EFF commissioned a research firm to investigate security vulnerabilities caused by the Suncomm Mediamax spyware, which Sony has included on some 50 CDs, and forced them to release a fix for the vulnerabilities:

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.

Link (Thanks, Fred, Matt and Guillaume!)

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)

Jamie Zawinski sez,

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.

Link (Thanks, JWZ!)

Seattle's City Center is hosting an elaborate gingerbread house display -- here's a small gallery of pix from it. Link (Thanks, Miss Cellania!)

Last week, Xeni blogged skater skull-hoodies with spine and ribs screened on both sides. Here's a cyclist's version -- a training jacket with a ribcage and spine on it in reflective ink. Link (Thanks, Christopher)

This is an entire 1949 NWCA candy-salesman's catalog, scanned in at medium resolution. Loads of clip-art treasure here. Link (Thanks, Candy Addict!)

Fender has released a line of Hello Kitty guitars and amps, including a Batz Maru bass and a Hello Kitty Stratocaster in pink and black! Link (via Gizmodo)

Penguin UK has posted a series of interviews with various peopl einvolved in book production, from rights-clearance to distribution to IT. It's a great peek inside what the different jobs are like inside Penguin's corner of the publishing industry.

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

Link (via Making Light)

This olive bowl doubles as a game of marble-solitaire, wherein one jumps marbles around a plus-shaped grid, clearing those that are jumped and attempting to clear as many marbles as possible. Clever! Link (via Cribcandy)

My friend, Ralph T. Castle, lives in Florida, and he was there when Hurricane Wilma hit. He wrote a fascinating, 13,000 word account of his experience, which we are running as a Boing Boing exclusive.

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.

(Continue reading)

An entire porn video company is being auctioned on eBay. Starting bid is $100k, instructions included! As BB pal Vann Hall says, it's the perfect "xxxmas (sorry!) gift for the perv who has everything." From the auction listing for the unnamed company:

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.

Link

UPDATE: Apparently eBay yanked the listing.

Passport photo shops are almost as much of a rip off as ringtones. Why pay for something that you can easily do yourself for free? This website, epassportphoto.com, can help you make your own passport photos. Link (thanks, Tom!)

Brucine says he was on a plane on Sunday when he noticed a guy using a single edged razor blade to peel off and reposition stickers onto his Moleskine notebook.

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

It's JerryTime! is a wonderful video diary of the life of a sad sack named Jerry. The videos are a mash-up of photo collage and Terry Gilliam-esque animation. Eye of the Goof said that this reminded him of Harvey Pekar and I agree.
Link

Deflexion looks like a cool board-game -- you line up mirror on a game-board so that when you hit them with a laser, they'll bounce its light from one part of the board to another. Way better gimmick than Hungry Hungry Hippos!

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.

Link (via Wired Magazine)

NoginSox are foam-rubber sculptured slipcovers for your bicycle helmet; they come in designs ranging from terrified froggies to naked brains to spiky mohawks. They come in lighted and non-lighted versions. Link (via Wired Magazine)

Grist Magazine just published a story which analyzes the presence of PVC and pthalates in sex toys, and questions the possible health effects of inserting such toxins in one's hoo-ha. The article goes on to suggest "healthier alternatives" like solar powered vibrators and non-petroleum-based lube. Incredibly, they've overlooked the time-honored erotic delight of cramming a pound of extra-firm organic tofu up your butt. Link (Thanks, David Roberts)

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.

The study did receive some criticism at the time of its release, and Koop Dogg did not specifically address the issue of sex toys -- so the uber-cautious may want to keep tofu within reach. (Thanks, John Schwartz!)

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.

Link

Steve Lodefink wants to know if this rock came from far side of outer space or the bowels of Hades.
Link (Please don't email me with your expert opinion. Leave a comment here.)

Go ahead and click on the thumbnail image here. It's perfectly safe for work. If you think this is funny, visit Galumpia for a whole gallery of images that look like porn but aren't.
Link (via Sexoteric)

Kim sez, "This is an interview with a Swedish author, literary critic and classical muscian Lars Holger Holm about his book, Fawlty Towers - A Worshipper's Companion The book is incredibly researched and full of crazy stuff -- including the story about how Holm saw the never-broadcast 13th episdoe of Fawlty Towers in 1999, and he even includes he script for 'The Robbers' in the book. Cleese has seen the book and given it his blessing. The book is not available in the U.S., but arrangements were made with the Swedish publisher to have a limited number shipped here for PBS stations to offer as pledge thank-you gifts around 'Fawlty Towers Revisited.'"

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!

Link (Thanks, Kim!)

Holy Tango of Literature is an hilarious anthology of comedy poems on the theme "What if poets and playwrights wrote works whose titles were anagrams of their names?" written by Francis Heaney. You can buy it in shops and/or get the Creative Commons-licensed edition from the Internet.

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.

Link (Thanks, Francis!)

Over at the Huffington Post, Larry Beinhart offers Democrats a number of suggestions for branding the Republican party, just as the Democratic party was branded by the Republicans in the last election.

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.

Link (thanks, Ted!)

Danny Hillis, Stewart Brand, and other members of the Long Now Foundation are designing a 65-foot-high mechanical clock designed to keep time for 10,000 years. (Previous Long Now posts here and here.) Now, the Levenger company is selling a souvenir 5.75-inch-high bronze replica of the clock's time cam. The sculpture is $500 and was created in a limited edition of 365. From an article about Brand on the Levenger site:

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."

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

I don't remember the click trail that led me to The World of Kane, but I'm glad I ended up here. Kane's blog is a regularly updated gallery of mod design in architecture, cinema, furniture, print, etc. Shown here: the work of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.
Link

Over at Guruphiliac, Jody Radzik chews on a document distributed among followers of a popular guru called the Bhagavan Kalki. The document claims that brain scans of several devotees using "a very sensitive electromagnetic sensor" proves that "their bodies are so thoroughly permeated with the Divine Presence that there is a fundamental change in the nature of matter." From Guruphiliac:

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.

Link

On eBay, auction oddity scout Michael-Anne Rauback stumbled upon this vintage 30-inch tall carved-wood bullet advertising the Winchester arms company.
Link

Our friend Douglas Rushkoff has posted the fifth excerpt from his new book, "Get Back In The Box: Innovation from the Inside Out," that will hit shelves in just a couple of weeks. In this bit, Doug takes a hard look at Ben and Jerry's approach to doing well by doing good. From the excerpt:

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.

Link

My friend Jason Tester says, "Read this headline and tell me it doesn't scream mnemonic device (like Every Good Boy Does Fine)." It's from an Agence France-Presse article:

French lesbians cross Belgian border to have babies

Link

Damien Kulash, the lead singer for the band OK Go, has a great editorial in the NYTimes today, describing why DRM systems are bad for artists:

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.

Link (Thanks, Chris!)

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.

Thirty seven days after Sony was outed for including a rootkit (a piece of software that hides itself from the Windows filesystem and process manager, and allows viruses to opportunistically do the same) they've finally released an uninstaller that you can download and run on your own computer (previous uninstallers ran from the Web and left you computer vulnerable to total takeover through simple attacks like embedding malicious code in web-pages). Of course, Sony knew about the rootkit for at least 28 days, so all told, this uninstaller took sixty five days to arrive.

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.

Talk about "unclear on the concept!" So, we'll uninstall the software, except we're not really giving you back control over your computer and if you try to understand what we're actually doing, technologically, you're in violation of a bunch of scary made-up lawyerese crap. Link

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

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

For this month's Wired Magazine, I interviewed director Steven Soderbergh about copyright, remix, and why his new movie Bubble will be released by Mark Cuban/Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment on DVD, cable, and in theaters all at once.

# 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.

Link to "Thinking Outside the Box Office"

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.