Update: Edward Burtynsky's photos are also a remarkable celebration of the beauty in giant quarries, dams, scrapheaps, and refineries. (Thanks, Kevin!)

An ODPM spokesman said: "The objective is to persuade owners in these circumstances to pass the responsibility for bringing the property back into housing use to the local authority.

"Of course, we want this to be with their consent, but where that consent is not forthcoming we do not apologise for granting local authorities powers to secure occupation without the need to obtain consent."

Pretty soon, we heard the toot-toot signal that meant disaster. And everyone wondered what had happened." What had happened was that the boat, which actually made its way around the lagoon on a rail, had sunk off the track and into the mud. There were too many people on board.

"It took about 20 to 30 minutes to get it fixed and back on the rail and it came chugging in. As soon as it pulled up to the landing, all the people rushed to the side to get off, and the boat tipped into the water again, so they all had to wade off through the water, and some of them were pretty mad."

His boss came to ask O'Brien how many people he'd put on the boat. "And I said about 250. And he said, 'Well, better keep it at about 200.' Then I remembered I had the clicker in my pocket. I looked and was shocked to see I'd put 508 people on the boat. I never told anyone until now." But he did make sure it never happened again.

Update: Dan sez, "After reading your Boing Boing post on the Hello Kitty-themed airplane I dug into some old photos I took of a Pokémon plane I flew on in Japan. If I remember correctly the Pokémon theme also extended to ticket design, seat covers and a Pokémon goody bag was given out to every kid on the ANA flight.

Update: and here's an animated GIF of Luke firing the kill-shot down the Death Star's chute, which is goatse'ed open by two giant, floating hands. (Thanks, Jason!)

The ultimate goal of any player is left up to them but I decided that having a few unique goals is the best way to encourage play. Since all content creating players are "trolls" how does one distinguish which players are better than the others? This is where the "Meta Troll" comes in, a player transcends trolldom to become a "Meta Troll" when their content creation cease to look like attempts at trolling. You might say I'm not a "troll" but frankly we all are, just get used to the fact. The other goals are to leave the game. This involves creating content in the diary section about how much the game sucks and you want to leave. This must be repeated over several weeks until you decide to either leave for greener pastures (Husi is just astroturf anyway) or stay on.

Whining is not a goal but rather a subgame. It can be played both ways, causing a player to whine or whining yourself. The most common whines are

* I got modbombed by [insert name]
* My story got voted down you bastards
* [insert name] crap flooded my diary/story/conversation
* Why do people zero my comment then reply to it? It's stupid.

While standard whines are ok, repeating them is boring. I believe we need more creative ways to whine.

Several months ago while at a local gas station, I saw that the owners were throwing away one of those R2-D2 Pepsi coolers. It had been badly abused and was split down one end. Right then and there I knew I wanted to have one just like it, but this one was far too beat up. I knew if I wanted it done right I'd have to make my own, but fabricating the legs would be far too difficult, so I asked if I could have the legs from the cooler. Next I looked high and low until I found a white plastic barrel for R2's body and a weber grill for R2's head. The body's pin striping work was long and tedious. I went through 18 rolls of black pinstriping and used pics of the R2-D2 cooler to make it look just right. There were some things I couldn't match, like R2-D2's front vents, where I opted for a metallic blue. The head had come with long horizontal holes for where the grill was mounted. I patched up with sheet metal and JB Weld, then bondo'ed and sanded it down smoothly.

Fon, a new Spanish company, is offering to build a service based on P2P principles for people to be able to access the Internet through other people connection using wireless networking.

The system is based on 2 categories of users;

-- Bill who resell their connection to other members of the service

-- Linus who offer to share for free and in exchange can benefit from roaming on the whole network.

the whole transaction is managed by the company (Fon)

A keen-eared ham operator who heard the message realized that something was awry and resolved to decode it himself. He taped it, played the recording back at half speed, and determined that the message had become garbled through a remastering process. Working with Disney Imagineers, he helped have the message restored.

"TO ALL WHO COME TO DISNEYLAND, WELCOME. HERE AGE RELIVES FOND MEMORIES OF THE PAST, AND HERE YOUTH MAY SAVOR THE CHALLENGE AND PROMISE OF THE FUTURE." in Morse code is: - --- / .- .-.. .-.. / .-- .... --- / -.-. --- -- . / - --- / -.. .. ... -. . -.-- .-.. .- -. -.. --..-- / .-- . .-.. -.-. --- -- . .-.-.- / .... . .-. . / .- --. . / .-. . .-.. .. ...- . ... / ..-. --- -. -.. / -- . -- --- .-. .. . ... / --- ..-. / - .... . / .--. .- ... - --..-- / .- -. -.. / .... . .-. . / -.-- --- ..- - .... / -- .- -.-- / ... .- ...- --- .-. / - .... . / -.-. .... .- .-.. .-.. . -. --. . / .- -. -.. / .--. .-. --- -- .. ... . / --- ..-. / - .... . / ..-. ..- - ..- .-. . .-.-.-

The connections between ordinary objects are fleeting and superficial. Two atoms may collide and separate, never to meet again. Others can stick together by virtue of the chemical bonds they form, until the day that bond is broken.

But there is another type of connection that is far more powerful and romantic. Certain objects can become linked by a mysterious process called entanglement. Particles that become entangled are deeply connected regardless of the distance between them. If they become separated by the width of the Universe, the bond between them remains intact. These particles are so deeply linked that it’s as if they somehow share the same existence.

Physicists do not yet fully understand the nature of entanglement but there is growing evidence that it is a fundamental property of the universe. Unfettered by the restrictions of space, entanglement may be the ghostly bedrock upon which reality is built.

Update: Matt sez, "It's actually not a FireFox variant, it's an extension."

Wake up each morning to a beautiful picture of space provided by NASA. Click on the link below the picture to view a higher resolution photo and an explanation of the picture, written by a professional astronomer.

Ed Felten's got a great editorial on this on Freedom-to-Tinker:

So this issue is not about open source, but about ensuring fairness for the accused. If they're going to be accused based on what some machine says, then they ought to be allowed to challenge the accuracy of the machine. And they can't do that unless they're allowed to know how the machine works.

You might argue that the machine's technical manuals convey enough information. Having read many manuals and examine the innards of many software systems, I'm skeptical of such claims. Often, knowing how the maker says a machine works is a poor substitute for knowing how it actually works. If a machine is flawed, it's likely the maker will either (a) not know about the flaw or (b) be unwilling to admit it exists.

In the three-dimensional world, there are five regular solids -- tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron -- whose faces are composed of triangles, squares or pentagons. In four dimensions, there are six regular solids, which can be built based on the symmetries of the three-dimensional solids. Unfortunately, humans cannot process information in four dimensions directly because we don't see the universe that way. Although mathematicians can work with a fourth dimension abstractly by adding a fourth coordinate to the three that we use to describe a point in space, a fourth spatial dimension is difficult to visualize. For that, models are needed.

Update: Here's a Flash animation of the sculpture (Thanks, Bonthon!)

"The synthesis and testing of nanocars and other molecular machines is providing critical insight in our investigations of bottom-up molecular manufacturing," said one of the two lead researchers, James M. Tour, the Chao Professor of Chemistry, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and professor of computer science. "We'd eventually like to move objects and do work in a controlled fashion on the molecular scale, and these vehicles are great test beds for that. They're helping us learn the ground rules."

The nanocar consists of a chassis and axles made of well-defined organic groups with pivoting suspension and freely rotating axles. The wheels are buckyballs, spheres of pure carbon containing 60 atoms apiece. The entire car measures just 3-4 nanometers across, making it slightly wider than a strand of DNA. A human hair, by comparison, is about 80,000 nanometers in diameter.

Update: Lots more on the Slashdot story

Commissioner of the Year: Dalia Grybauskaite
(we had big problems with Charlie McCreevy, and we are uncomfortable with all others except Dalia Grybauskaite, who seems a safe choice)

MEP of the Year: Michel Rocard
(he was the so-called "rapporteur" of the European Parliament on the software patent directive and did a very good job)

Statesman of the Year: José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
(his government was the only one to vote with a clear No against the software patent proposal of the EU Council, and the other candidates were either in favor of software patents like Juncker, Schröder and Blair, or they didn't help)

In between getting a Selectric in 1976 and a TTY in 1977, we had a brief period in my household where my dad was transitioning from being a programmer to going to teacher's college. He brought home a "cardboard computer" that you assembled by punching out parts, inserting tabs into slots. It assembled to something about three-card-thicknesses deep and about 10" by 6". It had little tokens that represented bits, and a table of operations. You could write a program to calculate, say, 2 + 2, then move the tokens around from one part of the computer to another, simulating the shunting of bits through logic-gates, until you got the total. I was completely enchanted with this thing -- I spent days and days making it add up very small numbers, fascinated by this look into the universe of a Von Neumann machine. Years later I saw Tron and was unimpressed -- sure they had speeder-bikes, but they weren't a patch on my cardboard tokens. I wish I could remember what that thing was called!

Dreamed up by some genius marketeer (and we’d put our last dollar on that being one of those American dreams we hear about) presumably after watching too many ‘50s B-movies, this viscous mixture of latex, wallpaper paste and food colouring (the actual ingredients may have differed slightly, but that’s what we’re guessing) hit the shops at roughly the same time the TISWAS gang were chucking buckets of water and foam flans at each other and basically making a right old mess on telly every week. And whilst no parent would normally leave his or her offspring unsupervised with just any old gunge, the restrained anarchy of Slime (water-based, non-staining on wipe-clean surfaces such as the kitchen lino) was perfectly suited to out-of-the-way play. Once the contents were emptied from the Oscar the Grouch type green “trash can” container, however (Slime came in different colours, some with plastic eyeballs, some with rubber worms), there was precious little play to be had. Sure, it could slowly ooze and bubble (a satisfying trick was to trap air in a glop of the stuff and slowly force it out with a farty sound) but any toy primarily exploited purely for its tactile qualities was always destined to hold only a transitory allure for us. Nothing, however, could match the disappointment of finding an accidentally-left-open pot of the stuff, dried to a husk and rendered useless to either man or beast. Slime was but a fleeting pleasure, and therefore all the better for it.

Tattoo artists report a surge in demand for designs that celebrate New Orleans: fleur-de-lis patterns, "NOLA," after the city's widely known abbreviation, and even a symbol modeled after the weather-map depiction of hurricanes.

Flock includes a built-in RSS reader, which allows a user to read all of their favourite blogs in one place, without the need to separately navigate to each one. Various Web sites and software programs already provide this functionality, but Flock is one of the first to integrate it into a Web browser.

The browser also facilitates blogging by the user with a "Create a blog post" button located in the main navigation bar. The button launches a sophisticated blogging tool which integrates on a drag and drop level with Flickr, a popular online photo management and sharing service which was recently acquired by Yahoo.

Flock integrates with a number of popular blogging services, for example, Wordpress, Six Apart and Blogger, according to Decrem's own blog.

According to Greg Hoglund, co-author of "Exploiting Software, How to Break Code," this hidden program opens every process on a gamer's computer, from email programs to privacy managers, and sniffs email addresses, website URLs open at the time of the scan, and the names of all running programs--whether or not those programs, emails, or websites could conceivably have anything to do with hacking...

Response 1: Warden doesn't collect personal information, so what's the problem?

Well, problem one is that gamers have no choice but to accept Blizzard's word on that. More importantly, if Hoglund is right, Blizzard has a pretty skewed idea of privacy--we can look at your personal info, but if we don't collect it there's no invasion? Hardly. We also wonder how Blizzard's executives would feel if we searched their homes, wallets, and bank accounts and read their letters and emails but didn't write down anything we found.

This year, Disney positioned itself for the first time as a fashion player, hosting previews of its "Alice In Wonderland" inspired lines of clothing, home decor and accessories at two star-studded events during Fashion Week in Los Angeles...

Disney has licensed Alice and other Wonderland characters from studio art done by Mary Blair and David Hall for lines of fabric, tableware, carpet tiles, decorative pillows and throws, jewelry and clothing.

It has hired Kidada Jones, daughter of music legend Quincy Jones to design a line of jewelry, cashmere throws and pillows, and to dress her celebrity friends in the posh items.

The Alice line will appear in high-end stores such as Fred Segal, Drexel Heritage, Zelen, and specialty retailers starting next spring.

Update: here's a preview of the fashion line. (Thanks, Kimothy!)

I asked my publisher, Simon and Schuster, for my book to be included in Google Print. I was told they did not do that.

Lack of exposure is the primary reason that a book like mine would fail in the marketplace. I spend most of my day trying to get attention for my book. Not for the money, but because I believe that it is well written and funny. Very few authors will become rich writing books. We do it because we have something to say. If we wanted to be rich, we'd have invented a search engine!

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help. After all, it's perfectly free to check out a book from the library. I have no problem with my book being indexed by your site. In fact, I wish it was!

Someone asked me recently, "Meghann, how can you say you don't mind people reading parts of your book for free? What if someone xeroxed your book and was handing it out for free on street corners?"

I replied, "Well, it seems to be working for Jesus."

So Flint has build a film camera. (Indeed, it’s a really, really big camera.) It uses film magazines salvaged from U2 spy planes (Flint used to run one of Lockheed Martin’s laser labs, which gave him access to some interesting technologyy.) It shoots 460mm x 230mm film stock using lenses that are anywhere from 200mm to 500mm in length. Those lengths would usually be telephoto lenses - but with film this big, these lenses act like wide angles, letting Flint photograph landscapes from 10-20km away. No commercial lenses are sufficient for this work - he and his team grind their own lenses, made of six different types of glass, and custom fit them to 30 kilogram cameras. The sheer geekery required to build these cameras is astounding - and the geekery to take a shot (laser rangefinders, adjustment screws that are tuneable to a thousandth of a centimeter…) is profound as well. And then scanning and digitizing the picture involves hours, terabytes of storage, and lots and lots of touchups in Photoshop.

On the other hand, I believe that consumers should have broad leeway to use legally purchased music and video for personal, noncommercial purposes in any way they want -- as long as they don't engage in mass distribution. They should be able to copy it to as many personal digital devices as they own, convert it to any format those devices require, and play it in whatever locations, at whatever times, they choose.

The beauty of digital media is the flexibility, and that flexibility shouldn't be destroyed for honest consumers just because the companies that sell them have a theft problem caused by a minority of people.

This woman is an embarrassment to the nation of Finland and to the Finns. She needs to be removed from office and banished to the scrapheap of history in a hurry. Link (Thanks, Herkko and Matias!)

However, recently cereal bar chain Cereality (which has no locations in Florida) threatened Bowls with lawsuits should Bowls tread on Cereality's turf. Cereality has patents pending to give them an exclusive right to six business methods, including "displaying and mixing competitively branded food products" and adding "a third portion of liquid." If these patents are approved by the U.S. Patent Office, Cereality would have a complete monopoly on cereal bar business--just for being the first to put together the legalese necessary to describe mixing breakfast cereal.

dios and rothko are some of the most prolific posters to MetaFilter, and they've grown into big personalities on the site. Simultaneously loved and hated by all, both members have been at the center of many controversial threads. For one reason or another both have been relieved of their posting rights in the past and both have turned over new leaves, but this time you're in charge.

They've both been great sports about this fundraiser idea and consented to taking part. It's for a good cause first and foremost -- every dollar goes to the Creative Commons 2005 Fundraiser so for the next seven days, the campaigns will be open and you can vote with your dollars. First one to $500 will be sitting on the sidelines for a week, and in the end, everything goes to Creative Commons.

International companies are ignoring basic human rights in return for business opportunity, while the Communist party is offering profits in return for continued control of the internet and the ability to intimidate dissidents, Mr Liu writes.

"The collusion of these two kinds of ugliness means that there is no way for western investment to promote freedom of speech in China, and that in fact it greatly increases the ability of the Communist party to blockade and control the internet."

"You are helping the Communist party maintain an evil system of control over freedom of information and speech," he writes.

It is a compendium of human inventiveness, by turns juvenile and petty, but in other ways inspired and deeply satisfying. We meet the junk-mail recipient who sends back unwanted “business reply” envelopes weighted down with sheet metal, so the mailers will have to pay the postage. We commiserate with the woman who was fed up with the colleague who kept helping himself to her lunch cookies, so she replaced them with dog biscuits that looked like biscotti. And we revel in the seemingly endless number of tactics people use to vent their anger at telemarketers, loud cellphone talkers, spammers, and others who impose themselves on us.



A celebration of the endless variety of passive aggressive behavior, Life’s Little Annoyances will provide comfort and inspiration to everyone who has ever gritted his teeth and dreamed of sweet retribution against the slings and arrows of outrageous people.

But Michael Beatty, a spokesman for the Queensland state branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said the toy was 'grossly irresponsible' and sent the wrong message to young children.

'What's next? Burn a cat? Shoot a dog? . . . Children of that age are likely to turn around and try the same thing on their pet bird or even the cat or dog. Then they're going to wonder why the animal fights back."
Link

Have you seen the latest high-resolution photos of the Saturnian moon, Hyperion, sent back by the Cassini spacecraft? (Higher-res versions available here.)

Hyperion resembles a gigantic loofah sponge! The high-resolution photo of Hyperion was taken on September 26, 2005 when the Cassini was 62,000 km (38,500 miles) from Hyperion.

Scientists are now studying these new photos to determine why so many of these craters are filled with a dark material, and why Hyperion has such different surface features than the other 49 known moons of Saturn.

Hyperion is one Saturn's smaller moons. It is also irregularly shaped, with dimensions of 360 km (224 miles) x 280 km (174 miles) x 225 km (140 miles). It's rotational period varies from one orbit to the next, and tumbles in an irregular, chaotic motion.

"He said if he was going to go down, he was going to go down in Larry Bird's jersey," Oklahoma County District Judge Ray Elliott said Wednesday. "We accommodated his request and he was just as happy as he could be.

"I've never seen anything like this in 26 years in the courthouse. But, I know the DA is happy about it."

OK, so, that was already interesting enough, but then -- Rolling Stone writer and The Game (book on the science of picking up chicks) author Neil Strauss showed up with his ladyfriend, Lisa Leveridge, who is the guitarist for Courtney Love's band. During a talent show at the filkfest, the duo performed a cover of the Hole song "Doll Parts" reimagined as... wait for it... "Jabba Parts," about the Star Wars character Lisa calls her "favorite guy in sci-fi." How did the fillk folk react? Listen to the NPR segment and hear all.

Link to "Filk Music: Odd Voices for a Digital Generation". Airs nationwide at 9am and 2pm depending on station. Archived story audio, downloadable Filk songs, and photos shot by Steve Diet Goedde will be online after 12pm PT.

See also this related Wired News story: Link.

Bonus: I have about 3 dozen music CDs that the kind filk musicians and promoters provided for the purpose of this radio story. I'd love to give them to someone who digs what they hear in the NPR story, to seed a future filk music collection... email me if you're into it. First response gets the goods. We have a winner, thanks!

And if this stuff floats your boat, other big filkfests are scheduled around the country in coming months, including one at a Los Angeles scifi con in just a few weeks: Link.

Reader comment: Jeff Hirsch says: "Sure, the horn truck is cool, but you can't talk about horn/siren laden cars without discussing Hyler Bracey's 'The Big Horn.' An amazing art car covered in historical bells and whistles. http://www.big-horn.com/ has pictures, details, and a fascinating history of not only the vehicle, but the different bells, pipes, etc that have gone into it.

Be sure to check out http://www.big-horn.com/diagram.html for a good overview of the vehicle."

(Harper) said she didn't want to throw it away because it wasn't hers...

Authorities would not confirm the device's purpose, but they said it looks dangerous.

"You are not an accident. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He wanted you alive and created you for a purpose. Focusing on yourself will never reveal your real purpose. You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Only in God do we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny." - The Rev. Rick Warren for Starbucks

A small but highly efficient killing machine lurks in the mountains of Japan—the Japanese giant hornet. The voracious predator pumps out a dose of venom with an enzyme so strong it can dissolve human tissue. Just a handful of these hornets can kill 30,000 European honeybees within hours. Watch an attack of giant hornets on a beehive, and learn the surprising secret that Japanese honeybees use in their defense.

The major projects include an electric cigar box guitar, a kit to take high speed strobe photos (so you can capture a balloon or light bulb in mid-pop), and how to turn kids' electronic toys into musical instruments. There's also a guide to a bunch of different kinds of kits (electronic, beer making, robots, etc) and a how-to by Mr. Jalopy on converting a vintage hi-fi cabinet into an LP and CD ripper, burner, and player.

David Pescovitz started a new column for the magazine called Proto, which profiles cool makers in corporate labs around the world, and Cory Doctorow weighs in on the Supreme Court's unfortunate Grokster decision.

I'm especially excited about the do-it-yourself section with ways to hack your coffee and espresso makers.
Link

Secretaries ate an average of 7.7 kisses each day when the candies were in clear containers on their desks; 4.6 when in opaque jars on the desk; 5.6 when in clear jars 6 feet away; and 3.1 when in opaque jars 6 feet away.

In interviews afterward, secretaries overestimated how many chocolates they ate when they had to walk a few feet to get some, and underestimated how many they consumed when the treats were in easy reach.

"The less effortful it is to eat, the easier it was to forget how much they ate," the study found.

(Livestock specialist Manny) Encinias used a $3,000 retinal scanner not much bigger than a small video camera to record the IDs at three locations over a six-month period. To make the digital record, the cow is held in what's known as a squeeze chute and the scanner's eye-cup, specially molded for a cow's face, is held to each animal's eye.

The scanner senses when the eye is open, automatically makes an image, and downloads the data to a computer database. In addition to the retinal image, the device records the date, time and a global positioning satellite coordinate of the location.

"It's as simple as taking a picture," Encinias said. "Plus, we can do everything at chute side."

The next documentary I am working on is about Text Adventures, or Interactive Fiction. It is called "Get Lamp". It has a introductory website (GETLAMP.COM) and I've been noodling with it for about 3 years. I got serious about it in June and have been spending significant time on it since September. This is, of course, in addition to my other duties and projects.

Now why, after finishing a massive film project, would I set off on a new one? Well, it's fun, for one thing. It's honestly a great time travelling around, meeting people, and getting down for posterity the thoughts and statements of what I consider to be some important folks. After a decade of wanting to make movies and then not actually doing it, it's great to accomplish what I used to dream of doing when I was a teenager. So there's that.

The Church of Reality is a religion based on believing in everything that is real. What makes it a religion is that what a person believes in is a personal choice. Most people choose to believe in some sort of fictional based religion. A Realist who practices Realism is someone who has dedicated himself to the pursuit of reality the way it really is and is committed to evangelizing reality to move society in a reality based direction. Realism is a doubt based rather than a faith based religion where truth is purified through scrutiny.

Is this the kind of copyright policy we want? Those are tougher questions. Just as artists are an engine for creativity in our culture, so are fans. An artist on their own can make a work of art, but only fans can make it mean something in our society. Fans take art and translate it into culture. They invest in it, obsess over it, share it, and spread it to others. They turn it from an isolated item into a means of communication. (For more on this, see danah's posts here and here where she breaks it down more eloquently).

But where is the recognition of this reality in copyright? Well, before the digital age, it was often in the idea that copyright was a public right and fandom was a private series of acts. Copyright would control public distribution of works and fans would collect them and share them and discuss them in private. More importantly, they would do so without making "copies" of them; instead, they would trade physical goods and have verbal conversations. Some would make costumes or their own art based on the subject matter, but those were generally kept private or only exhibited at limited forums like Comic Cons.

Lunar Magic is a level editor I created for Super Mario World (SNES). It's the first and, as far as I know, the only level editor available for this game. I began looking into making an editor for it shortly after releasing the SoM VWF patch, mostly on a whim to see how hard it would be. It wasn't intended to be a long term project, but things would turn out otherwise...

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced the filing of a lawsuit against Google over its plans to digitally copy and distribute copyrighted works without permission of the copyright owners. The lawsuit was filed only after lengthy discussions broke down between AAP and Google’s top management regarding the copyright infringement implications of the Google Print Library Project.

The suit, which seeks a declaration by the court that Google commits infringement when it scans entire books covered by copyright and a court order preventing it from doing so without permission of the copyright owner, was filed on behalf of five major publisher members of AAP: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group (USA), Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons.

Update: Here's a copy of the complaint: PDF Link (Thanks, Jason M. Schultz)

Previously:

Authors Guild sues Google over print program

Xeni op-ed on Authors Guild lawsuit against Google Print

A Boing Boing reader says,

I snapped this great piece of engrish at a Kentucky flea market. The Emulational High-Powered Nicety is an electric rifle that, according to the manufacturer "...simulates the real gun and reappears the excellent mechanical assembly."

Reader comment: Jake McMahon says,

This empty box has been hanging around my house for while. On the side of the box are the words "Do not shoot at any human animal!" written on the side. 'Spose that puts werewolf hunting out the question, then.

ALONtm is a ceramic compound with a high compressive strength and durability. When polished, it is the premier transparent armor for use in armored vehicles, said. 1st Lt. Joseph La Monica, transparent armor sub-direction lead

"The substance itself is light years ahead of glass," he said, adding that it offers "higher performance and lighter weight."

Traditional transparent armor is thick layers of bonded glass. The new armor combines the transparent ALONtm piece as a strike plate, a middle section of glass and a polymer backing. Each layer is visibly thinner than the traditional layers.

ALONtm is virtually scratch resistant, offers substantial impact resistance, and provides better durability and protection against armor piercing threats, at roughly half the weight and half the thickness of traditional glass transparent armor, said the lieutenant.

Why can he concentrate? you who know the knowledge about concentration will be confuse in many knowledges and actual facts.

But western scientist give you the genius answer for it.

If western scientist sees this picture, they conclude that the best way of concentration is to become homeless.

This is new knowledge. What a fucking useful knowledge is.

It involves freezing the coffin and body to -18C before lowering them into liquid nitrogen at -196C, which leaves them extremely brittle.

A vibrating pad is used to reduce the remains to a powder and a magnetic field then removes all traces of mercury and other metal residues from fillings or hip replacements.

The remains are then put into a biodegradable coffin made from vegetable matter and buried in a shallow grave, where they will be absorbed into the earth within six to 12 months.

Loved ones could plant a tree or shrub on top of the grave, to absorb nutrients from the remains, supporters of the promession system suggest.

The cost of the process is expected to be similar to that for a cremation - around one-third of the price of a grave plot and traditional burial.

I added a small amplifier that I found on some toy speakers to increase the sound volume and quality. Don't worry, I respect others when I play music. It's my school backpack first and foremost.

Everything shown is from a thrift store except for the eyelets/hinges/clasps, which came from a local hardware store. The strap is a modified women's belt, and the boombox had a damaged speaker cover that I replaced with that rabbit.

I was picking up food from a fast food restaurant one day, and an old man told me that he is happy that I'm "taking the music to the streets." That practically brought a tear to my eye.

The blogger also said someone from the store caught him taping the demo and ran out to chide him.

From the comments section of the blog entry: "Those are not rubber bands, they are just cotton strings. What you saw is a very old Chinese technique called 絞臉 (Jiao Lien) and it is still used today."
Link

Intended to be 'enjoyable and dog-friendly for a mobile lifestyle', the interior is dominated by novel ways for owners to pamper their pets and prevent them becoming lethal projectiles in accidents.

Silver print, 12x15 1/2 inches (30.5x39.4 cm.), with Leibovitz's signature, title, date, inscription and notations "A.P. 12," in ink, on recto. 1995

The child calculates number of steps in the move, including addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication of small numbers. The game helps to develop understanding of a complete computer program, formed by logical sequences of commands.

Update: Jim sez, "there is this interesting thread over at Boardgame Geek discussing the quality of the game (low) and being angered by the fact that the game maker applied for a patent for the game mechanics (not just copyright as most other games are protected)."

The stories vary from good to excellent, including a World Fantasy Award winner. Listening to this is like getting a great issue of Asimov's or the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction delivered to your ear-holes. The whole thing is Creative Commons licensed, too.

I liked it so much, I sent the editor -- Stephen Eley, whose introductions to the stories are utterly charming -- my story Craphound for adaptation to audio (look for it soon!). Link, Podcast feed (Thanks, Sal!)

Find pen orientation -- Hold the feather is you would a pen. I've found that the best thing is to follow the curve so that the point curves down instead of up. When it curves up and there's a bead of ink under the nib, if the angle is too low, the bead can touch the paper and spread everywhere. Also, the shape of the quill under the plume may affect how easy it is to hold. So figure out where the top of the pen should be.

It will actually work with the opposite curve, it's just a bit more awkward to get it to work easily, sometimes, though some folks like the way the tube curves through their grip the other way, so it's worth trying.

The Keyboard & Mouse preference pane doesn't even show the trackpad tab after it freezes. (I am using a USB mouse right now, which works just fine).

Sometimes, but not always, after a shut down the computer, the trackpad will work for a few minutes, but it always freezes up again after a couple of minutes.

I've tried resetting the PRAM and the the power management system (but shutting the machine down, taking the battery out, pressing down the power key for five seconds, and rebooting), but this doesn't solve the problem. I've changed the Energy Saver preferences to "Better Performance."

I've checked off the "ignore accidental input" checkbox on the trackpad. I've tried Apple's official recommended trackpad reset method of covering the entire trackpad with my palm for five seconds and lifting my hand off in a smooth motion. This does not reset my trackpad.

I'm at a loss, here. Do you have any ideas? If you do, please email me.

Reader comment: Bill Scannell says:

I don't know whether you've solved your problem or not, but having just solved mine, I thought you might be interested. It turned out to be the Airport card. Simply take out the battery, remove the Airport card and then reinstall the card. My card turned out to be loose. The card sits underneath the trackpad, which is why I think a loose Airport card causes the trackpad to go wonky. As always, YMMV.

For the first time in years, American visitors are being permitted to attend the uber-nationalistic Arirang Festival in North Korea. The "Mass Games" event retells the tale of NoKo history. Boing Boing has a few pals there, and we look forward to their first-hand reports. Blogger Dan Schorr went, and posts an account:

This flight attendant wore a pin with the face of Kim Il-sung, the "Great Leader" of North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea). Dying in 1994 has not prevented him from guiding the nation - he has been declared the nation's "eternal President" and almost everyone we interacted with who was in any any sort of official capacity (and we were hardly ever able to see other people up close) wore such a pin. Those that didn't had a different pin - one showing the face of Kim Il-sung's son Kim Jong-il, the country's "Dear Leader" who currently has the reigns of power and is often referred to as "the General".

(...) The [Arirang festival] performance runs this year for about two months - we were told that 100,000 performers took part in opening night, with a lower number of people after that. It lasted about ninety minutes. "Arirang" was also the theme of the 2002 Mass Games and we were told that performers practiced for a year - this time they took six months to rehearse for the performance.

After this incredibly impressive display, I learned first-hand that the North Koreans didn't want us to freely take photos. When I pointed my camera at the large picture of Kim Il-sung that hung over the stadium, a woman in uniform swatted my camera down, resulting in a blurry shot of the chairs. I noted the stern, disapproving stares from at least a couple of them and I hoped they weren't about to take my camera - fortunately they didn't.

(...) We got back to the hotel around 10pm and were told we were allowed to walk within 100 meters of the front door but no further. I had never experienced such a situation in my life - a very weird feeling to be told that you are locked down at home for the night like a child. But I knew this was part of the deal in traveling to North Korea.

Previously:
North Korea promotes vacations with wacky Flash Movie

"Naturally it will be without sex. Everyone will be happy about it, but I'm not telling you any more."

I saw Copperfield at the MGM in Vegas last fall, and he did the immaculate conception trick. Basically he picks a girl at random from the audience, and proceeds to play out a romantic tale, which includes a very funny way of serenading her. He then shows a sonogram of her tummy which reveals a baby inside. (BB reader Roger Braun adds that the baby in the womb "holds a card that another person from the audience has drawn on a paper and hidden.") I'm not so sure about the touching part since the girl grabbed his ass while being escorted to the stage, and David wryly commented that his name was Copperfield, not Cop-a-feel. I thought that it was quick-witted humor, but a search on Google revealed this page where the exact same scene is described. It would be too much of a coincidence if I saw the show on the same day as the lady who reviewed it (He performs quite regularly at the MGM).

The new study suggests that because grey matter consists of brain cells, while white matter forms the "wiring" or connections between these cells, pathological liars may have more capacity to lie and fewer moral restraints.

"They've got the equipment to lie and they don't have the disinhibition that the rest of us have in telling the big whoppers," Dr Raine said...

While the findings have no practical implications at present, if confirmed they could be useful in clinical diagnoses of whether a person is pretending to be sick.

They could also help in criminal justice settings by helping police determine if a suspect is lying, and in pre-employment screening.

Prior to the start of the promotion, Duel Masters reconsidered based on safety concerns for both the public and for creatures-at-large. Specifically, Duel Masters feared that untrained cryptozoologists would engage in unsafe behaviors in their attempt to capture these legendary creatures and that innocent creatures may be harmed in the process.

Instead, Duel Masters is sponsoring a photo contest that provides a guaranteed first prize of $5,000 for the photo that best perpetuates the mystique surrounding the hunt for the legendary creatures Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster and/or Yeti. A second place prize winner will receive $2,500, and three third place winners will receive $500.

The contest will be launched on October 24, 2005, which is the beginning of Creature Appreciation Week. A full set of contest rules may be viewed beginning Oct. 24, 2005 at the official website for Creature Appreciation Week, which is www.caw2005.com.

Okay, I’ve seen it all in 45 years, so this doesn’t really surprise me. Sure, I’m disappointed in Duel Master’s withdrawal of the bounty offer. But I understand. My phone has been ringing off the hook (since getting back from Texas). I’m hearing from people from around the world, from Scotland to Australia. The media story on this bounty has caused an unprecedented worldwide frenzy in which, apparently, Duel Masters felt a monster hunter could have gotten badly hurt in the race for the million dollar bounty. No one wants that. The company seems to have discovered all kinds of legal considerations too. Duel Masters may have discovered, for example, that the Loch Ness Monsters are protected under British law, specifically The Protection of Animals (Scotland) Act of 1912 and The Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966. And a few American counties have laws with heavy fines and imprisonment for harming Bigfoot, which could have accidentally occurred. Glad to hear there are guaranteed prizes of $9000 for photographs now.

OK, not exactly. But still, ROFL! Link to faux movie poster, here's the real story -- Joi's speaking in LA tomorrow, at USC. Fembots get in for free. (Thanks, Sean Bonner)

On Oct. 25 at 7 p.m., the Free Culture Club is holding a protest in front of the Virgin Records store at 14th Street and Broadway. The purpose of this protest is to educate customers about the use of digital rights management technology that might be be placed on CDs unbeknownst to the customer and to encourage Virgin to use a label that clearly indicates and explains DRM technology on CDs that have DRM technology blocks.

Update: Fred sez, "Thanks for posting about our protest. We're very excited and appreciate the exposure. I'm submitting a link to our wiki page, which we're updating with more information, flyers for people to use, and so on."

The copyright status of "Happy Birthday To You" and the law related to public performances of copyrighted works have recently been brought to my attention. I would therefore like to request permission in advance to sing "Happy Birthday" to my father at Frenchy's Original Cafe in Clearwater, Florida, on October 8, at approximately 1 pm.

My father will be turning 75 on this day and will probably be ordering the Seafood Gumbo and Fried Grouper. The rest of the party will include Charles Star, my brothers Peter and Paul, their spouses Karla and Cindee, and my mother Lynn. Five of us will be singing while my brothers merely mouth the words and smile. We expect there to be approximately 50 disinterested witnesses.

I realize this is short notice but we only recently settled the details. If there is a charge for the privilege of singing in this instance, please let me know. And, if there is, please specify whether or not the cost can be reduced by moving to another location.

Open-access satellite images are revolutionizing responses to disasters. Yet the government of Pakistan has forced aid agencies to remove pictures of earthquake devastation from the Internet.

1.  	15-Mar-1985	SYMBOLICS.COM
2.  	24-Apr-1985	BBN.COM
3.  	24-May-1985	THINK.COM
4.  	11-Jul-1985	MCC.COM
5.  	30-Sep-1985	DEC.COM
6.  	07-Nov-1985	NORTHROP.COM
7.  	09-Jan-1986	XEROX.COM
8.  	17-Jan-1986	SRI.COM
9.  	03-Mar-1986	HP.COM
10.  	05-Mar-1986	BELLCORE.COM
11=  	19-Mar-1986	IBM.COM
11=  	19-Mar-1986	SUN.COM
13=  	25-Mar-1986	INTEL.COM
13=  	25-Mar-1986	TI.COM
15.  	25-Apr-1986	ATT.COM

Digital Rights Ireland is body devoted to promoting, defending, educating and campaigning for Civil, Human and Legal rights in a digital age.

Who the directors are:

Bernie Goldbach (Lecturer)
Antoin O’Lachtnain (Geek)
Damien Mulley (Activist for IrelandOffline)
Colm MacCarthaigh (E-voting activist)
TJ McIntyre, Law Lecturer (Chairman)

The founding members of DRI combine legal, technological and public advocacy expertise.

Anyone that is interested in helping out or reading more about the group should visit the website or sign up to the mailing list here.

What a wonderful ethical question. I feel almost rabbinical pondering it. No, I don't believe you've broken any law. If you'd checked out the MP3 CD from your library you'd be expected to put it onto your iPod, after all. There's a weird sort of ethical fogginess, in that I suspect that part of the idea of libraries is that when you're done with something you return it, and of course once you have your MP3 on your computer and iPod you can keep it forever. But I think this is just one of those places where changes in technology move faster than the rules.

If you're listening to it, and you've got an iPod or suchlike MP3 player, you're almost definitely going to listen to it on your iPod. That's how things are, and it's a good thing (it's why I got Harper Collins to release American Gods and Anansi Boys on MP3 CD, after all).

Probably wisest not to pull it off your iPod and give it to other people, though. Let them at least take it out of the library themselves.

"The Regal Cinemas chain shows some special interest films there, plus popular films nearing the end of their run. The marquee space is severly limited, resulting in sublime concatanations like the one shown in the picture." Link

The perforator is the brainchild of Mike Minton, a 37-year-old electronics engineer, who says the ideal soldier should be 22mm wide.

"I love egg soldiers but the one thing I hate is cutting up the toast, because it is fiddly, messy and time consuming," he said.

"There has always been a danger of cutting your soldiers too fat or too thin. If they are too fat then obviously they can't fit into the opened neck of the egg which is infuriating.

"But if the soldiers are too small then there's the risk of a catastrophic failure after they're dunked into the yolk. The simple act of withdrawing the soldier may cause it to break in half, forcing the person who is eating the egg to resort to a teaspoon."

Then-president Jack Valenti took home $1.4 million, executive vps Simon Barsky and William Murray banked $380,351 and $379,559 respectively, executive vp and general counsel Fritz Attaway received $285,263, senior vps Brad Hunt, Vans Stephenson and Ken Jacobsen got $269,172, $249,602 and $242,215 respectively, and senior vp and cfo Mark Howe was paid $198,975.

For two years after the dot-com crash, Bram Cohen could almost always be found at his small dining-room table, first in San Francisco's Nob Hill and later in Oakland. His long brown hair would flop in front of his eyes, and he'd curl it back over his ears as he stared at the screen of his Dell laptop, writing line after line after line of code. Occasionally Cohen would take breaks--there was a club to visit some nights, a conference on coding to help organize, a trip to Amsterdam--but then he'd return to his wooden chair, his keyboard on his lap, his laptop propped up on some books, his back perfectly straight (thanks to posture classes he was taking), and he'd program some more. First he lived off savings from the handful of jobs he'd worked during the bubble. When that ran out, he lived off credit cards, following a rigid system for applying for and transferring debt to 0% introductory-rate cards. Friends would ask what he was doing. Why wouldn't he just get a job? Cohen shooed them away. He was determined to solve a puzzle that was consuming him.

Since the birth of the Net, programmers had been stumped by how to transfer massive files--movies, TV shows, games, software, whatever--without incurring astronomical bills or risking frequent failure. Cohen knew he could find a solution; all it would take was time, good code, and brute intellect. He had all three. The money would take care of itself. "I didn't have any clear plans when I first started," he says. "I wasn't worried, partially because what I was doing was really cool, and partially because I'm broken and can't feel anxiety."

On Sunday, October 23rd at 2pm, Zombies of all kinds will gather at the Necropolis and wend their way around the streets of Toronto, enjoying the delectation of any brains to which they come in contact.

This is a non-commercial event, and anyone who wants to don the mask of the (n)everliving may participate. All that is needed is a desire to resemble the Alternatively Living, a couple of hours, and the rampant need for Braaaains.

I buried him under the theedlewog bush
And jumped in a pool to rinse blood off my tush.
How smart I was, Sam! How sane was my plan!
So sure I'd be implicated by no man! -
It was then I stopped splashing. I heard a queer sound...
A faint tumpata-tump - but there's no one around!

Then I heard it again. But - who was it? Where?
... From the theedlewog bush? No! It can't be from there!
Well, it's not from the theedle that I hear this thumping
It must be Sam's compacted heart - it's still pumping!
My ears are quite large, and I do hear this sound
and I feel his cold stare through all six feet of ground.

The thump grew and grew like a clockwork in Hell
'til a glum kangaroo could have heard it as well...
and all of the beasts of the jungle, I'm sure,
could hear the percussion I scarce could endure!

If you haven't seen Good Night and Good Luck, you must. It's an impeccable film about about the life and work of legendary CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. More broadly, though, it explores the responsibilities of journalists -- and the nature of courage, a quality not defined so much by the absence of fear as the willingness to act in spite of it.

As the definition of journalism now expands to include "citizen reporters" and tech companies not traditionally thought of as news providers, those issues seem all the more immediate.

A few related links:

* The movie begins and ends with a famous speech delivered by Murrow at the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) in 1958. It's worth reading in entirety, and you can do that here. Snip:

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally.

Murrow worked in the early days of a centralized medium. He argues in this speech that television -- the new technology of that time -- could inform and empower in ways previous media couldn't, but that much of its potential was wasted.

Fifty years later, TV news institutions formed in his day are merging with a decentralized medium -- the internet -- and we have seemingly unlimited bandwidth. It's easier, more efficient, and cheaper than ever to distribute information. We have the same responsibility to use that bandwidth well.

* Here's Kenneth Turan's review in the LA Times, and here's an LAT profile of the actor who portrays Murrow so brilliantly, David Strathairn. I've been chewing on this line from the Strathairn interview since I read it:

He was a real spokesman for the common man. He was a person who lived by an adage I heard the other day: It is your duty to always take care of those who are less powerful than you and always question those who are more powerful.

* One of the more interesting interviews with the film's director, George Clooney, ran this past week on the Charlie Rose Show. Clooney is himself the son of a television news reporter, by the way. Unfortunately, the interview isn't offered on the program website for free, nor are transcripts. Google Video coughs up something here, but I'm not able to playback. If you can find it on BitTorrent or catch a rebroadcast on that other machine made of "wires and lights in a box", by all means watch it.

* I've been sniffing around for links to related online video and audio files -- there's some here here, at archive.org. Old Time Radio has some archived audio clips here. And here are audio clips from his narration of War of The Worlds for television in 1957.

Reader Comment: Daniel Hengeveld says,

participate.net is a social action website created by Participant Productions (note: my employer), the producers of both Good Night and Good Luck and the upcoming North Country. The idea behind the site is to take the films' momentum and use it to propel social action campaigns.

For GN&GL, we have a campaign called "Report it Now" promoting citizen journalism and featuring a thriving discussion with bloggers from organizations like the ACLU and Ourmedia, as well as actors and real-life personalities from the film.

Our campaign for North Country, which deals with sexual harassment in the workplace, features calls to action such as a women-friendly workplace pledge and discussion guides for the film, and has a similar blog.

Last Sunday the BBC program A Point Of View, hosted by Harold Evans (quite a well regarded newspaper editor in the UK for the pre-Murdoch owned Sunday Times, he's living and writing in NYC now) commented on Edward R Murrow and his importance, the archive should still be on the BBC's site for playback. Well worth a listen, though a transcript can be found here. Reader Comment: Mark Pike says,

The Center for American Progress, a think tank in DC, hosted a film screening of Good Night and Good Luck a few weeks ago. Clooney and friends showed up and had a nice panel discussion, fielding questions from the audience. Link

The company's new privacy policy, though little changed in substance from one issued 15 months ago, is easier to read and reflects Google's expansion beyond its core search engine business. It also describes in greater detail what Google is doing to protect against abuses.

But it remains remains silent on how long information is kept. That's an area of growing concern as Google offers more and more services that potentially collect and store a wealth of personal data, making the company's servers a prime target for abuse by overzealous law enforcers and criminals alike.

The most material change is in format. The July 1, 2004, policy is replaced by a set of three statements: a full-length policy twice as long as the one it replaces, a "highlights" version and explanations in question-and-answer format.

More evidence of H5N1's swift westward flight. Snip:

Greece has become the latest country to report a case of bird flu as the virus appears to spread across Europe. Twelve swans have also tested positive for bird flu in a second cluster in Romania. And the European Commission has ordered urgent tests on dead birds found in Croatia. Meanwhile in Asia, the deadly H5N1 strain has been detected in sparrows in Thailand.

When I got home, I put on my new titty and bra and promptly broke into tears. The titty reminded me of raw liver, while the bra resembled the suspension system of my 1995 Volvo.

To cheer myself up, I rummaged through my stash looking for something luxurious to knit up. Then it hit me that I could knit myself a new titty; in fact, I had so much yarn I could knit myself a different titty for every day of the week, month, year!

I finished my first knitted titty an hour before the party and wore it with one of my favorite lacy underwires. When a friend, who had been following the whole titty saga, saw me she remarked, "You really did a great job! Your left breast looks almost as good as the right one -- a bit lumpy but very realistic."

"You know," I replied, "It was my right breast that was removed."

Musician and writer Azmyl Yunor recently presented a paper on the subculture at Cambridge university here: Link to "Black Metal Subculture Among Malaysian Youth: Its Effects and the Role of Media."

That link via Ricecooker blog run by Malaysia's grandpappy of punk, Joe Kidd. An interview with Azmyl is here at the excellent Malaise blog and forum.

Previously:

MP3: Malaysian Metal and government crackdown

Malaysian metal and the Man: a first-hand account

Davecat keeps a picture of his girlfriend in his wallet. She's pretty, with long black hair, an alluring mole under her left eye, and glossy red lipstick. Her sheer tank top shows off her full breasts and the hoop through her left nipple.

Ask Davecat about Sidore -- pronounced She-doh-ray -- and he'll tell you she's everything that turns him on: beautiful, loyal, a great listener. Si-chan, as he affectionately calls her, is half British, half Japanese, which is nice because he's always had a thing for both British and Japanese culture. Even their clothing style and taste in music is simpatico -- they're both Goths.

Like many born in the sun sign Cancer, Sidore is a homebody, but then, she couldn't leave the comfort of the bed she shares with Davecat even if she wanted to because Sidore is a 100-pound solid silicone Real Doll.

# Habitable environments must provide, among other things, chemical building blocks, sources of biochemical energy and conditions that maintain liquid water at least intermittently. Gusev basalts resemble compositionally olivine basalts on Earth that can support life deep beneath the seabed.

# Rocks along the western slopes of Husband Hill have been extensively altered and chemical constituents have been added and/or removed. These indicate higher water/rock values that might have sustained life. Life can survive in subsurface darkness by obtaining energy from redox reactions such as iron oxidation.

# Rocks indicate that at least some deposits in Husband Hill might have sustained habitable environments in the distant past.

Reader comment: Boing Boing reader Jay Vaughan reminds us about the upcoming GamePark device, a dual processor gaming machine which runs on Linux.

Reader comment: Butch Maddul in the Philippines says,

Pocketdish looks so much like the ARCHOS Digital Video Recorder. I've got the archos 100gb and it's not pre-loaded with games though. It comes preloaded with usermanuals in pdf and some schmaltzy sample videos and music. Over-all its got an ok performance, it warmed up a bit while I was viewing the movie CRASH loaded in AVI. format. The videos accepted leave much to be desired, actually. It only plays specific vids, most of which are in the MP4,AVI and WMV formats. no support for Quicktime mov.

Reader comment: Brad Knowles says,

Yes, the PocketDish hardware is re-badged Archos. A little bit of searching on sites like Engadget and Gizmodo will turn up a wealth of articles on the devices, as well as facts like Dish investing $10m in Archos, etc. Feature-wise, compare the PocketDish AV500E to the Archos PMA400, and the PocketDish AV700E (<>) to the Archos AV 700.

Also note that Archos has 100GB version of the AV 700, whereas PocketDish does not (at least, not yet listed on their website).

The principal difference between these devices appears to be that the PocketDish versions have built-in software and hardware to copy content from Dish Network DVRs, whereas the Archos versions appear to be designed to be used as DVRs in their own right.

Personally, I like the PocketDish concept better, where you have a regular DVR at home that would be recording your favourite shows, and then you might periodically sync that with your portable device.

However, I don't know what features of the Archos devices may have been disabled and I'm not seeing any prices listed for the PocketDish devices (unlike the Archos website which does list prices for their hardware), so it's hard to say how this will play out in the future.

While cities around the country are battling over plans to offer free or cheap Internet access, this lonely terrain is served by what is billed as the world's largest hotspot, a wireless cloud that stretches over 700 square miles of landscape so dry and desolate it could have been lifted from a cowboy tune.

Similar wireless projects have been stymied in major metropolitan areas by telephone and cable TV companies, which have poured money into legislative bills aimed at discouraging such competition. In Philadelphia, for instance, plans to blanket the entire city with Wi-Fi fueled a battle in the Pennsylvania legislature with Verizon Communications Inc., leading to a law that limits the ability of every other municipality in the state to do the same.

But here among the thistle, large providers such as local phone company Qwest Communications International Inc. see little profit potential. So wireless entrepreneur Fred Ziari drew no resistance for his proposed wireless network, enabling him to quickly build the $5 million cloud at his own expense. While his service is free to the general public, Ziari is recovering the investment through contracts with more than 30 city and county agencies, as well as big farms such as Hale's, whose onion empire supplies over two-thirds of the red onions used by the Subway sandwich chain. Morrow County, for instance, pays $180,000 a year for Ziari's service.

The one weak thread through all of this (earthquake relief) has been project management or the lack of it, simply due to the enormity of the task at hand. As a community that specializes in automating and improving the processes involved in running businesses and government, it would be a shame if we could not help streamline the relief activities and make them more effective.

P@SHA has therefore offered its assistance to the PM’s Secretariat and Relief Cell. We are putting together a team of experts who will analyze the needs of the relief organizations including the government, the army and the NGOs etc and will link it all up to provide some sort of cohesive approach to the activities thus saving a lot of time and increasing the pace of relief activities.

TIME: WHAT INNOVATION WILL MOST ALTER HOW WE LIVE IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS?

TIM O'REILLY, publisher and technology advocate: Collective intelligence. Think of how Wikipedia works, how Amazon harnesses user annotation on its site, the way photo-sharing sites like Flickr are bleeding out into other applications. I think we're at the first stages of something that will be profoundly different from anything we have seen before, in terms of the ability of connected computers to deliver results. We're entering an era in which software learns from its users and all of the users are connected.

DON'T WE ALSO RUN THE RISK OF HARNESSING OUR COLLECTIVE IDIOCY? EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN ON THE WEB KNOWS THAT THE RATIO OF SIGNAL TO NOISE IS NOT ALWAYS OPTIMAL.

O'REILLY: Right, but remember what Google did. They basically said, let's look at what all the millions of individual users are linking to, and let's use that information to get the good stuff to float to the top. That turned out to be a very powerful idea, the ramifications of which we're exploring in other areas, such as with tagging on Flickr or blogs. People are finding more ways to have the wisdom of crowds filter that signal-to-noise.

MARK DERY, author and cultural critic: I find the fetishization of the wisdom of crowds fascinating. It has a whiff of '90s cyberhype about it. I'm fascinated by the way in which it contrasts with individual subjectivity. A lot of technologies, such as Flickr, blogging, the iPod, seem to turn the psyche inside out, to extrude the private self into the public sphere. You have people walking down the street listening to iPods, seemingly oblivious to the world, singing. More and more, we're alone in public.

"We don’t want people running around with guns trying to kill something to get the money," Coleman said. "It’s not a contest, either. It’s a very specific bounty that depends on the permanent capture of a live specimen, with emphasis on ‘live...'"

Coleman said most sightings are hoaxes, mistakes or misunderstandings. But the $1 million reward is on the level, he said.

"The company that’s behind this really understands the situation," he said. "They understand the interest in the creatures and monsters that are really out there and they are willing to step forward."

"It's not a matter of believing, like faith, when you believe in something you can't see," said Daryl G. Colyer, a Lorena businessman who has investigated hundreds of reported Bigfoot sightings in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

"It's a flesh-and-blood animal that just has not been discovered yet. And I think we're getting closer and closer and closer," Colyer said.

* 1 Assal Horizontology
* 2 BBBQ
* 3 Beginulate
* 4 BiMonSciFiCon
* 5 Bloodening
* 6 Blurst
* 7 Boneis Eruptus
* 8 Boo-urns
* 9 Bort
* 10 Buh
* 11 Car Hole
* 12 Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys
* 13 Chester A. Arthritis
* 14 Chocobots
* 15 Chocotastic
* 16 Chowdah
* 17 Clouseauesque
* 18 CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet
* 19 Craptacular
* 20 Cromulent

This is extremely foolish. The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous.

First, it would be easier to create and release this highly destructive virus from the genetic data than it would be to build and detonate an atomic bomb given only its design, as you don't need rare raw materials like plutonium or enriched uranium. Synthesizing the virus from scratch would be difficult, but far from impossible. An easier approach would be to modify a conventional flu virus with the eight unique and now published genes of the 1918 killer virus.

Second, release of the virus would be far worse than an atomic bomb. Analyses have shown that the detonation of an atomic bomb in an American city could kill as many as one million people. Release of a highly communicable and deadly biological virus could kill tens of millions, with some estimates in the hundreds of millions.

(...) We urgently need international agreements by scientific organizations to limit such publications and an international dialogue on the best approach to preventing recipes for weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands. Part of that discussion should concern the appropriate role of governments, scientists and their scientific societies, and industry.

We also need a new Manhattan Project to develop specific defenses against new biological viral threats, natural or human made. There are promising new technologies, like RNA interference, that could be harnessed. We need to put more stones on the defensive side of the scale.

Nearly exact self-similar fractal forms occur do in nature, but I'd never seen such a beautiful and perfect example until, some time after moving to Switzerland, I came across a chou Romanesco like the one above in a grocery store. This is so visually stunning an object that on first encounter it's hard to imagine you're looking at a garden vegetable rather than an alien artefact created with molecular nanotechnology. But of course, then you realise that vegetables are created with molecular nanotechnology, albeit the product of earthly evolution, not extraterrestrial engineering.

October 22 @ 7pm
The Tank, 208 West 37th Street, New York, NY 10018
212.563.6269
info@thetanknyc.org

The workshop is open for applications for next year, and we've just announced our instructor roster:

Plans have been announced for the 2006 workshop, which will run from June 26 to August 4 and will be taught by Samuel R. Delany, Gardner Dozois, Nancy Kress, Joe and Gay Haldeman and, as the traditional anchor team, Kelly Link and Holly Black. The workshop will be returning to Owen Hall where it was held from 1990-2003.

The application deadline for the 2006 workshop is April 1, 2006. Application information is available online at www.msu.edu/~clarion, by email, or by writing to the Clarion Workshop, 112 Olds Hall, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI 48824-1047.

Given the total failure of DRM to date to enrich creators or prevent unauthorised Internet distribution of works, it is a pity that NAVSHP started with the premise that the world needs more DRM, rather than exploring whether that is indeed the best way to foster the development of the home audiovisual market.

A more reasonable and balanced approach would be to start by asking, "How can we enrich creators and encourage creation?" and "If DRM vendors claim to be able to enrich creators and prevent unauthorised Internet distribution, what evidence can they offer in support of these claims?"

The EU -- and the world -- is experiencing a revolution in creativity thanks to the Internet. An entire generation of remixers, talented amateurs, and Creative Commons enthusiasts have created over fifty million works that do not require DRM to thrive. A useful work product from NAVSHP would be a set of technology standards recommendations for systems that embrace unrestricted copying, in support of these new, Internet-native business-models. These European creators deserve every bit as much attention from the EU as do American film studios and other incumbents.

It is the author's opinion that NAVSHP should begin a fresh inquiry to look at the broader question of how DRM technologies impact the marketplace for home audiovisual technologies. This inquiry should be based on the wide range of available empirical data at hand and focus on the following issues:

* Has DRM technology been successful at preventing the unauthorized Internet distribution of material, or have overly broad use-restrictions provided otherwise law-abiding consumers with incentives to find unrestricted material on peer to peer networks?
* What technological systems can enrich creators?
* What technological systems can encourage the creation of new works and new business models?
* What technological needs do "copy-friendly" creators have, and how could standardisation aid them?

The DocuColor series prints a rectangular grid of 15 by 8 miniscule yellow dots on every color page. The same grid is printed repeatedly over the entire page, but the repetitions of the grid are offset slightly from one another so that each grid is separated from the others. The grid is printed parallel to the edges of the page, and the offset of the grid from the edges of the page seems to vary. These dots encode up to 14 7-bit bytes of tracking information, plus row and column parity for error correction. Typically, about four of these bytes were unused (depending on printer model), giving 10 bytes of useful data. Below, we explain how to extract serial number, date, and time from these dots. Following the explanation, we implement the decoding process in an interactive computer program.

Because of their limited contrast with the background, the forensic dots are not usually visible to the naked eye under white light. They can be made visible by magnification (using a magnifying glass or microscope), or by illuminating the page with blue instead of white light. Pure blue light causes the yellow dots to appear black. It can be helpful to use magnification together with illumination under blue light, although most individuals with good vision will be able to see the dots distinctly using either technique by itself.

This is my interpretation of the Mellotron, a classic instrument invented in the 1960s. It was one of the first sample players, and was used by The Beatles, and countless psychedelic and prog bands. The Mellotron played strips of tape to emulate flutes, strings, choirs, orchestras, etc. The flutes at the beginning of Strawberry Fields are a good example of the Mellotron.

My version, The Melloman, uses Walkmans and cassette tapes to play original Mellotron samples, or whatever cassette tapes you want to put in. Inside the box, there are 14 continuously running Walkmans mounted side by side. The first Walkman is designated for drums, and the next 13 provide sampled loops for 25 notes.

The Charter is intended to be used as a litmus test by governments that are considering new exclusive rights over knowledge goods. These rights are usually granted without any evidence of their promised benefits. As my fellow drafter Jamie Boyle says, "it's as if the FDA made drug approvals by relying on speeches by pharmaceutical companies and looking at tarot cards."

The Adelphi Charter marks the first-ever set of empirical principles for evaluating newe xclusive rights proposals. For the first time, we have a test we can hold our lawmakers accountable to. I'm very proud to have been a part of it:

We call upon governments and the international community to adopt these principles.

1. Laws regulating intellectual property must serve as means of achieving creative, social and economic ends and not as ends in themselves.

2. These laws and regulations must serve, and never overturn, the basic human rights to health, education, employment and cultural life.

3. The public interest requires a balance between the public domain and private rights. It also requires a balance between the free competition that is essential for economic vitality and the monopoly rights granted by intellectual property laws.

4. Intellectual property protection must not be extended to abstract ideas, facts or data.

5. Patents must not be extended over mathematical models, scientific theories, computer code, methods for teaching, business processes, methods of medical diagnosis, therapy or surgery.

6. Copyright and patents must be limited in time and their terms must not extend beyond what is proportionate and necessary.

7. Government must facilitate a wide range of policies to stimulate access and innovation, including non-proprietary models such as open source software licensing and open access to scientific literature.

8. Intellectual property laws must take account of developing countries' social and economic circumstances.

9. In making decisions about intellectual property law, governments should adhere to these rules:

* There must be an automatic presumption against creating new areas of intellectual property protection, extending existing privileges or extending the duration of rights.

* The burden of proof in such cases must lie on the advocates of change.

* Change must be allowed only if a rigorous analysis clearly demonstrates that it will promote people's basic rights and economic well-being.

* Throughout, there should be wide public consultation and a comprehensive, objective and transparent assessment of public benefits and detriments.

"That's cool enough for BoingBoing, I know -- but think about the copyright issue. The strips in this collection ran from 1905-1910 and thus are in the public domain. The artist and heirs had their protection and reward some time ago.

"Now, 100 years later, the public that granted the limited exclusivity of copyright gets to reap in the greater benefit of cultural heritage being shared more widely.

"This is a perfect case, too: the comics collector self-published this $120 book and has no idea if he'll recoup the expense, according to The New York Times.

"The poor fellow stayed awake for nearly 60 hours while the book was printed in Malaysia. He should have brought a pal to spell him--he slept through a signature (not a 'page' as the Times would have it) and obviously thinks it wasn't up to par."

The book was launched at San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum yesterday.
Link

3. Nondescript Posting Titles
Sadly, even though weblogs are native to the Web, authors rarely follow the guidelines for writing for the Web in terms of making content scannable. This applies to a posting's body text, but it's even more important with headlines. Users must be able to grasp the gist of an article by reading its headline. Avoid cute or humorous headlines that make no sense out of context.

Your posting's title is microcontent and you should treat it as a writing project in its own right. On a value-per-word basis, headline writing is the most important writing you do.

Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing your weblog in search engines, newsfeeds (RSS), and other external environments. In those contexts, users often see only the headline and use it to determine whether to click into the full posting. Even if users see a short abstract along with the headline (as with most search engines), user testing shows that people often read only the headline. In fact, people often read only the first three or four words of a headline when scanning a list of possible places to go. Sample bad headlines:

* What Is It That You Want?
* Hey, kids! Comics!
* Victims Abandoned

This. Is. Amazing. I just lost an hour of my life to playing with this and had to close the window or I would have lost another. Bravo! Link (Thanks, Jim!)

In other words, the formation of red pigments in the autumn provides protection, preventing the too-rapid breakdown of chlorophyll which could occur in exposed (read: excess light) areas. As you can clearly see in the leaf in the upper right, the bottom-right corner has the pattern of the leaf above. Where the leaf above shaded this leaf, no red pigments were produced. Where the leaf was exposed, bright red anthocyanins were formed. To take this to a broader perspective, vine maple trees in shaded forests and under low light conditions have little need to produce red pigments, as the breakdown of chlorophyll can occur at a modest pace. However, vine maples in exposed sites turn flame orange and red, so that the pigments produced will slow the rate of chlorophyll breakdown. The leaves in this photograph are from trees that are partially exposed, hence the attractive blend of colours.scp

"The level of clarity was achieved using the Dunn’s freshly installed advanced adaptive optics image correction system and a new high-resolution digital camera. Usually Earth’s writhing atmosphere causes too much distortion for ground-based telescopes to capture so much detail, but the Dunn compensates for this with a spiffy deformable mirror that changes its shape 130 times per second to maintain optimal focus. It also uses a system where it takes a large number of images in quick succession, almost 30 per second for several seconds, then uses sophisticated software to combine all of the best parts from all of the images into one high-clarity finished product."
Link

Before my Apple II, I had a TI 99/4a and then an Atari 400 but though the specs were impressive, they didn't inspire like the open architecture of the Apple II. The Atari had sprite graphics and four joystick ports but BASIC came on a cartridge. And the TI was a 16-bit machine, but it was screwed shut and if you wanted an interface bus, you had to buy an external box. Apple did it all first and Atari still didn't get it. TI was even worse.

Woz got it. Thirty seconds after unwrapping an Apple II, you were opening the lid and connecting ribbon cables. It was respect.

...

The Apple II became a platform for invention. A modem in every slot to create the first online chat? Music keyboard controllers years before MIDI? Digitizing audio through the cassette input jacks? Controlling teletypes through the joystick ports? Big Trak and Armatrons connected as $30 robots? The first time I heard Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' About Love" was through a tiny Apple II speaker. All 15 scratchy seconds of it. Where'd I get it? I downloaded it from a bulletin board.

The employee in question calls me a Communist and a liar, makes reference to nonexistent copyright laws, and fails completely to address any of the substance in the post. If I were a Norwegian looking to show his MP why Microsoft shouldn't be given control over the national video archives, this post would be exhibit number one:

The world would descend into chaos without dependency on the American empire. The last sentence is more than anti-Microsoft, it is anti-Capitalistic (read: anti-freedom). Yes, now that I have a SAAB my dealer can charge whatever they want for service and Gillette me to death with bait and switch pricing. Maybe they are and service is super profitable for them? humm. It seems ok so far. Last time I went in they fixed for free while i waited. Wonder why? If I were Cory would I be living in fear of their evil Capitalist leverage? Sucks to be you man.

: This is Soviet thinking. God forbid you drive a car manufactured
: elsewhere or use technology from overseas. It takes a villiage
: (sic) Cory. A global village. Yugoslavs should only drive
: Yugos, and to not do so is unpatriotic. Forget about buying the
: product best adapted to your needs. Everyone use technology from
: your own country. Unless you are in the states and that
: technology is Microsoft.

More straw-men. No one is talking about the freedom of Norwegians to choose to consume foreign goods. We're talking about a government granted monopoly on supplying infrastructure for the use of public goods. To use your car analogy: what if the law was that Norwegian highways could only be driven with American cars? Or that all cars in Norway could only run on American petrol?...

Norway could have picked H.264 or another open standard for delivery of this video and allowed Microsoft and all its competitors to compete in the marketplace. Instead, they've delivered sole-vendor status to Microsoft. You don't want a market where the winner emerges through competition: you want a "market" where the winner is chosen by the government.

Andrea's PDA vibrated whenever the number of news stories appearing online mentioning her or Kodacell or Kettlewell increased or decreased sharply. She used to try to read everything, but it was impossible to keep up -- now all she wanted was to keep track of whether the interestingness-index was on the uptick or downtick.

It had started to buzz that morning and the pitch had increased steadily until it was actually uncomfortable in her pocket. Irritated, she yanked it out and was about to switch it off when the lead article caught her eye.

KODACELL LOSES TJAN TO WESTINGHOUSE

The byline was rat-toothed Freddy. Feeling like a character in a horror movie who can't resist the compulsion to look under the bed, Andrea thumbed the PDA's wheel and brought up the whole article.

Kodacell business-manager Tjan Lee Tang, whose adventures we've followed through Andrea Fleeks's gushing, besotted "blog" posts...

She looked away and reflexively reached toward the delete button. The innuendo that she was romantically involved with one or more of the guys had circulated on her blog's message boards and around the slashdots ever since she'd started writing about them. No woman could possibly be writing about this stuff because it was important -- she had to be "with the band," a groupie or a whore.

"A number of the films in The Canon came out of suggestions from Boing Boing readers and others (The Damned being a fine example of that), so I thought they might be interested in seeing their efforts paid off. Note that I don't expect everyone to agree with all my Canonical choices (I would be disappointed if they did), but this list is a good jumping off point for further discussion and debate and exhibition of sf film knowledge. Let the sniping begin!"

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!; Akira; Alien; Aliens; Alphaville; Back to the Future; Blade Runner; Brazil; Bride of Frankenstein; Brother From Another Planet; A Clockwork Orange; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Contact; The Damned; Destination Moon; The Day The Earth Stood Still; Delicatessen; Escape From New York; ET: The Extraterrestrial; Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial); The Fly (1985 version); Forbidden Planet; Ghost in the Shell; Gojira/Godzilla; The Incredibles; Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version); Jurassic Park; Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior; The Matrix; Metropolis; On the Beach; Planet of the Apes (1968 version); Robocop; Sleeper; Solaris (1972 version); Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope; Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back; The Stepford Wives; Superman; Terminator 2: Judgement Day; The Thing From Another World; Things to Come; Tron; 12 Monkeys; 28 Days Later; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; 2001: A Space Odyssey; La Voyage Dans la Lune; War of the Worlds (1953 version)

The Eulyzer analyzes end-user-license-"agreements" for abusive language and highlights it, reading these things so you don't have to. Next step would be for the tool to automatically email the company offering the EULA and the local trading standards board to complain about the unconscionable contract they're ramming down your throat. Link (via Copyfight)

The bad news is that they've released this media in Microsoft's DRM format for Windows Media Center.

That's not just bad news because the Media Center contains all kinds of restrictions on user-freedom (though it does). The worst of this is that the Norwegian broadcaster is selling out Norwegian taxpayers by setting them up to pay monopoly rents to Microsoft to the end of time.

Look at it this way: if the broadcaster had released the video as H.264 streams or a innother open format, they would have enabled Norwegians to buy products from any vendor in the world who wanted to make a player for the video that the broadcaster commissioned with public money, for the public's enjoyment.

Instead, by choosing Microsoft, they've put the Norwegian owners of the broadcaster -- i.e. the taxpayers -- in the position of having to pay again for Windows to play back the video that they already paid for once, with their taxes.

What's more, a Microsoft monopoly over the video they release means that Norwegian tech companies can't made products that play back Norwegian video without permission from an American company -- an American company that can withhold permission or charge whatever it wants for the privilege of playing back Norway's storehouse of video.

It's true that Microsoft Windows can play the Media Center PC videos without a download, while H.264 requires you to get new software -- but why is that? With any other video format, the Windows Media Player just automatically gets the patch it needs and you're off to the races. But when it comes to file-formats that threaten the Microsoft dominance in the market, all of a sudden you need to jump through a hundred hoops to get up and running.

Many people have a hard time downloading new software, but every single P2P user (likely also to be the leading users for this service) has already demonstrated her willingness to download and install new apps.

And if it's hard now to get people to download and install non-Microsoft technology that would provide a level playing field to the Norwegian tech companies, imagine what it will be like in Norway after five or ten years of the state broadcaster officially supporting Microsoft -- and only Microsoft -- with the cultural product that is the life's blood of the nation.

Norwegian production companies rely on huge state subsidies, direct and indirect, to fulfill the crucial role of providing cultural identity to a small nation. But Norway's many innovative tech companies provide an equally crucial service to Norwegians: offering economic independence and self-determination. To lock up Norway's culture in a wrapper that can't be opened by a Norwegian tech company is economic and cultural insanity.

If I were a Norwegian taxpayer, I'd be calling my MP and the public service broadcaster demanding redress for this. It's totally, utterly unacceptable for a tax-funded broadcaster to sell out the public and industry to foreign software giants. DRM doesn't work. No show that the broadcaster locks up with DRM will be prevented from showing up on the Internet almost instantly after it airs.

At a time when American state governments are throwing away their Microsoft products in favor of future-proof open standards, Norway has no excuse for selling out to Redmond.

This lockdown only adds cost, subtracts value, and betrays the national interest of Norway. Link

Update: Cort, a Microsoft employee, has posted a long defense of his employer's government-granted monopoly over supplying playback for Norwegian public video. In it, he calls me a liar and a Communist, because I believe that Microsoft should have to compete with other vendors who want to supply tools to work with Norway's public video archive. I've posted a rebuttal to his message board. If you are a Norwegian looking for arguments to deliver to your MP regarding Microsoft's new monopoly over the video you paid for with your tax-Kroner, you might want to reference Cort's piece as evidence of Microsoft's unfitness to receive such a generous state subsidy.

On the bigger screen, people completed the tasks at least 10 percent more quickly - and some as much as 44 percent more quickly. They were also more likely to remember the seven-digit number, which showed that the multitasking was clearly less taxing on their brains. Some of the volunteers were so enthralled with the huge screen that they begged to take it home. In two decades of research, Czerwinski had never seen a single tweak to a computer system so significantly improve a user's productivity. The clearer your screen, she found, the calmer your mind. So her group began devising tools that maximized screen space by grouping documents and programs together - making it possible to easily spy them out of the corner of your eye, ensuring that you would never forget them in the fog of your interruptions. Another experiment created a tiny round window that floats on one side of the screen; moving dots represent information you need to monitor, like the size of your in-box or an approaching meeting. It looks precisely like the radar screen in a military cockpit.

In late 2003, the technology writer Danny O'Brien decided he was fed up with not getting enough done at work. So he sat down and made a list of 70 of the most "sickeningly overprolific" people he knew, most of whom were software engineers of one kind or another. O'Brien wrote a questionnaire asking them to explain how, precisely, they managed such awesome output. Over the next few weeks they e-mailed their replies, and one night O'Brien sat down at his dining-room table to look for clues. He was hoping that the self-described geeks all shared some common tricks.

The most fascinating part of this is the catalog of game styles that have seen little development to date -- if you want to think about the future of video-games (and games in general), start to imagine how these fallow styles could be made to bear fruit. 636K PowerPoint Link (via Games * Design * Art * Culture)

Being a favorite didn't mean much to Matsubayashi, though. There were plenty of other fish in the sea. One was a bar hostess he bought an Alfa Romeo sports car for. Another a woman with a liking for kimono who had him foot the 2 million yen bill to refurbish her nightclub. One more stayed at home to look after the 4-year-old child he had fathered. It was a similar story for another woman who continued to receive 800,000 yen a month child support payments for yet another illegitimate child even though they had parted ways. There was even a foreign mistress...

"I want more new women," Shukan Jitsuwa quotes the Cashanova telling the police. "Sex pleases me more than a