200 simultaneous connections at once. This is *three times* what the old server could handle, and guarantees instant page load times on our part (ads notwithstanding, hopefully Indieclick can keep up!).

Anyway, I thought that was mighty impressive, and thought I'd share. :)

Update: The Systems Administrator Song from Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie totally kicks ass. (Thanks, Jesse!)

Part 1: Microsoft Trusted Computing Updates

Part 2: The Dangers of Device Authentication

Part 3: Protected Media Path, Component Revocation, Windows Driver Lockdown

Part 4: Microsoft Sells Out the Public on CGMS-A

What Would Burt Rutan Do?

One Boing Boing reader provides this interpretation.

(Thanks, Lisa Julie/Doug Humphrey)

In today's New York Times, I wrote about the revolution already in progress for AM and FM radio: IBOC (in-band, on-channel) digital radio, known by its trademarked named HD Radio.

With IBOC, the analog signal is undisturbed and digital audio nestles in the protected side bands. It's a surprisingly huge phenomenon--among radio stations. At least 450 stations are already full-time HD Radio broadcasters, and possibly more than 600. The reason? Digital AM sounds good--remarkably good.

But the real excitement is in FM. With digital FM, stations can choose to multicast. Public radio is funding a huge HD Radio supplement so that its member stations could, for instance, have an all Spanish format or serve other niche audiences that they can't offer enough programming to as part of their regular schedule.

There's only a few tens of thousands of receivers out there, but the tabletop boxes are coming. I was told the chips that drive HD Radio cost $65 for the radio makers now, but the price should drop by 2/3rds when quantities pick up, and then we'll see $100 to $150 radios instead of $260 to $600 units.

Reader Comment: Bill Kirkpatrick @wisc.edu says:

"It's worth pointing out that HD radio came largely at the expense of low-powered FM radio. We could have had thousands more LPFM stations, but large broadcasters objected to these microstations being shoe-horned into the spectrum. Why? So that there would be more room for IBOC. Commercial broadcasters effectively double or triple their spectrum, and non-commercial community broadcasting gets shut out.

There's a great article in Social Policy that explains all this in detail. I can't find it on the web, so I have quoted a relevant excerpt below."

From INTERFERENCE AND THE PUBLIC SERVICE: THE HISTORY AND IMPACT OF LOW-POWER FM , By: Spinelli, Martin, Social Policy, Fall 2000, Vol. 31, Issue 1

While arguments about existing station placement and economics are relatively easy to grasp, perhaps the most significant stumbling block for LPFM is more complex. IBOC-DAB (in-band, on-channel digital audio broadcasting) is left out of reports of the LPFM fight as often for its politics as for its difficulty. One could be forgiven for thinking that digital radio, when it happens at some point in the distant future, will be in a different radio spectrum than the one currently used. But "in-band," in fact, means in the existing FM radio frequency band on the same radio channels or stations that we listen to today ("on-channel").

The way IBOC is being promoted and tested by large broadcasters represents a kind of giant squatters' rights movement on the FM band. The current IBOC configuration, described as "saddle-bagging," would have a station broadcast a digital signal in the side channels immediately to the left and to the right of its analog signal. If two-channel separation standards were to be maintained, there would be far less room for other stations like LPFMs. Of course, if LPFMs are shoehorned into the bandwidth before the establishment of IBOC, there will be much less room for IBOC. The NAB, in seeking to stop or slow LPFM by calling for more engineering tests or trial periods, would buy its members enough time to rush the IBOC proposal through the FCC and establish digital broadcasting saddle-bags.

It is not surprising that LPFM opponents would not give prominence to the DAB objection in their complaints against microbroadcasting. If the IBOC saddle-bag system is established, existing stations will be given, in effect, three times the bandwidth for which they paid, while the consuming public, which has not indicated its desires or needs, will have a technology foisted on it--especially if, as it is being currently tested in the Washington, DC, area, it will be simply another means for existing stations to replicate their analog signals.

Incidentally, the existing IBOC saddle-bag tests are showing no interference to the mother channel to which they are immediately adjacent; consequently, the NAB has called for a loosening of the clear channel requirements for IBOC. This is further evidence that interference is not a genuine issue. It can thus be argued that existing commercial broadcasters do not actually object to LPFM because such stations might interfere with any of their existing signals but because their imminent presence would lessen the space available for their future digital broadcasts.

I'm a former broadcast engineer who has followed IBOC. Several Seattle FM stations use IBOC and I can't tell any difference between the "Spread" of their signal and the spread of the "normal" Seattle FM stations. And because Seattle was an IBOC-FM test market, a lot of people with experienced ears have been listening closely for problems. Many broadcasters are voluntarily investing big dollars in IBOC-FM.

This is not true with IBOC in the AM band, where the digital signal generates sidebands that tend to cover up the stations on the two adjacent channels. The problem is so bad that IBOC-AM cannot be used at night and as far as I know, nobody but Clear Channel stations are rushing to IBOC-AM. And, of course, Clear Channel owns a piece of the IBOC business.

I have been told that IBOC was broadcasting's answer to a European direct digital system, they were opposed because that system gives all area broadcasters an equal voice - power and dial location no longer matter. This was poison to those who want to sell their radio stations for lots and lots of money.

Over the years, EFF has connected hundreds of tech-savvy lawyers with potential clients through our Cooperating Attorneys listserv. This has worked so well, we thought we'd provide the same service for those who need technical assistance on litigation and civil liberties issues.

Here's how the Cooperating Techs list will work: Attorneys needing technical assistance on cases will contact us and let us know what kind of help they need and whether they can pay. After we receive the request and determine if it is appropriate for our list, we'll post a note to the list with a basic description of the project. (For example: "CA attorney needs a tech familiar with Microsoft Exchange servers to assist in recovering allegedly deleted email messages needed for lawsuit. Can pay reduced fee.")

If you're on the list and are qualified and interested, you contact us, and we'll connect you to the attorney. That's it. EFF won't investigate or vouch for either side -- we don't have those kinds of resources. We'll simply provide the connection.

Interested in being an Cooperating Tech? Send a note to cooptechs@eff.org, and we'll try to help you find someone.

Update: Seb sez, "Cisco, Michael Lynn and ISS have all come to an 'arrangement'. It would seem all material pertaining to the flaw, the exploit and the talk are to be handed over to Cisco, who will presumably lock it all up and throw away the key. All videos of the presentation are to be handed over as well, and Lynn has been forbidden from talking at Black Hat or Defcon."

Michael Lynn, a former ISS researcher, and the Black Hat organisers agreed to a permanent injunction barring them from further discussing the presentation Lynn gave on Wednesday. The presentation showed how attackers could take over Cisco routers, a problem that Lynn said could bring the Internet to its knees.

The injunction also requires Lynn to return any materials and disassembled code related to Cisco, according to a copy of the injunction, which was filed in US District Court for the District of Northern California. The injunction was agreed on by attorneys for Lynn, Black Hat, ISS and Cisco.

Lynn is also forbidden to make any further presentations at the Black Hat event, which ended on Thursday, or the following Defcon event. Additionally, Lynn and Black Hat have agreed never to disseminate a video made of Lynn's presentation and to deliver to Cisco any video recording made of Lynn."

Update 2: Randi, a reader who claims to be an ex-coworker of Lynn's, and the girlfriend of Lynn's roommate, says, "A settlement with Cisco has been reached, but ISS is still pursuing criminal charges. The press doesn’t appear to know yet that the FBI is performing an investigation now, starting with seizing equipment from Michael and his roommates. On a happy note, Mike has received quite a few job offers, including from some places you wouldn't expect."

Update 3 Courtesy of James, Wired News's coverage of the FBI's investigation of Michael Lynn

The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS), an organization that provides advocacy, education and community for Machinima (filmmaking using real-time 3D game technology/virtual reality), today announced the 2005 Machinima Film Festival and the call for entries for the 2005 Machinima Awards (the Mackies). Sponsored by NVIDIA and the Independent Film Channel (IFC), the third annual festival will be held Saturday, November 12th 2005, at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.

The one-day event will include screenings of Machinima films, workshops hosted by Machinima filmmakers, special presentations, talks with award-winning independent filmmakers and seminars about Machinima production techniques. The event will culminate in an awards ceremony where some of the best Machinima filmmakers will be recognized for their creative artistry in this new and powerful entertainment medium that's set to revolutionize the worlds of filmmaking and animation.

But opposing the artists on private copying takes this strategy to new heights. CRIA today claimed that artists will make up private copying levy losses through the marketplace. The truth is that artists and rights holders lost $4 million today, the amount collected from the iPod and digital audio recorders during a fairly brief period. Longer term, they lost tens of millions of dollars of potential compensation. These are not the nickels and dimes that CRIA derides. If anything, for Canadian artists the levy represents a potentially important revenue stream that will not be easily recouped.

Today's decision also likely means the end of a private copying levy that CRIA spent 15 years fighting to get. The system is clearly broken and policy makers will either drop it completely (perhaps supplemented by a fair use doctrine that will permit copying such as store bought CDs to personal iPods) or expand the levy so that it resembles a European approach that extends to both audio and video, while providing even greater compensation.

UPDATE: Dan Bllom says: "A Taiwanese surfer in Taipei with keen eyesight noticed that the bench in front of the bus stop has some words written in Japanese and concluded that the bus stop could not be in Taiwan and that item submitter 'Dan Bloom' (who now has egg on his face, among other things!) made an innocent but big mistake by wrongly telling boingboing.net that the watermelon bus stop was in Taiwan.'

"I've been hassled and harassed many time in the past for shooting photographs in privately owned public spaces (Starbucks, PF Chaings, Toys 'R Us, the new burger spot on Sacramento St. at Drumm, Tosca, Grand Central Terminal in New York, etc.) but yesterday was the first time I've actually been harassed on a public street over photography." Link (Thanks, Thomas!)

Update: Mat sez, " Everyone in San Francisco needs to go get a picture of this building. To encourage that, I'll give one person a $10 iTMS gift certificate for snapping a picture of One Bush. Take a picture sometime in the next week. Post it online (and link to it in my comments so I'll see it). I'll choose a winner at random."

Update 2 Erik sez, "I'm organizing a get-together this Saturday to walk through downtown S.F. taking pictures of buildings and whatever else strikes our fancy, starting at noon at 1 Bush St. Fun, artistic, and full of Free Speech goodness."

Before pressing 'Custom' or 'Express' buttons paste this text to the address bar and press enter:

javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all')

It turns off the trigger for the key check.

Here's the doc -- PDF Link. out of all 175 pages, nearly half are devoted to antipiracy measures.

AES 128-bit encryption of each digital movie file is part of the security prescription, as are DRM provisions. During the spec unveiling at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, panelists representing studios, theater owners, and cinematographers sat onstage, flanked by giant gold Oscars statues. Some described the shift to digital as the "biggest technology upgrade in Hollywood since talkies."

Walt Disney Company SVP of Media Technology Bob Lambert characterized the antipiracy approach for d-cinema as "military- or defense-grade," even stricter than protections designed to keep consumer DVDs off filesharing networks. "Because this is a plan for securing a B2B system," said Lambert, "The cost can be higher and the measures stronger."

I asked a few tech experts outside of Hollywood for their take:

Security provisions in the DCI spec deal mostly with what happens in theaters, and detail an open security architecture that allows a variety of tech vendors to compete and hone their technologies over time. The system proposed by DCI relies on digital rights management, watermarking, content encryption and key management. Digital movie files are to be encrypted for transport and receipt by theaters, which then would use decryption keys to unlock the content. The system is also designed to generate a data forensics bread-crumb trail, with the intent of tracing piracy incidents after the fact back to the theaters in which they occurred.

Outside Hollywood, analysts' opinions on the feasibility of the DCI security specs were mixed. "The devil is in the details," said security analyst Bruce Schneier, "and this document doesn't contain the details."

"Tracking it to the theater won't help, because attackers with camcorders could just make their visits to theaters random," said security analyst Jacob Appelbaum of LogicLibrary. "It means that the camcorders just have to fit into the crowd, and then the theaters have a reason not to adopt this. It's already against the law."

Studio representatives acknowledge that the DCI security specifications do nothing to prevent in-theater copying of movies, which remains a top piracy method. "These technical solutions won't solve internal theft by camcorders," said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners. "But we're working on human-resources solutions and incentives to help address that part of the problem."

Others cited the difficulties involved in the plan's "forensic watermarking" provisions. "There's no such thing as a watermark that is both invisible and hard to remove, because by definition, a watermark that adds no perceptible information to a signal leaves no perceptible change behind after it is removed," said Cory Doctorow, European-outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"Sleeping inside a 1950's Bristol Freighter Plane refurbished into 2 beautiful motel rooms.

"Sleeping inside a 1950's Rail Carriage 3 room motel unit, which sleeps six.

"Sleeping like a Hobbit--underground with a circular window." Link (Thanks, Mark!)

Update: Jon sez: "This reminded me of a relic of the Iran-contra affair that was converted into a restaurant/bar in Quepos, Costa Rica." How cool -- I used to live pretty close to Quepos in a squatter/refugee village on the Nicaraguan border and the locals had lots of stories about disused Contra airstrips in the bush.

Friday August 5:
10:00am You've Plugged _What_ into It? Hardware Hacking is an increasingly popular pastime. Also the advent of computer control has revolutionised many hobbies, e.g. amateur astrophotography. (with Martin Hoare amd Jordin Kare)

Noon: Clones, Children or Countless Lives If everyone lives forever, or is endlessly reincarnated, where do we put them? And can anyone reproduce in any other way? (with Simon Bradshaw, Anne K. Gay, Richard Morgan and Eric M. Van)

5:00pm: Is Genius Gendered? One lone genius and an attractive assistant (fill in the genders) save the world. Our panel gives media and literary SF examples, and discuss how changing the gender might change other things. (with Sean McMullen and Connie Willis)

Saturday, August 6:
2:30pm: Signing at the Borderlands Books table

6:00pm: Fannish Currency: Whuffie, Egoboo and Chocolate (Fandom has for a long time had a potlatch economy, where you give things away in the expectation of egoboo, or fannish kudos. How does this translate to the Internet Age?) (with Christina Lake, Mike Scott and Suzanne Tompkins)

Sunday, August 7:
10:00am AI: the Aliens We Make? Aliens and AI are both Other, but where one comes from Out There, the other lives Down Here. Are they really the same thing -- and either way, what difference does it make? (with David Gerrold, Ian McDonald, Charles Stross and Tricia Sullivan)

Noon: Creative Commons 101. A Primer for the Interested

2:00pm Reading

Monday, August 8:
10:00am: Standing up for our (Copy)rights Contrasting views on the benefits and hazards authors see in sharing (or having their work shared) online. (with Andrew Adams, David Cake and Christopher Priest)

Hope to see you there! Link

According to the researchers' calculations, Amazon earns, on average, $5.29 for a new book and about $2.94 on a used book. If each used sale displaced one new sale, this would be a less profitable proposition for Amazon.

But Mr. Bezos is not foolish. Used books, the economists found, are not strong substitutes for new books. An increase of 10 percent in new book prices would raise used sales by less than 1 percent. In economics jargon, the cross-price elasticity of demand is small.

One plausible explanation of this finding is that there are two distinct types of buyers: some purchase only new books, while others are quite happy to buy used books. As a result, the used market does not have a big impact in terms of lost sales in the new market.

Moreover, the presence of lower-priced books on the Amazon Web site, Mr. Bezos has noted, may lead customers to "visit our site more frequently, which in turn leads to higher sales of new books." The data appear to support Mr. Bezos on this point.

Orig:
And up they stirte, al dronken in this rage,
And forth they goon towardes that village
Of which the taverner hadde spoke biforn.
And many a grisly ooth thanne han they sworn,

Rap Version:
When he'd said his piece
The rest agreed, and the three friends hit the streets
And went to seek their destiny and provoke a confrontation,
In a drunken rage hoping Death would come and face them.
Their intoxication made them sure of their purpose

I guess putting it all on(the)line was partially my way of dealing with it, and also a way that I could share the experience with both the people I know and those I don't know (but who might be considering a similar procedure). The whole experience has been quite amazing, and I really feel fortunate to be recovering so quickly.

The circular house, 11 feet high and 26 feet across, was designed by Matti Suuronen, a Finnish architect, in 1968. A hatch door in its lower half opened down to reveal steps, like the door of a small airplane, and led into a room outfitted with six plastic bed-chair combinations and a central fireplace slab, as well as a kitchenette and a bathroom. Photographs from the time make the house look like a place where the Teletubbies might live, with Barbarella as a frequent houseguest.

Mika Taanila, a Finnish filmmaker who helped start the Futuro revival with his 1998 documentary "Futuro: A New Stance for Tomorrow," said he became interested in the houses because they seemed to represent the mood of the late 1960's so precisely. They reflected the era's "economic boom and optimism about the future," he said in a telephone interview from Finland. "Suuronen could not have come up with the idea 15 years earlier or 10 years later."

Part of that optimism was about the potential for plastics and prefabrication to radically lower the cost of housing, in the revolutionary spirit of 1968. The Futuro, which was made of polyester plastic and fiberglass and which sold in the United States for between $12,000 and $14,000, was one of many experimental plastic houses at the time. It came in 16 pieces that could easily be moved by truck or helicopter and set up in a couple of days.

Here's a review of the book Futuro: Tomorrow's House from Yesterday, by Marko Home and Mika Taanila. You can buy it here.

Previously on Boing Boing:
Futuro House: better living from the Gernsback Continuum
Relocation of Futuro-House

Billy and Principal Andrew Alty went all the way back to kindergarten, when Billy had convinced Mitchell McCoy that the green fingerpaint was Shamrock Shake, and watched with glee as the little babyface had scarfed it all down. Billy knew that Andrew Alty knew his style: refined, controlled, and above all, _personal_. Billy never would've dropped a dozen M-80s down the girls' toilet. His stuff was always one-on-one, and possessed of a degree of charm and subtlety.

But nevertheless, here was Billy, along with the sixth-grade bumper-crop of nasty-come-latelies, called on the carpet in front of Andrew Alty's massive desk. Andrew Alty was an athletic forty, a babyface true-and-through, and a charismatic thought-leader in his demographic.

Hormones. They were the problem.

Billy Bailey was the finest heel the sixth grade had ever seen -- a true artisan who kept his brand pure and unsullied, picking and managing his strategic alliances with the utmost care and acumen. He'd dumped BanginBumpin Fireworks (a division of The Shanghai Novelty Company, Ltd.) in the _fourth_ grade, fer chrissakes. Their ladyfingers were too small to bother with; their M-80s were so big that you'd have to be a lunatic to go near them.

But sixth grade was the Year of the Hormone at Pepsi Elementary. Boys who'd been babyfaces since kindergarten suddenly sprouted acne, pubic hair, and an uncontrollable urge to impress girls. Their weak brands were no match for the onslaught of -osterones and -ogens that flooded their brains, and in short order they found themselves switching over to heel.

As a result, the sixth grade was experiencing a heel glut. Last year's Little Lord Fauntleroys were now busy snapping bras, dropping textbooks, cracking grading computers, and blowing up the girls' toilets.

Hormones. They made Billy want to puke.

Virgin Enterprises filed a federal lawsuit against VirginThreads.com and several others using virgin* domain names, accusing them of trademark infringement, dilution, and cyberpiracy. All for using a word that's been in the English language for far longer than mogul Branson has been using it as a trademark for his businesses. As David Bollier asks in a CNN Money story on the subject, "If anyone can lay claim to that word, shouldn't it be the Catholic church?"

m Traditional trademark law, concerned with consumer confusion, finds infringement when one use of a mark tends to deceive consumers about the source of goods or services they're buying. Dilution goes beyond that to allow the holder of a "famous" mark to bar use that "causes dilution of the distinctive quality of the mark," even outside the trademark holder's realm of goods. Dilution is a big gun, and one rightly limited to distinctive coined terms and actual harm, as the Supreme Court ruled when it held that "Victor's Little Secret" did not dilute "Victoria's Secret."

READ THE ENTIRE BOOKS FROM EACH SERIES HERE:

Around the World in 80 Days
Pole to Pole
Full Circle
Hemingway Adventure
Sahara with Michael Palin
Himalaya

Pieter Hugo's photo series "Hyena People of Nigeria" is the result of a ten-day trek the South African photographer took with a group of wandering minstrels and their animal companions: three hyenas, two pythons and four monkeys. Shown here: "Mallam Mantari Lamal with Mainasara, Nigeria, 2005"

Here's a snip from a "making of" interview with Hugo:

‘Last year I saw a picture on a website that was taken from a car window in Nigeria,” says Pieter Hugo. “It showed a man with a hyena on the streets of Lagos.”

Seated on a restaurant balcony overlooking Cape Town’s city bowl, the tall, athletic photographer says it was this crude photograph that motivated him to visit Nigeria. “The caption said he was a debt collector,” he continues, a glass of wine and salad placed in front of him. “The photograph really intrigued me.”

Through a local researcher Hugo was introduced to Adetokunbo Abiola, a Nigerian journalist who emailed him to say he knew of the men (there were more than one) in the picture. A few weeks later Hugo nervously exited Lagos airport on his first visit to the country."

Previously on Boing Boing: Hyenas and baboons for pets

Lynn had found a buffer overflow exploit that lets an attacker take absolute control over Cisco routers. He sent the details to Cisco in April, but they still have not fully repaired the vulnerability. Since many of the world's key routers are supplied by Cisco, this means Cisco's foot-dragging places large parts of the world's information infrastructure at grave risk of collapse.

Lynn proposed to disclose this vulnerability at Black Hat, the respected Las Vegas security conference. Cisco threatened to sue, claiming they were defending their "intellectual property."

The conference and Lynn's employer agreed to yank the presentation, and Cisco employees spent eight hours ripping Lynn's research out of the printed program books before they were handed out to attendees. Lynn agreed to give a different talk.

Then, fewer than two hours before his presentation, Lynn announced his resignation from ISS. He got up on stage and delivered his original presentation. Cisco went ballistic and got a restraining order against Lynn and the conference forbidding them from further discussing this.

This SecurityFocus article is amazing -- the gutsy quotes from Lynn in particular are inspiring. This guy is my new hero.

"I feel I had to do what's right for the country and the national infrastructure," he said. "It has been confirmed that bad people are working on this (compromising IOS). The right thing to do here is to make sure that everyone knows that it's vulnerable..."

Lynn outlined a way to take control of an IOS-based router, using a buffer overflow or a heap overflow, two types of memory vulnerabilities. He demonstrated the attack using a vulnerability that Cisco fixed in April. While that flaw is patched, he stressed that the attack can be used with any new buffer overrun or heap overflow, adding that running code on a router is a serious threat.

"When you attack a host machine, you gain control of that machine--when you control a router, you gain control of the network," Lynn said...

"It is especially regretful, and indefensible, that the Black Hat Conference organizers have given Mr. Lynn a platform to publicly disseminate the information he illegally obtained," [CIsco] said in a statement. "We appreciate the cooperation we have received from ISS in this matter. We are working with ISS to continue our joint research in the area of security vulnerabilities..."

In the latest case, ISS and Lynn contacted Cisco in April to report their process for using a vulnerability in IOS to run a program on a Cisco router. The networking fixed the vulnerability in the operating system, but did nothing to prevent attackers from running programs on the devices using the broad techniques Lynn described, the researcher said.

During his presentation, Lynn outlined an eight step process using any known, but unpatched flaw, to compromise a Cisco IOS-based router. While he did not publish any vulnerabilities, Lynn said that finding new flaws would not be hard...

"What I just did means that I'm about to get sued by Cisco and ISS," Lynn said, joking later that he may be "in Guantanamo" by the end of the week...

"What politicians are talking about when they talk about the Digital Pearl Harbor is a network worm," he said. "That's what we could see in the future, if this isn't fixed."

Update: James sez, "I am a source close to Mr. Lynn.

"Things to note: Lynn and ISS contacted Cisco about this vulnerability in April and it was fixed. Vulnerable versions are no longer available from Cisco. Cisco and ISS both initially support Lynn's presentation at Black Hat. Cisco had, initially, commited to sending a representative to corraborate Lynn's findings. Lynn had been planning to give this presentation since then, which was months in advance, with the consent of both ISS and Cisco.

"On Monday before the conference Cisco and ISS decided to pull the presentation with vague reasons given. This prompted the actions by Lynn on Wednesday, resignation and release.

"It is important to note and propogate that Lynn did go through the corrrect channels for release: he contacted the vendor, the vendor issued a fix. At this point, normally, public release would be allowed and expected."

Not your thing? Then check the related undies that state "I consent to this search," and solicit random acts of person-parts seizure.
Link to "nosearch" store. (Thanks, Michael)

While you're at it, check out cellist Zoe Keating's website (and CDs). She performed a song called "The Legions" (QuickTime video link) during the recent Simnuke event in the Nevada desert at which 400 gallons of recycled restaurant grease exploded in 20 seconds to create a simulated nuclear mushroom cloud. The song was lovely. Zoe says, "I layer the natural sound of the cello to create rhythmically dense musical structures. Other than sampling and repetition, I do not manipulate the sound of my acoustic cello in any way."

And Boing Boing reader Rick Abruzzo, who also participated in the desert event, says, "Here are PDFs of the posters I made for Simnuke 'cheerleaders.' If anyone wants high-resolution PDFs suitable for framing, let me know [rick at thoughtpolice dot com]." One of these graphics is shown at the top of this post. Links: PDF 1, and PDF 2.

(Thanks, Camron Assadi)

Previously on Boing Boing:
Xeni headed to Simnuke
Simnuke: snapshots
Xeni on NPR -- SIMNUKE: Having a Blast in the Nevada Desert

Reader comment: Darin says,

When I was in the US Army (mostly during the 80s and early 90s), they used a nuke simulator composed of 20 lbs of C4 and a 55 gallon drum of smoke oil. The resulting mushroom cloud accurately represented the size of a tactical nuclear weapon. Supposedly it had a real-world kill radius of a quarter mile. Not any fire, but a huge cloud of grey and white smoke. Very impressive to see. I was a casualty of this type of 'simnuke' at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas and Ft. Irwin, California.

"This summer, upon advice from his doctor, he had the foot amputated. But instead of letting the hospital dispose of the body part, he took it home and stuck it (along with a can of beer and a porcelain horse!) in a bucket of formaldehyde on his front porch.

"When a neighborhood kid told one of his parents about seeing the foot, they called the police, who in turn confiscated the foot pending an investigation. As it turns out, it's perfectly legal to keep your own body parts, so the foot was returned to Mr. Rubottom, who's already planning on giving a couple toes to friends."
Link (Link to original story)

Reader comment: Fannie says: "I wouldn’t necessarily call this a custom amongst sane people, but in some areas of the South it’s not uncommon to keep various parts that have been removed from the body.  My Aunt Sara, for instance, has an entire medicine cabinet set aside for such items as her teeth, my uncle’s teeth, his gall stones, and some other bizarre bodily items that have been around since before he died in 1984.  And I know loads of other people who do it, too, who have no history of mental illness, so I can’t just chalk it up to one kooky aunt.  No amputated parts are cruising around the family homes that I’m aware of, but it really isn’t so bad to keep a jar full of your own teeth for the kids to find and yell 'gross!' at, is it?"

"She claims that she had made repeated verbal efforts to tell the security person that she didn't want to be felt up. When the security person said that she wasn't feeling Phyllis up, Phyllis responded, "My husband has been feeling me up for 40 years, I know what its like to be felt up".

"But...maybe the security person was right. Lets consider the other possibilities:

"1.) Phyllis was horny. she likes breasts. We all do. She saw the opportunity and she went for it.

"2.) Phyllis is a terrorist. This really seems to be the most likely scenario. The homeland is now secure thanks to the fine judgement of our people in airport security.

"I'm sure the federal prison inmates are quite worried about the threat Phyllis will pose to their safety."

[F]ederal policy required that Phyllis Dintenfass undergo a body search. As a result, she now faces imprisonment and financial ruin because of her understandable reaction. This does nothing to protect the public from terrorism, but a great deal to reinforce the idea of illimitable federal power – which is, apparently, the entire point of the "war on terrorism."

I have an interest in "extreme science," by which I mean research at the edges of plausibility. Of course, there's a lot of self-deception and wishful thinking among researchers who are serious about, say, human cryopreservation or unconventional energy sources. On the other hand, I don't think it's wise to refuse to examine anything that stretches or violates our ideas about the way the universe works. The chance of finding a new Einstein may be as small as the chance of winning the lottery; but if you don't play, you can't win.

When MAKE asked me to write a profile, I immediately thought of a man named Ed Storms, a chemist who worked at Los Alamos for several decades before taking early retirement and setting up a garage workshop in which to study low-energy nuclear reactions, or LENR — a generic term for the field that began with so-called "cold fusion." I wondered what Ed was doing now, so I gave him a call.

Reader comment: Alex S. says: "Reading your post on the unfortunate logo for Amadeus frankfurters, I thought I'd point out an unfortunate road sign I came across yesterday while searching Google images for a suitable background design for a website I'm trying to piece together...looks kind of like a jugglr who fell out of a plane over the ocean and is crapping a brick before he hits the water."
Link

When I first tried RSVP reading, I felt overwhelmed. The words flashed on the screen to the beat of an unheard drum. I felt out of control. I couldn't pause and reflect after reading a sentence. But after five minutes or so, I got used to the ocular assault, and my mind seemed to shift into a different gear. By letting go, the words started flowing smoothly into my head. Because my eyes weren't shifting back and forth as they normally do when reading, everything but the words themselves faded away, and I found that I was actually enjoying the experience.

Reader comment: Chris says: "Saw your posting regarding RSVP reading on BB and thought you might find this interesting.  RSVP is a standard type of presentation used by cognitive psychologists (I'm at UCLA doing work like this).  One interesting phenomenon revealed by RSVP is repetition blindness: decreased memory for a second presentation of a repeated item (e.g., in the sentence: They wanted to play sports but sports were not allowed) in an RSVP stream at rapid rates (usually about 150 ms/word or faster).  I don't know the rates in the messaging systems, but it seems that this type of presentation creates interesting possibilities for miscommunication."

I called Jenni and asked her a few questions about this:

Q: Are forgeries like this common occurrences?

A: I can't really say -- I'd have to speak to our folks to see if this happens with any frequency. As I stated in my email, we haven't initiated any legal action of any kind.

Q: Do you plan to pursue the forgers who sent out the bogus takedown in your name?

A: I need to check into that, that's all the information I have at this point.

Q: Will you pursue a claim against RPG Films for the use of your member-companies' copyright music in the films they host?

A: We have not initiated any communication or legal action against them. Forecasting future actions is not something we do.

Q: Do you have an institutional policy on the use of your member companies' music in noncommercial fan-films made from video-games?

A: I need to check on that.

Q: That's great, thanks. I'll post this and update the post when you get back to me. Link

"I mean we put up these ads with little robotic armed kids holding hands with Sue the Tooth or Gee-Whiz I Don't Have a Body Giraffe, but the root of all this is suffering. When I saw the Godfather and there was the scene with the decapitated horse I almost pooped my pants. I knew that I could have a whole line of animals without bodies. You zoom onto stuff like that and you'll strike it rich."

Today, even though they are larger than their counterparts in the 50s, children are still given 50s shaped Barbie dolls to play with. If given the opportunity to decide whether their doll was to be slim or fat, which would they choose? Would they want their doll to look like them? Should we give a child that choice?

The doll is manipulated through the injection of a liquid into its hollow body, which changes its shape from very slim to obese (and vice-versa).

Reader comment: Conor says: "The linked text refers to the 50s Barbie body shape -- in fact, Barbie had a major re-do in 2000 (and thus the body is called "B2K") and today the doll is proportioned like a tall, slender woman vs. 50's bullet-boobed fembot."

America Sings
historical DVD featuring interviews with Alice Davis, Marc Davis, and Jeff Burke. (History of America Sings with interviews and a look at Carousel of Progress)

The Haunted Mansion Story Vol. 1
historical DVD featuring interviews with Disney legends: X Atencio, Thurl Ravenscroft, Alice Davis and Rolly Crump on this DOUBLE DVD

Natures Wonderland (Mine Train) -Big Thunder MTN. DVD
featuring a interview with the voice of Natures Wonderland and Big Thunder as well as Alice Davis discussing the never built Western River ride and Tony Baxter on Thunder Mountain.

Mission To Mars / Flight to the Moon DVD
ride history and ride through with Alien Encounter! Plus bonus audio and more!

Digital music research firm The Leading Question found that they spent four and a half times more on paid-for music downloads than average fans.

Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.

According to the music industry, legal downloads have tripled during 2005.

Dear Senator Clinton:

I'm writing to commend you for calling for a $90-million study on the effects of video games on children, and in particular the courageous stand you have taken in recent weeks against the notorious "Grand Theft Auto" series.

I'd like to draw your attention to another game whose nonstop violence and hostility has captured the attention of millions of kids — a game that instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing.

I'm talking, of course, about high school football."

The current High Line is a remnant of a much larger elevated freight rail system, and it has been out of use since 1980. The trackbed provides a glimpse of what New York would look like if it were abandoned and turned over to nature.

The High Line starts at 33d Street and 12th Avenue near the MTA's Hudson Yards and runs to Gansevoort Street and Washington Avenue in the Meatpacking District. I have wanted to walk the line for years and it was exactly as much fun as I thought it would be.

Update: A couple people have written in to claim that this is a hoax. Certainly the dealers page is suspiciously blank. (Thanks, Alex and others!)

Update 2: FZ sez, "It's indeed a hoax. It's hilarious, if you get the joke. The page with the detailed description of the modeled cowbells is a clever parody of the user manuals of Line6 products, a company that produces digital guitar amplifiers. They're downloadable at line6.com if you're curious, and double as pretty great primers of the history of electric guitar amplification."

Santorum: No, no. Again, what's society's purpose in marriage? Society's purpose - the reasons civilizations have held up marriage is because they want to establish and support and secure the relationship that is in the best interest of the future of the society, which is, a man and a woman having children and providing the stability for those children to be raised in the future.

Stewart: Wouldn't you say though and with that same thing and I completely agree, although I always thought the purpose of marriage was a bachelor party but that's beside the point. (laughter) But wouldn't you say that society has an interest in understanding that the homosexual community also wants to form those same bonds and raise children and wouldn't a monogamous, good-hearted, virtuous homosexual couple be in society's best interest raising a child rather than a heterosexual couple with adultery, with alcohol issues, with other things, and by the way, I don't even need to make that sound as though a gay couple can only raise a child given failures in other couples.

The Telecommunications Act contains at least two provisions that appear relevant. Section 27(2) provides that "No Canadian carrier shall, in relation to the provision of a telecommunications service or the charging of a rate for it, unjustly discriminate or give an undue or unreasonable preference toward any person, including itself, or subject any person to an undue or unreasonable disadvantage." It seems to me that a compelling case could be made that Telus is unjustly discriminating against this particular website, which puts the site at a disadvantage. In fact, Telus argued that this is precisely what the provision does during the CRTC's VoIP hearings. As part of the CRTC analysis on whether it should prohibit packet preferencing, it notes that Telus argued against a prohibition, submitting to the CRTC that it "retained the subsection 27(2) prohibition on unjust discrimination." Moreover, Telus "submitted that it had committed not to do anything to deliberately degrade the service experienced by an end-user of any access-independent VoIP service."

Section 36 is even more on point. It provides that "except where the Commission approves otherwise, a Canadian carrier shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommunications carried by it for the public." This appears to directly address the current situation as Telus is in fact controlling the content carried by it for the public.

Again, it is illegal for police to search, detain, or question you just because you refuse a search. But if the police proceed to detain, search, or arrest you despite your wishes -- do not physically resist. You may state clearly but non-confrontationally: "Officer, I am not resisting and I do not consent to any searches."

RPGFilms was a website that hosted tons of machinima videos made with video-game engines. One popular machinima genre is the music video, in which a machinima artist synchs action recorded from a game to a piece of popular music.

Now the Recording Industry Association of America has had RPGFlims shut down because they argue that these "songs files" (not MP3s you understand, but humorous videos made by fans who in no way substitute for purchasing the songs) infringe their members' copyrights.

Under the US fair use doctrine, a court can find a use fair if it can be shown that the use doesn't interfere with the rightsholder's income. I think that's pretty clearly the case here: no one who downloads a machinima video of a bunch of Wookies getting down to "Surfin' Bird" is going to say, "Well, hell, now that I've got this, no need to buy the CD."

The use of music in fan-films can only be beneficial to the rightsholder's interests, and permitting that use can only be beneficial to society. Watching the RIAA commit slow, spectacular suicide by taking down the fan art that celebrates, advertises and raises awareness of its members' products, well, it's flabbergasting.

What a bunch of tools. Link (Thanks, Nick!)

Update: Michelle sez, "An MMORPG player has started a petition against the RIAA for shutting down rpgfilms. 451 people have signed it so far."

Like PGP and PGPfone, which he created as human rights tools for people around the world to communicate without fear of government eavesdropping, Zimmermann hopes his new program will restore some of the civil liberties that have been lost in recent years and help businesses shield themselves against corporate espionage.

Regarding Grokster:

"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," Justice Souter wrote.

Regarding guns:

Senate Republicans on Tuesday moved the National Rifle Association's top priority ahead of a $491 billion defense bill, setting up a vote on legislation to shield firearms manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits over gun crimes.

"The president believes that the manufacturer of a legal product should not be held liable for the criminal misuse of that product by others," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

[Senator Larry] Craig said such lawsuits are "predatory and aimed at bankrupting the firearms industry," unfairly blaming dealers and manufacturers for the crimes of gun users.

Reader comment: Paul says: "I have to point out that: The actual point in the Supreme Court decision quoted in the recent post 'Shoot someone? Not Smith & Wesson’s fault. Copy a movie? Grokster’s fault' is in fact the text that isn’t highlighted with a bold typeface.

"It would be tragic to give people the impression that what was quoted is in any way negative by using ctrl + b on two sections of text, because the classy way to do such a thing, and the usual way to detect purposeful neglect, is to simply remove what you don’t like with an ellipsis.

"The ignored and obviously overlooked part reads 'with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement.' Relate that to gun manufacturers and we would hope, and pray, that anyone who sells a gun that is advertised (promoted) as '… well suited for killing your cheating spouse…' would be liable for any one using it for the purpose of killing some one, and if Ford advertised a F150 as 'Great for getting away from the cops after robbing a bank' they would be liable as well. We could add such obviousness to nearly anything: 'our pillows are designed to be 25% more efficient in smothering some one!' or 'Our toilet paper is much better for toilet papering some one’s house!'"

Cory replies: Paul's comments on the Inducement doctrine for Grokster are a little incomplete. The inducement doctrine handed down by the court attaches liability to someone who advertises a technology for a purpose that is later to be held infringing. There's no way to know, a priori, whether a use will be held to be infringing. Therefore, any technology that is advertised for a use that has not previously been litigated has massive liability under Grokster. For example, Sony advertised the VCR as useful for both time-shifting and librarying: the court only found that time-shifting was legal. If librarying is found to be illegal -- say, in a case that's litigated next year -- it makes Sony and everyone else who's advertised librarying as a feature liable under Grokster. Current technologies that advertise uses that haven't been found to be noninfringing include the Slingbox ("space- shifting"), the Promise TV (capturing the entire multiplex and buffering it for 30 days), mythtv (commercial skipping), iTunes/ WinAmp/Windows Media Player (ripping CDs), and many others.

I came across a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory fan site today which featured scans of polaroids taken of the five children from the 1971 film, all grown up.

Reader comment: Shannon Larratt says,

That photo is actually a BME picture, although Davelog appears to have edited out my logo/URL/copyright note. He has a bonus gallery on BME/HARD... The person in that photo is a very cool guy that's just posing like that for a lark. He is however into some very kinky play in real life (deep chest play piercing, sometimes even deep enough that the needle rested against his heart and shifted with his heartbeat) and is interviewed in my new book (probably be out in January).

"The restaurant was so popular among Taiwanese diners, young and old, that the owners opened up a second joint in what they hope will become an islandwide chain, with some franchises eventually in Hong Kong and Japan. Los Angeles or New York? Never!

"Now comes eyewitness news of a small operation in one of south Taiwan's night markets in Chiayi City, where a pretty woman runs a "squat toilet cup ice cream" dispenser on one of the main shopping streets in town. Passersby have their choice of chocolate or vanilla soft ice cream that is dispensed into light-green squat toilet-shaped plastic cups, seen here, all for a very affordable NT$25, which comes to about 75 cents in American money."
Link

Previous mentions of Toilet Bowl restaurant here and here Reader comment: Dan Bloom says: "MORE ice cream toilet pics."
Link

Newsarama: The main character's name is Rocketo Garrison. Issue #1 starts at his small beginning as a young boy. Can you tell us what he's like?

Frank Espinosa: Before his compass lights, Rocketo is much like any other young boy, except that he has this incredible genetic gift that makes his natural sense of curiosity ten fold.. So he reads tons of books on old myths and explorers, he asks tons of questions, and loves to explore the small Island where he is born.

We get to see how he spends his time with his parents, and how he gets to learn certain values that will help him later on in his Journeys. Because the Rocketo series is a long saga of this explorer's life, I wanted to start with his youth and work my way to Rocketo as an older man. The last journey, called Rocketo: Journey to ULTAMO takes place when Rocketo is in his late fifties, maybe even a bit older. So I wanted the audience to understand this character from start to finish. As the stories progress there will be more flashbacks to his youth and his friends on the island where he grew up. Right now it's broad strokes to get him moving and ready for Journey to the Hidden Sea.

# Huichunji pharmacy sells sleeping pills.
# Suzhou Creek is uncovered.
# The #57 bus goes directly to the zoo. You can jump into a tiger’s mouth and die.
# Cars under the Yan’an Road viaduct drive very fast. Accidents happen often.
# Fuxing Park — hanging yourself is simple among the tall, close trees.
# Wang’s Tofu Stand — crush yourself with a piece of tofu.

Bad news from the front lines of the War on Pornography, at least where our side is concerned: after a nine month trial in which New York-based fetish photographer Barbara Nitke and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom attempted to challenge certain provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, a federal appeals panel yesterday ruled against the plaintiffs and “refused to find unconstitutional a law making it a crime to send obscenity over the Internet to children”, according to the Associated Press (as if forcing her material onto children over the internet was part of Nitke’s agenda in the first place).

Boing Boing reader M.C. adds,

You may also be interested in my favorite brand of Taiwanese condom, O'Mr. Skin Chapeau, with a charming illustration of a coupla swingin' 8 yr olds on the package.

Previously on Boing Boing: Japanese condom packaging art

Chuck Berry is famous for not using a touring band and hooking up with different ad hoc local groups everywhere he plays. And sometimes the results are less than inspiring– like the jumped up mess that was heard that day on the set of the Mike Douglas show. Lennon and Berry seem to be singing in different keys, the band sounds like it’s playing another song. Instead of a great rock moment, it’s three and a half minutes of atonal boogie.

But what makes watching the video of this performance so wonderful, and what has led me to watch it over and over again, is Yoko. During some random boogie moments Yoko grabs a nearby microphone and lets loose with some spirited Yoko-style caterwauling. It’s SO wrong that I almost can't believe it’s going to happen again every time I watch the video. A few times Mr. Berry’s eyes almost pop out of his head as his roots rock classic is injected with kooky downtown performance art on national television. One online critic describes the look on Berry’s face “as if somebody just poured an ice-cold beverage down his pants.” It’s that good.

The primary difference between the retail version of the game and that of the modded version is that the above content has simply been rearranged and intensified by the consumers. By using the logic that this content was illegally "hidden", one could just as easily claim that any R rated movie has covertly crossed the limits of decency because the end-user could very well pause their DVD player on a scene containing nudity, thus exceeding the length of such scenes by which the MPAA decides whether a film is to be classified as R or NC-17. The same could be said of even a PG-13 rated movie which contains brief nudity.

Perhaps what is most absurd about the accusations against both Rockstar Games and the gaming industry, is that those making the allegations seem to have no idea how the technology they're condemning works. Had they done even a moment's worth of research, they would discover that the online mod community for GTA:SA (and many other PC games) is not only capable of recycling various fragments of game code and art to create new scenes for the game, but we do it all the time. If Senator Hillary Clinton, Leeland Yee, Dr. David Walsh, et al, were to give even a cursory glance at the websites which published the Hot Coffee mod, they would see that it is but one of thousands of modifications made by users which create new game play scenarios using the existing assets. Given the very nature of the interactive digital medium, an industrious "modder" could within minutes create things far "worse" than Hot Coffee if they so desired simply by swapping a few items and lines of code about. Then, on top of just shifting around pre-existing assets, it is also quite easy and common for players to create entirely new content from scratch.

Numerous California civil liberties organizations have formed up behind the bill, including EFF and the ACLU, and the bill passed the senate with flying colors. But now a bunch of industry types who hoped to sell their RFID technology to the state are lobbying hard in the Assembly to kill the bill. We're looking for California residents to send letters to their state reps expressing support for the bill as well.

The alternative is pretty Orwellian: imagine a state full of ID cards that can be read without your knowledge or permission, containing arbitrary facts about your identity and personal life. I like knowing that my ID stays in my wallet unless I take it out -- don't you?

Would the government want to know where you are at all times? Would an identity thief or a kidnapper be interested in the personal information contained in your driver's license or your child's school identity card? Unfortunately, the same technology used by businesses to track inventory could be used by the government to track people in California.

"Tag and Track" devices known as RFID's (Radio Frequency Identification tags) are being considered for use in government documentation like drivers' licenses, K-12 student ID cards, medical cards, benefit cards, and library cards.

Fortunately, The Identity Information Protection Act (SB 682), authored by Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), would prohibit the inclusion of RFID tags in these mass distributed identification cards. It will also ensure that any other state-issued cards that contain RFID tags use strong encryption and authentication, and broadcast very little personal information.

Last month in Elk Grove, a high-school student faced eight felony computer-theft charges for allegedly hacking into his school's computer system and changing his grades.

When police searched his home, they found aluminum-lined, cylindrical potato-chip containers that some hackers use as crude antennas to help them intercept wireless signals.

Known as "cantennas," they consist of a Pringles can and some hardware worth $5 to $10 but can be used to amplify a wireless signal several miles away.

"They're unsophisticated but reliable, and it's illegal to possess them," said Lozito of the Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force.

It's also illegal to access wireless networks that aren't public. In other words, if you've ever been pleasantly surprised to open your laptop, pull up your browser and have Internet access, that likely means you've just intruded into someone else's unsecured network — and really aren't allowed to be there.

Likewise, I'm not sure who told this reporter that accessing an open wireless network is illegal, but again, it's not true. There are certainly circumstances where doing so is illegal, and others where it's perfectly legal (for an unambiguous example of the latter, consider what happens if both you and your neighbor have a network called "linksys." When you're in the front of your house, you're closer to your AP than his, so your laptop connects to your AP. When you go to the back bedroom, your computer seamlessly and transparently flips to your neighbor's network. This isn't lawbreaking: it's standards-compliant behavior.)

I hope the Bee does a followup on this story where civil liberties get their due. Link (Thanks, Owlswan!)

Update: I just had a brief phone conversation with Lt Lozito of the Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force. He's a pretty reasonable guy. He says he doesn't remember if he said that cantennas are illegal, but he affirms that he doesn't believe that they are. He suggested that he thought that in some cases of computer intrusion, convicted offenders should have their access to devices limited as a condition of parole, but that he didn't believe that cantennas are illegal, and he also doesn't think it's illegal to access open wireless networks -- except when this is done for illegal purposes. He's apparently fielded a lot of calls on the subject and I suggested that he post a statement about this before he gets slashdotted. I hope he does -- I'll link to it here when and if.

It Helped Set Off the Vintage-Furniture Craze
Is it coincidence that Craigslist's ascendancy dovetailed with the rise of midcentury-modern mania? "It's like a giant yard sale," says Andrew Eutsler of Cosmo's Cosmos furniture shop in Brooklyn, whose best finds include six Saarinen tulip chairs for $75. And it's not just midcentury stuff. An employee at Steven Sclaroff in the West Village tried in vain to snag a mahogany T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings chest for $15. (A refinished one at the store costs $3,225.) "People don't know what they've got, and then it's gone," says Eutsler. But sellers are wising up. A few years ago, he slipped and told some how happy he was to get such a great deal. They raised prices on the spot. Buyers also realized better deals can be had from Eames-era grandmas with DSL. Craigslist's a "threat," admits David "Jake" Jacobs, of Two Jakes in Williamsburg. It "probably has blown the bubble on things that we as retailers could've gotten more money for."

Boing Boing reader Roy Berman says:

"Your posts prompted me to post a couple of photos I had laying around from the insect-only petshop Starbugs, located in a sort of riverside entertainment zone in Danshui, just north of Taipei."

Link. Careful, if these green crawlies are doing what I think they're doing, this photo set is totally NSFW.
Previously on Boing Boing: Starbucks clones of the world, including sex-themed variants; Starbucks knockoff in Ethiopia

Link
(Thanks, Sean Bonner)

Reader comment: The mystery of Kit Sack has been solved. Jeff Youngstrom says,

As I'm sure a million BoingBoing readers are about to tell you, "Kit Sack" is a pun on the Kit Kat chocolate cookie candy -- Link (there's a gallery of the candy wrappers at the bottom of the page). Incidentally, Kit Kats are made by Hershey in the US and Nestle everywhere else. The Nestle version is way better. Fortunately I live close to Canada.

The Kit Kat marketing tagline could even work for Kit Sack: "...a simple treat that complements your lighthearted, positive approach to life."

Davis Rowan, who writes for the London Times, says "Rav Berg's people have been worrying the Brits too -- here's my investigation for the London Times (I've been trailing them since 2002)."

[Rabbi] Berg's teachings, too, have angered more traditional Kabbalah scholars, particularly his claim that anyone can "read" these ancient Aramaic or Hebrew texts simply by scanning their eyes or fingers over the pages. Still, the promised benefits are an impressive selling point (with courses starting at £151): Kabbalah can make you rich, cure illness and help you find true love. "You'll learn how to harness the Light of the Creator to get what money can't buy - including more money," its literature claims. "You'll learn how to... find the perfect mate, how to remove illness from your life, and even before illness strikes, prevent it. You'll also learn about a precise technique that can methodically reverse the ageing process and prolong life."

Reader comment: Paul Bragiel says,

gfxzone has some of the best pixel art from the demo scene going back from c64 through amiga onto the pc. Check out the 8bit galleries especially... some amazing stuff in there.

'Music sounds so wrong at the moment," says Matthew Herbert, sitting outside a pub near his London studio. People who hear his new album, Plat du Jour, may well agree with him. One of the tracks features the sound of Herbert driving a Chieftain tank over a re-creation of the meal Nigella Lawson prepared for Bush and Blair, when the US president came over to thank Tony for his support over Iraq. Plat du Jour also features 80,000 chicks, 3,255 people biting into apples, and a track made from "one crystal of beet sugar and a coke can" (...)

Herbert's research for the album also included a trip down the London sewers with his microphone. "It was like Ghostbusters. Late one night I got a call on my mobile. 'We're on,' said a man." He gave Herbert a location, turned up there in a van, gave Herbert a special suit and snuck him down a manhole in the early hours of the morning. "All to record the sound of your shit, you see?" I am stuck, just for a second, with the image of a singing poo.

I ran across this Starbucks knockoff in Santiago, Chile - not only is the sign's font and color virtually the same, but the fern-bar-with- coffee decor is a dead-ringer for the dreaded 'Bucks as well. (Come to think of it, the entire neighborhood of Las Condes looks like it could have been transplanted from suburban Virginia or Dallas or Sacramento.) Situated not far from the U.S. embassy, apparently the continued non-ceasing and non-desisting of this place occasionally causes a bit of a stink in discussions of IP in Chile. A "real" Starbucks just opened down the street, so perhaps the sparks of litigation will soon fly. Both places are going to have a tough time competing with Santiago's somewhat notorious "cafes con piernas," which translates to "cafes with legs," but might better be described as "caffeinated Hooters." These places, and this country, are not known for great coffee.

Reader comment: S. Melmoth says,

There are numerous Starbucks-esque knockoffs in Korea, including Prowstar, for one. But since they merely serve coffee, that's all quite boring compared to.... the sex-related knockoffs!

There's Starbutts, and better yet, Starfucks! Notice... it's better than porno... It's prono.

India's knockoff of Starbucks is called Barista. It's very popular, but it's not an exact copy: the colors are blue and orange, and several locations have a guitar you can pick up and play. Link

Ian says,

We saw a "USABucks" coffee house with a starbucks-esque logo in Harbin, China. This link shows my friend Keisuke getting his pose on in front of it. There is something brutally honest about a name like USA Bucks.

(Ed. note: I could swear the sign to the far left reads "WESTERN STYLE FOOBAR," but I'm pretty sure "food bar" is the intent.)

Reader Michael says,

This is a snapshot I took of a fake starbucks -- "starblack coffee" -- in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Link

[Priyanka Chopra] is a Bollywood actress, and as such, trained to play the role of a virginal glam-doll, not a sexual aggressor. By tradition, a Bollywood heroine is a one-dimensional creation who may wear eye-popping bustiers or writhe passionately during a song in the rain. But she is unfailingly virtuous. Whether girlfriend, wife or mother, she is the repository of Indian moral values. In the ancient epic "Ramayana," the hero Lakshman draws a furrow in the earth, the Line of Lakshman, which represents the limits of proper feminine behavior, and requests that his sister-in-law Sita not step outside it. As if heeding his exhortation, Bollywood heroines have rarely stepped out of line, even for a kiss.

But a decade-long cultural churning has overturned stereotypes in India. In 1991, the threat of fiscal collapse forced the government to introduce wide-ranging economic reforms and allow multinational corporations to operate in India. The same year, satellite television arrived. Today, consumerism, globalization, the proliferation of semiclad bodies in print and television, and the emergence of a more worldly audience have redefined the boundaries of what is permissible. Sex has been pulled out of the closet and actors have become more willing to experiment with their images. The latest Bollywood heroines seem to be taking a page out of Mae West's book: when they are good, they are very good, but when they are bad, they're better.

Link.

Previously: E3 Snapshots for NPR by Jake Appelbaum, Xeni portraits, shot by Jake Appelbaum

Previously: Kevin Sites responds on Falluja shooting video via his blog, Kevin Sites interview on NPR Tuesday

Reader comment: Tom Robinson says: "Regarding the article about Microsoft "nuking" Apple's headquarters, it appears their satellite photos are simply very out of date. Many of surrounding buildings are different as well."

At the time of the accident at the Florida plant, a department manager mistakenly thought all flesh had been flushed from the machine, the letter said. When workers couldn't find the fingertip, they assumed it had been washed down the drain. In the March 29 letter, included in the lawsuit, quality assurance director Frank Curto apologized for the "foreign object that was found in one of our frozen entrees" and "any inconveniences that were incurred as a result of this incident."

The entree at issue was served March 20 and supposed to be a "special vegetarian, soft diet meal," for Rocha, who practices Buddhism in prison and has dental problems, Merin said. "That was what was unusual to him. As he was eating the cornbread, he chomped into something that appeared to be a cashew nut, tried to chew it, then took it out of his mouth."

"While it sounds like something from an episode of "Alias," the scenario isn't fictional. "

In an effort to identify counterfeiters, the US government has succeeded in persuading some color laser printer manufacturers to encode each page with identifying information. That means that without your knowledge or consent, an act you assume is private could become public. A communication tool you're using in everyday life could become a tool for government surveillance. And what's worse, there are no laws to prevent abuse. ... The ACLU recently issued a report revealing that the FBI has amassed more than 1,100 pages of documents on the organization since 2001, as well as documents concerning other non-violent groups, including Greenpeace and United for Peace and Justice. In the current political climate, it's not hard to imagine the government using the ability to determine who may have printed what document for purposes other than identifying counterfeiters. Your freedom to speak anonymously is in danger. Yet there are no laws to stop the Secret Service -- or for that matter, any other governmental agency or private company -- from using printer codes to secretly trace the origin of non-currency documents. We're unaware of any printer manufacturer that has a privacy policy that would protect you, and no law regulates what people can do with the information once it's turned over. And that doesn't even reach the issue of how such a privacy-invasive tool could be developed and implemented in printers without the public becoming aware of it in the first place.

What the Promise does is grab the entire broadcast TV multiplex -- all the channels being broadcast in the UK -- slices them up according to the free, over-the-air electronic programming guide, and stores an entire month's worth. Why program a TiVo to get certain shows for you when you can record every single show on the air, all at once, and then use recommendations, search, a grid, or any other means you care to name to figure out which of those thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of programming you want to watch.

The promise.tv team have produced a breadboard prototype and a single, product-like box that looks like the kind of thing you might stick under your TV. They've put up a placeholder site to collect email addresses of people who want to find out more when they do a more formal launch. I've just signed up -- I can't wait to see more of this. I'd buy one in a hot second. Link

$ cd /middle_east
$ ls
Afghanistan   Iraq          Libya         Saudi_Arabia  UAE
Algeria       Israel        Morrocco      Sudan         Yemen
Bahrain       Jordan        Oman          Syria
Egypt         Kuwait        Palestine     Tunisia
Iran          Lebanon       Qatar         Turkey

$ cd Afghanistan
$ ls
bin  Taliban    
$ rm Taliban
rm: Taliban is a directory
$ cd Taliban
$ ls
soldiers
$ rm soldiers
$ cd ..
$ rmdir Taliban
rmdir: directory "Taliban": Directory not empty
$ cd Taliban
$ ls -a
.            ..           .insurgents
$ chown -R USA .*
chown: .insurgents: Not owner
$ cd ..
$ su
Password: *******
# mv Taliban /tmp
# exit

Secure Flight is a disaster in every way. The TSA has been operating with complete disregard for the law or Congress. It has lied to pretty much everyone. And it is turning Secure Flight from a simple program to match airline passengers against terrorist watch lists into a complex program that compiles dossiers on passengers in order to give them some kind of score indicating the likelihood that they are a terrorist.

The Improvement District has far-reaching powers. Through the District, the Walt Disney Company could construct almost anything within its borders, including a nuclear power plant (which it never built, opting instead for a more traditional plant that supplements power from outside the District). The District, as with any municipal corporation, can issue tax-free bonds for internal improvements. This became a point of contention when a 1985 law limited the amount of tax-free bonds in Florida. The eligible bonds were chosen randomly, causing the District to beat out Orange County, which had planned to build low-income housing, in 1989. In addition to the power of eminent domain outside the District, the one other power that the District was given that it would not have had if it were simply the two Cities was the power to ignore any laws, including state laws, about zoning and land use. When the state later established the Development of Regional Impact study process, the Walt Disney Company, through the District, was able to avoid the paperwork and streamline the process to build theme parks and other attractions. On the other hand, county taxes, including property and sales taxes, still apply within the District.

The planned residential areas never came (though part of the plans for EPCOT did come through), due in part to the fear of losing control of the District, causing some to cry foul. Most notably, Richard Fogelsong argues in his book, Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando, that the Walt Disney Company has abused its powers by remaining in complete control of the District. On a related note, the Disney-controlled town of Celebration, Florida, which was built with many of Walt Disney's original ideas, which have evolved into a form of New Urbanism, was deannexed from the City of Bay Lake and the District to keep its residents from having power over the Walt Disney Company. Celebration lies on unincorporated land within Osceola County, with a thin strip of still-incorporated land separating it from the rest of the county. This strip of land contains canals and other land used by the District. [edit]

Beautifully preserved silent advertising film from Max Fleischer. The film starts off with a man trying to talk into a phone while trying to smoke a cigar. After failing to hear clearly (clearly failing to grasp how to use a phone), the man falls asleep.

His dream is done in the classic 1920's Fleischer style, using word balloons when characters needs to speak. The film relies on simple black and white lines, much like his later sound film "Finding His Voice".

A anthropomorphic phone is rushed into the hospital. When the doctor examines him, the phone complains of fatigue and the doctor examines the phone's diary. The diary covers all the don't of the day; don't get the cord wet, don't tangle the cord, look up correct number when speaking with the operator, etc. It should be noted that the film does contain a stereotypical portrayal of a African American zookeeper, complete with stereotypical speech.

After the rules are covered, the man wakes up, remembers the rules and is able to hear what's going on. The print for this film is in excellent condition and a fine example of Fleischer's style of the period.

Telus is playing very dirty -- they're blocking access to the union's website so that their workers and the general public are cut off from legitimate debate about this action. This is inexcusable: imagine if this phone company chose to block all calls into union headquarters. From an email forwarded by Damien Fox:

Telus Communications Inc, Canada's second largest telephone company, whose 13,500 unionized employees setup picket lines only sixteen hours before Telus implemented their non-negotiated contract offer Friday is now playing media censor.

In an attempt to convince employees to cross picket lines and win public support during what may be a long labour dispute, Telus has blocked access to several pro-union websites from any Telus customer internet connections. This comes only one day after the Canadian Industrial Regulations Board (CIRB) found Telus guilty of bargaining in bad faith for the third time during the negotiation process that has left the Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU) without a contract for nearly five years.

TWU members who rely on these websites and internet discussion forums for communications are now looking for alternative methods for retrieving information related to what is happening on picket lines across Alberta and BC. Union members who are able to get to the website are angered but not surprised by Telus' latest move.

"What else should we expect from a company who has tried to implement a contract deemed a violation of Canadian Labour Code? Telus' disrespect for customers, employees, and Canadian labour law has all unions in Canada on the edge of their seat. If Telus successfully imposes their non-negotiated contracts, it sets precedence for all unionized companies across Canada when they sit down to bargain." one post reads. The CIRB has been reluctant to impose any penalties for Telus' violations of labour code as they are unsure what the direct impact has been on the bargaining process, and if the two parties would be any further along if Telus had followed labour law. Telus has been found guilty of several counts of bargaining in bad faith and interfering with the operations of a trade union by the CIRB.

Known pro-union websites currently blocked to Telus customers are www.voices-for-change.com and www.telusscabs.ca . Visitors posting on the website are asking fellow union members, Telus customers, and the public to file a complaint with the CRTC and their MP for Telus violating their personal right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

For further union information and media inquiries, please contact Bruce Bell, TWU President at 604-341-2925 or Sid Shniad at the TWU Burnaby Office at 604-437-8601. Visit the TWU web site: www.twu-canada.ca

For furher Telus information and media inquiries, please contact Nick Culo, National Communications, Telus Corporation at 780-493-7236, nick.culo@telus.com or visit www.Telus.com

Update: Abram sez, "This is the website through which you can make complaints to the CRTC about the business practices of Telus."

I was prepared for a letdown as soon as I saw ROCKETO's cover because there's no way the interior art could live up to such a masterful drawing, right? Well, what an incredible surprise to open it up and find an entire comic that looks like this. Every page of ROCKETO is a jaw-drop gorgeous work of cartoon art, with tight drawing, color and design throughout. The expressive use of color and rhythmical black inks give the book a distinctive feel that defies comparison to any other current American comic; you have to look at European comics to find anything that remotely resembles ROCKETO's stylish cartoon sensibility.

Now the zine Crap Hound is back, in a series of reprints from ReadingFrenzy/Show & Tell Press. Yesterday I scored a copy of issue 5 from a dealer at Opentech and was completely delighted to once again hold a copy of this magnificent zine. According to the interior,, Show and Tell will be shortly reprinting issues 2 and 3 (Sex and Kitchen Gadgets), issue 4 (Clowns, Devils and Bait), and issue 6 (Death, Telephones and Scissors), along with an all-new issue number 7 (Church and State).

Crap Hound is mesmerizing -- browsing the pages is a near-mystical experience. At $8 an issue, it's a steal, too. Link (note to Reading Frenzy/Sean: my offer to set up mag.craphound.com or zine.craphound.com and point them wherever you'd like still stands)

The School of Computing for the Creative Industries is a new departure for Ravensbourne College. It retains Ravensbourne's commitment to vocationalism and practical skills, as well as Ravensbourne's spirit of innovation and enterprise. Though the School takes its inspiration and values from the core of the Ravensbourne tradition, it also embraces new opportunities and a new vision. The School's programmes are rigorous with a strong technical focus. One of the undergraduate programmes is delivered entirely via e-learning. The other programmes make strategic use of e-learning, digital communications, and Web 2.0 technologies as a living demonstration of, and a process of practical research in, the subject matter of the School.

The learner-practitioner is the heart and life-blood of the School. We recognise that the creative professional of the future - the new creative - has a distinctive skill-set and an easy relationship with technology. The new creative is a connected citizen, whose passions and campaigns, ideas and innovations appear first on their blog. The new creative uses the internet as an inspirational resource, drawing on that vast, interconnected meme-pool, but returning far more to it than s/he ever withdraws. Fundamentally, the new creative understands that s/he is defined by the impact and credibility of their online presence.

As the creative industries bifurcate into the twin realities of intellectual property businesses, and crafts-for-hire, the new creative has the skill, and panache, to exploit the opportunities of the new creative landscape.

"'There was no need to stick the wand in that hard,' he said gruffly, clambering to his feet. 'It hurt.'" (p. 64)

"Just as he raised a gloved hand to wipe them, Leanne made to grab hold of the package Katie was holding; Katie tugged it back and the package fell to the ground." (p. 248)

"Very astute, Harry, but the mouth organ was only ever a mouth organ." (p. 278)

Peter's a PhD Marine Biologist, and his scientific background and dark sensibility combine in unexpected ways -- for example, a credible account of the co-evolution of human and computer viruses.

Now Peter's put his first two novels online under a Creative Commons license allowing for unlimited noncommercial redistribution and the creation of derivative works (fan art, music, translations, films, audiobooks, etc). I'd love to get a podcast of these books being read aloud by someone who loves them as much as I do.

Peter's pledged to put Behemoth online shortly, and in the meantime, fans of his work are already converting them to formats well-suited to PDAs. Link