...Making media experiences private often seems to raise concerns about the consequences of isolation.

Usually the fears seem misplaced in retrospect. In the Middle Ages, reading had been a public, group experience; the rise of literacy rates and diffusion of cheap books sparked worries that people would start reading and thinking for themselves -- and deviate from religious teachings. Society survived, and people have found a way of reconnecting over books: book clubs.

More recently, in the 1950s, people lamented that the transistor radio would spell the end of families gathered around the radio; it did, but it didn't stop families from listening to music and talking together. Parents were no longer able to prevent their children from secretly listening to rock 'n' roll, or doo-wop, or even jazz, but that hasn't pulled families apart, either.

Some technologies even move from one extreme to the other. Parents who used to worry that the personal computer would isolate their kids now fret about them spending too much time instant messaging.

At the 5th Annual Texas Bigfoot Conference in Jefferson, Texas, October 15-16, 2005, and the Bates College Cryptozoology Symposium in Lewiston, Maine, October 28-29, 2005, Loren Coleman will be unveiling the details of a $1 million bounty to encourage the public to assist in the safe capture of a Bigfoot, Yeti, Lake Monster, Sea Serpent, or other cryptozoological specimen.

This is for real. Cryptozoology's creatures can truly come in from the cold.

...By saying "feasibility estimate confirmed", we mean that our mathematical feasibility estimate was confirmed by the experiment and that the myth is at least possible.

This is not '"myth confirmed" in the Mythbusters sense. In the context of the class, the goal was to verify our order-of-magnitude feasibility estimation and accomplish the effect in a very simple manner that might have been possible in Archimedes' day. We were not trying to make a statement that Archimedes did it (which, of course, one could never prove conclusively). However, it is hard for me to say the death ray was impossible.

The author of RSS Announcer went to great lengths to get users' feeds submitted to Boing Boing. We've got a whole ton of sekrit anti-spam stuff built into our submit-a-link form (mostly precipitated by some company that thought that sending us 400 "site suggestions" an hour advertising Polish rosaries was a great idea), and RSS Announcer gets around it.

We're going to add some more specific anti-RSS Announcer code to the form, but really, a better answer would be for RSS Announcer to just stop sending us this stuff. We're never, ever going to link to anything that RSS Announcer sends our way, so this is just a waste of everyone's time, including that of the author of RSS Announcer.

So here's the question: how do we get ahold of the author of RSS Announcer? I've emailed the WHOIS contact for the domain of the site that sells RSS Announcer, and tried calling the phone-number associated with it (it's no good). I tried looking up a current phone number for the domain contact using various white-pages and background check services, all to no avail.

Does anyone out there in interwebland know who wrote RSS Announcer and how to get ahold of her or him? The volume of junk submissions we're getting is making it basically impossible to manage the legit submissions, which means less link action on BB. If you know the person or can get in touch with her/him, email me

Update: Very important to note: there are many, many distributors of this software. I'm looking for the author, which means I'm looking for someone who knows who wrote this or can track it down.

My kid brother DJ Carlito, a club deejay who specializes in rare world eclectica, shares the following roundup of goodies on his blog:

I bought 3 awesome heavy metal vinyl LPs from Kuala Lumpur today. When i looked "Malaysian Heavy Metal" up on the internet to find out more background, I learned that it's making quite a controversy again in Malaysia, as it did in the 1990s.

Some news links: Malaysian Authorities Ban Heavy Metal (BBC), Herbal cure for Malaysian metal fans (BBC), and Dissonant Voices.

I found some interesting Asian metal websites, too. Here's the Malay-metal band Mandatory, they do "spiritual metal": Link. Here's some metal from Indonesia (AWESOME!!) Link. A big international list: Link. Some clips of some bands from Malaysia: Link. Also found a great site with Vietnamese death metal and punk: Link.

Idda is the Malay-Metal vixen you see on the left hand side of the image above. Here's her '90s glam metal song
Sembilu Cinta: MP3 Link.

Thanks, Carlito!

This village on the edge of the Gobi desert entered the 21st century much as it had the previous one, with yellow sand blanketing the mountains and poor farmers sharing their mud huts with cows, donkeys and pigs.

No homes had running water. No shops sold clothes, just bundles of fabric to be sewn into shirts and pants. Donkey carts plied the dusty main street, rarely troubled by the rumble of a motor. No one in this forgotten section of northwestern China seemed to realize that the nation's east coast was booming or that dot-coms were changing the world. But then, out of the blue, came an idea - and a multimillionaire - that promised to bring prosperity here.

High-tech entrepreneur Sayling Wen heard about the village and decided that by harnessing the power of computers, he could beam its 30,000 inhabitants into the Information Age economy.

Never mind that the Taiwanese tycoon had never laid eyes on the place. He would turn Yellow Sheep River into China's first "Internet village."

Old allies in world politics, representatives from the UK and US sat just feet away from each other, but all looked straight ahead as Hendon explained the EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium.

The issue of who should control the net had proved an extremely divisive issue, and for 11 days the world's governments traded blows. For the vast majority of people who use the internet, the only real concern is getting on it. But with the internet now essential to countries' basic infrastructure - Brazil relies on it for 90% of its tax collection - the question of who has control has become critical.

And the unwelcome answer for many is that it is the US government. In the early days, an enlightened Department of Commerce (DoC) pushed and funded expansion of the internet. And when it became global, it created a private company, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) to run it.

But the DoC retained overall control, and in June stated what many had always feared: that it would retain indefinite control of the internet's foundation - its "root servers", which act as the basic directory for the whole internet.

As you may have seen, a 7.6-magnitude quake with the epicentre 80km (50 miles) north-east of Islamabad wiped out several villages. At least 500 died in North-West Frontier province in Pakistan. More than 450 died on both sides of Kashmir. The aftershocks have been felt all the way upto Aceh & Sumatra. The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami (SEA-EAT) bloggers have again assembled to blog about this disaster in our blog where the latest news, disaster helplines & relief requests are being posted.

Kathryn Cramer says,

I have set up a Islamabad Earthquake Community Walk site to which I believe (if I checked the right boxes) users can add markers to. I put in all the significant quakes that happened in the past 24 hours plus a marker for Islamabad with Flickr photos of the collapsed 19-storey building.

My writeup on the Islamabad Earthquake Community Walk site: Link

The Islamabad Earthquake Community Walk site: Link.

My first blog entry on the earthquake: Link

See also this news story, from the SEA-EAT blog:

Army seizes Uri town, bars media entry

The Army has seized Uri and barred media from entering the town of Baramullah district in Jammu and Kashmir even as the injured were being evacuated hours after the 7-plus magnitude earthquake flattened it this morning.

Survivors of the giant quake said in this hamlet, 20 km from Uri, that the death toll was "much higher" and the entire town had been flattened. They complained that the relief and rescue efforts had not come speedily and were not enough.

Me, I say they all suck ass. The idea that the entertainment industry should design next-gen technology is hilariously stupid. These are the dumbasses who are calling for mandatory watermark detectors on analog-to-digital converters, after all. They still believe in crazy snake-oil like robust watermarks! They believe that it's practical to control the design of analog-to-digital converters, even though high school science students often build them as class projects!

This is ideological science, Soviet in its approach: like the Soviet apparats who insisted that it was possible to make ideologically correct weeds that would magically transform themselves into wheat; these boneheads insist that it's possible to make computers and networks that are less-good at copying files.

Gates has lain down with dogs and now he's waking up with fleas. Inviting the entertainment industry to design Windows for him was a move of such breathtaking commercial stupidity that it's hard to credit. Where's that monopolist swagger when we need it?

Gates argued that Sony's new high-definition DVD standard, called Blu-ray, needed to be changed so it would work smoothly with personal computers running on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Stringer and two lieutenants defended the technology, insisting Blu-ray would work fine in PCs.

Yet Gates's ire only grew. "There must be something much deeper going on," Stringer said later, according to another person who heard the comment. A Microsoft spokesman acknowledges that Gates and Stringer talked at the conference, but says things did not become "heated."

So imagine the reaction that these awesome, masked French hoodies will evince when they land on Britain's shore. All they lack is a cluster of hidden, high-intensity infra-red LEDs that can overwhelm the charge-coupled device arrays in some digital cameras. Link (Thanks, W1nt3rmut3!)

Lawmakers are listening.

On Copyfight, this note from Terry Frazier, whose email to Senator Saxby Chambliss prompted a personal phone-call back from a staffer who vowed to fight the flag:

Today I got a surprise telephone call - I mean a real surprise - from Heather Riley in Senator Saxby Chambliss' office. On Wednesday I sent an e-mail to my Congressman and both Senators regarding the Broadcast Flag issue I saw on Copy Fight...Heather called to tell me that Senator Chambliss received my e-mail, that they are aware of the Broadcast Flag amendment in a reconciliation bill coming up for consideration, and that the Senator will try to have the amendment removed when they take up the bill after recess. According to Heather the Senator agrees with consumers - this bill needs to be debated on its own merit, not slipped in under the radar attached to some unrelated matter.

Thank you Senator Chambliss. I routinely complain about my representatives voting for big business and against consumers. It's nice to be surprised.

Write to your lawmakers today and tell them that elected reps who break their constituents' televisions don't get re-elected. Link

* You cannot afford to be Visible in IR
* From now on your enemy is Thermally Identifiable but you are not
* You are Protected from thermal threat
* You now have the flexibility to Adapt to the IR environment
* A Sustainable advantage for you, that is
* A technologically advanced yet low cost Force Multiplier. Exploit it
* Because camouflage and deception are now taken one step Further. A new Era of camouflage has now begun
* Erase your assets… Let your enemy wonder...

Intermat is widely known for being the only company that exclusively provides thermal signature management. All anti-thermal coatings are state-of-the-art that have been developed after many years of R&D. Applicable at the wide IR spectrum of 400 –20.000nm they perfectly conceal against thermal observation and protect you from heat-seeking weapon systems.

Those little cultural differences can really make an impression. I remember being astonished by how many flavors of potato chips they have in England.

N.G.: Gherkin! The English grow up with pickle-flavored potato chips, so I probably wouldn't think to put them in a story. With "Anansi Boys" it was frustrating. I had the idea for the story first. I had Anansi [a West African trickster god], his son Spider and this other one who eventually got called Fat Charlie. Then I spent about seven years lazily reading every Anansi story I could and finding a book from the 1920s, when someone went out to Jamaica and talked to people. It's out of print, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I was able to get a copy. Reading stories about Anansi and death, this was all part of it. And then I had to go out to the Caribbean. And then I had to go to my friend Nalo Hopkinson and say, "I am a floppy-haired, white English person and I'm going to be writing Caribbean dialogue. I need somebody to read this and make sure that I am not making an absolute idiot of myself." Bless her, Nalo read all of my dialogue and offered suggestions where needed. I didn't actually breathe a sigh of relief until I heard the audiobook with Lenny Henry reading it. Lenny's from Dudley, but his mother came over from Jamaica, and he does all the accents. And they all work.

Boing Boing reader Morelos Barros says,

I am a loyal fan and reader from Mexico City. My country is being hit by hurricane Stan and we are in pretty bad shape.

I am sitting here at work drinking coffee and thinking how lucky I've been so far. Hurracaine Stan has hit Mexico in the worst possible way and if you think the devastation in NOLA was terrible, just look at international news and see how we are in such a bad shape.

Seven states have been declared red alert and disaster zones. As of this writing there are several thousand people without a home and children asking for food.

As usual, government has been quick to hide the real death toll, but bloggers and unofficial info report that it's in the thousands. This is a dark time for a poor country.

Here's a New Scientist article with more detail on areas where mudslides and flooding have occurred.

Guatemala appears to have sustained the worst damage, with nearly 200 confirmed dead throughout the country -- 70 died from a mudslide in a small pueblo called cantón Panabaj, in the Sololá area near beautiful lago Atitlán.

I've driven by that village. The people of this country have witnessed so much death. Whether the cause is political or "weather violence," the gente natural always suffer the hardest blows.

BoingBoing -- and my own family -- has friends throughout this region. Best wishes go out to them, and their surrounding communities.

Image: Mayan women mourn dead after the Panabaj mudslide today. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd).

Update: up to a thousand or more people are now presumed to have died in the Panabaj mudslide -- possibly the entire population of the pueblo. Link

When the Comedy Central program The Daily Show With Jon Stewart canned its original set for a slicker, newsier replacement, much wailing and rending of garments could be heard throughout the land.

But while the old set may be sorely missed on TV, one group of die-hard Daily Show junkies plans to resurrect it for a cross-country tour -- and a new life online. The fans purchased the old set in an eBay auction held earlier this year benefiting 826NYC, a nonprofit youth-literacy center in New York City.

Using the name Mouth of America Network, or Moan TV, the winning bidders now plan to produce an internet project called "The Daily Set Without Jon Stewart," to consist of podcasts, a blog and video webcasts that chronicle the adventures of the old set as it travels cross-country.

"The Daily Set Without Jon Stewart" spokesfan Hal Bringman tells Boing Boing the Old Set seems to have special awesome superpowers. It is a magnet, and trufans are steel. Here's a short excerpt from a long lovenote it received today from Alyson West in Atlanta:

Dearest Daily Show:

If only I had been wise to your ways I would have tuned you out at the start. But it was inevitable. You grew on me. You, with your flirty headlines and seductive reports. I wasn't really expecting to feel this way, but I do.

This is worse than that time in 9th grade when a senior basketball player came by my locker to ask me to the homecoming dance. You're reducing me with your charm. If I still used notebooks, then I would scribble your name all over their pages. If I did not have a car, then I would ask you to walk me home. If I wanted to put myself at risk for mono, then I would kiss you nonstop, Daily Show. That is how much I love you.

Boing Boing reader Jason Bobe says, "The Long Now Foundation has put their seminars online. They have already posted the recent Ray Kurzweil talk and the panel [with George Dyson, Esther Dyson, and Freeman Dyson] last night should be up soon -- it was excellent."

Vlad Spears went, too, and exclaims, "My brain is filled with science! I've posted a write-up on 2Sec of the evening: Link."

Jake Appelbaum also attended the event, and shot photos including the one shown here. L-R: George, Freeman, Esther Dyson; Stewart Brand.

Next up on the Long Now event calendar: a talk by Clay Shirky on Monday, November 14 -- "Making Digital Durable: What Time Does to Categories." Link.

Previously:
In SF, 3 Dysons - Freeman , Esther, George - speak Wed 5 Oct.

* Los Angeles: An exhibit of work by often-mispronounced artist Seonna Hong opens at the new sixspace Saturday night.

* Online: dude, where's my corset? Adventurous gentlemen may want to grab a credit card and prepare to lace up in one of these over the weekend.

*Everywhere on the planet, after sunset: Observe earthshine on the surface of the waxing moon. It baffled Leonardo centuries ago, and no, not Di Caprio. Link

Leland: [Hip] should be a way to invent a hierarchy where people who are on the bottom rung of one social ladder can place themselves at the top of another one. And to consider the other social ladder superior to the one that would put them at the bottom.

While scientists valiantly warn of the pandemic spread of the DRM flu, has anyone considered that innocent-seeming CORY DOCTOROW might be an unsuspecting carrier? After years of close physical contact with the biohazardous hands of MPAA lawyers during the brief Broadcast Flag outbreak of 2004, he now seems to have been in *just* the right spot to see the pestilence jump the species barrier to European Digital TV. And this variant seems a lot nastier: tweaked by Hollywood lawyers to determine at a much finer grain what Europeans get to record off their TVs, where you get to save it, what constitutes a "family", and who exactly in open source will be buggered this time. And while the American Broadcast Flag appears now to be at least temporarily cordoned off in a batch of carefully isolated politicians, this European "CPCM" mutation looks to be spreading through the sprawling, marshy standard bodies endemic to the European continent. Will we live in a locked-down, quarantined TV world? Or are we *insufficiently paranoid*?

Darain Housen has not taken off his hat for the last 20 years. He bathes, he sleeps and does everything possible in it. It is a perfect fit. But unlike other hats, his is not made of cloth but from the very hair on his head...

...Housen said that he was once stopped by a policeman while coming from a dance early one morning who insisted that he removed it. "Him shine di light pon mi an' look. When him see it seh a mi real hair him frighten an' seh mi mus come check him a di station di following morning. When mi go him shake mi han' an' seh mi have talent an' mi fi keep it up.

"I was so lucky - if it had been a few millimetres in the other direction then I would have lost my eye," he said.

He is keeping the weight as a souvenir after doctors gave it back to him.

"It's my lucky weight now. I will carry it around with me," said Mr Williams, of Acrefair.

The ramifications of a transition to this new system state would be profound. The deglaciation of Greenland alone would cause a substantial (up to 6 m) rise in sea level, resulting in flooding along coastal areas where much of the world’s population resides. Shrubs and boreal forest will likely expand northward, further decreasing the albedo. Less certain is the fate of vast stores of carbon previously frozen in the permafrost. Would they be exhaled as carbon dioxide and methane, further accelerating warming?

The change appears to be driven largely by feedback-enhanced global climate warming, and there seem to be few, if any, processes or feedbacks within the Arctic system that are capable of altering the trajectory toward this “super interglacial” state.

The demon in me wants to say: Party and make merry. No need now to worry about Kyoto, recycling your aluminum cans, or using too much toilet paper, when, soon enough, we'll be debating how many hunter-gathers can survive in the scorching deserts of New England or the tropical forests of the Yukon.

Flight attendants, saying passengers had complained, first asked Heasley when the plane stopped to let off and pick up passengers in Reno to change into other clothes, Heasley says. She told them she didn’t have any other clothes on board, but agreed to partially cover the T-shirt with her husband’s sweater. When the sweater fell down into her lap as she was napping, flight attendants asked her to change out of the T-shirt, turn it inside out or leave the plane, Heasley says.

When attendants told her that Southwest would refund her money for the flight, Heasley says, she and her husband, Ron, decided to leave the plane. But she says Southwest officials have since rejected her request for a refund. Forcing her off the plane, she says, was both ridiculous and a violation of her right to free speech.

Update: Hey, there's video too! (Thanks, Costoa!)

I just spoke with MIT professor David Wallace and grad student Barry Kudrowitz who are both involved in MIT's Product Engineering Processes course, a creative deisgn and engineering class. Last week, the class demonstrated that Archimedes's Death Ray, as previously "busted" on TV's Mythbusters (episode 16), could have been real. Legend has it that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes made a burning glass to burn up the enemy Roman warships. To see if it was possible, the MIT crew built a 10+ foot long model ship out of wood and positioned 129 1-foot square mirrors nearby. The results:

Flash ignition!

In an instant there is a large, open flame. The volatiles liberated from the wood ignite at roughly 1100 F.

Open, sustaining flame occurred less than 10 minutes after the sun was in a clear patch of sky!

When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a telltale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Ninepin down on the donkeys' common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
All the green leaved little weddings' wives
In the coal black bush and let them grieve.

Well, certainly the president can claim executive privilege. But in the this case, I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called.

The goal is to raise a very modest $225,000 by December 31. That's so do-able. CC is a charity, and you'll get a tax-receipt, but you also get to strike a blow for a digital future that expands our rights and freedoms.

The alternative is a future in which every click and every use and every innovation requires permission and payment. A pay-per-use, pay-per-second, ask-first world. I'll do anything to stop that world from coming to pass. My $250 donation is cheap insurance. Link

Author and BoingBoing band manager John Battelle is hosting the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco this week -- sounds like this year's edition is a great one (I think Cory's there, too!). Here's press and blog and Flickr coverage: Link.

But the backwards-compatible Web 1.0 conference, pictured above and below, was the place to be last night for folks who lived through the dot-com hype years and secretly miss them. It was held in the rear corner of a back-alley dive bar -- "Listen for people yelling 'Sell! SELL!' into StarTac flip phones," the invite read. Paradigms were shifted, man. Photos.

President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

...

[Palestinian Foreign Minister] Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Things are getting weird out there, so much so that imaginary obsessions such as exophilia, the "abnormal attraction [to] beings from worlds beyond earth" that is the subject of the underground novel Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish, are starting to sound downright plausible. Can we be far from the future foretold by J.G. Ballard, where car-crash enthusiasts get off on vehicular manslaughter and fans of Space Age snuff thrill to footage of astronauts being roasted alive during re-entry? In the introduction to his 1974 novel Crash, Ballard wondered if the android numbness induced by media bombardment—the "demise of feeling"—would open the door to "all our most real and tender pleasures—in the excitements of pain and mutilation; in sex as the perfect arena...for...our...perversions; in our moral freedom to pursue our own psychopathology as a game."

Where in the World is the Daily Show Set Today will be a daily show produced along the back roads, on the main streets, in the small towns and in between all the wide spots that make up this diverse land.

Jon Stewart look-alikes, in addition to towns and people interested in having the set come to their city, should log on to thedailyset.com and submit an email to us about who they are and why the Daily Set should come to their town.

I want to call your attention to a very good decision issued today by the Delaware Supreme Court in Cahill v Doe, quashing a subpoena to identify a citizen who criticized a public official on a newspaper's blog. The decision contains a very good discussion of the potential chilling effect of such subpoenas, of the important role of the Internet in facilitating citizen communication, and of the need for a standard that balances the First Amendment right to speak anonymously against the interest of one who believes that he has been defamed to vindicate his reputation.

Most important, the decision agrees with most other courts that a plaintiff should not be allowed to identify his critics unless he presents evidence to support his defamation claims. This is the third appellate court in the country to weigh in on the topic, and all of them -- the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Melvin v Doe, New Jersey's Superior Court, Appellate Division in Dendrite v Doe, and now the Delaware Supreme Court -- have required the presentation of evidence before a Doe defendant may be deprived of his right to remain anonymous.

Conde Nast's Style.com reports that he was "inspired by a Japanese band [named] Mad Capture Maggots."

I can hear it now in the alley behind Neiman's in Beverly Hills, while their greatest hits blare from an iPod nano on someone's arm: "My Watanabe can beat up your St. Johns, bitch!"
Link (Thanks, Tolz)

Reader comment: BoingBoing spoilsport Emile says,

I believe he was refering to "The Mad Capsule Markets" when the article mentions "mad capture maggots". They're a Japanese band reminiscent of Mindless Self Indulgence.

Now the "lynx user" has been found guilty of unlawful intrusion, and has changed his story. He says that he wasn't just using nonstandard browser, but that'd he'd also probed the system when his attempt to make a donation had failed and he got a suspicion that he'd been suckered by a phishing scam.

If this is the true story (and the judge didn't dispute it, according to the ZDNet story), then that could very well have been me -- lots of times when I suspect a site is dodgy I'll do things like check the operating system and server version of the remote end by using probing tools and compare the result against a list of known-compromised combinations.

But in court on Wednesday, Cuthbert said he had made a £30 donation to the site, after clicking on a banner advert. When he received no final thank-you or confirmation page he suspected he might have fallen victim to a phishing scam, so he carried out two tests to check the security of the site.

Cuthbert's defence team had argued that he had merely 'knocked on the door' of the site, pointing out that he had the skills to break into it if he wanted.

Section one of the CMA says that it is an offence to make "unauthorised access to computer material". There is no burden on the prosecution to prove that the accused had intended to cause any damage.

Judge Purdy accepted that Cuthbert had not intended to cause any damage, and also pointed out there was almost no case law in this area.

Update: Stephen de Vries sez, "The details of this case are important to understand exactly how absurd the verdict was. What Daniel actually did to 'knock on the door' was to insert a ../../../ character sequence into the web address and a single quote into the credit card field - THROUGH HIS BROWSER. He did not use any attack 'tools' or 'probes' other than Internet Explorer. Furthermore, typing these sequences into a browser does not an attack make - it only proves that a website may be vulnerable. It takes a hell of a lot more effort to actually gain any form of unauthorized access to the site. Daniel did none of this, he only typed the sequences and watched the responses - and don't forget, he actually donated the £30 p towards the fund using his real credit card and personal details. I am a security consultant and not the only one to be outraged by the way this case was handled and by the outcome of the final verdict. The incompetence and ignorance of the Computer Crime Unit can be understood - but that the judge chose to interpret the vague Computer Misuse Act in this way simply beggars belief and sets a worrying precedent in UK law. So to all UK based web administrators, if you encounter ../../../ or single quotes in your web server logs, please forward this information on to the CCU. They can be contacted on: +44 20 7230 1279 or +44 20 7230 1280, http://www.met.police.uk/computercrime/#SO6"

The free trade agreement which Australia signed with the US last year and which came into effect this year stipulates that copyright laws here have to be aligned with those in the US by 2007.

According to the FTA, consumers cannot circumvent "effective technological measures" that control access to a tech device.

All six judges of the High Court held that widely used mod-chips are legal and that playing a game on a consumer's machine does not constitute an illegal copy.

One large, startling work-in-progress was a "buscycle," a bus that is designed to run entirely on the energy produced by pedaling passengers. Coming together on the bed of a 1989 Dodge box van, now sheared of its top, the buscycle was usually surrounded by a small swarm of artists and bike nuts, welding and twisting wrenches. It occupied the main stage in the shop, except when it was being pushed around the empty parking lot on tentative test runs.

A number of smaller projects were also in residence. Dan Grunberg and son Ted, 14, were leaning into a variety of tools around the edges of the shop. Dan was using the MIG welder and plasma cutter to fashion a firebox for a custom BBQ smoker. So far, he's put about three weeks of free time into the pursuit of this "perfect smoker."

This one-day conference brings together public and private defense attorneys, clients, investigators, advocates and academics to discuss the latest developments in peer-to-peer litigation. How do the RIAA and MPAA go about identifying plaintiffs? What are the most effective legal strategies and tactics? Is it better to settle immediately, or fight it out in the courts? How is this impacting the individuals sued? What is the role of ISPs in this quagmire? Should Congress step in and, if so, what legislation is needed? Are there other ways to compensate authors for their works? Panelists will address these topics and more. Audience members will be strongly encouraged to share their experiences as well.

Microsoft and Apple couldn't have asked for a better gift horse (Hollywood) to come their way, seeking a solution that ultimately gives back to it what it has for so long wanted. Both companies had a razor (the DRM playback technology) and all they needed were some blades (the music). Today, with every individual DRM-wrapped piece of content that gets sold, we are securing the futures of the DRM licensors (mostly Apple and Microsoft). That content will forever be useless unless you have something that includes their playback technologies.

The fact that you have 1000 iTunes store-bought songs means that you will be paying Apple to use that music for the rest of your life (directly for devices like iPods or indirectly through licensee's products like Motorola iTunes phones). With Microsoft aggressively licensing its DRM technology to multiple device manufacturers (for both audio and video) and multiple online content merchants, I've already said that its DRM technology is positioned to follow in Windows' footsteps as the next dominant technology monoculture even though Apple's players continue to sell like hot cakes. By continuing to buy DRM-wrapped content, we as consumers are actually unwittingly co-conspiring with Hollywood to give Microsoft and Apple the keys to the kingdom.

You know the drill. Click the link below to contact your congress members. After you've sent a letter, using the talking points below, try giving your members' offices a call and tell them why the broadcast flag is a bad idea. This is especially important for those of you who have a member on the appropriate committee (see the list below). If you don't have a member on either of the committees, your letter will go to the chairmen and ranking members.

Pt 1 - Time Machine

20th Century Fox theme intro
Negativland - Downloading  (Seeland)
MCSleazy / Franzie Boys - Triple Take (Half Inch Recordings 12")
DJ BC - Surebladi (mp3)
Danger Mouse -  Encore (CD)
Wayne Butane - Elderly (Sucks Bigtime)
Big City Orchestra - Bulldog (The Beatlerape)
Jay-Z - Encore (accapella) (Roc A Fella)
The Beatles - Glass Onion (2 versions) (Apple LP)
Avril Plays The Beatles (mp3)
Loo and Placido - Safari Love (mp3)
Jrb - Busta vs Steptoe & Son (mp3)
Loo & Placido -  Kids Will Rock You (mp3)
Braces Tower - Special Child (mp3)
Exactshit - Crazy (CDR)
Cropstar - Crazy Prado (mp3)
Tacteel vs Britney - Overprotected (CD-R)
Will Smith vs Mr Trick - Nod Ya Head (Boot Camp 7")
Osymyso - Intro inspection (Radar 12")
fLeXuS - It Ain't Nothin' (CD-R)
unknown - Spandau Fillet (mp3)
Go Home Productions - Turn Out The Light Slave And Give Me Some Rhythm (mp3)
Go Home Productions - Work It Out With A Foxy Lady (mp3)
Beyonce - Crazy In Love (poj mix) (mp3)
Skkatter - Diddy (mp3)
Wobbly - Yo Yo Yo Yoyo, Hey... (Wild Why)
Frenchbloke & Son - Sound of da S Club (CD-R)
Lemon Jelly - Soft Rock (LJ 7")
dsico - Bille Jean Dancehall Edit (mp3)
People Like Us - Nobody Does (ubuweb mp3)
2 Many Djs - Smells Like Booty (mp3)
fLeXuS - White Love (CD - R)
Evil Twin - The Lady & The Lake (CD-R)
Justin Timberlake - Like I Love U (Ochre remix) (mp3)
Osymyso - Intro Expansion Pt 2 (mp3)
Go Home Productions. - Ray Of Gob (Half Inch Recordings 12")
Madonna - WTF? (mp3)
Player - Angel of Theft (Blood 12")
Osymyso - Wegoddim (mp3)
Flashbulb - Mama Said Knock You Out (mp3)

Update: Here's the official Raiding the 20th Century page, but they've taken the MP3 down.

Update 2: Here's a torrent (Thanks, David!)

This vortex would be produced inside a large cylindrical wall, 200 metres in diameter and 100 metres tall. Warm air at ground level enters via tangential inlets around the base of the wall. Steam is also injected to get the vortex started. Once established, the heat content of the air at ground level is enough to keep the vortex going. As the air rises, it expands and cools, and water vapour condenses, releasing even more heat. This is, in fact, what powers a hurricane, which can be thought of as a heat engine that takes in warm, humid air at its base, releases cold, watery air at the top of the troposphere, about 12 kilometres up, and liberates a vast amount of energy in the process. (Just as water requires heat to make it boil, it releases heat as it condenses back into a liquid.)

Mr Michaud's vortex would reach a similar height to that of a hurricane, but its base would remain stationary.

"Today it finally happened. More than 200 tons of crushed ice were trucked in, and a kicker was built on the Fillmore Street hill. Then, under a perfect blue sky, 20 of the world's best skiers and snowboarders did their thing.

"Thanks to the folks at Icer Air 2005 for all the hard work they did to pull this off!"
Link

The gory evidence of the latest gator-python encounter — the fourth documented in the past three years — was discovered and photographed last week by a helicopter pilot and wildlife researcher.

The snake was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its midsection. (University of Florida wildlife professor Frank) Mazzotti said the alligator may have clawed at the python's stomach as the snake tried to digest it.

In previous incidents, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw.

"There had been some hope that alligators can control Burmese pythons," Mazzotti said. "This indicates to me it's going to be an even draw. Sometimes alligators are going to win and sometimes the python will win."

"What can we learn from the lessons of 1918 to prepare for and mitigate against a future influenza pandemic?" (said Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.)

Drugs and vaccines could be designed to target the mutations found in the research, Taubenberger said.

Taubenberger's team used pieces of virus taken from preserved samples from 1918 victims, as well as from the corpse of a victim dug up from a frozen grave in Alaska in 1998.

They used these pieces to make a replica of the 1918 virus, and brought it back to "life" -- viruses are not truly alive like other microbes -- by combining it with modern influenza virus pieces and growing it in bacteria.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.

The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.

This is a community where the woman you want to meet is the "target," where anyone she's with is an "obstacle" and where men learn magic and ESP tricks to show value and avoid LMR ("last minute resistance").

All this can take you from an AFC (average frustrated chump) to MPUA (master pickup artist). It worked for Strauss, who bedded dozens under the nom-de-guerre Style and became a guru in his own right.

"All this stuff is backward engineered from what works. Nobody sat at a computer and invented these techniques. They watched guys who are successful and broke it down to what works," Strauss says....

One thing Strauss stresses is that the techniques he's describing can only get the conversation started. After about 15 minutes, a pickup artist's real personality will begin shining through the cracks.

"On the surface it might sound like a horrible thing -- men learning tricks to manipulate women. But any guy who doesn't have anything inside -- like confidence and self-awareness, some sort of spirituality or goodness, being in touch with their emotions -- is not going to do well anyway."

While Strauss did spend some time with Ross Jeffries, the man who promotes NLP in his program known as "Speed Seduction," most of his time in "the community" was spent with Mystery and other gurus who teach a different form of seduction entirely. These methods rely on the pick-up artist (PUA) doing something interesting and unexpected as they speak with their "target," but do not involve any form of hypnosis. I just thought this was worth pointing out since Strauss and other PUA's would probably rather be seen as the interesting people they are rather than manipulative hypnotists. By the way, the book is very interesting as a tale of the community and should not be seen as a pick-up guide. There are plenty of those already.

Peter Svensson says: "Under the proposed Indiana law, if [Mary] willingly accepted the Holy Spirit's visitation, that would be a misdemeanor:

As it the draft of the new law reads now, an intended parent 'who knowingly or willingly participates in an artificial reproduction procedure' without court approval, 'commits unauthorized reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor.' The criminal charges will be the same for physicians who commit 'unauthorized practice of artificial reproduction.'

"People lost their virginity to this music, got high for the first time to this music," Densmore said. "I've had people say kids died in Vietnam listening to this music, other people say they know someone who didn't commit suicide because of this music…. On stage, when we played these songs, they felt mysterious and magic. That's not for rent."

"Everyone wanted him to do it," said John Branca, an attorney who worked on the Cadillac proposal. "I told him that, really, people don't frown on this anymore. It's considered a branding exercise for the music. He told me he just couldn't sell a song to a company that was polluting the world.

Reader comment: Stephanie says: "John Densmore wrote an article for The Nation approximately three years ago explaining why he refused to allow The Doors' music to be used in commercials.

If I learned anything from Jim, it's respect for what we created. I have to pass. Thank God, back in 1965 Jim said we should split everything, and everyone has eto power. Of course, every time I pass, they double the offer!"

Evidence uncovered in this analysis suggests that a significant portion of historic recordings is not easily accessible to scholars, students, and the general public for noncommercial purposes. There are many reasons for this, but the primary one appears to be a convergence of two factors. The first is that the physical barriers created by recording technologies change often and have rendered most such recordings accessible only through obsolescent technologies usually found only in special institutions. Second, copyright law allows only rights holders to make these recordings accessible in current technologies, yet the rights holders appear to have few real-world commercial incentives to reissue many of their most significant recordings. The law has severely reduced the possibility of such recordings entering into the public domain, at least until 2067.

While there is no reason to assume that the law intended to create or sustain such an imbalance between the private and public domains, the evidence suggests that it has, in fact, created such an imbalance. This study indicates that there is an active and hardy network of foreign and small domestic companies, associations, and individuals willing to make historic recordings available; indeed, some do this in spite of laws that force them underground or overseas.

When: Monday, October 10th, 6:30PM
Where: Borders Oxford Street, London (Oxford Circus tube)

Map link

It's as if it was produced just a day ago.

Baby Peace, directed by Randal Kleiser:
Link to quicktime, Link to WMV.

(Thanks, Jeff Kleiser, and thanks, Randal Kleiser -- and special thanks to Jeff Koga for video conversion!)

Between this and the NetNewsWire announcement, this is a great day for acquisitions news! From Upcoming's original launch post:

My new site has launched! Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, where anyone can add the music/sports/arts/film/drama events they're going to, find out who's going to the same events, and browse the event listings of other people with similar tastes. After adding events to your list, you can use the generated RSS feeds to list them on your own weblog. By adding people to your friends list, you can track your friend's events as they add them (also available via RSS).

Update: Approx ten million people wrote in to point out that this painting cost half-a-mil and was paid for out of tax dollars. Now you know.

This is a visibly bad idea, and once the publisher heard from its readers and EFF, they came up with a much, much better system for accomplishing the same end: putting a unique number on every page of each book that they can use to forensically track copies discovered online, but that don't undermine user-privacy or rights like the right to loan or re-sell your books.

Well-done to Memletics for finding a compromise that does the right thing:

We're pleased to report that in response to our post explaining how this form of "DRM" threatens people's privacy, the publisher has now changed his policy. He says that he's sorry he ever used this method, and will no longer be printing personal information in Memletics books. Instead, he will print a unique serial number in each book. That way, if a book winds up on a filesharing network, he can track who released it. But he won't be putting his customers at risk of identity theft if they share their books with friends or make fair use copies.

For ebook publishers concerned about infringement of digital works, this should be an industry best practice going forward. It protects privacy and promotes fair use, but also gives publishers a way to track people who distribute infringing copies. The system is hardly foolproof, of course. Somebody could buy the book from its original owner and distribute it. Marking strategies are, in general, a weak form of security. However, the serial number solution is a more sensitive and sensible approach for publishers worried about infringement, and EFF applauds Memletics' decision to go forward with it.

On this blog a (former?) Winchester Mystery House tour guide posts dozens and dozens of photos from inside and outside the house, including a bunch of off-limits stuff I'd never seen before (check out this room full of heads from a now-retired wax-museum!). The comment-boards on the posts are full of cool minutiae about the Mystery House, too. Link (Thanks, Brandon!)

Update: A reader points out that there's loads more Winchester Mystery House pix on Flickr.

Now NewsGator, a company that makes a Windows-based feedreader of the same name, has purchased Brent's company, Ranchero Software and hired Brent to go on developing NNW. This has got to be great news for all concerned -- Brent gets a little dough and more support to go on developing his great tools, Newsgator gets to add a badly needed Mac app to its lineup.

Congrats Brent! Looking forward to lots more NetNewsWire updates -- this is the app that lets me drink straight from the Internet firehose and I couldn't live without it. Link (Thanks, Mike and Daniel!)

Wednesday night in San Francisco, a crowd of very fortunate people will gather to hear three great minds speak in public together -- for the first time ever.

Freeman Dyson, Esther Dyson, and George Dyson (shown above, L-R) will be the guests of The Long Now Foundation, in a talk called "The Difficulty of Looking Far Ahead." The event is sold out, but die-hards, persist: there might just be a last-minute space or two. Starts at 7pm at Fort Mason. If any Boing Boing readers are lucky enough to be present, we hope you'll take notes, blog 'em, and drop us a url. Link.

The latest RU Sirius Show features interviews with Beth Lisick (author of Everybody Into The Pool) and with my Counterculture Through The Ages book (just out in paperback) co-author Dan Joy.

Lisa Rein continues to do her Songs From The Commons show, featuring songs from Creative Commons and talk about the same.

Our most recent show, Blue Herring, features John Sanchez, famous for advising people about investing in Apple stock... advising people about investing in Apple stock... and generally shooting the shit.

This devious little device is designed for one sole purpose…..to drive people insane! And That is Just what this little device did.

The Mind Molester In Action: I decided to first plant it in the Living room right behind the tv so its sound would distinctly interupt anyone’s viewing expierience as well as be masked by the tv sound. The first beep came 5 minutes after I planted it followed by the 3 minute interval of beeps that come once it sets into its sequence. For the first few beeps I got nothing. But then people started asking what that beeping was. Next thing I knew I was watching them rummage through the room looking for it. They dug out the couch and chairs, opened the drawers and everything. Alls I could do was try not to laugh. It was quite amusing. And so for a few hours I left it there and drove everyone nuts. They never could locate the source of the beeping. The 3 minute interval that I at first thought was too long was perfect. Just enough to get their attention and just when they give up the search it’d come back and aggrivate them. I loved it!.

"It's probably not a surprise that only married heterosexuals would qualify, but the other information the bill suggests be collected reads like something from Eugenics manual:

Sec. 12.

(a) Before intended parents may commence assisted reproduction, the intended parents shall obtain an assessment from a licensed child placing agency in the intended parents' state of residence.

(b) The assessment must follow the normal practice for assessments in a domestic infant adoption procedure and must include the following information:

(1) The intended parents' purpose for the assisted reproduction.

(2) The fertility history of the intended parents, including the pregnancy history and response to pregnancy losses of the woman.

(3) An acknowledgment by the intended parents that the child may not be the biological child of at least one (1) of the intended parents depending on the type of artificial reproduction procedure used.

(4) A list of the intended parents' family and friend support system.

(5) A plan for sharing any known genetic information with the child.

(6) Personal information about each intended parent, including the following:

(A) Family of origin.

(B) Values.

(C) Relationships.

(D) Education.

(E) Employment and income.

(F) Hobbies and talents.

(G) Physical description, including the general health of the individual.

(H) Birth verification.

(I) Personality description, including the strengths and weaknesses of each intended parent.

Update: Here's a video clip of the scene, cool! Link

Reader comment: Tom Radcliffe says,

The solar eclipse photos are very cool. The projection of images by leaves in this way is an example of a natural pin-hole camera. The small gaps between the leaves act as "pinholes" in the sense that they are very much smaller than the distance to the ground (and very very much smaller than the distance to the sun!)

Just a little correction: The photograph is not a time-lapse photography. In fact, it probably had a fairly quick shutter speed in order to catch the light cast through the trees without the blur of them moving in the breeze. It's still a neat-o eclipse photo though!

Reader comment: Terry Karney replies:

I just wanted to clarify M. Merrick's comment. Time lapse photography can have high shutter speeds. Time lapse is the use of multiple photographs, seperated in time, of the same object; to show changes in the object. The ones most of us are familiar with are series (often in films) of plants growing, or butterflies emerging.

Wow! Clearly, Spain was the place to be if you wanted to see this solar eclipse in its maximum beauty.

Boing Boing reader Enrique in Madrid shot the photo here and below, and says,

Just to show you it was an amazingly common effect during the eclipse I posted some pics. And just another photographic comment: its true that it is not a time-lapse photo, but anyway the shutter speed could not be very fast... there´s not much light during an eclipse!!. (anyway no problem with the breeze, there wasn´t any at the moment).

These (clamps) help prevent the device slipping on mucus in the intestine as it moves along, but are too small to damage the soft tissues, says Menciassi. The capsule can park at any site of interest by releasing a clamp with two 5-millimetre-long jaws, each with teeth. These grab onto the gut wall tightly enough to resist the muscular pulsations trying to push the device along.

Photographer and train junkie Scott Lothes is traveling in China, seeking out the history of steam trains in that country, and snapping lots of photos. He's been having some technical probs blogging from inside China, because the blog service he uses appears to be blocked with government 'net filters. Troubleshooting blog-format minutiae on the road is extra tough right now because, Scott explains:

It's rather hard to be certain when the screen is in Mandarin (traveling too light and cheap for a laptop, so I rely on 'net cafes -- always a unique social experience). In the meantime, here's a photo for Boing Boing -- it's actually of a steam train in China and not [the one BB's been posting of] a diesel train in West Virginia!

Previously:
Blogging China's elusive steam trains

Reader comment: Nick says,

Some friends and i were channel surfing one day and came across the "China Adventure" episode of 'trains and locomotives' on the RFDTV channel. Basically, all we saw were scenes of steam locomotives rolling across the middle of nowhere in China with no captions and very little commentary; however, we were captured for a good half hour before realizing that we were still watching a train on tv. This is a link to buy the dvd for anyone who wishes they could join Scott Lothes in China. Link

Even as KCRW abandons "Day to Day", KQED-FM in San Francisco and Sacramento has added it to the schedule. It begins today (October 3) at 11 pm PDT.

Regarding KCRW's deletion of Day to Day from its lineup, some BoingBoing readers wrote in to complain that all publicly available e-mail addresses for feedback on the KCRW.com website either bounce back, or send back auto-replies indicating that nobody can respond to your e-mail, but would you please send money for a pledge drive that happened in August. Boing Boing friend and intrepid sleuth Shawn Sites says:

When I called KCRW about the three emails not working, they gave me jennifer.ferro@kcrw.org to send it to and that one didn't get returned.

Considering that Day to Day is produced in LA, I'm surprised KCRW pulled it. I assume they're still planning on producing it there?

Reader comment: Joshua Kidd says,

Chewbacca has been making the rounds lately. Here's a pic of him throwing out the first pitch at fenway park. Link

Hit with sudden force from, say, a hapless victim, the quicksand gel turns to liquid. Then salt causes clay particles to stick to one another instead of the sand grains, with the result that a victim ends up surrounded by densely packed sand.

The force needed to pull out a person immersed in quicksand is about the same needed to lift a car, (University of Amsterdam physicist Daniel) Bonn said. The trick for escaping is to slowly wiggle the feet and legs, allowing water to flow in.

As a resident of Guangzhou, China, and a dog owner, would you please consider helping me to get the word out about the mass/forced culling of pet dogs by the Guangzhou govt. I wrote a post about this barbaric and officially-sanctioned government policy: "Guangzhou pet dogs beaten to death by government teams"

I really like its emphasis on cloning others' projects and then tweaking them to suit your own needs. It really reminds me of the old days of the Web, when you'd see something cool, View Source on the page to get how it was accomplished, paste it into your own page, and tweak it to your heart's content. That's how everyone learned to do everything, and it made for a fast revolution.

As all the cool stuff has migrated to the back-end, the View Source method has become less and less useful. This brings that all back -- I hope.

Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for people to build and run social applications. Social "apps" are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.

Our goal with Ning is to see what happens when you open things up and make it easy to create, share, and discover new social apps. These might include for any city, your own take on Craigslist...for any passion, your own take on Match.com...for any interest, your own take on Zagat...for any event, your own take on Flickr...for any school, your own take on the Facebook...for any topic, your own take on del.icio.us...for any mammal, your own take on Hot or Not or Kitten War.

You choose the app, decide for whom it's most relevant, create the categories, define the features, choose the language - or just clone an app that's already up and running on Ning - and be on your way.

"Wherever I go children call me 'Uncle Ghost' and peep at me through windows," a smiling Haldar said. "Women and children are even scared of going out at night in case they meet me."

His friend Sunil Chakraborty helps him perform on candle-lit stages in Sunderban villages yet to be reached by electricity and where people prefer to confine themselves in their homes after sundown.

He says it takes him only 10 to 15 minutes to do his makeup and transform his emaciated self into a ghost-like creature -- mainly by painting his sunken face, protruding ribs and skeletal limbs with soot.

The US Copyright Office is holding its third set of hearings on anticircumvention exceptions. This is something you -- and everyone you know -- can participate in, submitting written petitions for exemptions for personal backup; for fair use remixing, criticism, and education; for providing assistive information to disabled people, etc.

EFF Pioneer Award Winner Seth Finkelstein has written a citizen's guide to petitioning the Copyright Office on this subject, which you can read here.

There's a common view of technical people, that participation in government falls somewhere between functionally useless and morally perverse. It's easy to deride the clueless congresscreatures, and take comfort in an idea of building an uncensorable realm located in some other dimension. And it's not encouraging to be one letter in a pile of mail to a Senator, or a few dollars versus the economic clout of copyright industries. But not all aspects of influencing government are so one-sided and unbalanced.

To begin with, making a submission in this DMCA rulemaking process is comparatively easy. Whatever gains are made, are won at a trivially small cost. This is a matter of drafting a letter, with some thought and detail. It's not a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign. It's not a lawsuit which drains someone's life. It's not anyone going to jail. Rather, it's essentially drafting a letter, the same commitment as happens every single day on so many mailing-lists and weblogs.

But unlike letters to congressional offices, these public comments are truly read by the people who make the policy. That is in fact one of the most astonishing aspects visible in the text of the earlier rulemaking results. The policy-maker may not have agreed with the arguments, may in fact have dismissed them; but there's enough referencing and mention of the reasons for the results so as to make it clear that the viewpoints of the public were heard. And this consideration doesn't even require a large bribe, I mean, campaign contribution. Not all parts of the government are equally inaccessible. It turns out these policy-making determinations are surprisingly amenable to informed citizens making a difference.

Participants in the study listened to an argument given by an artificial agent that either mimicked the listeners' head movements at a four second delay or repeated the movements of another participant. Those listeners who were mimicked viewed their agents as more persuasive and likable than those who listened to agents that did not mimic them.

"In addition, participants interacting with mimicking agents on average did not turn their heads such that the agents was outside of their view," researchers Jeremy N. Bailenson and Nick Yee state. At times, those not being mimicked did turn their heads away. The researchers also found that although participants knew they were being spoken to be a nonhuman agent, most did not notice the mimicry.

FEMA Troubles with new correspondent Jason Jones
Rita's Digest
I'm so indicted starring Tom DeLay
Oil Nothing on Bush's call for conservers to conserve
March of the Peaceniks to stop the war in Iraq and everything else bad
Interview with disaster expert Irwin Redlener
Interview with George Clooney on his new movie about the media: Good Night and Good Luck
Interview with Chuck Schumer on John Roberts
Michael Brown Lies to Congress w/Rob Cordry
Unscrupulous entrepreneur screws Seattle homeless

She was told to wash them down with Coca-Cola. Three men stood guard and every three hours another man would come to check she was getting on with the task.

"It was frightful to be swallowing these things, it was horrible. I felt I was going to be sick but they gave me some black coffee. I had only taken 20 and they said I had three hours to take the other 80..."

When she had finally managed to ingest all 100 packages she was put on a flight to London with another man whom she was to pretend was her common law husband.

She was told not to eat on the flight although she did anyway, little knowing that eating stimulates gastric juices which can burn through the latex and cause the bags to burst. Fortunately, this did not happen.

Dan Howland, of the Journal of Ride Theory, created a character in the online game version of Disneyland, The Virtual Magic Kingdom, which is a graphic chat environment. The chat app censors words it thinks might be naughty, to "protect" the kids who use it.

Howland's character stood in the middle of the virtual town square, next to the virtual flagpole, and attempted to have his character utter Mr Lincoln's famous, familiar words.

The censor cut them to ribbons. Words in red are words that were blocked:

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts. These are not our reliance against tyranny. Our reliance is in the love of liberty that God has planted in our bosums. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

...Hillis has never had to put out an APB for his inner child.

This becomes clear as soon as one crosses the threshold of Applied Minds, which sprawls over five flat buildings in an industrial area of Glendale, Calif. Behind an ordinary reception area, a door opens to a small room with only a red phone booth that could have been a prop in an Austin Powers movie. Hillis picks up the handset. "The blue moon jumps over the purple sky," he says, a twinkle in his eye acknowledging the corniness of the process. The wall behind him opens up to what geeks hope to see when they go to heaven: a vast room packed with brainiacs at work and exquisitely bizarre gizmos, ranging from a 13-foot skeleton of a robot dinosaur to a gleaming outback vehicle loaded with more communications gear than the trailers outside "Monday Night Football." It's a virtual museum of the future that rambles over several buildings.

At every turn, there's something to make your mouth hang open. Here's an array of data-display screens that looks like Han Solo's cockpit. There's a room populated with architectural mock-ups of "podules," fully wired instant buildings designed for stealthy government agencies (that's a picture of Donald Rumsfeld running a meeting in the full-scale version of the model sitting beneath it). Another area looks like Albert Einstein's chop shop, stuffed with half- disassembled Cadillac Escalade SUVs hooked up to exotic telemetry. Oops! Almost stepped on a six-foot-long robotic snake, slithering on the floor with scary fidelity to a pit viper.

My grandmother in Philadelphia had piles of the latest comic books and all of the classic children’s books. We used to sit on her porch swing and read about “Archie” and “Little Lulu”, “Madeline”, “Pippi Longstocking” and “Nancy Drew”. I loved “MAD” magazine and I even started my own humor magazine with a little printing press and distributed it around the neighborhood.

"We just have to get the idea across to the nation that carbonation is not really bad for you," Astle said. "Carbonation has sold an awful lot of sugar and pop. Why not use it to sell something that's healthy?"...

"When you put the product on your tongue you get a woosh of gas that comes off the product and onto your mouth," said John Brisson, a mechanical engineering professor and co-developer of the carbonated ice cream. "With soda you don't get this woosh kind of thing."

Carbonation could extend to other foods and beverages as well. At Brigham Young, Ogden said the process used to make bubbly yogurt also works well with pudding, gelatin and similarly textured foods.

A company called Fizzy Fruit plans to introduce carbonated, cut fruit to sell at schools and other venues.

These unGoogleables don't post online, blog, publish or build web pages using their own names. They're careful about revealing information to businesses, belong to few organizations that can leak personal data, and never submit online résumés -- all common ways that Google captures your data. They spoke to Wired News only on condition that their names be changed for this story.

Agalia says she visits online poker sites, but always enters false data not tied to her true identity. She limits online purchases and favors websites vetted by Truste and other privacy-monitoring groups. Presented with a sweepstakes offer at Legoland, Agalia said she backed out when she was required to submit personal information.

"I try to protect myself from identity theft," says Agalia, who says a would-be thief tried to use her credit card number a few months ago but got the expiration date wrong. "I shred bills, I don't give out information and I don't talk to telemarketers."

The Sonic Alarm makes the whole 'getting them out of bed' exercise a very simple, and indeed amusing, operation. Looking like an old-fashioned comedy hand grenade, the Sonic Alarm will wake pretty well anything up. Simply pull the pin, yell an emphatic "fire in the hole" and lob the grenade into the sleeper's room. After ten seconds a very annoying and piercingly loud noise (there are three volume settings) will blast out from the alarm. That's not all however, what makes this especially great is that to stop the alarm the sleeper has to find you so you can put the pin back in. It's stupid, and brilliant, and will be the bane of every over-sleeper on the planet.

Under the umbrella of cryptozoology (CZ) this project including a symposium, exhibition, book and film series aims to explore a pursuit where the disciplines of science and art share a mutual focal point, a desperately desired visual encounter. By [Rosamond Purcell] virtue of its collective scientific aims CZ is forced to engage in subjective longing and constructions as a primary tool towards discovery, comprehension and legitimization. It is this subjectivity, this means to an end, that is often at odds with the scientific community. As a practice CZ is based on the search for visual and material evidence where every piece of proof, every proposition is questioned and placed under extreme scrutiny. Nearly all accumulated data is saved, regardless of authenticity, so that when the puzzle is solved the data can be objectively classified or cast aside as meaningless.

CZ is a fascinating zone of inquiry for contemporary artists interested in the fertile margins of the history of science and museums, taxonomy, myth, creativity and discovery. The theme out of time place scale provides an opportunity to challenge the taxonomic limitations of hierarchy, linearity, chronology and/or context that museums and art history manipulate to control presentation and reception. Staking out a position or non-site that blurs the boundaries between time place scale and choosing not to deconstruct predominant museum ideologies this project constructs an alternative mode of address that favors a return to the organized mayhem, wonder, delight, spiritual and intellectual adventurism of pre-enlightenment curio cabinets.

The very definition of CZ implies a quest, a search of something not yet realized; Loren Coleman, the pre-eminent cryptozoologist, suggests that CZ is the interest in animals out of time, place, or scale.

"Our grandfather and other relatives lost their lives under Pol Pot's regime," said 17-year-old manager Hakpry Agnchealy, whose brother owns the business. "This is more than just a restaurant. It is to remind us of those who died."

"We opened two weeks ago, but have only had two Europeans coming here to eat. We don't know how much longer we can go," she said...

Recognizing that many tourists might not be able to stomach such a close brush with the Killing Fields, the "Khmer Rouge Experience Cafe" is also promoting itself to those wishing to shed a few pounds.

Although the new project will not be a direct source of revenue of Yahoo, it could give the company's search feature more visibility. The announcement also establishes a new round in the battle between Yahoo and Google over index size - the number of documents that can be found in a search engine's database.

Yet the new project's approach differs from Google's in several ways. Once a book has been digitized, Yahoo will integrate the content into its index and provide an engine for the group's Web site (opencontentalliance.org). "As soon as it's made available on the O.C.A. Web site, we'll get a feed letting us know, so it can be indexed by us immediately," said David Mandelbrot, vice president of search content at Yahoo.

In a departure from Google's approach, the Open Content Alliance will also make the books accessible to any search engine, including Google's. (Under Google's program, a digitized book would show up only through a Google search.) And by focusing at first on works that are in the public domain - such as thousands of volumes of early American fiction - the group is sidestepping the tricky question of copyright violation.

Torino scale 4: "A close encounter, meriting attention by astronomers. Current calculations give a 1% or greater chance of collision capable of regional devastation. Most likely, new telescopic observations will lead to re-assignment to Level 0. Attention by public and by public officials is merited if the encounter is less than a decade away."

It's likely the odds will increase in our favor over time, but according to Mosnews, Viktor Shor of the Practical Astronomy Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences says "his research predicts that the asteroid’s orbit could change and it may return in seven years [following the first near miss in 2028 or 2029], this time crashing into the Earth’s surface."

According to the model, the impact of a 500-meter asteroid traveling at a speed of 10-20 kilometers per second hitting the ocean would cause a circular wave 200-meters high. An asteroid 10 kilometers in diameter would cause a tsunami 4 kilometers high which would be about 400 meters high as it hit land. The scientists say that a similar disaster took place millions of years ago and resulted in the extinction of 90 percent of all living species.

By way of comparison, the asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908 was only 50 meters across. The blast was equivalent to 800 Hiroshima atom bombs and completely wiped out a half a million acres of forest. The asteroid (or comet) that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was 10-kilometers in diameter. Link

Reader comment: douglips says:

"The information on 2004 MN4 you gave is out of date - there was a subsequent news release dated February 3 which ruled out impact in 2029. However, there is still a possibility of impact in 2036, a little more than 1 in 1000.

"Also, note that this asteroid has been renamed Apophis, which I'm sure will satisfy Stargate SG-1 fans everywhere.

"CURRENT risk profile for Apophis, should be updated by NASA occasionally: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html

"Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_MN4

"More recent news release than the December 2004 one previously cited on Boing Boing: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news149.html"

"You know," he said, after they'd ordered coffee and desert, "it's all about abundance. I want my kids to grow up with abundance, and whatever is going on right now, it's providing abundance in abundance. The self-storage industry is bigger than the recording industry, did you know that? All they do is provide a place to put stuff that we own that we can't find room for -- that's superabundance."

"I have a locker in Milpitas," she said.

"There you go. It's a growth industry." He drank his coffee. On the way back to their cars, he said, "My daughter, Anushka, is 12, and my son, Lee, is 8. I haven't lived with them in four years and I've only seen them twice since. They're good kids, though. It just couldn't work with their mother. She's Russian, and connected -- that's how we met, I was hustling for my import-export business and she had some good connections -- so after the divorce there was no question of my taking the kids with me. But they're good kids."

"Only twice?"

"We videoconference. Who knew that long-distance divorce was the killer app for videoconferencing?"

I don't know when I've ever read a book that was more hard-boiled. It read like a cross between the classic con-man study The Big Con and a Dashiell Hammett novel. The author's account makes him out to be a genuine sociopath, and his descriptions of dealing bottoms and seconds, goading other players into acting badly, sneaking chips and the contents of home-game strongboxes are filled with a gleeful species of braggadocio that makes it clear that this guy is a lot more fun to read about than to meet (likewise, the HOWTOs for surviving the inevitable beatings you'll endure when you get caught are clear enough warning to me that moral considerations aside, cheating at cards is just a bad idea).

There's an hilarious appendix of card-sharp lingo that tells many tales -- I love slang and jargon and word-play.

I've always been a fan of this little sub-genre of narrative accounts of con-men, gamblers and so forth. I don't gamble at all, don't even play the lotto (we call it the stupidity tax in my household) but I find reading about the crazy, hell-for-leather, grifting exploits of amoral con-artists just fascinating.

The book's got many grace-notes but my favorite is that when you remove the dust-jacket, there's a different title printed on the back of the book (nominally so you can read it without arousing suspicion): THE HISTORY OF PLAYING CARDS IN AMERICA BY DB RICHARDS.

Home games are ripe for the picking. There are more George games going on in a bullshit town than you'll ever find at the swankiest casino in Vegas. A lot of people would rather blow their money in their weekly payday game than spend a bundle on tickets and hotels to get to the closest casino. If they stay at home, they have more money to play with and more to lose to you. Why should you split your money with Wayne Newton.

There are pros and there are cons (other than you) in the home game. First, you'll have to play with a lot of idiots. Don't let them frustrate you. Many of them won't know the game. Almost every single one of them will believe that they're a "much better than average" player. They'll try to be hip and act like riverboat gamblers. One guy I played with proudly showed his pocket aces and announced that he had "US Air" instead of "American Airlines" (A-A). They'll make you sick because they're so stupid and so easily taken. Don't get cynical. They're like children. Be patient and support them. Children aren't smart; they're little robots that do and feel what you teach them to do and feel. Unlike children, home game players won't give you their love, they'll only give you their money. And that's better any day.

The DVB CPCM specification is being developed in closed-door meetings. Joining DVB costs 10,000 Euros per year, and membership is only open to manufacturers, broadcasters, studios, and academics. Its proceedings and intermediate work products are not widely published or publicized.

Most of the details of CPCM have not been publicly disclosed. The material in this section is drawn from two public presentations, one given by the Motion Picture Association of AmericaÕs (MPAA) Vice-President, Jim Williams, at the DVB World Conference in Dublin in March 2005, the other given by DVB Content Protection Technical Group chairman Chris Hibbert to the MPAA's Copy Protection Technical Working Group in Los Angeles in January 2005.

CPCM is a system to "enable...current & future business models." To accomplish this, CPCM employs three areas of specification:

* Usage State Information (USI). This is a set of commands that can be embedded in a TV programme. These commands instruct a DTV receiver to apply particular restrictions to the programme received by the device. Elements of USI include "Copy Once" and "Copy Never," "Proximity Control" and "View No More." The level of control afforded by USI is particularly extensive and fine-grained compared to the "rights expression" in older use-restriction schemes. This more precise level of control is intentional and regarded as beneficial by its authors.

* Definitions. CPCM defines new terms, "Authorised Domain" and "Local Environment." The definitions of these terms effectively set the boundaries of what a valid family is ("Authorised Domain") and how far apart two devices are allowed to be in order to interact ("Local Environment").

* Compliance rules. This is a set of rules for DTV device manufacturers. They limit the choices manufacturers can make in developing their products, and require them to implement technological measures they might not choose to use otherwise.

Hesoten -- laid-back, secure, happy. Literally means sprawled on one's back with one's belly-button pointing skyward.

Haniwa rukku -- High-school girls, particularly in northeast Japan, have taken to wearing sweat pants under their short uniform skirts to discourage the ubiquitous camera peepers. By so doing, they resemble the garments on haniwa, the clay figures placed around prehistoric grave mounds.

Nonai kanojo -- literally "brain-inside girlfriend." It means the girl of one's fantasies -- a virtual partner who does not actually exist. The opposite would be riaru (real) kanojo.

History shows that the use of cocoa to treat diarrhea dates back to the 16th century by ancient South American and European cultures. Until now, no one knew exactly why the cocoa bean appeared to be a remedy. "Our research successfully proves that this ancient myth is really based on scientific principals," said Dr. Illek. For more than a year, scientists tested cocoa extract and flavonoids in cell cultures that mimic the lining of the intestine. All of the cultures reported lower fluid levels. Consequently, the tests confirmed that cocoa flavonoids are a possible remedy for diarrhea.

I've recently (re?)discovered Lister engines and ST Generators.

For those of you with a strange mechanical penchant, or a wild-eyed post-Apocalyptic wishlist, here is the toy for you! It's a piece of early 20th-century British design, now made in India. Runs a house with 9000 watts on .3 gallons of biodiesel per hour (!!!) and can be serviced with flat rocks and grass clippings (well, almost.) They weigh quite a bit, but who cares? No MOS chips, integrated circuits, explosive fuels, or cheap metal parts that aren't meant to be serviced by the owner. Rumors are for some of these engines lasting >100,000 hours with regular maintenance. Wow. Plus, they're just neat machines to look at - dinosaurs that earn their keep.

There's a video on the rocketboy site that shows one running; they're only a bit louder than a dryer outside if you muffle it appropriately. Price is around $2200 with decent-sized engine and generator head; quite reasonable, when compared to any other 100% duty cycle generator you might care to cost out. Links: utterpower.com, oldstylelisters.com, poweranand.com, f1-rocketboy.com/lister.html.

Maybe when my back porch patio concrete gets put down in the spring, there will be a nice corner with a mini-ISO containing fuel and a Lister genset!

From The Smoking Gun:

While we knew that Tinky Winky was gay, TSG was unaware of the Teletubbies cocaine connection. When federal officials in New York yesterday announced the arrest of 22 members of an international drug cartel, they revealed that cocaine shipments seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were labeled with a sweet portrait of the colorful cartoon quartet.

Chewbacca on drums: Link. The image comes from a weekly photo caption contest on starwars.com that features images gathered from fan events and Lucasfilm archives. (Thanks, Bonnie Burton!)

I'm the program's regular technology contributor, and I'm really bummed about KCRW's decision. Apparently so are KCRW listeners: I got a bunch of email about it over the weekend.

I'm proud to be part of "Day to Day." I have much respect for hosts Alex Chadwick, Madeleine Brand, and Noah Adams; and for each of the reporters, editors, and producers who work so hard to it an unmissable source of news and opinion.

Nobody goes into public radio news to get rich. A strong public service ethic drives this program. Everyone I work with on the program is there because they believe in it, because they want to make a difference, because they want to produce great work, and because they love it. If you feel the same way about the show, I encourage you to let the management at KCRW know. Bring back "Day to Day"!

email link, phone: 310-450-5183, postal: KCRW, attn: Ruth Seymour, General Manager/Program Director, 1900 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, Ca. 90405, USA.

The good news, however, is that "Day to Day" can still be heard on more than a hundred other affiliate stations around the country (including LA's KPCC, where it airs at 9AM weekdays). And for folks out of range of those FM signals, each day's program is streamed online, and available there in permanent archive.

(Thanks, Rochelle!)

Update: Also see this awesome Mario quilt that John May made!

Is your congressjerk on the list below? Give her or him a call, and let it be known that elected lawmakers who break their constituents' televisions don't get re-elected.

Find out if your rep is on the list here.

John Shadegg, R-AZ, (202) 225-3361
Mary Bono, R-CA, (202) 225-5330
George Radanovich, R-CA, (202) 225-4540
John Shimkus, R-IL (202) 225-5271
Bobby Rush, D-IL, (202) 225-4372
Ed Whitfield, R-KY, (202) 225-3115
Albert Wynn, D-MD, (202) 225-8699
Charles Pickering, R-MS, (202) 225-5031
Lee Terry, R-NE, (202) 225-4155
Charles Bass, R-NH, (202) 225-5206
Mike Ferguson, R-NJ, (202) 225-5361
Frank Pallone, D-NJ, (202) 225-4671
Eliot Engel, D-NY, (202) 225-2464
Vito Fossella, R-NY, (202) 225-3371
Edolphus Towns, D-NY, (202) 225-5936
John Sullivan, R-OK, (202) 225-2211
Michael Doyle, D-PA, (202) 225-2135
Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, (202) 225-2811
Bart Gordon, D-TN, (202) 225-4231
Charles Gonzalez, D-TX, (202) 225-3236

Update: Several readers have written in to make this list more complete and accurate -- now it's got phone numbers and URLs for each of the lawmakers who are selling us out to the entertainment cartel. Thanks to Raul, AFD, Jef-E, John, and Nym!

Update 2: Thanks to Danny O'Brien for supplying callto: URLs for people who use SkypeOut or compatible phones.

We're looking for a dynamic music producer, journalist and new-media thinker to lead the team that will turn NPR.org Music into a premier online destination for musical exploration and enjoyment. Help define the strategy and produce the musical and journalistic offerings that will translate the NPR sensibility into an online experience.

Lawyers for inmates there say prison guards abused some of the nearly 8,000 prisoners evacuated from flooded cells.

The allegations are contained in affidavits filed by lawyers who have interviewed thousands of inmates in recent weeks. The complaints include accusations that some guards left prisoners locked in their cells while floodwaters rose to their necks, and that others engaged in regular beatings and other abuse.

The lawyers also estimate that as many as 2,000 people arrested for minor crimes just before the hurricane are still in prison five weeks later. They said that under normal circumstances, such low-level offenders would have seen a judge and been released within days. State and local officials say flooding has destroyed much of the court system and legal records in New Orleans.

On Friday, lawyers for the inmates filed papers requesting that the federal Department of Justice immediately seize control of a temporary holding facility in Jena, La., where more than two dozen inmates have complained of beatings, racial slurs and sexual taunts.

(...) Guards used racial slurs, forced prisoners to get up on tables and "hop like bunnies" and threatened to force them to perform sex acts on guards, the affidavits said. The lawyers said that prisoners showed bruises, cuts and chipped teeth that were consistent with their accounts of beatings.

Related previous post:
Katrina roundup, 09/24/05

[The] Islamic government of the northeastern [Malaysian] state of Kelantan will hold a lullaby contest for wives singing their husbands to sleep. [...]

Nik Aziz said the lullaby contest will strengthen family ties. "This is important. For example, a husband returns home tired and when the wife sings to him, he can sleep soundly," he said. "When he awakes, he is a happy man and this will help build a great relationship between husband and wife."

Lullaby
and goodnight
My new fighting technique is
unstoppable