"Homecoming" is a full-frontal assault on the Bush administration, and about as subtle -- and bracing -- as a punch to the jaw. Adapted by Sam Hamm from Dale Bailey's short story "Death and Suffrage" -- but also vaguely reminiscent of Irwin Shaw's 1936 anti-war play "Bury the Dead" -- Dante's hour darkly satirizes zombie movie conventions, as dead soldiers arise to vote against the politicians who shipped them off to war.

Reader comment: Or in Israel says:

I've just tried to view the link in your BoingBoing post - " TV movie: "Homecoming" -- zombie soldiers rock the vote", but then i've hit an intresting road-block. Check out this screenshot (PNG). It seems that Showtime is not interested in letting Israelis -- or rather anyone who does not live in the United States of America -- view their website. Makes me wonder what is it that they are trying to hide?

I remember facing this error a couple of times before, when attempting to view the official site of a few TV shows that we screen here on our local television. Showtime has been doing this for years. The concept being forced to use an anonymous american proxy just to be permitted to view a specific website is just plain aggravating.

Reader comment: Mateusz Pozar in Sweden is among many BB readers who wrote in to say they're getting the same cockblock message ("We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States."), and asks,

I'm trying to track down a free proxie to use from within the US to take a look at the site. any suggestions? could someone mirror it perchance?

I'm in the US, but proxify.com has come in handy a few times for me. Also, this modified Showtime "Homecoming" link might work directly for overseas visitors.

There was an article on digg.com recently listing open proxies: Link. But, as with all lists like that, they get stale pretty quickly. However, someone in the comments on digg pointed the rather spiffy proxy.org -- This site'll allow you to plug in a URL and pop a new window displaying that site via a random proxy. Fantastic! (Note: I tried it with Showtime URL & it worked.)

Thankfully, there's no restriction for the actual clips. (shakes head). You can access the clips directly here: part one, part two.

More links, no SWF -- MOV+WMV: Link.

Digital coding is the universal language allowing free translation between abstract information and physical books. Once upon a time, if you wanted the information, you had to physically possess (or borrow) the book. If you wanted to purchase a new copy of the book, the title had to be "in print."

This is no longer true. Scan the text once, digitally, and the information becomes permanently available, anywhere, no matter what happens to physical copies of the book. Search for an out-of-print title and you will now find bookshops (and libraries) who have copies available; soon enough the options will include bookshops offering to print a copy, just for you. Google Library and Google Print have been renamed Google Book Search — not because Google is shying away from building the Universal Library (with links to the Universal Bookstore) but because search comes first. To paraphrase Tolkien: "One ring to find them, one ring to bind them, one ring to rule them all."

Why does this strike such a nerve? Because so many of us (not only authors) love books. In their combination of mortal, physical embodiment with immortal, disembodied knowledge, books are the mirror of ourselves. Books are not mere physical objects. They have a life of their own. Wholesale scanning, we fear, will strip our books of their souls. Works that were sewn together by hand, one chapter at a time, should not be unbound page by page and distributed click by click. Talk about "snippets" makes authors flinch.

The site is "Dedicated to the preservation of early recorded sounds" and features wicked cool Jurassic DJ gear 'n' stuff, including this STILL LISTENABLE sound recording from 1878, grooved into a lead cylinder (instead of tin or wax) -- and a record player that looks like a watchmaker's lathe.

Reader comment: David says,

These recordings are a bit newer, from around the time of the first World War (1914-1918). Click the links on the right side to hear songs by year. My favorite is Aba Daba Honeymoon.

A snip of this fine prose:

"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Chimpie to the Monk,
"Baba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Said the Monkey to the Chimp.
All night long they'd chatter away,
All day long there were happy and gay,
Swinging and singing in their hunky-tonkey way.
"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab,"
Means "Monk, I love but you."
"Baba, daba, dab," in monkey talk Means "Chimp, I love you, too."

Reader comment: JonesR says,

Leia Skywalker's Mom sang Aba Daba Honeymoon in "Two Weeks with Love"! Debbie Reynolds sang this in 1950, and it was repeated in one of the "That's Entertainment" compilations of MGM musicals that were released in the seventies. Don't know if Carrie Fisher had been in Shampoo yet, but I think Star Wars had not happened yet.

Leo McGovern of the New Orleans alt-zine ANTIGRAVITY says,

At a mall in Metairie (just outside of New Orleans), a Christmas display was removed because it featured a Katrina theme. A couple of people complained, and it was deemed offensive because the guy who built it included blue tarps on the houses, a helicopter saving someone from a house, and a shut down pumping station. It was a pretty neat display. Here's a link to a local stations coverage, and a link (with more photos) to the New Orleans LiveJournal community's posting about it.

The folks at Lakeside Mall have reversed their position on the Hurricane Town display and allowed it to be restored. The public outcry was tremendous. It seems everyone got it except mall management. Link.

web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank).

I earn my living as a stevedore, but I shall promptly and respectfully reply to all personal messages at my leisure time providing that a busy working day hasn't squeezed all orange juice out of me.

You’ll note that the Nasdaq (red) lags Wired’s page count (blue) by a few months. I’m not suggesting you go an buy technology shares, but gee, I’m thinking the reports of money pumping back into technology companies might just be true given the big up-tick in this months page count (294).

Nov 21: Protest CD DRM in NYC on Nov 30!

FreeCulture NYC is planning another street demonstration at a Tower Records store in Manhattan against DRM CDs, and have a great flier about the dangers of buying DRM music.

Nov 21: Table compares different kinds of Sony music infections

Sony CDs are infected with at least two different kinds of malicious software, the XCP rootkit and a spyware product from Suncomm called MediaMax. This handy table summarizes the differences and similarities between the two systems

Nov 22: Library won't buy Sony CDs

The library system in Ann Arbor, MI declares a moratorium on buying DRM CDs from Sony

Nov 24: Sony rootkit tee: "Why should people care about rootkits?"

These limited-edition tees from F-Secure bear the now infamous quote from Sony BMG president Thomas Hesse: "Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"

Nov 24: Sony rootkit recall makes The Onion

The news of Sony's recall of its rootkit-infected CDs goes even more mainstream and is lampooned in this week's issue of The Onion, their What Do You Think? section.

Nov 24: Rootkit arms-dealer takes website down

First4Internet, the makers of the rootkit DRM that has turned Sony into an infamous villain facing tens of millions in liability, have taken down their website and replaced it with a simple landing page with some contact info.

Nov 27: Pre-history of the Sony rootkit

An old email thread shows the early efforts of the authors of Sony's infamous rootkit.

Nov 28: Sony rootkit author asked for free code to lock up music

An old newsgroup post from a First4Internet programmer offers cash if someone will do his homework for him. Later, code from the free/open source software project LAME (which does some of what this programmer was trying to do) showed up in a First4Internet product.

Nov 28: Programmers on Sony's spyware DRM asked for newsgroup help too

Programmers on Sony's less-known DRM, a piece of spyware called MediaMax from a company called Suncomm, posted messages to newsgroups asking for help with their technology.

Nov 28: Sony CD spyware installs and can run permanently, even if you click "Decline"

We knew that the MediaMax spyware on Sony's CD installs itself even if you click "Decline" when confronted with the "agreement" that governs it. Now we find that the software also runs, permanently, under some common circumstances, even if you never agree to its installation.

Nov 29: Will NY sue Sony, too?

New York Attorney General is making threatening noises over Sony's rootkit DRM, and it looks like he might bring suit.

Nov 29: Sony knew about rootkits 28 days before the story broke

BusinessWeek reports that Sony knew on Oct 4 that its DRM system was built on rootkits and exposed its customers to danger of opportunistic infections from other malicious programs.

Dec 1: No Xmas for Sony protest badge

Gisela has created a "No Xmas for Sony" badge she's using in her email, linking it to Mark Russinovich's account of the Sony rootkit debacle, as a means of convincing people not to buy Sony products this holiday.

Dec 3: How can you tell if a CD is infectious?

EFF publishes a list of indicia that Sony has used to inform customers that a CD carries the MediaMax spyware.

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

Firefox still has less than 10 percent of the browser-share globally, but on sites like Boing Boing, it's a clear majority (check out the present stats -- almost 46 percent Firefox/Moz versus 34 percent Explorer). This also seems like it's true in cosmopolitan cities like New York. At a guess, I'd say that a lot of the Explorer market share is in corporations where people are forced into Microsoft's browser by their IT departments. Link, Torrent Link (via Digg)

Update: Booksandlibretti sez, "The video was filmed in Washington Square Park, which is basically part of NYU's campus. Chances are good that the interviewed people were a lot more hip, with-it, and tech-savvy than the usual run of people even in New York. We saw a lot of students, but I'm guessing a large proportion of the adults were also affiliated with NYU as professors or as grad students."

"Other interesting info: NYU grad students are on strike (detailed on MeFi and lots of other places). In this video, you can hear their whistle, and at times you can see the inflatable union rat in front of the large red building (Bobst Library)."

The biggest change is that anyone can now use the in-the-browser recording tool (Odeo Studio) and phone posting, along with the "Casually Private" sharing functionality we built around the idea of casual content creation. We've also redesigned the homepage for simplification and the workflow of the site around the idea of an audio inbox. You can still download everything in iTunes or your podcast client of choice. Or you can listen on the site.

ApacheCon is in San Diego, and runs from 10-14 December, 2005 at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina, and there are still several scholarships available for students working with Java.

My talk, "Open Source is not a crime -- yet!" is on Monday, December 12 at 9AM. I'll be talking about US and international legislative threats to copyleft, Free Software, and Creative Commons -- hope to see you there! Link

There is no standard way that music companies use to warn you that a CD is infected with Suncomm's Mediamax spyware, which reports on your listening habits back to Sony, and which can't be uninstalled using the Windows uninstaller. The MediaMax spyware installs itself even if you decline the "agreement" that is put on your screen when you first insert the CD.

Sony is being sued for including both the MediaMax spyware and the XCP rootkit (which enables virus-writers to opportunistically and invisibly seize control of your PC) on its music CDs, but lots of other labels use MediaMax spyware, along with numerous other malicious DRM programs.

EFF has prepared a guide to helping you spot and avoid Mediamax spyware, with a list of CDs believed to carry the infection, along with a gallery and slideshow of the numerous different stickers, fine-print, and other indicia that Sony has used to disclose that the CD on the shelf contains spyware.

But buyer beware: this problem goes well beyond Sony. Most of the major labels have decided that they need to punish their remaining customers with infectious technologies. I don't trust them, so I've just stopped buying CDs. Between mashups, Creative Commons licensed music, Internet radio, and my gigantic collection of tracks ripped from my old CDs, I have all the music I need for now. If a hot band comes out with a hot album, they'd better be willing to sell me Oggs or MP3s, 'cause I've had it with CDs. There's no music worth risking my data for. Link (Thanks, Kurt!)

There should be a book titled "How News Is Made," a book that could be for journalism what "The Jungle" was to the meatpacking industry. My version would offer no conspiracy theory, but I'd point out the preponderance of sloppiness and lazy thinking coupled with a herd mentality, most especially in business journalism. I found a great example to illustrate what I've been thinking about, tipped off by an article written by Carl Bialik in the Wall Street Journal.

Europe's equivalent to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a controversial directive called the EUCD. Each EU state is responsible for implementing the minimum set of EUCD restrictions (which are far from minimal!) but each state can exceed the minimum, and the entertainment lobby pushes hard to see to it that they do. They've run amok in France, subverting the lawmaking process with a farcical wish-list of penalties, mandates and software bans.

Copyfighters in France have published a detailed alert in French; what follows is a loose, machine-assisted translation (substantive corrections gladly sought):

* A prohibition on all software that permits transmission [disposition is unclear without greater context] of copyrighted material that does not integrate both a watermark and DRM
* A prohibition on marketing or advertising such software
* These prohibitions include legal sanctions<
* DRM mandates for digital radio transmission
* A universal wiretapping system for private communication [This is defined elsewhere as a system to check for, say, music files attached to email messages, and not one that would violate the "secret of private correspondence".]
* Creation of a universal filering system for all ISPs

Update: The French Department of Culture has also threatened to ban Free/Open Source Software:

Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill proposal pass in the Parliament.

Update 2 Here's a petition against this hijacking of the legislative process (Thanks, Henri!)

Have no the adult the child that look after with the old man prohibition against the next sea swimming

Update: Aaron Dunlap says: "I should point out that what I have for sale is kits to build your own charger in an Altoids tin or whatever you want. You get the electronic components and a walk-through manual. You might want to mention this on the site, since I've had a lot of people place orders thinking they're getting the whole kit & cabootle when I don't have the time to solder together 300 cabootles."

Reader comment: avidd says: "I call prior art on that USB charger featured in today's post. I built one for my trip to the amazon rainforest. While the guy is providing a service by selling the kits for cheap, he's being silly about keeping the design so mysterious. Buy a 5v IC regulator like the NTE960 or NTE977 from jameco.com for $1.65. Solder it between the battery leads and the usb leads. Don't forget the matching heatsink. For the NTE977 I chose to put some capacitors to ground as recommended in the manual on page 8 though that might have been overkill.

"That's really all there is.

"Go ahead and sell the kits, but Information wants to be free. Link

Reader comment: Aaron says: "Why does McDonald's stay in business when you could just make your own burgers? You can even get cookbooks for free from the library.

"Information should be free free; parts, however, aren't. My kits are meant for beginners who wouldn't know how or where to get the parts themselves or what to do with them. I have the full manual posted online if someone wanted to just do it themselves."

In short, the champions of Intelligent Design make two mistakes when they claim that the SETI enterprise is logically similar to their own: First, they assume that we are looking for messages, and judging our discovery on the basis of message content, whether understood or not. In fact, we’re on the lookout for very simple signals. That’s mostly a technical misunderstanding. But their second assumption, derived from the first, that complexity would imply intelligence, is also wrong. We seek artificiality, which is an organized and optimized signal coming from an astronomical environment from which neither it nor anything like it is either expected or observed: Very modest complexity, found out of context. This is clearly nothing like looking at DNA’s chemical makeup and deducing the work of a supernatural biochemist.

Apparently the smaller fish was caught on Tannum's shark lines.

While being pulled in, the movement attracted the attention of its larger colleague.

The tiger shark was so reluctant to let go of its free meal, it was eventually pulled in to shore.

Tabpreview is a similar plugin that drops a thumbnail of whatever's loaded in each tab as you mouse over it. Just tried it out and it worked well in a short round of testing. This will be way useful, I can tell already. Link (Thanks, Tim)

It's seems ridiculous that you can record a TV show to play back on your TV, but you have to buy it again if you want to watch it on your iPod, phone or PSP. Why do you need to buy a DVD and an iPod version? Why can't you "home-tape" your media to something more convenient, the way you could with your old LPs?

Thank (or curse) the entertainment companies: they have threatened to sue any company that makes a better digital VCR (they put one manufacturer, ReplayTV, out of business, by sucking up all their dough with legal fees). They've even proposed legislation to close the "analog hole" that makes this recording without permission possible. That's right, Hollywood's media-savvy technophobes really think that they'll be able to convince Congress to help them with something called the "A-Hole problem." Hey, if the shoe fits.

But Neuros's pocket-sized "Recorder 2" defects from the tacit agreement to withhold better technology from the market. Just in time for Christmas, Neuros is taking a stand, letting you home-record your stuff and watch it the way you want, the way the law allows. They've even written a stirring editorial explaining their commitment to their customers' freedom, with such choice quotes as "But who will stand up for you today if you are to continue to have the right to enjoy your legally obtained media content wherever and whenever you want?" and "these proposed laws are about Big Media using piracy as an excuse to take away your right to control your own legally obtained content and thereby open up new revenue streams by forcing you to pay multiple times for the same content."

* Record effortlessly from any video source (TV Cable box, Satellite Receiver Box, PVRs or DVRs Like TiVoTM, DVD players, VCR, Camcorders).

* Simple setup that works without a PC and operates like a VCR.

* MPEG-4 video format allows you to view content directly on your PSP(TM) or any other device that accepts standard Memory Stick or Compact Flash (CF) memory cards (not included).

* The MPEG-4 format is also compatible with most other portable media devices.

* A great way to digitize your home movies for archiving, emailing, or playback on portables and laptops.

* Can play back from Recorder 2 through TV's and home theatres. Pocket-sized device is small enough to use as a portable VCR.

A woman named Sam Buck opened a coffee shop in Astoria, Oregon in 2000, two years before a Starbucks opened down the road. She named her shop Sambuck's, and the judge in her case said that she willfully infringed on Starbucks's trademark in so doing.

Now she's stuck with hundreds of thousands in legal fees and the added expense of throwing out all her cups, her sign, etc.

She says she doubts people have trouble distinguishing her 10-foot-wide shop from a Starbucks, and that her business logo is not easily confused with that of Starbucks.

Washington, DC's Brookings Institution will be hosting a panel on software and law, on Dec 7, and I could not be more enthused about it. This is partly because I'm the moderator, and partly because it's going to be an open debate on some enthralling subjects by some exceptionally well-informed indivudals. There'll be two of the best advocates against software patents, Richard Stallman (of the FSF) and Brian Kahin (of the Ford School at UMich and the CCIA); and there'll be two of the best advocates for software patents, Ken Dam (who sired many a software patent as a former IBM VP), and Emery Simon (of the Business Software Alliance, one of the key players in passing the DMCA).

As well as being a rousing good time, this debate _matters_, because the Patent Reform Act of 2005 is gaining steam in Congress, and it's still an open question whether it will help the world of software or just create more constraints.

A typical day would start with a 10 a.m. flight to Victoria, British Columbia, about 70 km (45 miles) from Vancouver. He would fly back and fourth between the two cities about six times and then catch an overnight flight 4,300 km (2,700 miles) to Toronto.

In Toronto, he would immediately board a return flight.

However, it appears that all the talk about "communications SNAFUs" was a smokescreen for a half-assed compromise that leaves the highest-quality recordings available only as streams, meaning that they can no longer be simply downloaded from the Archive and traded on.

The spin on this is bizarre -- see below:

He said the band consented to making audience recordings available for download again, although live recordings made directly from concert soundboards, which are the legal property of the Grateful Dead, should only be made available for listening from now on.

So why is this being characterized as the Grateful Dead changing its position? They've reversed on a minor point -- that freespace recordings may be traded -- but they've stuck to the main point: recordings made by fans with the blessing of the Dead and the admonition to share them far and wide are no longer to be shared without the explicit blessing of the band's surviving rightsholders.

It's clear why these rightsholders want this. The Grateful Dead is famous, and lots of people are interested in buying GD recordings, merchandise, and tickets to the successor band, The Dead. The Grateful Dead's fame is the direct consequence of the goodwill they exchanged with their fans when they adopted their liberal policies for recording and sharing of shows.

Now the rightsholders want it both ways: they want to profit from the goodwill that fans retain for the band due to its generosity, but they want to revise that generosity downwards. They want to change the deal so that fans continue to do just as much evangelizing, spend just as much money on shows and shirts, but get less in return.

There's a ripoff here, and it's not coming from the fans. To quote John Perry Barlow, the band's irate former lyricist who wrote an open letter objecting to this move: "How magnificently counter-productive of them. It's as if the goose who laid the golden egg had decided to commit suicide so that he could get more golden eggs." Link

They're bizarre lists: people -- names and aliases -- who are too dangerous to be allowed to fly under any circumstance, yet so innocent that they cannot be arrested, even under the draconian provisions of the Patriot Act. The Selectee list contains an equal number of travelers who must be searched extensively before they're allowed to fly. Who are these people, anyway?

The truth is, nobody knows. The lists come from the Terrorist Screening Database, a hodgepodge compiled in haste from a variety of sources, with no clear rules about who should be on it or how to get off it. The government is trying to clean up the lists, but -- garbage in, garbage out -- it's not having much success.

The program has been a complete failure, resulting in exactly zero terrorists caught. And even worse, thousands (or more) have been denied the ability to fly, even though they've done nothing wrong.

"They literally gutted the dog," local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

"When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them."

Mikhail Tiyunov, a scientist in the region, said it was the first he had ever heard of such an attack.

While squirrels without sources of protein might attack birds' nests, he said, the idea of them chewing at a dog to death was "absurd".

"If it really happened, things must be pretty bad in our forests," he added.

Dr. Laurent Lantieri, an adviser to the French medical ethics panel, said the surgeons who operated violated the panel's advice because they failed to try reconstructive surgery first. He said a transplant donor was immediately sought without trying to repair the woman's face with more conventional surgery...

The panel had previously objected to full face transplants but said partial ones could be considered under strict circumstances, which included first trying normal surgery.

"The ethics committee said this kind of transplant should never be considered as an emergency procedure," Lantieri said.

However, surgeon Denys Pellerin, of the National Consultative Ethics Committee advised by Lantieri said, "as long as the transplant is not total, it is not unethical."

And Dr. Jean-Pierre Chavoin, secretary general of the French society of plastic surgery, noted that Lantieri had planned to do a face transplant himself and had been beaten.

Carine Camby, director general of the agency under the French Health Ministry that coordinates organ procurement, said normal reconstructive surgery could not have been used in this case.

"It is precisely because there was no way to restore the functions of this patient by normal plastic surgery that we attempted this transplant," Camby said. "She could no longer eat normally, she had great difficulty speaking and there is no possibility with plastic surgery today to repair the muscles around the mouth which allow people to articulate when they speak and not spit out food when they eat."

The length of track preserved, 6m (20ft), is remarkable. The stride pattern, too, is huge - 27cm (11in).

Fragmentary fossils of Hibbertopterus are well known from Scottish Lower Carboniferous rocks and were first described from West Lothian in 1831.

The creature did not have the big pincers or carry its tail in the air like the land scorpions we know today, and it did not have a sting, either; but these animal groups are nonetheless distantly related, scientists believe.

What is interesting about this trackway is that is shows Hibbertopterus could move out of its usual water habitat.

"There has been debate about whether it was restricted to water or could come out on land. I believe this trackway shows it could come out for short periods," explained Dr Whyte.

Happy Palace didn't say which projects the pictures were from, so I went to SciToys and looked them up. In doing so, I saw a bunch of other projects, many of which had animations of the things in action. They are fantastic, because they are simple, yet novel contraptions that demonstrate rules of physics, optics, and electricity in fun and surprising ways. These projects are just the sort of thing you hope for when you get a book of "amazing science projects." In fact, Simon has a book out, called Gonzo Gizmos: Projects & Devices to Channel Your Inner Geek. It's the best science project book I've ever seen.

It's worthwhile going through the entire site to see what Simon has made, but here are the three projects that Happy Palace featured:

This is a "Three-Penny" radio, a very simple battery-powered transistor radio. The three pennies serve as junction points for the soldered components. Instructions here.

This is a homopolar motor. The funky wire frame spins slowly around the battery. Here is an animated gif of the thing in action. I already have a few of these small but very strong magnets (if you play with two of them long enough you will eventually get painfully pinched, I promise you) from the gauss rifle project I made last year. I'm going to make one of these this weekend if I can find the time. Instructions here.

This is a simple crystal radio made from a plastic bottle, a plastic ball point pen tube, a germanium diode, and some wire. Instructions here.

Comparative images, using a human model at the same spot, will help demonstrate the unusual aspects of this figure.

The size might be very big, and possibly off the chart for a human.

The camera positions will be easy to re-establish, along with the horizontal and vertical position on the ridge. The exact distance will be hard to determine and re-create with accuracy.

A person will have to be directed via radio to stand in the correct horizontal and vertical line, and then step back until his/her waistline is obscured by the foreground. With those angles re-created, there will be a rough comparison of body dimensions.

The figure may dwarf the human model to such a degree that it will speak for itself.

Now Steadman is soliciting your donations to continue to produce and distribute its music:

I want to tell you why we’re giving away our entire catalogue up to this point. Please don’t read this and think I’m a bitter artist whining about getting dropped. I’m merely passing on what I’ve learnt and giving you an artists insight into the workings of the music industry. I have had SO many wonderful experiences, I’ve traveled the world and I’ve met and worked with some amazing and good people. I regret nothing. Honest...

Donate and get:
$7 = Small Goodie Bag
$15 = Medium Goodie Bag
$25 = Large Goodie Box
(inc. T-shirt while stocks last)

We invite papers for the conference and for a very special issue of First Monday. These papers will be reviewed by a special conference editorial committee. Authors of selected papers will be invited to the conference, scheduled to take place in Chicago in May 2006. Other selected papers will be published in a special issue of First Monday, to appear in June 2006.

Papers should address the issues involved in building sustainable models for openness in science, software and content. They can examine technical, sociological, economic/business and legal issues, and can be conceptual or practical in nature. Case studies by practitioners are welcome.

Scientists may be justified in retaining privileged access to data that they have invested heavily in collecting, pending publication — but there are also huge amounts of data that do not need to be kept behind walls. And few organizations seem to be aware that by making their data available under a Creative Commons licence (see http://creativecommons.org/license), they can stipulate both rights and credits for the reuse of data, while allowing its uninterrupted access by machines.

As web services empower researchers, the biggest obstacle to fulfilling such visions will be cultural. Scientific competitiveness will always be with us. But developing meaningful credit for those who share their data is essential, to encourage the diversity of means by which researchers can now contribute to the global academy.

Sure, it's great to be all-powerful, or "uber" in game parlance. But at what cost? I consider it cheating to buy your way in to an uber character. In order to be truly "uber," you need to earn it. Besides, it takes a lot of skill to use a high-level character's abilities to their fullest, so an inexperienced player that has purchased a high-level character will very often lose a battle or die because they don't have the experience of all that playing time.

For me, the point of playing these games is not to win -- it's to be immersed in the worlds, and to interact with fellow players. You miss out on truly experiencing the world if you don't earn your items and character abilities.

Reader comment: John Cook says: "Hi Mark. I heard the tail end of the NPR story yesterday when it aired, and felt a tinge of pride, because I did the same story -- which I believe was the first story on this phenomenon outside the gaming press -- six years ago in the NYT Magazine. It's not online -- though I put a pdf on my clips site here."

Dr. Sanford Kuvin, head of tropical infectious diseases at Israel's Hebrew University, said the study provided strong evidence of Ebola's presence in bats and should prompt people in the region to "avoid contact with the creatures at all costs."

Used 3G Apple iPod
Cost: As low as $30! Maybe free if you ask around!

The iPod 3G is the weird mutant iPod with the four round buttons that was quickly natural-selected off the iPod evolutionary chart almost as quickly as it arrived. Why in the world is this *the* iPod to get? It's cheap, you can replace or extend the battery that's likely dead, and best of all, you can install Linux, making it into a 20GB+ high-quality voice recorder. That's right--the iPod comes crippled, but the iPod Linux project not only unlock it but offers dozens of new games, applications, and more.

In my case the law forbids streaming "radio" that features more than 4 tracks by any one artist in a three-hour period. My guess is that they may have confused streaming with downloading -- in the same way that people often confuse downloading with file sharing. They are afraid that even if it's not downloadable somehow if a fan knows there will be 3 Missy songs at a given time they can prepare their gear and tape them. The assumption being that sale is lost. [I've been informed that the fear is less sensible than that -- it is that if you know you can hear a specific artist whenever you want, then the reasoning is you would never buy their records.]

Back in the day I used my boom box to tape things off the radio all the time -- that's how I found out about music I didn't know about, and eventually I not only bought those records, but ended up promoting them, too. Which made a fair amount of money for some record labels -- but not for me. Not complaining, though.

They've initiated a public process of comment on GPL3, soliciting feedback on the license draft and defining the way that comments and concerns will be addressed as the drafting proceeds. The new GPL is pretty controversial, but it could plug some major holes, like the one that allows people to use trusted computing to technically comply with the license by publishing their code, but to subvert its purpose by keeping your computer from running the code if you change it.

They're also having a public launch event at MIT on Jan 16/17, which sounds like a blast! Link (Thanks, John!)

Now the same knitters have created a knitted re-enactment of the convulsively funny British zombie spoof Shaun of the Dead. What is it about zombies and knitting? They just go awesomely well together. Link (Thanks, Widgett)

Previous installments of the Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III

1) Put your DVD in your computer and open DVD Player (Applications -> DVD Player) if it does not open automatically. Go to Video -> Maximum Size, or hit Command-3. Fast forward to the frame you want to capture, or select the scene to start at.

2) Open the Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal). Type this, or copy / paste it right in the Terminal:

screencapture -i ~/Desktop/dvd.jpg

Your mouse should turn into crosshairs. Now hit the space bar. Your mouse should now be a camera. Click the window the DVD is playing in. A file called "dvd.jpg" will appear on your desktop.

Update: Kirk sez, "This is not entirely correct. screencapture's default image format is PNG; adding a .jpg extension does not change this. There's a flag in the man page for screencapture, but the format codes are not documented (and the man page even admits this...). (And I can't get it to work.)

You can change the default format with a simple command - see this article on Mac OS X Hints.

Free Software movement founder Richard Stallman, who had been at NYU to give a talk, tagged along and wore a sandwich board. Link, Link to announcement of the DRM demonstration (Thanks, Fred and Michael!)

The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA, 1998) makes it a crime to break a digital lock that controls access to copyrighted works, even if you do so to enable a lawful activity. For example, you might want to break the DRM on a DVD that you bought in Europe so that you can watch it on your the DVD drive in your American laptop. No copyright law protects DVDs from being watched outside the place where they were purchased, but the cartel the controls DVD-player licensing requires manufacturers to prevent you from doing this. The DMCA makes it illegal to break the protection and do something that is perfectly lawful.

Every three years, the Copyright Office holds hearings to determine whether they should allow some exceptions to this law. But the process is so tortured and the criteria are so absurd that this process practically never grants an exemption:

* No Tools. You can get an exemption for acts of circumvention, but the Copyright Office lacks the power to legalize circumvention tools. So, unless you are an engineer, a computer scientists, or can afford to hire them, you're not likely to be able to take advantage of any exemptions granted.

* Impenetrable Complexity, Impossible Burdens. In order to effectively participate in the rulemaking, you need to wade through >200 pages of bureaucratic legalese and have graduate level understanding of copyright law. You have to persuade the Copyright Office that your activity is noninfringing and gather evidence that demonstrates a "substantially adverse effect" on noninfringing uses beyond “mere inconveniences or individual cases."

* "Mere Inconvenience" = Ignoring Consumers. Where consumers are concerned, the Copyright Office discounts their concerns as "mere inconveniences." So region coding is no problem, according to the Copyright Office, because you could just buy a separate DVD player from every region. Copy-protected CDs are no problem because you can play them on CD players, even if they won't work in your computer. Where the copyright industries are concerned, in contrast, the Copyright Office presumes that DRM is the only thing that stands between them and financial ruin.

Now there's an open letter from Phil Lesh, former bassist for the band endorsing the Internet Archive's repository, saying "I was not part of this decision making process...I have enjoyed using Archive.org and found it invaluable during the writing of my book."

A spokesman for the Grateful Dead has attributed the takedown of the recordings to a "communications SNAFU" and promised that they would be reinstated shortly: "It is my understanding that by the end of the day, the audience tapes will be restored to archive.org" Link to article, Link to Lesh letter (Thanks, Breon and Dan!)

At least ten operations will be carried out to test in humans a technique pioneered in animals by the neuroscientist Geoffrey Raisman, who heads the spinal repair unit of University College, London. He discovered 20 years ago that cells from the lining of the nose constantly regenerate themselves. Professor Raisman's team believes that if those cells were implanted at the site of the damage they would build a bridge across the break, allowing the nerve fibres to knit back together.

1. Robugs: Swarms of tiny robotic insects.

2. Hacking DNA: Creating life one BioBrick at a time

3. Location, location, location: The GeoWeb

4. Maker mindset: DIY technology

5. Biology as art: Genetic creativity

6. Desktop manufacturing: 3D printing and inkjet electronics

The mug is inspired by the Comedy/Tragedy masks aesthetic. It is a 3-tone mug in purple, gold & green which are the official colors of the Mardi Gras. One side of the mug features the Remember frowning face, and the othe side features the Rebuild smiling face. The nose design on the mug is the Fleur de Lis, the official symbol of New Orleans. Also, notice the general contours of the mug… it is shaped like a Hurricane glass.

Alex Ravenel says: "[Hawk's] post is currently in the 'Popular' list on del.icio.us, has hundreds of comments, and upwards of 4300 Diggs. The scammer has been reported to the NYAG office and the BBB, negative feedback has been listed on every review site the author could find, and the the scammer's office has been flooded with phonecalls and emails."

"I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again." "I'm an attorney, I will sue you." "I will call the CEO of your company and play him the tape of this phone call." "I'm going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you." "You'd better get this through your thick skull." "You have no idea who you are dealing with."

These are all direct threats that I received today from an individual who identified himself as Steve Phillips, the manager of PriceRitePhoto in Brooklyn, New York when I called to inquire about my order with them. My crime? Telling him that I planned to write an article about my unfortunate experience with his company regarding the camera order I had placed with him yesterday.

If you're tempted by what some cellular operators are calling "unlimited" 3G cellular data service, read the fine print.

Three U.S. cellular operators that currently offer fixed-price 3G service -- Verizon Wireless, Cingular and Sprint -- typically use terms like "unlimited" in their marketing material to describe the nature of your access. However, a close look at the fine print makes it clear that the cellular operators are putting significant limits on their so-called unlimited service.

These limits are stated in the terms of use documents that the operators apply to their 3G service, documents that strictly spell out what you can -- and can't -- use 3G service for. Reading those documents, it is obvious that the operators are imposing these limitations to make sure you don't use too much 3G service or use 3G to replace existing wired broadband and Wi-Fi hotspot services.

The technology used for decades by law enforcement agents to wiretap telephones has a security flaw that allows the person being wiretapped to stop the recorder remotely, according to research by computer security experts who studied the system. It is also possible to falsify the numbers dialed, they said.

Someone being wiretapped can easily employ these "devastating countermeasures" with off-the-shelf equipment, said the lead researcher, Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania.

"This has implications not only for the accuracy of the intelligence that can be obtained from these taps, but also for the acceptability and weight of legal evidence derived from it," Mr. Blaze and his colleagues wrote in a paper that will be published today in Security & Privacy, a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

You can store all of your own music, making your entire music collection playable from any browser in the world. Plus you can also sync that entire music collection and playlists to multiple computers with a single mouse click. Oboe is the jukebox in the sky that can store all library for safety, playback and move your music to any location for offline playback as well.

Here's some things which I think make Oboe interesting.

- Oboe is the only online music locker. There are photo lockers, email lockers, general purpose storage, even video lockers but no music lockers and music is ideal for lockers because it's used repeatedly from multiple locations.
- $39.95 per year for unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth. No per gb billing for either storage or bandwidth.
- Works on Mac/Win/Lin with MP3, AAC, WMA and Ogg files.
- First of its kind iTunes plug-in so iTunes users will be able to sync their entire music collection from within iTunes with one mouse click. This makes it ideal if the user just wants a simple backup of their music. When they realize they can now access their music from any website or zap it to other computers they will be amazed.
- Last time I launched a locker system called my.mp3 it triggered a hailstorm of lawsuits. Hopefully we can avoid them this time, but you just can never tell with the music industry.
- I'm personally a big advocate of open formats and open APIs which Oboe has. So today we're announcing syncing to PCs of all flavors, but tomorrow those same APIs will let you sync your music collection to any phone, PDA, car, tablet, etc.

These type of "DIY traffic-calming happenings" are described by their creator as "roadwitches" and have included an 11-feet high rabbit, a big bed (for a sleeping policeman), a Casualty-style fake crash scene for Halloween and the setting up of a living room in the middle of the road.

"There's an element of fun and mischief, but underneath is the ambition to encourage people to re-examine how roads are used," says Mr Dewan.

"With the living room, it was the most direct way of saying 'We live here. This is our living space.'"

And he says that residents really enjoyed the strangeness of being able to relax outside in their own street, rather than feel it was a place only belonging to the cars that race up and down it.

Eleven seconds before volunteers played the game — discriminating the direction of a field of moving dots — scientists showed them a hint: an arrow pointing to where the moving dots were likely to appear. The dots were visible only for one-fifth of a second and therefore were easy to miss if a subject was not paying attention to the right area.

After the hint and prior to the appearance of the moving dots, researchers scanned the volunteers with functional brain imaging, which reveals increases in blood flow to different brain areas indicative of increased activity in those regions. Based on brain activity patterns that reflected whether the subjects used the hint or not, scientists found they could frequently predict whether a volunteer's response would be right or wrong before the volunteers even had a chance to try to see the dots.

A trip to Spar here in Barry confirmed the strange truth of the phenomenon. The Mosquito is positioned just outside the door. Although this reporter could not hear anything, being too old, several young people attested to the fact that yes, there was a noise, and yes, it was extremely annoying.

"It's loud and squeaky and it just goes through you," said Jodie Evans, 15, who was shopping at the store even though she was supposed to be in school. "It gets inside you..."

Stapleton, a security consultant whose experience in installing store alarms and the like alerted him to the gravity of the loitering problem, studied other teenage-repellents as part of his research. Some shops, for example, use "zit lamps," which drive teenagers away by casting a blue light onto their spotty skin, accentuating any whiteheads and other blemishes.

Using his children as guinea pigs, he tried a number of different noise and frequency levels, testing a single-toned unit before settling on a pulsating tone which, he said, is more unbearable, and which can be broadcast at 75 decibels, within government auditory-safety limits. "I didn't want to make it hurt," Stapleton said. "It just has to nag at them."

You don't want to be an 800-pound gorilla. No such animal has ever existed. The average big daddy silverback tops out at about half that weight. And gorillas are not predators, but vegans, with an almost unlimited appetite for fruit and bamboo shoots. I once worked on a TV documentary about lowland gorillas; on an average day the dramatic episodes consisted of the alpha male passing gas, picking his nose and yawning. Then he did the same things, the other way around. Over and over. This is probably not the image a hard-charging executive wants to present to the public.

Nor do you want to be lionized. Once, in Botswana, I saw a male lion rouse himself to court a female, with lots of growling and nipping. Finally, grudgingly, she assumed the sphinx position and he mounted her. One of my companions, a National Geographic photographer, began whirring and clicking (with his camera, I mean). The big moment of leonine love lasted all of ten seconds. "Definitely a motor-drive picture," the photographer muttered. Think about this the next time the preening CEOs at an awards banquet liken one another to lions.

Peace is paying dividends in Sierra Leone. The same civil war that depleted the country of tools and work is now providing ample raw material for recovery: weapons. Enterprising blacksmiths and metal workers convert them into farm implements so that a Kalashnikov becomes hoes and axe heads and a rocket launcher transforms into pickaxes, sickles and even school bells.

The indisputable heavyweight champ is a tank (or a heavy duty 16 wheeler) that can provide a year's work for 5 blacksmiths, turning it into 3,000 items vital to equip a farming village of 100 families. Jobs, tools, agriculture. It isn't everyday that what you long for comes true.

Most of what I do from day to day is ignore stuff -- quickly deleting emails that I won't be able to answer or don't need to read, skipping through RSS to get at the good stuff, separating small quanta of wheat from mountains of chaff. I can totally believe that the key to survival in the information age is not paying attention to unimportant stuff.

The findings turn upside down the popular concept that a person's memory capacity, which is strongly related to intelligence, is solely dependent upon the amount of information you can cram into your head at one time. These results have broad implications and may lead to developing more effective ways to optimize memory as well as improved diagnosis and treatment of cognitive deficits associated with attention deficit disorder and schizophrenia...

"People differed systematically, and dramatically, in their ability to keep irrelevant items out of awareness," Vogel said. "This doesn't mean people with low capacity are cognitively impaired. There may be advantages to having a lot of seemingly irrelevant information coming to mind. Being a bit scattered tends to be a trait of highly imaginative people."

Now a record company has shut down the American Edit site -- I was privately sent a copy of the takedown notice, which was signed by Warner Bros -- and internet activists are calling for a reprise of Grey Tuesday when websites all over the Internet mirrored DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album mashup, which was censored off the Internet by EMI.

As I wrote earlier this week, fighting mashups has nothing to do with reducing "piracy." No one who listens to American Edit will shrug her shoulders and say, "Well, heck, now that I've heard that, who needs to buy the Green Day album?" Censoring this art is tantamount to saying, "This music must go because it displeases us."

I presented this view to an EMI representative at the Creative Economies conference in London earlier this autumn and she responded by saying that DJ Danger Mouse had a happy ending, because they subsequently hired him to produce lawful mashups for them (while still maintaining legal censorship of the Grey Album).

Copyright maximalists like to contrast copyright with the old system of patronage, when you could only make art if you could convince the Pope or a duke or a king that your art was worthy. Patronage really distorted creative expression, and copyright did indeed promise to decentralize authority over what kind of art was permitted.

But the EMI rep's answer to the Grey Album is patronage. "You must not make this art unless we permit it." If you work for one of a few big record companies, you can use their legal apparatus to clear the material you want to use in a mashup. Otherwise, your art is illegal and will be censored.

I think patronage is wrong -- I agree with the maximalists here. Let's end it. Let's share these mashups, make samples without permission, and continue to produce art without permission from the latter-day aristocracy of creativity.

Only 10 days after its release, the mash-up album American Edit, which pays tribute to the acclaimed Green Day album American Idiot through some of the best mash-up productions of 2005, was shut down reportedly after received a cease & desist order from Green Day's label, Warner records, despite the fact that it was released as an internet only release with no commercial gain for the team of mash-up artists involved. In fact, the only possible profit to be made from the release was a plea from the creators of the album (known only by the shared alias Dean Gray) for fans who enjoyed the creation to donate to one of three possible charities that Green Day have been known to support. Furthermore, the mash-up versions were such fantastic productions that they were truly a departure from the standard Green Day performances and would not compete for consumptive dollars.

We hope to mobilize the online Mash-Up community by organizing a simple one-day organized event. Participants would be asked to post the American Edit album online for 24 hours only starting on Tuesday, December 13, at 12:00AM. Doing so is not intended to be a mass organization of music piracy but, rather, one single display of the consumptive power of the mash-up and home remix community in the hopes of encouraging the labels, publishers and artists who are curious about the mash-up community to consider giving the high quality productions of "illegitimate" music a legitimate consideration as a promotional avenue for all music.

It's an interesting service, but the land-line, mains power, and proprietary OS all make this less valuable as a development tool than the One Laptop Per Child device. The OLPC people talk about their device as something that will not only bring computing to poor and rural people in the developing world, but as something that will provide a platform for users to learn to program and improve on their tools -- a "teach a man to fish" technology. This goes hand in hand with the WiFi and the power designs in OLPC, which allow ad-hoc groups to gather, collaborate, and work together. By sacrificing these three elements, the IT PC undermines these knock-on benefits.

The OLPC is intended as a platform for instruction and exploration of computers themselves, as an opportunity to put the means of production into the hands of users -- as well as a tool for delivering and sharing information. The IT PC is just a tool for doing the latter; and for delivering users to merchants.

Jamais at WorldChanging has some good commentary on this, too. Link (Thanks, Pablo!)

There's something about an Atari 2600 that makes you feel warm and tingly all over. If you want to bring those feelings to the ultimate climax, follow these instructions to make a vibrator out of your Atari controller.

We found a small, inexpensive and self-contained bullet vibrator that fit perfectly inside the case and whose switch happened to be very compatible with the button on the Atari 2600 controller. With a little wire, solder, and basic materials, you can build one of these units yourself and put even more joy in your joystick.

Sony BMG officials insist that they acted as quickly as they could, and that they expected to be able to go public and offer a software patch at the same time. However, Russinovich posted his blog item first, forcing Sony BMG to scramble to contain the crisis. It recalled millions of CDs recorded by 52 artists, including Van Zant, Celine Dion, and Neil Diamond. Plus, it offered exchanges to customers. "We're very, very sorry for the disruption and inconvenience that this has caused to music consumers," says Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business.

Previous installments of the Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

Spitzer's office dispatched investigators who, disguised as customers, were able to purchase affected CDs in New York music retail outlets -- and to do so more than a week after Sony BMG recalled the disks. The investigators bought CDs at stores including Wal-Mart (WMT), BestBuy (BBY), Sam Goody, Circuit City (CC), FYE, and Virgin Megastore, according to a Nov. 23 statement from Spitzer's office...

"It is unacceptable that more than three weeks after this serious vulnerability was revealed, these same CDs are still on shelves, during the busiest shopping days of the year," Spitzer said in a written statement. "I strongly urge all retailers to heed the warnings issued about these products, pull them from distribution immediately, and ship them back to Sony."

Previous installments of the Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant. Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats.

Update: a revised version of the story here says no random ID checks are planned. (Thanks, Dave F. and Kevin Poulsen)

Snip from the piece:

Anime and manga firms have taken on forms very different from Hollywood studios or publishing houses. They more closely resemble the constantly updating startups of Silicon Valley. Their ethos is to get the product out to the right people -- whether it's on a DVD or over a mobile phone or downloadable -- and see what happens. If it succeeds, milk it; if not, try something different. And if the fans are into file sharing (which they are), keep the lawyers leashed and find a way to make piracy work for you.

(...)Female fans now make up about half the attendees at the conferences. Responding to the interest, CosmoGirl last summer began running its own manga strip on the back page of every issue. 'We started hearing girls say their favorite books and favorite things to read were manga,' says Ann Shoket, the magazine's executive editor. 'The girls have drawn their own manga for us. Not just one weird girl -- a lot of girls.')

"Archive.org has been forced to take down over 1000 soundboard recordings of the Grateful Dead by Jerry's wife and a few (perhaps one) remaining member of the band."

You have no idea how sad I am about this. I fought it hammer and tong, but the drummers had inoperable bricks in their head about it.

What's worse is that they now want to remove all Dead music from the Web. They might as easily put a teaspoon of food coloring in a swimming pool and then tell the pool owner to get it back to them.

It's like finding out that your brother is a child molester. And then, worse, having everyone then assume that you're a child molester too. I've been called a hypocrite in three languages already.

How magnificently counter-productive of them. It's as if the goose who laid the golden egg had decided to commit suicide so that he could get more golden eggs.

This is just the beginning of the backlash, I promise you.

This is worse than the RIAA suing their customers.

All of the downloads were pulled last week at the request of Grateful Dead Merchandising (GDM), the group that handles official products for the band and is overseen by its surviving members.

Deadheads have answered in protest. In an online petition, fans have pledged to boycott GDM -- including CDs and concert tickets -- until the decision is reversed. (The band itself broke up in the wake of leader Jerry Garcia's 1995 death, but in recent years guitarist Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann have toured simply as "the Dead.")

The men in the picture look like military servicemen. The surroundings look like this photograph was taken on a beach or island. The fish appears to be about six feet long (notice the yard or meter stick lying next to it). But where are the fins on this cryptid (or even a tail)? What is it?

Dear Sieveking

(Why do you 'Dr' me? Had we not dropped the honorifics?) As things worked out, I wasn't free to hear a single instalment of our serial [The Magician's Nephew] except the first. What I did hear, I approved. I shd. be glad for the series to be given abroad. But I am absolutely opposed - adamant isn't in it! - to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.

All the best,
yours
C. S. Lewis

[Letter to BBC producer Lance Sieveking (1896-1972), who has written at the top: 'The Magician's Nephew' and, after the address, the phone number "62963".]

Because the programming is free, it changes regularly, he noted. Sometimes, a program he likes will disappear and something he dislikes will be put in its place, or vice versa. For example, he once had three ABC stations from Wyoming only to have it reduced to one.

"One day it may be here, the next day it may be gone, the next day it may be back," he said. "You never know."

Jessup said some programming includes things he likes, like racing or music, and some of it is, well, "weird."

Soon, he plans to add a 13th dish to his collection, he said. He may later get a "fancy" satellite dish that is basically like 16 dishes in one. This could eliminate some of the dishes outside his house -- or enable him to get even more channels.

"I could point them toward the east where there's a bunch of satellites running around," he said. "I don't know what I would get there."

Custom printed M&M'S Candies are for personal use only. No business names, product names, celebrity names, specific sports teams, major events, landmarks, names of schools or institutions. You're smart...use your creativity and work around these specifics.

Update: Kevin remixed the M&M maker to let you sub in your own messages, such as Impeach Bush, War Criminal.

Previously, Princeton researchers revealed that the MediaMax software installed itself even if you declined the EULA (the pop-up license agreement). However, the researchers concluded that if you declined the EULA, the software was only active until you restarted Windows.

Now Princeton's Alex Halderman reports that if you insert another MediaMax-infected CD (or the same CD again) and decline the EULA a second time, the software can activate itself permanently.

In some ways, this is unsurprising -- we know that non-negotiated "contracts" like DRM EULAs aren't really agreements. No one even expects them to be read, and no one allows you to negotiate the terms if you disagree with them. They contain abusive clauses that no one would ever willingly consent to. They're a comb-over that does little to disguise the glistening, liver-spotted bald pate of bad business-practices that underpin the entertainment industry.

So it's hard to get a lot of spit in your mouth over the revelation that they don't particularly care if you agree to the terms or not -- they'll impose them anyway. This is illegal, and EFF is suing them for it. Can't wait for them to get their comeuppance.

In the comments to our last MediaMax story, reader free980211 pointed out that the driver sometimes becomes permanently activated if the same protected CD is used more than once, even if the user never agrees to the EULA. This wasn't apparent from my earlier tests because they were conducted under tightly controlled conditions, with each trial beginning from a fresh Windows installation and involving only carefully scripted operations. I've performed further tests and can now confirm that MediaMax is permanently activated in several common situations in spite of explicitly withheld consent.

Previous installments of the Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

The French Democracy is a little rough around the edges, unashamedly political and one-sided, and could use some work on the pacing, but it's also a stirring piece of political filmmaking, created using a $50 piece of software intended to enable its users to become one-person animation auteurs.

Most machnima is silly, or porny, or violent -- but this is real political stuff, the kind of thing the First Amendment was invented for. It's a real milestone in machinima history. Link (Thanks, Hugh!)

Update: Tony sez, "I think it's important to know that movies made with 'The Movies' are subject to Activision's EULA, which asserts Activision's exclusive copyrights in all of its original content. Since user-created movies seem to require at least *some* of Activision's copyrights (3D character models and/or environments at minimum), the DCMA could probably be used to take down movies. This might be of note if Activision doesn't agree with the content of political machinima made with 'The Movies.'"

CBH collects 24 comic book parody strips Johnny has drawn into one gorgeous package, with a display-worthy three-color wraparound letterpress cover produced by Buenaventura Press. Only 200 copies were produced, we have limited quantities available. Each copy is signed and numbered.

Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsmedia.drm
From: "Ken Fagan" - Find messages by this author
Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 13:22:16 -0700
Local: Tues, May 1 2001 12:22 pm
Subject: How to download a licensed WM DRM file
Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show original | Report Abuse

Here is our big problem!

We have found the same feature in the SDK files but what we WANT to do is EXACTLY what you describe as well as what is described below from the link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/wm7/drm.asp#works

We want to DOWNLOAD (and not stream) the files to the end user WITH A license to Play or Delete or Transfer to an SDMI Compliant Portable Device BUT NOT TO TARNSFER TO A PEER PC...

We want to do all of this WITHOUT having to require the user to re-validate a license with an online licensing server again!

It seems like you have figured it out!

Can you help???

Previous installments of the Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

Nyararia Mukandiwa, 33, was stopped after driving erratically in the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield last year, but refused to give officers a blood sample on the grounds that as a witch doctor it was likely to send him into a zombie-like state.

The captive dolphins "produced 317 distinct forms of play behavior during the five years that they were observed," they wrote.

One calf became adept at "blowing bubbles while swimming upside-down near the bottom of the pool and then chasing and biting each bubble before it reached the surface," the researchers continued. "She then began to release bubbles while swimming closer and closer to the surface, eventually being so close that she could not catch a single bubble."

"During all of this, the number of bubbles released was varied, the end result being that the dolphin learned to produce different numbers of bubbles from different depths, the apparent goal being to catch the last bubble right before it reached the surface of the water."

"She also modified her swimming style while releasing bubbles, one variation involving a fast spin-swim. This made it more difficult for her to catch all of the bubbles she released, but she persisted in this behavior until she was able to almost all of the bubbles she released. Curiously, the dolphin never released three or fewer bubbles, a number which she was able to catch and bite following the spin-swim release."

The dolphin may have been keeping her play interesting by blowing more bubbles than she could easily catch and bite, the researchers wrote.

Mashups are a really dumb target for the RIAA. There's just no universe in which someone who downloads a mashup of Prince's 1999 and the Benny Goodman orchestra performing "In the Mood" thinks, Well, now I've heard that, I have no need to buy the CDs those songs originated on.

In other words, if the RIAA genuinely only goes after its customers because it wants to keep from losing sales, attacking mashups won't and can't accomplish that. This action amounts to the RIAA saying, "This art is illegal because it displeases us." Link (Thanks, Karl!)

The church offered a tour of the underground facility if KRQE would kill the piece, the station said in its newscast. Scientology also called KRQE's owner, Emmis Communications, and "sought the help of a powerful New Mexican lawmaker" to lobby against airing the piece, the station reported on its Web site...

What do the markings mean? For starters, the interlocking circles and diamonds match the logo of the Church of Spiritual Technology, which had the vault constructed in a mesa in the late 1980s. The $2.5 million construction job was done by Denman and Associates of Santa Fe, but company Vice President Sally Butler said of the circles, "If there is anything like that out there, it had nothing to do with us."

Perhaps the signs are just a proud expression of the Scientology brand. But there are other, more intriguing theories.

Former Scientologists familiar with Hubbard's teachings on reincarnation say the symbol marks a "return point" so loyal staff members know where they can find the founder's works when they travel here in the future from other places in the universe.

United States Patent Application
20050212207

Edward Gilhooly patents a "game board apparatus" having a game board horizontally divided into two sectors representing heaven and hell. The start position is at the bottom of the hell and the finish winning position is situated at the top of the heaven. The players use playing pieces to traverse spaces in the heaven and hell sectors, the amount of advancement being dictated by indicia provided on decks of question cards and answer cards.

In a renaissance society driven by the need to forge connections, play is the ultimate system for social currency. It's a way to try on new roles without committing to them for life. It's a way to test strategies of engagement without being defined by them forever. It’s a way to rise above the seemingly high stakes of almost any situation and see it as the game it probably is. It’s a way to make one’s enterprise a form of social currency from the beginning, and to guarantee a collaborative, playful, and altogether more productive path toward continual innovation.

And this play begins at work....

In their crude efforts to make work more fun, however, most companies are missing the point. Employers are busy installing foosball tables, hiring chefs, and building gyms for their increasingly disgruntled employees, but these are just ways of trying to make a bad situation more tolerable. (or to coax employees into spending long hours away from home) A foosball table is not the sign of a fun place to work; it's a glaring symbol that work is not fun and employees need a break. Why would they rather be playing foosball than doing whatever it is they've been hired to do?

Many have argued that it’s immature and idealistic to believe that everyone,or even a majority of people,should be allowed to enjoy their jobs. In the words of one dark New York TimesOpEd piece, "We're still just means of production....Work is often more bearable when we don’t, in addition to money, expect it always to deliver happiness." The same might be said for life itself, particularly when our duty to perform an economic function extends from what we can produce to what we can consume. Both work and life should be much more than "bearable."

Luckily, renaissances celebrate immaturity and idealism.

Half the fun of drinking bubbly is seeing what damage you can do with the exploding cork. Now you can add to the fun by clipping the 9cm Champichute onto the neck of the bottle and carefully pushing the 'pin' at the end of the parachute into the cork. The parachute is taken along with the cork which drifts down slowly and harmlessly.

#3: Be Casual
We're moving into what I call the era of the "Casual Web" (and casual content creation). This is much bigger than the hobbyist web or the professional web. Why? Because people have lives. And now, people with lives also have broadband. If you want to hit the really big home runs, create services that fit in with—and, indeed, help—people's everyday lives without requiring lots of commitment or identity change. Flickr enables personal publishing among millions of folks who would never consider themselves personal publishers—they're just sharing pictures with friends and family, a casual activity. Casual games are huge. Skype enables casual conversations.

"We will always be Muslims, Serbs or Croats," said Veselin Gatalo of the youth group Urban Movement Mostar.

"But one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee."

Update Erik sez, "Someone stole Bruce Lee's nunchucks! Apparently it happened a few hours after the statue was unveiled in Mostar. According to this article, several dozen citizens gathered in the park where the statue was unveiled to 'express their disgust.' 'Once again we've shown what Balkan savageness is!,' says one." (Thanks, Erik, Marion and Sinisa!)

Now, Baz and Alexander have found this old newsgroup post from a First4Internet programmer offering cash if someone will do his homework for him. Later, code from the free/open source software project LAME (which does some of what this programmer was trying to do) showed up in a First4Internet product.

I know it sounds like I am just after some free code due to my laziness but I really dont have the time and I am serious about the cash - I really need this functionality!

Previous installments of the Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

EFF's Fred von Lohmann has a sterling review of Siberry's store:

Her new download store, recently unveiled at her site, is a model of what the music downloading world could be. All of her songs are available as plain MP3s, which means they will play on your iPod and are not loaded with DRM restrictions (much less evil rootkits).

And you pay whatever you like for them. Yes, you set whatever price you like. Options include:

* free ("gift from Jane");
* a standard price (CAN$0.99);
* self-determined price - pay now; or
* self-determined price - pay later (to facilitate try-before-you-buy).

When you purchase the song, moreover, you can select up to 5 people to whom you can email a link to the song.

I just saw her perform in concert here in SF, and she summed it up this way: "I want to treat people the way I'd like to be treated. I don't like being treated like a child, so I won't be doing that to other people."

Update: Pete sez, "Kudos to Jane for following the lead of former [Canadian 90s indie greats] The Inbreds drummer Dave Ullrich and his zunior.com label, which has been doing a booming business for several years now. In addition to providing plain-Jane (pun intended) mp3s they allow you to download a full sized CD ISO file for your burning pleasure. Beat that! Plus if someone wants a CD, they can pay a bit extra to cover shipping, and get both."

Advocating and saving the Net is not a partisan issue. Lawmakers and regulators aren't screwing up the Net because they're "Friends of Bush" or "Friends of Hollywood" or liberals or conservatives. They're doing it because one way of framing the Net--as a transport system for content--is winning over another way of framing the Net--as a place where markets and business and culture and governance can all thrive. Otherwise helpful documents, including Ernest Partridge's "After the Internet" fail because they blame "Bush-friendly conservative corporations" and appeal only to one political constituency, in this case, progressives. Freedom, independence, the sovereignty of the individual, private rights and open frontiers are a few among many values shared by progressives and conservatives. All are better supported, in obvious ways, by the Net as a place rather than as a transport system.

Earlier this month, I blogged a story about Singapore's chief executioner, whose identity was outed in the Aussie press after more than 50 years and more than 850 executions.

"They called me a few days ago and said I don't have to hang Nguyen and that I don't have to work anymore," Mr Singh told Reuters news agency.

"I think [the prison authorities] must be mad after seeing my pictures in the newspapers."

Update: According to an article from an Aussie news-source, the hangman still has his job: "'There is no change to his status,' added the spokesman, but he would not confirm whether Singh would be the executioner in Nguyen's case. An Australian sheetmetal worker on Monday reportedly offered his services to Singapore to replace Singh as hangman." (Thanks, IZ Reloaded!)

Each rod has a flared rear end, like the feathers of an arrow, and hundreds can be packed into a single cylindrical shell. This shell can be lobbed into a mined area and just before impact a charge behind the arrows will fire them downwards. The metal flights will keep the arrows on a straight course so that they pepper the area at high velocity and at regular spaces.

Tests show that a shell containing hundreds of arrows can wipe out every mine in an area several metres square, even when the mines are buried under sand or under nearly a metre of water. GPS can also be used to guide the shells into overlapping patches in order to safely clear a wide area.

On May 29, 2002, a girl celebrating her 18th birthday -- in her first hour of her first day on the job at the McDonald's in Roosevelt, Iowa -- was forced to strip, jog naked and assume a series of embarrassing poses, all at the direction of a caller on the phone, according to court and news accounts.

On Jan. 26, 2003, according a police report in Davenport, Iowa, an assistant manager at an Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar conducted a degrading 90-minute search of a waitress at the behest of a caller who said he was a regional manager -- even though the man had called collect, and despite the fact the assistant manager had read a company memo warning about hoax calls just a month earlier. He later told police he'd forgotten about the memo.

On June 3, 2003, according to a city police spokesman in Juneau, Alaska, a caller to a Taco Bell there said he was working with the company to investigate drug abuse at the store, and had a manager pick out a 14-year-old customer -- and then strip her and force her to perform lewd acts...

Across the United States, at least 13 people who executed strip-searches ordered by the caller were charged with crimes, and seven were convicted.

But most of the duped managers were treated as victims — just like the people they searched and humiliated. They all "fell under the spell of a voice on the telephone," wrote a judge in Zanesville, Ohio, in an order acquitting Scott Winsor, 35, who'd been charged with unlawfully restraining and imposing himself on two women who worked for him at a McDonald's.

Chicago lawyer Craig Annunziata, who has defended 30 franchises sued after hoaxes, said every manager he interviewed genuinely believed they were helping police.

"They weren't trying to get their own jollies," he said.

...My mother-in-law has a severe case of multiple sclerosis and has been conned to a wheelchair for almost 20 years. Six years ago my brother-in-law developed a mild case of MS, and my wife, a neurologist, then confided in me her fear, practically a conviction, that she would be next. Every time she brings up her perception that MS is her destiny, I try to counter it with the bald statistic that only 4 percent of close relatives are at risk for the disease. "There is a 96 percent chance that you won't get it," I say. But for my wife, as for many others, the perception rests with the 4 percent. Empathy for her mother and a natural tendency to personalize her experience create the fear and the conviction, despite her neurologist's knowledge of the disease.

Recurrent or unremitting fear has the same deleterious effects on the human body that running persistently at 80 to 100 miles per hour has on a car. Many illnesses are more likely to occur as a result, including heart disease, stroke and depression. Thus, we should focus our efforts on avoiding the ordinary killers such as heart attacks that develop as a result of our unremitting worries rather than extraordinary occurrences or exotic diseases. Consider: in 2001 terrorists killed 2,978 people in the U.S., including five from anthrax attacks. That same year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease killed 700,142; cancer, 553,768; accidents, 101,537; and suicide, 30,622. Murders (not including 9/11) accounted for only 17,330 deaths.

So what can be done about irrational fear? There is no one standard treatment in part because symptoms vary from one individual to the next. A person may feel destined to a given bad outcome and have a greater sense of foreboding because of a certain family tendency. Some people's bodies more easily release the ght-or-ight hormones than others. Time-consuming therapy and the resulting reeducation, to avoid triggering our fears, have been the chief solution to date. Now research also suggests therapy could be supplemented by a simple pill that blocks the reception or production of fear signals or even by a fear "vaccine." The fear research does not seek a traditional vaccine--in which the immune system develops protective capabilities in response to the presence of an injected (inert) disease agent. Rather the immune system might be chemically primed with a shot so that it is as healthy as possible--making the body less susceptible to hyperreacting to threats.

ORIGINAL USED ENAMEL SIGN ,MACHINE MUST NOT BE WORKED UNLESS GUARDS ARE IN POSITION.

COLOUR: WHITE BACKGROUND ,BLACK LETTERS .

SIZE 1 FT 4 INCH'S X 1 FT 2INCH'S.

WEIGHT ,APPROX 4 LBS.

While completing her master's in art at San Francisco State in the early 1970's, Ms. Hershman Leeson was frustrated by her lack of recognition. So she began writing reviews of her own work and publishing them, under pseudonyms in local newspapers. Another early project involved taking a room at the Dante Hotel in San Francisco and spreading out personal items - books, cosmetics, clothes - to create portraits of imaginary inhabitants.

Then she conjured up Roberta Breitmore, her most sustained character study. From 1974 to 1978, while Ms. Hershman Leeson was a wife and mother trying to make it in San Francisco as an artist, Roberta was a divorced woman new to town, trying to make it on her own. The artist brought her to life by wearing a blond wig, applying heavy makeup and adopting a set of rather depressive tendencies.

Other performance artists in the 1970's were also creating characters to untangle the knots of identity and gender, but Roberta was no one-act wonder. She had her own slumped posture, slow gait, colorful outfit, loopy handwriting, odd jobs and romantic encounters. In time, Roberta acquired a driver's license, two credit cards and her own apartment.

"Everyone thought I was crazy," the artist said. "But I rented Roberta an apartment across the street from my house. I just didn't feel her life would be complete without her own space."

Still, being Roberta was not easy. She went to Weight Watchers and gained weight. She met a man through a personal ad who tried to recruit her into a prostitution ring. Ms. Hershman Leeson also found it hard to sit through psychoanalysis as someone else when "my marriage was ending and I had so much going on that I could have really used the therapy myself."