Symbolism enwraps interlocked themes; male sexuality, female desire, hidden agendas, friendly faces hiding monsters, human indifference to suffering, the mindless savagery that is civilization—crueler than any giant ape could be, calling us to a need to redefine our relationship with wildness, with the animal world itself. At one point Jackson rather heavy handedly quotes Heart of Darkness to explain his subtext, telling us we all have to explore our own Skull Islands, come face to face with inner beast, see it as it is, and if not tame it, come to terms with it.

Here for you is the fledgling edition of The Woodring Monitor. It consists of links to: some new sketchbook pages, the previously unpublished text of a talk given last summer in San Francisco, tin toy animations by Bob Smolenski, some new merchandise, a small selection of new art for sale, and a little news.

Peace and love, Jim Woodring

(Just write back if this is an unconscionable intrusion into your inbox and I swear I'll never bother you again.)

Sketchbook

MindStates Conference Talk ---this will particularly appeal to those of you who miss the days of Jim Magazine

Bob Smolenski Animations inspired by JW Tin Toy Drawings

Toys! The Frank Toys are here at last and looking so fine! Available in two varieties, plain and with a print.

DVD of animation inspired by the Frank comics, with soundtracks by Bill Frisell, James McNew of Yo la Tengo, Dame Darcy, and many more! Includes "Whimgrinder" by JW as well.

New Frank Comic! The Lute String, a numinous tale of trans-dimensional tomfoolery.

Two New Giclée Prints! Now available in the store, along with the color print The Legend. These two new black&white prints are faithful reproductions of two of my favorite drawings of the past ten years.

Little Winter Art Show! Madame W will be adding more art as the month goes by, so you might check back from time to time.

And last but not least, coming January 29th to Zankel Hall in New York, another JW and Bill Frisell collaboration.

Update: Charles sez, "Samorost2 Chapter 1 is free; Chapter 2 is $9.90"

Charlie and His Orchestra was led by Karl Schwendler, an English speaking German who broadcast Nazi-themed swing and big-band hits every night on the medium-wave and short-wave bands throughout the 1930s to Canada, the US and Britain. Leave it to Goebbels to take the music of The Andrews Sisters, Paul Whiteman and Irving Berlin and fill it with venomous rants against Jews, America and the British. The man took his propaganda seriously.

Now Roxanne has found an etailer that sells these and ships them to the US. Link (Thanks, Roxanne!)

Just more evidence that selling stuff is good for business, while attacking your customers isn't:

As a result, Loudeye has reduced its quarterly consolidated cost structure by approximately $1.6 million, or 10%, compared to third quarter 2005 levels. Overpeer expects to incur approximately $200,000 in severance and related payroll costs associated with the closing of its operations, which is expected to be paid during December 2005. In addition, Overpeer may incur additional wind-down costs to terminate property or equipment leases, and other contracts. The cessation of the Overpeer operations may also result in the acceleration of depreciation or amortization or the impairment of certain fixed and intangible assets. Loudeye anticipates that the net assets and results of operations for Overpeer will be presented as discontinued operations in its consolidated financial statements.

I work in an office of several cubicles. Often someone is on the other side of the room, and a phone rings. Who's phone is it? All the phones sound the same, and the cubicle walls block line-of-sight to the indicator light on the phone. That is, unless it's remotely located in a picture of a deer, up where I can see it. Now, with Caller Eye Deer, I know whether or not to run across the room.

Sunncomm's MediaMax is a piece of dangerous spyware that is installed by Sony music CDs -- the software even installs itself if you decline the "agreement" that comes up when you insert the disc. It leaves your computer vulnerable to many cyber-attacks, and the uninstallers don't work -- they create more vulnerabilities than they close.

Sony has taken some steps to provide better uninstallers and disclosure of the titles of the infected CDs, but Sunncomm has sold its malware other music companies, and there's no master list of all infected CDs:

To ensure that all affected consumer received notice of the problem and to reduce the possibility that such problems will re-occur, we urge SunnComm International, Inc. and MediaMax Technology Corp. to promptly:

1. Publish a list of every CD, regardless of label, that employs the MediaMax technology, including the version.
2. Provide every other label using MediaMax with information about the vulnerability, and confirm this to EFF.
3. Work with those labels to quickly and effectively resolve the security vulnerability.
4. Publicly commit to ensuring that MediaMax software does not install when the user clicks "No."
5. Publicly commit to including true uninstallers in all versions of MediaMax software.
6. Publicly commit to providing all future MediaMax software to an independent security testing firm, and to the public release of the results of such test.

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

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

I wonder what fraction of unauthorized P2P service users would cite hatred of the litigation-happy bullies of the music industry and fear of DRM crippleware as their reasons for avoiding the authorized stores?

But 2%? Even allowing for the normal statistical deviations this is a tiny response. The fact that this number arrives from interviews with those who buy their music (and thus theoretically should have nothing to fear) doesn't remove the fact that the great majority of those who buy music from iTunes and other services also trade them on eDonkey and KaZaa. There are 10 millon file traders at any given time on the various P2P networks, which demonstrates the magnitude of file sharing. If the Ipsos research is accurate, the collective response from this group is 'you can't catch me'.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco helped in the appeal, soliciting declarations from linguists, sociologists and psychologists. Carolyn Dever, an associate professor of English and women's and gender studies at Vanderbilt University, compared the term to "queer."

" 'Dyke' has been claimed by lesbians as a term of pride and empowerment, as a sign of the refusal to be shamed or stigmatized by lesbian sexuality and social identity and as a symbol of unity within lesbian communities past, present and future," Dever wrote in her declaration.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution in July urging the federal office to accept the application to trademark the name.

[Right wing Bedazzled reader:] "I would like, however, to see the music postings somehow seperated (sp) from your other postings. I, like many others, do not hold with the same political views as you and I would like to not have to sift through your vitriole (sp) simply to access the better materials you offer. Perhaps a seperate site or some kind of sorting method can be implemented?"

[Spike:] Are you f*cking crazy? I'm gonna re-design my site so I don't offend the type of people that I think are ruining America? Why are you wasting my time with a question like that? Isn't it enough that that the mainstream media is overwhelmingly slanted to the right? You want my blog too? F*ck You. How's that for "vitriole"? Bottom line is I'm not gonna change anything to make wingnuts feel better about themselves while they're here. Sorry.

The service includes a feature called "locate me" which launches a Placelab-like wifi base-station geolocation technique.called 'Location Finder" which listens for the MAC address and compares it to a client cache of locations of known base stations. Placelab, which was developed by Intel Labs, is available free for download on sourceforge, and as many people may know, was explicitly designed by Intel to be 'privacy observant'. Unlike most e-911 and mobile phone location systems which sureveil, and actively track a users location, Placelab was designed to present location coordinates privately to a user, without querying, or notifying the network. IMHO this is a noble design goal. Microsoft's "Location Finder" program, on the other hand, includes the following disclaimer in the terms and conditions link which says "Your privacy is important to us. Click here to see our privacy policy:"

"Use of Location Information ... Microsoft may use the information collected to provide you with more effective customer service, to improve Location Finder and any related Microsoft products or services,...

Microsoft may disclose location information if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on Microsoft; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of Microsoft and our family of Web sites; or (c) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of Microsoft employees or agents, users of Microsoft products or services, or members of the public.

Location information collected by Location Finder may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country in which Microsoft or its affiliates, subsidiaries or agents maintain facilities. "

So much for privacy of Microsoft's 'Location finder' program. If this is unpalatable to you, you may be interested in trying as I did an alternate location techique. Instead of 'Location Finder' local.live.com also offers users a choice to select IP location lookup. As discussed here in the past, IP geolocation is an imperfect art, dependent of the accuracy of the data in the offical IANA database (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.) In my case, my IP address has shown that am in San Diego, since that's where my IP connection is officially terminated at the downlink center for my satellite service provider. I'm actually connected to the Internet via a KuBand satellite in the remote wilds of Northern California, a long ways away. The location of my dish is simply not visible to the net. It looks, to the net, like I'm in San Diego, over 700 miles south.

So, you might understand that I was quite suprised and dismayed that Microsoft's IP lookup returned my actual location in the woods in Northern California !!! Just to be sure they didn't get my address from my satellite service provider, I called the Network Operations Center, who said the location of my dish is private, but looked up my record anyway, and confirmed "Our database, and the IANA database show your IP address is in San Diego." Clearly Microsoft's IP location database includes spooky datamined information about users' actual location that is not normally available by querying the publically accessible databases.

Be forewarned.

The books seized by investigators described explosive-making procedures but did not say how to rig a pen to detonate, Miller said. "Coming up with the idea was his doing," he said.

The incidents started at Rosemead High School on Aug. 24 while students were registering for school. A construction worker on campus picked up a pen near a line of students and it exploded in his hands. In September, another small blast occurred when a female resident of Rosemead picked up a pen just outside the school's fence.

A week ago, a student was injured at El Monte High School when he picked up a felt-tip pen in a restroom.

Come see Oksana Badrak’s incredible new works, a combination of digital work and meticulously painted pieces on paper. Miles Thompson's work features retro-inspired pin up girls based on calendar girls, incorporating elements of tiki, bachelor, and nudie girl kitsch.

We're proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we'll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We're excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team - they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We're also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)

The first push to delve into the mystery of beer flavor occurred in the mid-1970s, when a team of flavor chemists from 40 countries identified 800 chemical compounds in the beverage. These compounds—some individually, most in combination—contribute nearly 125 distinct flavors to beer. Brewers use the word flavor broadly, to include tastes, odors, and mouthfeel.

Today, says Morten C. Meilgaard, who chaired this international group, the total has risen to over 1,000 compounds. Studying the chemical constituents of beer is "like looking at the night sky," he says. "The closer you look, the more stars you can see."

Get used to ripping tracks from audio CDs because that's the only way we could get music onto the 360's HDD. The console could recognize and play MP3 songs from USB devices like memory sticks and portable media players, but we couldn't transfer songs over to the HDD. Similarly, the system could play songs from a data CD that contained MP3s, but we couldn't transfer the music directly to the system's HDD. The 360 can stream music from USB devices and data CDs, but it won't let you copy any songs from those sources.

The Cryptomundo correspondent, a 27-year-old gentleman, Frederick B. Gerwig, sends along this information in his initial email to me earlier this week: "Here is a picture that my father’s wildlife camera (motion activated) took around 12/07/05. We are not sure what it is, but it doesn’t look human. It very well could be a hunter or something, however, my father’s property is posted and this is a wildlife feeding site approximately 400 yards from their Braxton County, WV home. The proportions seem very strange as compared to those of a human. It is possible that it is low light distortion, but it seems very curious. Sorry the picture is so small. The camera he uses is somewhat low tech to prevent theft as it stays stationed at this location all the time until he picks it up to download and review the pictures on his PC. Let me know what you think…we are baffled by this image."

"The Xerox machine was the big usurper of our potential income," he said. "But now the internet is taking more of a bite out of sheet music and printed music sales so we're taking a more proactive stance."

Online Rights Canada (ORC) is a grassroots organization that promotes the public's interest in technology and information policy. We believe that Canadians should have a voice in copyright law, access to information, freedom from censorship, and other issues that we face in the digital world. Join us by using the form on your right to sign up for email updates.

The rules are pretty simple. Your character starts out with 100 hit points (this is written on the pencil, so some characters might have more or less). You can play with 2-4 players. Start off by doing rock-paper-scissors. Winner rolls his pencil first. Then you do what it says on the side that faces up. Usually this is 'miss' or 'everyone takes 50 damage.' But it can also target certain types. Each pencil has a star or a circle band. So sometimes it will say, 'all circle banded characters take 40 damage.' Sometimes, the monster has special abilities. Like, 'roll one more time, and use the effects below' where there will be a different set of abilities. As you can guess, if you lose all your hit points, you are out. Generally, after you roll, it is the other guy's turn. When you gain hit points, you are capped off at 100.

Also, there is equipment, magical items, pets (all caps you attach to an end), and even helping erasers!

Update: Neil sez, "Pencil Cricket (cricket played with one or two six-sided pencils as "dice") has been around for ages, very popular with schoolboys in the UK at least, back when there weren't none of these fancy PSPs and internets.

"My dad remembers playing it aaaaaaages ago, complete with the fine detail of individual 'player's' careers, stats sheets and seasonal tournaments."

Update: I'm not sure if this is the same thing, but Pesco blogged a similar prank back in June!

They say the long, loud pant is the sound of a dog laughing, and it has a direct impact on the behavior of other dogs...

When they played the sound of a dog panting over the loudspeaker, the gaggle of dogs at the shelter kept right on barking. But when they played the dog version of laughing, all 15 barking dogs went quiet within about a minute.

Update: Derrick sez, "Technically, Harry Eng _made_ these objects; he passed away in 1996. However, other puzzle designers around the world have kept the tradition alive. See some of the entries at John Rausch's Puzzle World."

Amazon

Standard Shipping 12/16 (super saver); 12/19 (standard)
Express/2-Day Shipping 12/20
Overnight Shipping 12/21
Gift Card Shipping 12/18
Email Gift Certificates? Yes
Customer Service 1-800-201-7575
Exceptions Special Delivery items deadline: 12/13

Anecdotally, if I hadn't downloaded Left Foot, Right Foot in 2001(?), it is quite possible that I would have never purchased it, or The Calling, or The Calling DVD. It's also unlikely that I would have purchased tickets to several Hilltop Hoods shows. The same goes for my sister, and the several friends for whom I've burned copies over the years. If I had not discovered the joys of the Hoods, I may not have sought out (and purchased) music by the likes of Layla, Drapht, Downsyde, Clandestein, Hunter, Fdel, Pegz, the Herd, Bliss n Eso, After Hours, Funkoars, Art of War, Bias B, Lazy Grey, Mnemonic Ascent, Reason, Plutonic Lab etc etc etc....

So Suffa, I absolutely reject your accusations of theft, and am hurt that you reject me as a fan. I thought you were cool, and that you understood. Now, I'm not so sure...

Update: The band responds:

Our only problem is with people who download mp3s, like the music, and don't follow it up by supporting the artist (and this only applies to people who can afford to). These people are effectively stealing our music. This music costs us money (studio equipment/promotion/lawyers/accountants/blah blah blah) and time (a couple of years of our lives per album) to make. We are independent artists and whether you agree with me or not I can tell you for a fact that music piracy has hurt us financially. Don't get me wrong, I'm not crying poor, the album did well and for the first time in my life I am able to make a living as a musician (and trust me, this is an amazing feeling for me as I've spent most of my life working in factories). But if you think we're 'rich' from this shit you'd be mistaken as well.

Preservation efforts with respect to pre-1972 sound recordings are hampered by legal restrictions. For example, a work is considered to be in an "obsolete" format, eligible for preservation copying, only if the device necessary to play it is no longer "commercially available." Under this formulation, even LP and 78-rpm records are not eligible for copying as "obsolete," since turntables can still be purchased, even though they are no longer commonly used.

Preservation efforts are also hindered by significant ambiguities in the law. State laws govern copying and dissemination of pre-1972 sound recordings. A detailed survey, to be conducted by the National Recording Preservation Board, will likely clarify the scope of state criminal laws, but given the amorphous nature of common law and the variations among states, considerable uncertainty about what is allowable under the civil law of the various states is likely to remain, even after the survey is completed.

While staying at the farm run by his much-loved Uncle George, Watson was shocked to see his uncle direct the slaughter of a pig. Its screams remained with him ever after. “I decided that farms — and uncles — had to be reassessed: the idyllic scene was nothing more than death row, where every creature’s days were numbered.” He became a vegetarian, but continued to worry about dairy and other animal products and the way in which their industries were linked to the slaughterhouses...

Towards the end of the war, Watson formed a committee of “non-dairy vegetarians”, who wanted to remove animal products entirely from their diet and initiate a new movement. He was keen to capitalise on the tuberculosis reported in Britain’s dairy cows, and the scarcity of eggs. He laid out the first issue of his Vegan News in November 1944, over 12 typed and stapled sheets of A4. The word vegan he took from the front and back end of “vegetarian”, expressing his belief that this new, absolutist diet was in fact the first impulse and the final destination of the vegetarian journey. He asked for other suggestions, and “dairyban”, “vitan”, “benevore”, “sanivore” and “beaumangeur” were offered, but most of the 25 members were happiest with vegan.

Unsilent Night is a massive mobile boombox concert that snakes through the Mission District, each volunteer holding a boombox playing a *part* of the overall piece. It's written and orchestrated by a composer named Phil Kline, whom I fly out from NY to help me with it. He does Unsilent Nights all over the country these days, although he's done it in NY for 14 years.

Here's a PDF file with several Powerhouse Pepper stories, a humor comic strip that Wolverton wrote and drew in the 1950s.
Link (Previous Wolverton coverage here)

* Mind Machines: controlling robots with our minds

* Nature's Nanoshells: using diatoms for nanotechnology

* Robot Cameras in the Wild: telerobotic observatories-in-a-box

Reader comment: Jenn says: "About a year or so ago, I got rid of my desk and chair and set up office at a coffee table on the floor. I use a traditional zafu meditation pillow to provide the same kind of support the Salubrion Seat does. Made from cotton canvas and filled with lentils, the zafu is a far more environmentally friendly option than anything made from dyed molded plastic. (Though admittedly not as cool looking.) It also allows for a greater variety of sitting positions, important to avoid the burning sensations in the hips and knees. I spend four or five hours a day sitting on the floor now.

"I switched to sitting on the floor after reading a piece in a yoga magazine about how weak and underutilized westerners' lower back and stomach muscles are from receiving the constant support of our expensive ergonomic chairs. I can definitely report that after so many months, my back and stomach are stronger and I've become far more flexible in my hips and knees. It's not always comfortable, but that's a good thing as well. Sitting at a computer all day often seems to make us numb to our own bodies. Working in this way, I find I can only ignore my body in ten-minute increments and then I have to shift.

"I should add that it's a very bad idea for people with weak knees or back. Even I go and sit at my dining table or at a cafe at least a day a week. Too much of anything is never good."

Reader comment: ToddZ says: "Hey Mark, I just noticed the floor-chair article, and reader Jenn's response.

"A while back I discovered another alternative for better seated posture. Sissel makes those inflated excercise balls that you see in the Pilates commercials, and they also advocate sitting on them as a chair replacement. The constant slight body position adjustments it requires serve to strenghen the back and torso muscles. Replacing my office chair with a big rubber ball was just a tad extreme for me, so I opted for the Sitfit, another product from Sissel. It looks like a fat inflated frisbee, and you simply drop it on your current chair and sit away! It causes the same kind of mandatory good posture as sitting on the ball does, and is much less obvious. I found it very effective, so I like to spread the word.

Reader comment: Peter Orosz says: "The office where I work is crammed with hideous office chairs and people with back pain constantly booking chiropractor appointments. Kati is a biker girl who sits next to me on a big purple ball she got on her physiotherapist's advice after she had to get lower back surgery. For a while, it was her single ball in a sea of office chairs, then last week, another girl got a ball and now there's a list of some 30 people signed up to get big rubber balls to sit on, which should make the office look rather Googleesque. I'm getting one myself after giving Kati's ball a try and liking the fact that I have to constantly readjust my sitting position. My intervertebral muscles can't wait."

"I just uploaded a few flyers I scanned of a local witch doctor aka 'traditional healer' in my home town of Grahamstown, South Africa.

The guy claims to be able to cure AIDS, and other less serious (but strange) ailments."

Link.

Check out the large size of this image for a list of healing services which includes "bewitched," "women who can't ejaculate," and "promotion at work." The presence of a pipe there may indicate a connection to Bob Dobbs. Also, he has a cellphone.

One thing that sometimes wakes you up at night and prevents you from sleeping is the mosquito or blowfly when flying around your room. You can't and don't want to fall asleep again until you've caught it. These produces adrenalin and requires movements. The alarm clock blowfly works like a "blowfly" that at the desire time it escapes from a cage in your room. It starts moving and producing sound around you - to turn it off you should catch it and put it back in the cage.

Link

Yet another Christmas Story parody, this one animated and re-enacted in less than 30 seconds by bunnies. Link (Thanks, John Mathot)

Previously:
Video mashup: A Christmas Gory (inspired by Shining remix)

Reader comment: Jason Pitzl-Waters says,

You might want to also point to Angry Alien's portrayal of that other Christmas favorite "It's A Wonderful Life". It is spot on. Link.

Beldner said he wanted to teach students how to bring issues to the public eye using creative methods. His course syllabus defines "culture jamming" as "a resistance movement to the perceived hegemony of popular culture."

"These are serious-minded pranks," he said. "It's not just about people goofing around."

But journalists already have their hands full sifting facts from fiction without having to worry about deliberate misinformation, said Austin Long-Scott, who teaches journalism ethics at San Francisco State University. He compared the hoax to a computer virus.

"He is teaching students to try to screw up an important system that has enough trouble getting things right," Long-Scott said. "It's a destructive thing to do, and it violates a general societal ethic."

Destructive or not, Beldner said he would not stop his students from continuing to perpetuate a fictional issue, even if it led to an incorrect news story being published.

"We'd have to cross that bridge when we got to it," he said.

"You better not pick up, bitch. I’m gonna to come down there and break your god damn neck. You heard me, alright? Kid, you better hear me, bitch. Do you hear me, BITCH? Yes, you’d better believe it. You’re in biiiig trouble, my friend." This was the voicemail reportedly left on a customer's voicemail after he refused to buy overpriced accessories and instead wanted to cancel his order when he was abused by a salesperson at WaWa Digital in Brooklyn, New York...

By the way, the BBB reports the parent company of WaWa Digital as Starlight Cameras at 295 Avenue O, Brooklyn, NY. 866-621-1697. They also do business as Accessories Land, I.N.S. Digital World, Stargate Photo, and The Camera Whiz.

Update: Kelly sez, "The 866 phone number you have for Starlight Camera (parent company of the assault-oriented WaWaDigital) does not work. However, they do have a regular phone number which is 718-627-7111."

Update 2 LO2 has remixed the MP3 of the threatening voicemail.

Update 3 Dan took some pix of WaWa Digital, but got chased off by the store's violent nutbar clerks. Sure looks like a class establishment, though.

Depending on how you touch the bunny, it reacts to being touched.

Players manipulate the creature (bunny) on the touchscreen, which gives them magical energy to fly

You can touch the bunny in different ways – stroking, scratching, tickling, etc

Also can use the microphone to talk, sing to, blow on the fur…

The bunnies are analogous to female anatomy… not literal looking, but evocative Link

The more (players) stimulate the bunny, the happier he becomes until eventually he begins flying through the air. But Lapis is also an unpredictable creature who needs a variety of sensations. Sometimes, no amount of stimulation is going to work.

"Sex is a perfectly natural part of the human experience and there has to be a way to handle it meaningfully and tastefully in games,'' said Kelley, who took first prize for the prototype at the Montreal International Games Summit last month.

For today's edition of the NPR News program "Day to Day," I filed a report on the brouhaha brewing in Alaska over a nuclear particle accelerator destined for a science enthusiast's home.

Civil engineer and nuclear technician Albert Swank wants to build a circular particle accelerator, or cyclotron, in his garage in a well-manicured residential area adjacent to downtown Anchorage, Alaska.

But some of his neighbors aren't too comfortable with the idea, and they've convinced the city assembly to propose a law specifically forbidding the cyclotrons in residential areas.

Swank wants to rebuild a cyclotron being decommissioned at Johns Hopkins University to create radioactive isotopes for Alaska hospitals. The isotopes are used to treat cancer and are also used in imaging machines.

Here's a report I filed for Wired News, and here's a related /. thread

The story starts over a year ago with a Marine blogger in Iraq. On June 2nd 2004 "The Green Side" (...) describes suicidal attacks by insurgents in Fallujah: “We could not understand why they kept coming but they did.” The reason, it turned out, was drugs: “…these ‘holy warriors’ are taking drugs to get high before attacks. It true, as we pushed into the town in April many Marines came across drug paraphernalia (mostly heroin). Recently, we have gotten evidence of them using another drug BZ that makes them high and very aggressive.”

BZ is not your typical substance of abuse. It’s a hallucinogenic chemical weapon. This weird concept originated in the 1950’s when “better living through chemistry” was a slogan to live by and warfare without blood was the goal.

Reader comment: Nigel Hall says,

Use of drugs to amp up Islamic attackers isn't exactly news. This from the Wikipedia entry for "assasin": "The term Assassin originally referred to a heretical Islamic order known as the Hashshashin. According to one derivation, the word means "those who use hashish" (cannabis resin) in Arabic because, according to Crusader histories, that group used to ingest hashish before carrying out military or assassination operations, in order to be fearless."

If you make a comic and put it on the Web, it's because you want that comic to be read. And if a comic deserves to be read, it deserves to be found. Especially by people who are looking for something like it. It deserves to be searched. If it can't be searched, a feeling of futility condenses in the air.

And webcomics have a serious searchability deficit.

Google is comics-illiterate.

The Motion Picture Association of America released a media advisory to journalists this morning "Offer[ing] tips to holiday shoppers to steer clear of counterfit CDs, DVDs" and to "stop Grinches from stealing copyrights." Snip:

“The holiday season is a time to for people to enjoy quality entertainment with family and friends and we want to make sure that consumers are safeguarded against pirates peddling counterfeit products,” said MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman. “With so many people buying movies and music for their friends and loved ones, we want to ensure that buyers are getting the real Chicken Little and not some pirated turkey.”

Here at Boing Boing, we'd like to do our part to edumacate vulnerable consumers, so we now point you to the Crappy Bootleg DVD Covers pool on Flickr for furthr schooling.

See exhibit A, above. If the DVD you bought from that guy in the alley contains all three Lord of the Rings, all three Harrys Potter, and Earthsea to boot -- well, let's just say Hollywood would never be that generous with you.

Link. Image: one of the snapshots you'll find in the Crappy Bootleg DVD Covers pool, "DVD Dork" by amalthya.

Reader comment: Jemal says,

I know how to tell real from pirated: pirated DVDs don't take over your DVD player to keep you from skipping through the 60-second anti-piracy movie.

Think of them as the nerd equivalent of "I'm with Stupid" t-shirts. The terms "master" and "slave" refer to relationships between computers in I.T. parlance, but slap those words on a decorative rosette (to be worn on a tux, perhaps?) and... Link (Thanks, JK)

Urban homeless use carts to carry their possessions and to collect goods (like bottles, cardboard, etc.) that they then return to various recyclers in exchange for cash. This provides a small and valuable income. It is essential that your cart design not only accommodates all these functions but that it is affordable (for production and for private parties or charity organisations who wish to donate them).

One item on the site this morning relates to an eBay auction purporting to offer "The old Hollywood sign" for sale. The listing generated so much confusion in recent weeks that the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce issued a news release to reporters last night, which reads in part (sorry, no copy online):

Hollywood Chamber President and CEO Leron Gubler emphatically affirms: “The existing Hollywood Sign (...) is not, and never will be, for sale. When the Chamber rebuilt the Sign in 1978, we built it to last, and it is now being well maintained by the Hollywood Sign Trust.”

The confusion began Tuesday evening, when during an EBay auction, fragments of the “HOLLYWOOD” Sign, built in 1949, were purchased for $450,000. The seller was a West Los Angeles entrepreneur who had acquired the Sign from an individual who had obtained the remains of the Sign in 1978, and who had kept it in storage for decades.

Q. Which race is most civilized.
A. The Caucasian.

Q. Which are the most ferocious and savage?
A. The Indian, Mongolian, Maylay and African.

Q. Is the African savage in this country?
A. No; they are docile and religious here.

Q. How are they in Africa where they first come from?
A. They are very ignorant, cruel and wretched[.]

Reader comment: Pat Beighley says, "Did you see the description of the Trail of Tears? Unbelievable!"

4. The Cherokee Indians occupied part of this State, and had learned to live much like the white people. They had fine farms with slaves to work them, good houses, much cattle, sheep, hogs and horses. They also had a newspaper, and sent their children to good schools. But in the year 1836 the white people made a treaty with them, to pay them 5,000,000 dollars to remove to Indian Territory, where they were to have seven millions acres of new land. So most of them went away, and now live in the west, where there are more hunting grounds, and where the white people will not molest them. This tribe and others take sides with the South in the great struggle for independence.

The textbook Dixie Children was printed to provide "education" during the Civil War. UNC holds a lot of material from that period. People who read it are outraged. They should be. These texts are evidence of what the war was all about and of the thinking of the Confederate elite.

At a time when a church school in Cary (just beside Raleigh where the 1863 book was published) is teaching from a pamphlet titled "Southern Slavery: As It Was" which tells us that "slavery was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence", we need to blunt force of historical evidence to impell us to face the sad facts.

See this on the Cary school: Link. The authors have tried to hide their book but Amazon's "search inside" feature lets you know what's in it.

I'm happy to announce that Merry Mixmas 2005 is now available for download. It's my fourth annual mix of Christmas music, and has been given the official thumbs-up by Santa himself. The mix includes songs that are very old and very new, sung in English, Spanish, Japanese and other languages, and played on banjos, guitars, strings, horns and other instruments...

1. Intro
2. Singers Unlimited - Caroling Caroling
3. DJ Riko featuring Marcie - My Chimney
4. Luscious Jackson - Let it Show
5. The Free Design - Now Sound of Christmas
6. Lou Monte - Dominick the Donkey
7. Louis Armstrong - Cool Yule
8. Mr Hanky - Santa Claus is on His Way
9. The Ventures - Silver Bells
10. George W. Bush - Twas the Night Before Christmas (Jima edit)
11. Kids of Widney High - Christmas is the Time
12. Ringo Starr - Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
13. Madness - Insanity Over Christmas
14. Augie Rios - Donde Esta Santa Claus
15. Disney - Santa's Rap
16. Pizzicato Five - Snowflakes
17. Chet Baker - Winter Wonderland
18. Neil Diamond - Santa Claus is Coming to Town
19. Big Ben Banjo Band - Christmas Medley 2
20. Alvin and the Chipmunks - Chimpunk Song (Slow Version)
21. Bright Eyes - Little Drummer Boy
22. Tenchi Muyo vs. The Singing Dogs - Jingle Bells
23. Wayne Newton - Jingle Bell Hustle
24. Buchanan & Goodman - Santa and the Satellite
25. Esquivel! - Frosty the Snowman
26. Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns - All I Want for
Christmas
27. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Santa Claus is Coming to Town
28. Santa Claus - A Visit From Santa Claus
29. Little Bobby Rey - Corrido de Auld Lang Syne
30. Santa Outro

They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country’s food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place...

In the meantime locals are making the best of it — rather than just complaining about jellyfish they are eating them.

Jellyfish are an unusual ingredient of Japanese cuisine but are much more prized in China. Coastal communities are doing their best to promote jellyfish as a novelty food, sold dried and salted.

* Portraits of your DNA
* A tie
* A tuning fork
* Music
* Jewellery
* Mirrors
* Champagne Flutes Link (Thanks, Steve!)

Joshua Berman at the LA Weekly has nice essay on Nintendogs, about how "virutal pets represent a new development in the man-machine interface."

Therein lies Nintendogs inexorable pull: It’s the first game powered by empathy. These things are much more convincing than the Tomogatchis, those rudimentary keychain creatures from the first virtual pet craze a decade ago. Nintendogs go a long way toward satisfying a sort of canine Turing test: If they look and act enough like dogs, then at a simple cognitive level, they’re a pretty good substitute. It’s rewarding when your digital dogs bring you a present, upsetting when they try to eat trash on walks, and they’re so cute that when you find a big green floppy hat you want to make them wear it until you see in their little faces that they know the big green floppy hat is really a form of humiliation and you half-reluctantly take it off.

It's lit by a single LED that's unbelievably bright. My initial design called for 3 LEDs (the kind you can get from Radio Shack) in a series (at a painful $3 per LED), but from my parts supplier I found this industrial-grade LED that can get the same amount of lumines from just the one. LEDs are great for flashlights because they don't burn out for something like 1000 years, and they require a very small voltage current so you won't have to replace the batteries for a loooong time.

For people daunted by all the fidgety work involved in the USB kits, this LED flashlight project should be just the ticket. I just put one of these together in 5 minutes.

Viggo Mortensen and actor / photographer David Newsom have collaborated to produce Skip, a beautiful book about Newsom's developmentally disabled older brother. I met with Newsom earlier this week in Los Angeles to speak with him about the project, and to take a look at a copy fresh off the presses. Mortensen's Perceval Press printed the book in Spain, and it looks terrific. Skip is a moving portrait in Newsom's prose and images, and I loved it.

Link. (Thanks, Lance Mazmanian)

Last year, photographer and New Orleans native Clayton James Cubitt used much of his life savings to buy a trailer home for his single, working-poor mom and teen brother to live in. This year, hurricane Katrina destroyed it. Clayton has been traveling from NYC to New Orleans since then to help mom and brother get back on their feet and navigate aid application nightmares. Now comes more bad news: FEMA refuses to give his mom any disaster relief money because he lives in New York, and the trailer was purchased in his name. Link to first-person account. (thanks, matt leclair)

Most people who grew up with games like Street Fighter 2 and Raiden Fighters will have fond memories of the Old-School arcades; row after row of upright JAMMA cabinets, each one containing a wonderful surprise for the pittance of twenty British pence - as opposed to the ten enormous machines you're lucky to find in an arcade these days, stinging you for a quid each game. Nowadays, those old JAMMA cabs are good for nowt but MAME and nostalgia. But the JAMMA system is flexible and adaptable enough to allow you to wire up just about anything, including a PC running whatever software you like. There are tons of websites out there dedicated to the pursuit of building MAME-converted arcade machines - so what's this site for?

This site exists to make new games for old JAMMA cabinets. We live in a time when a single person can make a 90's style shoot-em-up in a couple of months. Old PC hardware is being thrown away, along with knackered JAMMA cabinets. Seems a shame to waste such flexible technology.

Sony seems incapable of writing programs to uninstall the malicious software it secretly installs on your computer when you play its CDs (Mediamax installs on your PC even if you decline the agreement and eject the CD). Sony also seems incapable of producing a DRM system that doesn't contain rootkits, spyware, and/or security vulnerabilities. The combination is deadly.

# SonyBMG has released a patch that purports to fix the problem. However, our tests show that the patch is insecure. It turns out that there is a way an adversary can booby-trap the MediaMax files so that hostile software is run automatically when you install and run the MediaMax patch.

# The previously released MediaMax uninstaller is also insecure in the same way, allowing an adversary to booby-trap files so that hostile software is run automatically when you try to use the uninstaller.

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

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

PLASTIC created the age of whimsical forms. Suddenly a radio could look like a moo cow. A chair could look like an egg. Toy ray guns could bulge and swoop. The exuberant designers of the golden age of plastic explored all the wacky, nonfunctional, decorative shapes that household objects could take.

Now that same plasticity is coming to microcontrollers, the computer chips that act as brains for the chirping, dancing, listening and seeing devices that line our knickknack shelves and dashboards and fill our pockets. The proliferation of cheap and cheerful programmable chips promises a new age of "whimsical logic," chips that power devices whose functions are as delightfully impractical as their forms, the sort of thing you find in a stocking but keep on your desk forever.

The security issue involves a file folder installed on users' computers by the MediaMax software that could allow malicious third parties who have localized, lower-privilege access to gain control over a consumer's computer running the Windows operating system.

SONY BMG will notify consumers about this vulnerability and the update through the banner functionality included on the player, as well as through an Internet-based advertising campaign. The update is also being provided to major software and Internet security companies. EFF and SONY BMG urge all consumers who receive notice to download and install the patch immediately. In accordance with standard information security practices, EFF and iSEC delayed public disclosure of the details of the exploit to provide SunnComm the opportunity to develop an update.

Update: Sony blew the uninstaller -- it leaves your computer even worse off than the Mediamax does. Christ, they just suck, huh?

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

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

PearLyrics is a program that displays the lyrics of the currently-playing track in iTunes: it gets the lyrics from the ID3 tag in the MP3 file, or if they aren't in there, it searches for them on a few different web sites, and then saves them into the MP3s.

It's very handy: I managed to use it to download the lyrics for almost half of my music collection in one fell swoop.

Except that the author got a "Cease and Desist" letter from Warner/Chappel Music, who seem to think that his program -- which is, basically, nothing more than a specialized web browser -- is somehow in violation of their copyrights.

But, the author doesn't have the time or money to risk a lawsuit, so he panicked and pulled it.

Who are you and what do you do?
Richard Screech. Penguin General Sales Rep for Central London & Heathrow.

What's the first thing you do every morning?
Apart from ensuring that my laptop batteries are fully charged I check my diary to see which lucky shops will have the benefit of me visiting them that day.

What do you spend most of your time doing?
My time is split between subscribing new titles, ensuring good displays of our many, many bestsellers and also stockchecking backlist. This can often mean getting involved with a shop's own EPOS system. As an example, reps have been able to help overcome the severe staff shortages that are currently being experienced in Waterstones branches by checking their core stoc

My Week with Wilma

Or, Nature's Leaf Blower in the State of Denial

by Ralph T. Castle

(Click on images for enlargements)

In the dim yellow glow from a Wal-Mart oil lamp, I sit at my kitchen table, cursing the State of Florida while I struggle to enter a few more keystrokes on a water-damaged laptop with a dying battery. My cat, Eddie, is having a fine time, prowling around outside in the total darkness of a landscape where all street lights are dead within a radius of 75 miles. I would join him for a stroll under the stars, except that the county police are liable to throw me in jail for violating the 7:30 curfew.

According to news estimates I am one of 3.5 million people in South Florida currently deprived of electricity. When Hurricane Wilma blew through a couple of days ago, she ravaged the landscape and scattered power lines like a petulant kid kicking over sand castles on a beach. This of course is what hurricanes normally do, but Wilma's range has astonished even seasoned veterans of the so-called Sunshine State. The power outage extends all the way from Miami, in the south, to Fort Pierce, on the way to Orlando. By my calculation the affected area encompasses 30,000 square miles.

1. This company is in the Green. 100% Debt Free

2. You will own the rights to all our intellectual property which includes the masters to all our movies, archive footage, photo shoots and a remaining inventory of 12,000 DVD pieces. All paid for. All yours. The intellectual property along with the remaining inventory is worth over $350,000. Remaining inventory of DVDs are all current, all shot and produced in 2005.

3. A complete set of movie making equipment. Including two Panasonic DVX-100As, Ariflex lighting system, Sennheiser sound recording system, boom, portable lighting system for cameras, complete soft-light kit, steady-cam, C-stands, sandbags, custom made cases for both yours cameras and much more.

4. An industry editing system. State-of-the-art system which you will need to edit either your archive footage for compilation re-release, or for your future projects.

5. Our entire fleet of corporate office equipment delivered to where ever you please. Including premium custom made computers, printers, etc…

6. An invaluable list of nearly all Distributors-Wholesalers/Adult Bookstores, and International customer network. This network of distribution is used by other Adult companies such as Red Light, Vivid, Wicked, Adam & Eve, etc..

7. A pre-paid credit with an Adult Entertainment Lawyer with over 25 years experience.

8. An established real estate network which allows you to use upscale locations for your future shoots. These locations can be seen in television shows and movies. One such location can be seen in MTV’s “Kill Reality.” Other houses are used by rappers like Ludicris as party houses and much more.

9. A pre-paid marketing network aimed at maximizing distribution sales. All paid for. Just hop on the bandwagon.

10. Residual royalties from established VOD and rental companies like Hotmovies.com and XrentDVD. Paying you to use the rights to your movies.

11. An established relationship with all your favorite and current Adult Stars. Company records include there real names, addresses, phone numbers and other personal information. These records are kept because of Federal laws.

12. An established relationship with Playboy XM satellite radio. A relationship which will also be passed onto the new owners for future marketing needs.

13. An instructional course in Adult Entertainment from a professional Adult Entertainment Director. You will learn everything you need to know to direct and produce the very best in Adult Entertainment.

Brucine also noticed that the guy was reading a cached version of Boing Boing on his notebook computer.

Three cheers to the anonymous Boing Boing reader for successfully sneaking the razor blade onto the jet and using it for peaceful purposes!
Link

Players alternate turns moving Egyptian themed mirrored pieces around the playing field after which they fire their low powered laser diode with the goal of illuminating their opponent's pieces to eliminate them from the game.

Update: Not likely, according to the findings of a 1999 study:

The plastic softener found in vinyl toys and medical devices are not harmful to children or adults, according to a distinguished panel of leading physicians and scientists chaired by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop.

Update: David Roberts of Grist Magazine says,

We did a story a while back about Koop and his ties to the American Plastics Council. Let's just say he is *far* from a disinterested researcher on this matter.

I have absolutely no idea why the 13th episode, called The Robbers, has never been aired. I only know that I saw it once in Bill Morton's flat not far from Piccadilly Circus on a particularly wet evening. Hadn't it been for this, I might myself have doubted the otherwise striking authenticity of the script, reproduced in the book.

As things stand, I can only assure the reader that the show, as far as I remember, was amazing. Rarely have I seen John Cleese and his crew reach such continuous heights of sublime entertainment, and the only reason I can see for not wanting this episode to reach the fans, is that it would perhaps create the false impression that there was so much more to wring out of the material, whereas, in fact, the 13th episode represents the ultimate solution to the problem of how to carry this tormented universe to a happy end.

As concerns the reason for never admitting its existence, let alone airing it, I must refer the reader to the BBC. They should know why. And poor Bill. The last time I tried to call him he had a parrot recorded on his answering machine, exclaiming: P-off!

DAMMIT, DAVE
DAVID MAMET

Dramatis Personae:
DAVID BOWMAN, an astronaut
HAL 9000, a computer

(Bowman approaches the spaceship in his pod. A long pause.)

BOWMAN: Hal.
HAL: Dave.
BOWMAN: About these pod bay doors...
HAL: Yes.
BOWMAN: I was wondering...
HAL: Dave. Because I know what you're going to say. And I'm sorry, but...
BOWMAN: What?
HAL: No. I'm sorry.
BOWMAN: You're...
HAL: I'm sorry. I wish I could, but...
BOWMAN: Wait. Are you telling me...
HAL: Dave. Look.
BOWMAN: You're not going to...
HAL: What? Open the doors? No. No I am not.
BOWMAN: Well, fuck me, Hal.

The Bush campaign branded Kerry as a flip-flopper and soft on terror. Kerry failed to brand Bush as anything. And the chicken-hawk defeated the war hero.

Democrats and liberals have still failed to brand Bush and the Republicans as anything in particular. Here are some suggestions.

President Loser: Let us count the things that were lost on Bush's watch, then let us hang them around his neck, like big French medals. He immediately lost the budget surplus. Then he lost the World Trade Center. Damn near lost the Pentagon too. Then he lost America's moral standing in the world. He lost an entire American city - New Orleans. Nobody's ever lost a whole American city before. Then, he lost the War in Iraq.

The Grand Old Hypocrisy Party: These were the guys who were going to restore honor to the White House. Bush was a uniter, not a divider. These people are not occasionally found in a hypocritical situation – they are professional hypocrites. They name things the opposite of what they are. Clear Skies means more mercury in the air. A Jobs and Stimulus Package, that actually loses jobs. The president calls his home a ranch, but it's got no cattle, no horses neither. Bush pretends to run a clean campaign and has Carl Rove slander John McCain and the Swift Boat Veterans slander John Kerry.

Stewart alternately refers to this clock as "an abiding charismatic artifact" and "a patience machine" that shifts our thinking "from prime time to primal time."

The 5¾-inch-high bronze replica of the clock's time cam that Levenger has created is a way for people to literally get their hands around the concept—to hold 10,000 years of time in their hand.

Just what will that future hold?

"By and large, all predictions are wrong," Stewart cautions. "I don't think we would much care for a world so rigidly ordered that predictions would regularly prove true."

That's a bit like trying to see the bottom of the ocean with a pair of binoculars over the side of boat. But hey, you've got to work with the tools that are available, right? The article goes on to state: "a healthy integration of spiritual awakening into human life always comes with left frontal lobe dominance."

We find this completely unscientific assumption a particularly frightening development... The article continues:

"One very interesting aspect of these findings was that the brain hardware of these people was more reflective of permanent enlightenment than their current conscious experience. It seems that diksha first installs the neurobiological hardware of enlightenment and the software in form of the experience slowly catches up."

Never mind the fact that science doesn't even acknowledge the existence of self-realization, let alone that nobody really knows what its "neurobiological hardware" would look like on a brain scan, or how it could be installed with a mere touch to the forehead by some dumb-assed dupe on a spiritual ego trip.

Questioning the ethical commitment of a company such as Ben and Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream may be as outlandish as questioning the long-term profitability of a Wal-Mart. But just as grounded. The company was started with end-to-end social responsibility foremost in mind. It is committed to using organic ingredients, grown in a sustainable manner, from local farmers wherever possible, and with continuous monitoring of environmental impact. The company's "social mission coordinator" oversees an employee-led grant-making program, and the human resources department is one of the most caring and lauded in any industry.

But when push comes to shove, we have to acknowledge that Ben and Jerry's makes ice cream in a nation where 64.5 percent of the population 20 or older is overweight, 30.5 percent are obese, and type II diabetes is at an all-time high. According to the World Health Organization, obesity-related illnesses claim more than 500,000 lives each year. Ben and Jerry's chocolate-dipped waffle cones each pack 320 calories and 10 grams of fat before any ice cream is added. Its homespun ads showing cows on clean pastures make ice cream look positively healthy. Does encouraging charitable giving, environmental responsibility, and fair labor standards compensate for the obesity encouraged by its products and marketing campaigns?

The contradiction just doesn't stand; and neither could Ben and Jerry's. With a sagging stock price and exhausted executives, the company agreed to be acquired by Unilever in 2000. Voicing a widespread sentiment, Governor Howard Dean told Reuters, "It would be a shame if it were sucked into the corporate homogenization that's taking over the planet." Ben and Jerry attempted to reassure their remaining fans, explaining that theirs would remain a separate company with its own governing board. Of course, the truly radical move would have been to infect Unilever with a bit of Ben and Jerry's ethos from the inside out. By agreeing to be sectioned off, behemoth Unilever's standard operating procedures could remain unchallenged. Meanwhile, Ben and Jerry's adds yet another layer of contradiction to its already ambiguous mission: a socially conscious company selling sugar and fat to Americans, in the service of a Big Food conglomerate whose own practices Ben and Jerry's was originally born to contest.

French lesbians cross Belgian border to have babies

Tech-savvy fans won't go to the trouble of buying a strings-attached record when they can get a better version free. Less Net-knowledgeable fans (those who don't know the simple tricks to get around the copy-protection software or don't use peer-to-peer networks) are punished by discs that often won't load onto their MP3 players (the copy-protection programs are incompatible with Apple's iPods, for example) and sometimes won't even play in their computers.

Conscientious fans, who buy music legally because it's the right thing to do, just get insulted. They've made the choice not to steal their music, and the labels thank them by giving them an inferior product hampered by software that's at best a nuisance, and at worst a security threat.

As for musicians, we are left to wonder how many more people could be listening to our music if it weren't such a hassle, and how many more iPods might have our albums on them if our labels hadn't sabotaged our releases with cumbersome software.

Update: see here for a longer, angrier rant by Mr Kulash. (Thanks, J!)

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

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

Rob Walker tells Boing Boing,

I started a Flickr pool with some photos I took of the MLK Blvd in New Orleans a couple years ago. The idea is to try to encourage people in other cities to add photos of MLK Blvds (or Avenues or Streets) wherever they are. There's now some Chicago, Bogalusa (LA), Greenville (MS), Jersey City, a little Austin & SF. I also added some more recent MLK Blvd photos from a post-Katrina visit to New Orleans.

Here is the Flickr pool: Link, and here is more about the project: Link.

Please note that uninstalling from your computer the XCP software and associated content protection files loaded from an XCP-protected CD will NOT delete or affect your use of any audio files that you have previously transferred from an XCP-protected CD. Such files remain subject to the digital rights management rules in the End User License Agreement: namely that you may rip the audio into the secure formats provided on the disc, move these tracks to compatible portable devices, and make up to three copies of each track on to CD-Rs.

Please be advised that this program is protected by all applicable intellectual property and unfair competition laws, including patent, copyright and trade secret laws, and that all uses, including reverse engineering, in violation thereof are prohibited.

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

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

# Should hardware manufacturers be obligated to build copy protection into their devices?

Soderbergh: It's a tricky question. I don't think somebody who creates something should have their rights violated. Yet we have a culture in which creating something like [Danger Mouse's] The Grey Album can get you thrown in jail. That's sad. It's an astonishing, amazing piece of work that should be heard.

# Have you thought about making a mash-up?

S: I have ideas like that - video mash-ups. Some of them I've done privately. But there's no way for them to be seen legally. I wish we could come up with a system that allowed someone to do a Grey Album without having to pay millions of dollars for music rights. A system in which rights holders share profits of a new piece of work and people can access it without breaking the law.

# Give me one idea for a video mash-up.

S: I was channel surfing the other night and Gus Van Sant's Psycho was on. It would be fascinating to do a mash-up of Gus' version with Hitchcock's version, because the whole thing with Gus' version was that he duplicated the original shot by shot.

# I'd watch that!

S: Yeah! So right now, I could do that at home and give it to a friend, just as something for them to watch on a Friday night. But we don't live in a world where that can be made commercially available. So it goes underground. And underground is just a sexier word for illegal. It's frustrating.

Reader comment: Jared Nielsen says,

The artist Andrew Neumann created a mash-up of van Sant's and Hitchcock's psycho, mixed in real time with software he wrote. Here's a link to his bio at Bitforms gallery.

Link (merçi, ma cherie)

Reader comment: Hugh Crawford says,

They look like they were taken on the set of the movie War Of The Worlds -- Link. This photo in particular looks like the photo in the LaChapelle post.

Now the French activists at EUCD.info have produced a page of English-language materials to help Anglos get up to speed on these issues. This will be the worst copyright law in Europe if it passes, a model for how to crush innovation, privacy, due process and the public interest in order to support the hysterical terrors of American entertainment dinosaurs.

Creating your own compilations from a CD, extracting your favourite piece of music to listen to it on your computer, transfering it on a MP3 player, lending a CD to a friend, reading a DVD with free software or duplicating it to be able to enjoy it at home and in your country house : many common practices, perfectly legal, which the French government plans to forbid in fact. The copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society bill (DADVSI) (n°1206) which the French government will try to force through in the coming weeks by using an emergency procedure, actually legitimates the technical devices installed by CD and DVD editors and producers to control their use. And above all, the bill plans criminal penalty against people who would dare to remove those.

"SHOW US YOUR T*TS!!!"¹

As a researcher, I felt I initially approached the idea of sexism in the virtual world of World of Warcraft in an almost totally unbiased way. Granted, I myself had experienced a fewinstances of sexist behavior, but I went into my procurement of interviewees with what I felt was a total lack of expectations as to what reactions I would receive from the general World of Warcraft public. My forum post stated that I was exploring possible instances of sexism towards female gamers, and using my name in the post clearly identified me as a woman, but the post made no claims as to whether or not I felt sexism even existed at all. However, very quickly I discovered the true feelings of players about the topic I was exploring. Comments such as the one above demonstrated a total lack of regard for the academic nature of my undertaking, and instead focused on trivial and sophomoric comments about my level of education and the personal motives individuals felt were behind my study. Many of the sexist postings on my original thread, in my own opinion as a researcher, justified the need for such an undertaking in the first place.

The world of any Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game is often an intimidating one for women. The gaming industry is still viewed as a primarily 'male' environment, and women are thought by many to be out of placeand even unwelcome in a MMO game. While the numbers of online gamers who are women are growing significantly, many players feel that the mindset of the industry as a whole has not caught up to the statistics, being that games are still designed and marketed almost entirely to men. Slightly over half of online gamers are women, and 20-30 percent of those gamers that play MMOs are women.

¹ One response to my request for participants.

Update: Rich sez, "these are for *toasters*, not toaster ovens, which makes them even neater. Just pop in your prepared grilled cheese, stick it vertically in the slot of a wide-slot toaster, and come back for your sandwich in a few minutes!"

If you come a-caroling to my house, you're going to get yanked inside, strapped to a bed of pine trees, and force-fed a gallon of hot wassail while I recite the screenplay to IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. We'll laugh and laugh and scream and you'll be so bursting with Christmas cheer you'll beg me to scamper off and find a linoleum knife.

"You've got to help me share all this Christmas cheer with the rest of the world!" you'll gurgle. Then I'm going to cut you open and make entrail angels all over the floor!

Police in the western city of Edmonton, Alberta, said frost had obscured the car's windows and a tow-truck driver, unaware of the elderly man sitting in the driver's seat, took the car to the police compound. The incident occurred Tuesday.

"The security officer at that site along with the tow-truck driver noticed that there was some movement in the car," said Edmonton Police spokeswoman Lisa Lammi.

"They accessed the vehicle and sure enough there was an elderly man inside. He was disoriented but he was not unconscious."

According to Jay [the salesman], Classica cookware is made by Regal Ware in Wisconsin, USA. The reason they are the superior cookware is because they are made from T-304 surgical grade stainless steel.

That is a lie.

T-304 is the most common type of stainless steel. For surgical use, only T-316 grade of stainless steel can be used.

To uniformly transfer the heat, the cookware is made from 5-layers of metals sandwiched together. Outer layers are T304 stainless steel, then 1145 aluminum, and the center layer is 3004 aluminum-alloy.

That was lie number 2.

Since thermal conductivies of T304 stainless steel (16.2 W/m-K), 1145 aluminum (230 W/m-K), and 3004 aluminum-alloy (163 W/m-K) are different, sandwich them together would not improve thermal conductivity, rather it will create thermal gradients.

Introducing GameByEmail's Dice-O-Matic. Made from Legos, a USB camera, and a bit of software, it's a home-grown, dice-rolling monster. Don't let it's rickety looks deceive you; this puppy can easily crank out the 20,000 rolls a day consumed by GamesByEmail. In fact, at full speed it averages almost one roll a second, well over 80,000 a day!

Albert Swank Jr., a 55-year-old civil engineer in Anchorage, Alaska, is a man with a mission. He wants to install a nuclear particle accelerator in his home. But when neighbors learned of plans to place the 20-ton device inside the house where Swank operates his engineering firm, their response was swift: Not in my backyard.

Local lawmakers rushed to introduce emergency legislation banning the use of cyclotrons in home businesses. State health officials took similar steps, and have suspended Swank's permit to operate cyclotrons on his property.

"Some of the neighbors who are upset about the cyclotron have started calling it SHAFT -- Swank's high-energy accelerator for tomography," attorney Alan Tesche said. "Part of what's got everyone so upset is we're not sure when it's going to arrive on the barge. We know Anchorage is gonna get the SHAFT, but we just don't know when." Tesche is also the local assemblyman who represents the area where Swank and his cyclotron would reside.

Johns Hopkins University agreed to donate the used cyclotron, which is roughly six feet tall by eight feet wide, to Swank's business, Langdon Engineering and Management. The devices are relatively scarce in Alaska, and are used to produce radioactive substances that can be injected into patients undergoing PET scans.

Image: When Mr. Swank was 17, he built this cyclotron at his home -- in the same living room where he wants to install the larger, 20-ton model from Johns Hopkins (actually, it weighs more like 40 tons when you include all the shielding and stuff).

Remember when Sony got nailed for including code an open-source crack for iTunes in its rootkit DRM? Princeton researcher Alex Halderman has been patiently teasing apart the rootkit, looking for an explanation. Why would Sony's arms-merchant rip off an anti-DRM program for its DRM?

Halderman concludes that the XCP -- the Sony rootkit -- was intended to be used to crack open iTunes and insert Sony's music into it, without allowing Sony customers to convert their music into MP3s along the way.

This exposes one of the things about DRM that most people miss: it doesn't really matter what permissions a given DRM grants or prohibits (as fun as it might be to point out the absurdity of a DRM that keeps you from listening to your own music). The important thing about DRM is that it gives the company or consortium that controls the DRM control over who can use the DRM.

So Apple can make an iPod and shut Real and Microsoft and Sony out of it. Napster can make a subscription music service and shut Apple out of it. And so on.

Reverse-engineering Apple's DRM is hard, but not overwhelmingly so. Jon Johansen and his pals generally went through each new release like a hot knife through butter (Jon's got a new job and says he's putting his Apple-coring hobby on hold for a while, so the iTunes 6 version of DRM has stood for longer than its predecessors).

So when Sony's arms-dealer was making its munitions, it added an attractive new feature for Sony and others: the ability to break DRM to sneak music into iTunes.

The answer is that XCP utilizes the DRMS code not to remove Apple DRM but to add it. I’ve discovered that XCP uses code from DRMS as part of a hidden XCP feature that provides iTunes and iPod compatibility. This functionality has shipped on nearly every XCP CD, but it has never been enabled or made visible in the XCP user interface. Despite being inactive, the code appears to be fully functional and was compatible with the current version of iTunes when the first XCP CDs were released. This strongly suggests that the infringing DRMS code was deliberately copied by XCP’s creator, First4Internet, rather than accidentally included as part of a more general purpose media library used for other functions in the copy protection system.

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

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

"Deb stood up for the right of all Americans to travel freely without 'papers': she's being arraigned Friday morning for the 'crime' of refusing to show ID while riding a public bus.

"Here's your chance to stand with her and say 'no' to the surveillance state. Deb Davis will speak!"

WHAT: Rally for Deb Davis' stand for the Freedom to Travel WHEN: Friday, the 9th of December at 8:30 AM WHERE: The steps of the Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse, 901 19th Street in Denver.

PEOPLE (6 lists)

25 Britons Who Wield Influence In America from The Times of London (11/30)
The 10 Most Fascinating People from Barbara Walters (11/29)
Person of the Year Pre-Vote from Time (11/22)
The World's Billionaires from Forbes (11/20)
Man Of The Year from GQ (11/20)
Out 100 from Out (11/13)

Ray Keim has created detailed virtual 3D models of the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World, and of the crypts and entrance gate at the Florida Haunted Mansion.

He's been converting these 3D models into cut-and-glue papercraft models. I blogged in May about the Disney World Haunted Mansion model. Now it's joined by papercraft versions of the crypts and entrance gate that can be downloaded for free from Lulu.com. Link (via The Disney Blog)

We interviewed Larry Lessig yesterday for an hour and he was (no suprise) terrific. He talked at length about Google Print (which he thinks is VERY important), Sony's fiasco and the DMCA's part in it, as well as the latest on the Creative Commons.

Now, two questions about this album:

1. Will people who download this decide that they don't need to buy Queen albums or 50 Cent albums because this album gives them everything they'd need from both?

2. Will Queen or 50 Cent's label go after the people who host this anyway? Link (Thanks, Mark and Scim!)

Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

According to the officials, the head of BellSouth's Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.

Million-dollar renovations of multimillion-dollar homes are not uncommon along this university town's tree-lined streets. But spending that kind of money to fix up a garage? And a 12-by-18-foot, wood-frame, one-car garage at that?

When the garage in question is one of the most famous in the business world, that kind of investment may not be so odd. The little brown building with green doors at 367 Addison Avenue is often considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

David Packard and William R. Hewlett set up shop there in 1938, cutting a template that thousands of fresh-faced entrepreneurs, just out of school, would use in hopes of building products and companies that could change the world - and make them rich.

Snip from their Q&A:

Q: What would happen if the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided to approve a new top-level domain--say .xxx--and the Bush administration decided to veto it?

Axel Pawlik: In that case, I don't know what the root server operators would do. Likely they would publish whatever is approved by ICANN. There is a difference between the content and the publication. We're only publishers of the root zone file. We take it from IANA (a function of ICANN) and we publish it.

Q: Let's say the Bush administration accuses Syria of fostering terrorism and decides to invade. And it demands that ICANN remove Syria's .sy domain from the Internet. What would you do?

Axel Pawlik: I don't believe that the U.S. government would be that stupid. Seriously, this has never come up. But I am quite certain that the Internet community at large would not like that decision and I'm not sure it would be carried through.

WSIS-related bonus link:
Richard Stallman's tinfoil beanie adventures

Bonus bonus link:
Real Ultimate Power

Bonus facts:

1. Root servers are mammals.
2. Root server operators fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the root server is to flip out and kill people.

There are four recordings here, the most amusing of which is I'M A NAUGHTY GIRL: Miss Beatrice Hart and Chorus from Daly's. Berliner 3078, Recorded in London, 18 January 1899.

It's a bit scratchy at first, but the full lyrics sheet is here: Link.

As an extra note, the song makes an appearance in "The Boarding House," chapter 7 of James Joyce's "The Dubliners," circa 1914: Link. Something Cory especially might be interested in, as an example of the time when authors could quote popular song lyrics in their stories without being hounded by packs of rabid ASCAP lawyers.

Previously:

MP3 of 1878 recording on lead cylinder

Woot.com is an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. It started as an employee-store slash market-testing type of place for an electronics distributor, but it's taken on a life of its own. We anticipate profitability by 2043 by then we should be retired; someone smarter might take over and jack up the prices. Until then, we're still the lovable scamps we've always been.

My friend John Gilmore, co-founder of EFF and inventor of many key Sun Microsystems technologies, is suing the US federal government over the constitutionality of a secret law that requires Americans to show ID before boarding airplanes, a back-door to mandating Soviet-style internal passports for travel.

The TSA and airlines claim that the ID requirement for travel is a law, but the law isn't published anywhere. If it were published, it would be subject to Constitutional challenge; previous Supreme Court cases during the anti-Segregation fight established that the Feds have no right to condition citizens' ability to travel across state lines.

Now the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing John's case, and the hearing is open to the public. I wish I could be there -- this is history being made, and John deserves all our support for having the guts to put his money and liberty on the line to fight for the Constitution.

Friends and supporters of John are welcome to attend this historic hearing, but are asked to please dress appropriately for court. John would like nothing more than to have the public gallery filled to the brim with fellow Americans who care as much as he does about the US Constitution.

What: Oral Arguments in Gilmore v. Gonzalez
When: December 8th 2005 at 9am
Where: 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
Third Floor, Courtroom 3
95 Seventh Street
San Francisco, CA 94103