Mark van der Horst, the Amsterdam councillor responsible for traffic, told the newspaper that it is not easy to find subway trains that can withstand the Amsterdam brand of hooligans...

"Our new Amsterdam subway must be absolutely Amsterdam-idiot-proof," he explained.

In Danny's presentation, he recaps some of the evils of the year in technological liberty, and then switches to reporting on how good gets done (see the Gandhi State Diagram, left) and reports on some of the triumphs of the year.

It's a terrific and funny presentation, one that provokes both thought and laughter, and it's full of geeky in-jokes. Link to audio, Link to Danny's slides (via Trubble)

Because numbers beginning with 1 turn up so often, it's possible to catch cheaters (tax cheats, homework cheats, etc) by checking to see if the numbers they make up skew to ones that begin with the numeral 1 more frequently than other numbers.

It's not perfect, of course (the 1998 NYT article notes that people on $25 dinner allowances often submit receipts for $24.90), but it is fascinating.

"If we think of the Dow Jones stock average as 1,000, our first digit would be 1.

"To get to a Dow Jones average with a first digit of 2, the average must increase to 2,000, and getting from 1,000 to 2,000 is a 100 percent increase.

"Let's say that the Dow goes up at a rate of about 20 percent a year. That means that it would take five years to get from 1 to 2 as a first digit.

"But suppose we start with a first digit 5. It only requires a 20 percent increase to get from 5,000 to 6,000, and that is achieved in one year.

"When the Dow reaches 9,000, it takes only an 11 percent increase and just seven months to reach the 10,000 mark, which starts with the number 1. At that point you start over with the first digit a 1, once again. Once again, you must double the number -- 10,000 -- to 20,000 before reaching 2 as the first digit.

"As you can see, the number 1 predominates at every step of the progression, as it does in logarithmic sequences."

Update: Christian sez,

The Benford's Law story has some bad math in it. I'm not arguing with the validity of Benford's Law. I just hate to see bad math put up as truth.

Quote from article:
"Let's say that the Dow goes up at a rate of about 20 percent a year. That means that it would take five years to get from 1 to 2 as a first digit."

Actually, it only takes four years. At a rate of 20 percent a year, by year four the Dow would be 2073.6

Quote from article:
"When the Dow reaches 9,000, it takes only an 11 percent increase and just seven months to reach the 10,000 mark, which starts with the number 1."

An 11 percent increase doesn't get the Dow to 10,000. An 11 percent increase of 9000 is 9990, not 10000 or more as the quote states.

Update 2: Ben sez,

The math in the article isn't as bad as one reader suggests.

True, it would take 4 as opposed to 5 years for the Dow Jones to reach 2000 at 20 percent. I assume that the author was saying that the first number starting with 2 would be the fith in the sequence

1000, 1200, 1440, 1728, 2074...

And it is the sequence we are interested in.

The second perceived fault is due to routine rounding off. 10000 is an 11.111111...% increase over 9000, which rounds down to 11% very nicely. At that rate it would take 6.934595174188633 (let's call it 7) months to reach 10000.

Update 3: Alvy points us to an excellent piece on Benford's Law at Steven Wolfram's Mathworld.

This really spectacular architecture seems to be absolutely original. The mechanical design of the Cabestan, including its tourbillon, is totally transversal. The indications (hour, minute, seconds, and power reserve) appear on the cylinders located at the four "corners" of the watch.

Starting from the lower left, we find the barrel, which transmits its driving power to the movement by the intermediary of a chain. This chain is connected to a second cylinder, at the upper left, made up of one part of a fusee (placed horizontally as opposed to the traditional fusees that are always vertical), and the other of the cylindrical power reserve indicator (a total of 72 hours).

The government's request comes just weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law giving the authorities wide-ranging powers to monitor the activities and finances of non-governmental organisations.

The new powers, which include the right to suspend NGOs should they "threaten Russia's sovereignty or independence", have been severely criticised by both domestic and international rights groups.

i followed the motorist back to his car to photograph his license plate number. he proceeded to open his trunk, take out a baseball bat, and charge me. i walked away, and was one of only two witnesses to stay at the scene and give a statement to police.

Princeton's Ed Felten and Alex Halderman continue to pre-publish sections from a major paper on the lessons to be learned from the Sony DRM debacle, in which it was discovered that the music label had deliberately infected its customers' computers with malicious software that spied on them, destabilized their computers, and exposed them to attack from other malicious entities. The software had no easy means of de-installing it, requiring many music fans to reinstall their operating systems.

Today's installment is "CD DRM: Compatibility and Software Updates" and it addresses the question of the longevity of media with anti-copying/use-control software embedded in it -- how can the companies that force these technologies on their customers minimize the harm to future systems, and ensure that users run updates when they have no incentive to increase the efficacy of technologies that treat them as attackers?

Compared to other media on which software is distributed, compact discs have a very long life. Many compact discs will still be inserted into computers and other players twenty years or more after they are first bought. If a particular version of (say) active protection software is burned onto a new CD, that software version may well try to install and run itself decades after it was first developed.

The same is not true of conventional software, even when it ships on a CD-ROM. Very few if any of today’s Windows XP CDs will be inserted into computers in 2026; but CDs containing today’s CD DRM software will be. Accordingly, CD DRM software faces a much more serious issue of compatibility with future systems.

The future compatibility problem has two distinct aspects: safety, or how to avoid incompatibilities that cause crashes or malfunction of other software, and efficacy, or how to ensure that the desired anti-copying features remain effective.

Previous installments of the Sony DRM Debacle Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

(Sony taproot graphic courtesy of Sevensheaven)

The SRDS is a security paper shredder, where the residue of individual shredded documents pages are collected in multiple collections bins for disposal ensuring that no single collection bin contains the residue of any entire page. It utilizes a top deflector plate and four bins lined with bags to disperse and collect the shredded paper. The material is gravity fed from the bottom of the cutting head to the deflector plate. The plate ensures that the material does not back up into the cutting head and an entire document does not deposit into one collection bag. To further ensure that no adversary could obtain a complete document at one time, the dispersion system is coupled with a procedure of disposing the collection bags on a rotating basis. SRDS does not require the operator to do any additional work and has no moving parts.

The AISTD is a security tape dispenser where the tape is on a liner and is dispensed adhesive side up without the liner. This alleviates the tape from unintentionally sticking to an unwanted surface area. AISTD allows a user to pick a mode, enters the information, and receives the desired length tape. It gives the user several options for dispensing the tape: MODES Run - The user picks pre-programmed lengths from the keypad (6" to 36" in ½" increments).

Length - The user can input a length from 3.0" to 999.0". After the length is entered, the user presses the ANY button on the keypad, which causes the machine to dispense the programmed amount.

Box - A lookup table assigns a number to the boxes listed. The box number is entered and the tape comes out to the correct lengths to wrap the box.

Box Flaps - A lookup table assigns a number to the boxes listed. The box number is listed and the tape comes out to the correct lengths to wrap the box. The first tape is for the center seam, the second seals the edge/flap on the same surface, the third seals the edge/flap on the other side the fourth seals the center seam on the open side of the box, the fifth and sixth seal the remaining edge/flap.

Custom - Any recipes of lengths can be programmed and burned into the e-prom.

The Broadcast Flag and Audio Flag proposals would require anyone who build a digital TV or radio device to use technology to control what sort of other devices -- like portable players, recorders and PCs -- could be connected to them. That means that your ability to watch a TV show on your laptop or listen to a recorded digital radio program on your iPod would hinge on whether the manufacturers of these devices can proved to a regulator that they weren't disrupting Hollywood's entrenched business-models.

Until now, lawmakers have been reluctant to speak out against this. A combination of expert lobbying and technological ignorance has made Congress suicidally willing to consider proposals to break America's televisions.

But in yesterday's Commerce hearings, two Senators altered the course of events. First MIT grad John Sununu of New Hampshire said that government mandates "always restrict innovation" and then 82-year-old Ted Stevens of Alaska talked about the iPod he'd gotten for Christmas and put the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol on the spot about whether his proposal would break Stevens' ability to move digital radio programs to his iPod and listen to them in the most convenient way (it would).

This is a momentous occassion: two powerful senators have woken up to the impact that these proposals will have on their voters. As more and more lawmakers get wise to how these things will harm their constituents' interests, it will get harder and harder for entertainment mouthpieces to go crying to government to enshrine their cushy business-models in law.

[Sununu] pointed out that "we have a whole history of similar technological innovation that has shown us that the market can respond with its own protection to the needs of the artists." And he concluded with one of the most damning depictions of the ahistorical nature of the flag (clip from Congressional RealVideo) you'll hear on the Hill:

"The suggestion is that if we don't do this, it will stifle creativity. Well...we have now an unprecedented wave of creativity and product and content development...new business models, and new methodologies for distributing this content. The history of government mandates is that it always restricts innovation...why would we think that this one special time, we're going to impose a statutory government mandate on technology, and it will actually encourage innovation?"

The second revelation, dropped into the later discussion of the RIAA's audio flag, was that Senator Stevens' daughter bought him an iPod.

This is unhappy news for the RIAA. Once again, their representative was forced to burst into praises of MP3 players (a technology his organization attempted to sue out of existence in 1998).

And when Stevens asked whether with the audio flag in place he would be able to record from the radio and put the shows onto his iPod: that's when the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol really began to sweat.

With that simple question, the octogenarian Senator encapsulated arguments about place-shifting, interoperability, and fair use that would have taken whole federal dockets to explain a few years ago.

Even more damning was Senator Sununu's follow-up question, in which he asked if, post-flag, the Senator might record three songs from the radio today, and listen to only one of them again tomorrow. Of course, under the RIAA's proposed controls, you may not: this is "disaggregation" in their language. This flag, which was sold to Congress to impede piracy, appeared to be designed primarily to control and inconvenience law-abiding, ripping, mixing, modern-day Senators.

Just because there aren't many laws against taking home body parts doesn't mean it's an easy thing to do. Most hospitals make patients sign a waiver that cedes ownership of their surgical leavings to the pathology lab. And many teaching hospitals are unwilling to give up potential research samples. To have a good shot at keeping the stuff that's removed, let your doctor know before the procedure. You also usually have to sign a liability release form on the way out.

Advances in laparoscopic and microscopic procedures mean that many body parts that were once removed whole are now taken out in small pieces. Doctors now use shock waves to break up many stones that might have been surgically removed in the past. Even if the desired piece comes out whole, a pathologist sometimes destroys it while taking samples. He can also decide that it represents a biohazard, though most communicable diseases can be killed with formaldehyde. (Some notable exceptions include hepatitis and prion diseases.)

Display	Start Time	End Time
Around 6 o'clock	5:57	6:03
Slightly After 6	6:03	6:10
Around 6 Fifteen	6:10	6:20
Nearly 6 Thirty	6:20	6:25
Half Past 6	6:25	6:35
Nearly 6 Forty Five	6:35	6:40
Quarter To 7	6:40	6:50
Just Before 7	6:50	6:57
Around 7 o'clock	6:57	7:03
About 12 Noon (or midnight)	11:57	12:03

Update: Fuzzyclock will do this for your Mac menubar, and for Konfabulator -- thanks, Bill and Phil!

Check out the updated version on the same page.
Link

Kevin Evans says: "Detailed scale models, except they're not. Strange photographs of places using a technique that makes them look like small model dioramas. Truly amazing images.

"the Las Vegas photographs in which an innate sense of unreality collides most strikingly with Barbieri's projected vision. The city's simulated monuments are made to look artificial, in total defiance of their reality. For Barbieri it is "the city as an avatar of itself."

Reader comment: Noah says: "The technique Barbieri uses to get the surreal Depth of Field in his pictures is tilt-shift photography, you can get a nice detailed explanation at the above link. For homebrew photo buffs, there's a cool tutorial on how to make your own tilt-shift lens (without dropping $1000) here."

Reader comment: Alex says: "this photography blog features some very good examples of tilt-shift photography. its in japanese, so i can't give you any more details. i found the quality of the images are superior to those featured in Metropolis. beautiful stuff."
Link

"I think the sector of home robots in general is about to boom," adds Magnus Wurzer, who organised an event featuring cocktail-making robots in Vienna, Austria in November 2005. "At the moment the home products called robots are but toys, but this will change, features will be added, production will get cheaper."

But Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, US, says the new contraption is a poor advertisement for home robots - which can be more sophisticated. "Home robots are already present," he told New Scientist. "Roomba and Aibo are two good examples - the former for cleaning, the latter for entertainment."

Modding a disposable camera's flash to deliver an RFID-killing energy-shock is a pretty cool project if you want a portable way to disinfect your stuff. The London Underground's "Oyster cards" are used as stored-value cards for boarding the tube. They track your movements when you touch in and touch out at the turnstiles. You can avoid the worst of the data-collection if you frequently change Oyster cards, but the Underground has promised to start charging £3 for new cards; however, they promise to replace defective cards for free. With one of these, you could zap your card when it runs out of stored money and trade it for a new one that will have a different serial number and consequently not be associatable with your previous card.

Many times, intrusions into privacy like this are excused on the basis that they offer discounts in exchange for your personal information. This is true with the Oyster card, too: a single ride on the tube costs £3 now if you use a paper ticket, but with an Oyster card the journey is as little as £1.30. The thing is, before they ramped up Oyster card use on January 1, the cost of a paper single was also as little as £1.10 -- in other words, they nearly tripled the cost of an anonymous journey and then told everyone that you got a great discount if you used the privacy-surrendering means.

It generates a strong electromagnetic field with a coil, which should be placed as near to the target RFID-Tag as possible. The RFID-Tag then will receive a strong shock of energy comparable with an EMP and some part of it will blow, thus deactivating the chip forever.

To keep the costs of the RFID-Zapper as low as possible, we decided to modify the electric component of a singe-use-camera with flash, as can be found almost everywhere.

Update: Kurt sez, "you don't simply pull out the tape to the desired time. You pull it out ALL THE WAY and then use a dial on the bottom to retract the tape to the right time. Not as cool." I agree. How disappointing.

I decided on the PVC since I had already seen a few of the suitcase mods, but then while at Home Depot I saw the copper plumbing pipes and thought, that's what I need to build my case out of. The structure would be the same as that of my PVC idea, but copper would ground my motherboard whereas PVC case would not. Also, you can't beat that copper shine. Finally, building the case out of copper would be me that one last excuse for finally getting my cordless Dremel, and a butane blowtorch (which also does a very good job at lighting charcoal for cooking out).

Gameplay in World of Warcraft (WoW) hinges on cooperation and guilds; many missions require several players to complete. The game, then, focuses on intense social interaction, and has benefitted tremendously from players who move large parts of their social lives to the game.

But players who have advertised their guilds as "GBLT-friendly" have lately been warned off by Blizzard moderators, who cite a rule against sexual discrimination in censoring the players. When pressed for explanations, they offer the genuinely bizarre excuse that if queer players are allowed to tell other players about their sexual orientation, that it might arouse discriminatory or unkind remarks from those players, and that would violate the anti-discrimination rules of the game.

Online games are incredibly, deeply moving social software that have hit on a perfect formula for getting players to devote themselves to play: make play into a set of social grooming negotiations. Big chunks of our brains are devoted to figuring out how to socialize with one another -- it's how our primate ancestors enabled the cooperation that turned them into evolutionary winners.

But real life has one gigantic advantage over gamelife. In real life, you can be a citizen with rights. In gamelife, you're a customer with a license agreement. In real life, if a cop or a judge just makes up a nonsensical or capricious interpretation of the law, you can demand an appeal. In gamelife, you can cancel your contract, or suck it up.

Will a game ever give players citizenship instead of just customership? Will players always be willing to treat games as their online homes if they have to rely on customer service ethos instead of the Constitution to assure them of a fair shake?

Andrews explained that there was an obvious misunderstanding and that she was not insulting anyone, but merely recruiting for a "GLBT friendly" guild.

The response from Blizzard was, "While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a 'GLBT friendly' guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy is to 'be temporarily suspended from the game.' However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning."

"I've been into this sort of thing all my life," says Rutter. "When I was a kid I'd go to the library and devour weird stuff. And now," he says with a wave of his hand, "I've got all this!"

"All this" comprises a collection of over 100 strange items. He has fossilised fingers, rings that belonged to (real) giants, a painted bowl made from a human skull, an ostrich egg mounted on an ostrich foot ("why not?"), plus a whole lot of other weird things. Rutter never goes out looking for things to buy, but when he sees something he knows immediately that it's the thing for him.

"I say to people if it makes you go 'yeargh', 'what's that?' or 'who would want that?', then the chances are I'd be interested." A jackalope is a rabbit with antlers attached. A clear fake it was apparently first 'spotted' in Wyoming in 1829.

A jackalope is a rabbit with antlers attached. A clear fake it was apparently first 'spotted' in Wyoming in 1829.

Rutter's "room full of curiosities" comprises genuine weird things and fake weird things. For him, the fakes are just as exciting as the real things.

"As soon as people started collecting weird and unusual things, the frauds started," says Rutter. "But the fakes are just as interesting to me. Reality is not the over-riding thing."

...Bruce Bender, owns 56 Aibos, which he believes is the world's largest private collection. Bender, who lives in Rancho Cordova, outside Sacramento, noted in a message board posting that although Aibo manufacturing has stopped, ``that doesn't mean Aibo is dead.''

Bender said in a phone interview that he still plans to host gatherings for the worldwide Aibo community, such as one he held in late September where 110 dogs danced together in unison. Bender believes Sony's moves wlil bring the Aibo community closer together -- at least in spirit.

``Aibo is a very small department and that is the kind of thing you cut out when you are streamlining,'' Bender said. ``It's a business decision and business decisions don't always make money. But the Aibo community will go on.''

Benyus, Janine, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, New York: Perennial, 2002. ISBN 0060533226

Kurzweil, Ray and Terry Grossman, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 2004. ISBN 1-57954-954-3. Selected chapters also available online from http://www.fantastic-voyage.net/

Hostetler, John A., Amish Society, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-8018-4442-8

Reader comment: Steve says: "The creepy smoking dolls aren't Blythe dolls (compare the features to actual Blythe dolls on thisisblythe.com). They may be Blythe-inspired, and Blythe herself may not approve of smoking, but the dolls aren't Blythe (who's much cuter...) "

"According to Standart daily newspaper under the Bulgarian capital Sofia there's a thousands of kilometres of tunnels built between Roman times and Communist regime. They shelter about 20 000 people - most of them are criminals and bums."
Link

Astronomers prefer to calibrate their telescopes, satellites, and other instruments against deep-space objects such as pulsars, which emit pulses of energy at regular intervals.

...

The International Telecommunication Union decided that astronomical time could not differ from Coordinated Universal Time—which is based on atomic time—by more than 0.9 second. Because the two systems are inherently out of step, it’s periodically necessary to add “leap second” to bring them into sync. Most people didn’t notice, but one of those seconds was added after midnight on Dec. 31, 2005, just before 2006 began. A leap second, says Jonathan Betts of the Royal Observatory, “asks the atomic clocks to hold their breath for one second, so that the Earth can catch up.” So far, the compromise has worked. But some American scientists have proposed scrapping leap seconds altogether.

A method and system for generating a displayable icon or emoticon form that indicates the mood or emotion of a user of the mobile station. A user of a device, such as a mobile phone, is provided with a dedicated key or shared dedicated key option that the user may select to insert an emoticon onto a display or other medium. The selection of the key or shared dedicated key may result in the insertion of the emoticon, or may also result in the display of a collection of emoticons that the user may then select from using, for example, a key mapping or navigation technique.

The findings prompted surprise from the scientific community. Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, said: "It is surprising that many should still be sceptical of Darwinian evolution. Darwin proposed his theory nearly 150 years ago, and it is now supported by an immense weight of evidence.

"We are, however, fortunate compared to the US in that no major segment of UK religious or cultural life opposes the inclusion of evolution in the school science curriculum."

In almost every village, town, or city in the developing world, there are people who can build just about anything. With the right know-how, this can include wireless networks that connect their community to the Internet. The book addresses what Rob Flickenger, the book's editor and lead author, calls a chicken-and-egg problem: "While much information about building wireless networks can be found on-line, that presents a problem for people in areas with little or no connectivity", said Flickenger from his workshop in Seattle. The book covers topics from basic radio physics and network design to equipment and troubleshooting. It is intended to be a comprehensive resource for technologists in the developing world, providing the critical information that they need to build networks. This includes specific examples, diagrams and calculations, which are intended to help building wireless networks without requiring access to the Internet.

In the developing world, one book can often be a library, and to a techie this book may well be a bible. Access to books is difficult where there are few libraries or book stores, and there is often little money to pay for them. "Our book will be released under a Creative Commons license, so everybody can copy and distribute it free of charge. That doesn't mean it is a 'cheap' book. I think it is a great book," stated Corinna 'Elektra' Aichele, one of the books co-authors who was recently installing wireless networks in Bangladesh.

The literature taught in schools is that which has survived: a collection of gross statistical anomalies. This is misleading. Falling out of print is a book's natural fate. We can belatedly train ourselves to believe that this will happen to other people's books. What's hard is for writers to believe it will happen to their own.

It'll happen just the same. It happens faster in mainstream fiction than it does in Our Beloved Genre, more slowly for nonfiction history books, very fast indeed for computer manuals; but in the end, all but a very few titles will be forgotten. Just look at the authors in that collection of bestseller lists. You're a literate bunch, but have you ever heard of Harold Bell Wright? How about Mazo de la Roche? Mary Roberts Rinehart, Lloyd Douglas, Irving Bacheller, Frank Yerby, Coningsby Dawson, Warwick Deeping? These were all notable authors in their day. Some of their books were no better than they should be, while others were genuinely praiseworthy; but all of them spent some time perched on top of the commercial heap.

"By giving our employees the freedom to manage their shift commitments, we will increase their motivation and enjoyment of work," said David Fairhurst, the chain's vice president (people).

McDonald's said the first users of the new "Family Contract," which it believes to be unique in Britain, were two sets of twins.

# Total calories (extrapolating from info provided here): 19490 calories
# Total eaters 8 (2 girls and one guy who already ate dinner and only ate 6 patties)
# Most patties eaten by one person : I think I ate about 20. I think Nalin ate about 20 as well (including the raw ones)
# Time to finish : less then 2 hours
# Number of people who barfed : 1 (way to go Elena!) Oh yeah.... nothing says "Vegas baby" like barfing, not because of booze..but because of burgers.

Update: Adrian sez, "In-N-Out uses 100% real American cheese, not 'processed cheese food'." He also says that In-N-Out's beef is pretty good, but I've had their burgers and while the beef is better than BK or McD's, it's hardly ground sirloin.

Update 2: Sandeep sez, "American cheese IS processed cheese food!

Update 3: Brad sez, "Kraft American Cheese Slices are *not* 'processed cheese food.' It is 'processed cheese.' Looks the same, but there is a real difference: 'Processed cheese food' is a 'food product' *ulp* containing 'processed cheese.' Simply put, there is not enough sawdust, lint, whey or cow toenail emulsion in Kraft slices to (de)merit the lower grade."

This has been positioned as an anti-spyware measure, but it will also have the effect of making copy- and use-restriction systems more restrictive. You won't, for example, be able to install alternative drivers for a video-capture card that lets you ignore anti-copying watermarks in your videos, effectively taking control away from you, the owner of the computer, and indiscriminately giving it over to anyone who can insert a watermark (no-copying watermarks have already been illegally inserted into many Fox programs, resulting in their not being stored by TiVo video recorders).

Another effect of this will be to raise the cost of developing drivers, since developers will be required by Microsoft to buy a VeriSign Class 3 Commercial Software Publisher Certificate, at an unknown cost.

Still, what is this going to stop? SONY screwed up majorly, but nothing bad has really happened to them. Do you think that a $500 fee is going to deter spyware companies?

Spyware/adware authors aren't some teenagers... they're million-dollar businesses (or larger). Do you think they care if they have to get a new $500 certificate every few months? They probably spend twice as much on lunch during that time.

Do you think Verisign is going to selectively refuse to grant certificates to paying customers just because they're suspicious? They'd be sued immediately by the first rich "victim" company, and would probably settle quickly to avoid the bad press.

It's not like Verisign will magically prevent the bad guys from doing harm. Remember, this is Verisign we're talking about - not exactly a model for ethics.

Nettwerk became involved in the battle against the RIAA after 15-year-old Elisa Greubel contacted MC Lars, also a Nettwerk management client, to say that she identified with "Download This Song," a track from the artist's latest release. In an e-mail to the artist's web-site, she wrote, "My family is one of many seemingly randomly chosen families to be sued by the RIAA. No fun. You can't fight them, trying could possibly cost us millions. The line 'they sue little kids downloading hit songs,' basically sums a lot of the whole thing up. I'm not saying it is right to download but the whole lawsuit business is a tad bit outrageous..."

Nettwerk Music Group has agreed to pay the total expense of all legal fees as well as any fines should the family lose the case against the RIAA.

"Litigation is not 'artist development.' Litigation is a deterrent to creativity and passion and it is hurting the business I love," insists McBride. "The current actions of the RIAA are not in my artists' best interests."

SuitSat transmits for 30 seconds, pauses for 30 seconds, and then repeats. "This is SuitSat-1, RS0RS," the transmission begins, followed by a prerecorded greeting in five languages. The greeting contains "special words" in English, French, Japanese, Russian, German and Spanish for students to record and decipher. (Awards will be given to students who do this. Scroll to the "more information" area at the end of this story for details.)

Next comes telemetry: temperature, battery power, mission elapsed time. "The telemetry is stated in plain language—in English," says Bauer. Everyone will be privy to SuitSat's condition. Bauer adds, "Suitsat 'talks' using a voice synthesizer. It's pretty amazing."

The transmission ends with a Slow Scan TV picture. Of what? "We're not telling," laughs Bauer. "It's a mystery picture." (More awards will be given to students who figure out what it is.)

...Another guy, “Luke”, who lists his web site as http://www.bluepulse.com, so we’ll presume he’s an employee too (particularly since he posted from the same IP address as Alan), comes back a couple days later to say that I’ve left out a key word, that the quote is actually “Your content and applications, on almost any phone, anywhere…” Click on the link to the relevant page, and yes, it says that… now.

You see, the good folks at Bluepulse have gone back and changed the page, then it would appear that one of them couldn’t resist coming back to the site and pointing out my “error”. The problem — for them — is that they didn’t think about the good old Google cache, as you can see in the screengrab...

So instead of saying “hey, that’s some aggressive marketing copy, we’ll tone it down a bit”, they change it, then come back here in an attempt (I guess) to try to impugn my integrity, or, at the very least, make me look foolish. Funny how things like that can backfire. So there’s a lesson here in honesty for companies on the web. Well, that, or at least be smart enough to cover your tracks.

This incident certainly does highlight some of the important issues in the role of blogs as media, and in workplace environments where employees are encouraged to communicate with the outside world through their own blogs and those of others, rather than through an all-controlling PR manager. I don’t think anybody reading these comments really wants us to react to this event by banning employees from communicating in blogs - in return I hope you can understand that not every bluepulse employee’s comment is an official company statement.

News regarding Jill Carroll has been few and far between for the last several days. Everyone has been on pins and needles. But there have been some developments of real note. The number and caliber of appeals coming out for her release has been stunning. There was the plea from a former member of Gamaa Islamiya ( Link ) calling for her release, then a top Hamas offical. Then came rumblings that six female Iraqi detainees might be released, rumblings that US forces in Iraq denied.

Then came a powerful statement from the wife of Tareq Ayyoub, one of Jill's colleagues at The Jordan Times. Tareq was killed in Iraq by a U.S. missile in the early days of the war. His wife, Dima Tahboub, made a powerful statement to a Jordanian paper (in Arabic) saying, "Kidnapping journalists hurts the message of humane resistance and makes its message criminal." ( Link ) The statement reminded Natasha of the terrible fate that has now befallen two Jordan Times reporters.

But today, five female Iraqi detainees were in fact released (Link ). And, as of just a few minutes ago, a breaking wire story from the Associate Press has an Iraqi police officer saying he thinks Jill may be freed soon ( Link ). The mother of Hala, one of the women being freed, even had kind words and hope for Jill's release, telling AP: "We are happy and we thank God for this blessing ... I call upon the kidnappers of the American reporter to release her because she is as innocent as Hala."

This all looks tremendously hopeful. All the good wishes and prayers sent out for Jill may finally, hopefully, be answered.

Update: Cowicide points us to this 3D tour of the Bridge/home theater.

Right now, this art form is more exciting than novels. If I had to choose, I'd do this. And I don't say that because of the paycheck--though being a freelance science fiction novelist is not a great way to put your kids through college, so it has been nice to get paid.

I honestly believe that the gods in their infinite mercy looked down and gave me a chance --miraculously and wholly unlooked for--to be at Kitty Hawk, to be in motion pictures in 1905, to be at a place and a moment in time where something extraordinarily exciting was just getting off the ground. As much as I'd like to think it had much to do with my merit, mostly it's this huge stroke of timing and good luck to be in the right place at the right time, working with the right people, to have a chance to be in on something at an extraordinary cultural moment.

Update: Christian sez, "SF author Walter Jon Williams recently wrote about his own experience writing ARGs on his blog."

Made of concrete, the passageway had lighting, electricity, ventilation and a pump to remove water, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

Mack said human intelligence led to the discovery of the underground structure. Agents then used ground-penetrating radar technology from the military to find anomalies in the soil, she said.

In 1957, Charles Schulz seems to have given The Des Moines Register and Tribune permission to publish an eight-page comic (not drawn by him -ed.) in which Charlie Brown and Lucy fall out of a comic strip and into the arms of some unspecified dude who proceeds to give them a tour of the Register's offices and printing plant. At the end of this visit, drawn in a sort of modified Soviet realism style, the kids are taken back to their strip by a Register paper boy.

Besides answering a lot of questions about the newspaper business, this story tells us how large comic-strip characters are in relation to human beings--a lot smaller, apparently, though the blockhead and fussbudget grow to about half-human size when they land in Iowa. (The tourguide is able to walk around with Charlie Brown balanced on one shoulder and Lucy on the other.)

What better way to get your message through than to aim your cruise missiles at the soft underbelly of kid-dom? Look at all the mendacious crap forced down childrens' impressionable gullets these days. Thank Jebus I don't have any, or I'd be forced to listen & look at that crap ALL DAY LONG, whcih brings up the other brilliant part of this plan. Most of the parents of those young'uns are in my age bracket, and were probably DEVO fans themselves in their younger days. I'm sure they would much rather listen to DEV2.O than the friggin' Wiggles, or whatever other weird crap is popular among the Huggies set these days.

According to the researchers, the secret of actors' memories is, well, acting. An actor acquires lines readily by focusing not on the words of the script, but on those words' meaning -- the moment-to-moment motivations of the character saying them -- as well as on the physical and emotional dimensions of their performance.

To get inside the character, an actor will break a script down into a series of logically connected "beats" or intentions. Good actors don't think about their lines, but feel their character's intention in reaction to what the other actors do, causing their lines to come spontaneously and naturally. The researchers quote the great British actor Michael Caine: "You must be able to stand there not thinking of that line. You take it off the other actor's face."

The key, the researchers have found, is a process called active experiencing, which they say uses "all physical, mental, and emotional channels to communicate the meaning of material to another person." It is a principle that can be applied off-stage as well as on. For example, students who studied material by imagining conveying its meaning to somebody else who needed the information showed higher retention than those who tried to memorize the material by rote.

I sprinted, I twisted,
I tried to run about everywhere
I spun, I was spun,
I rolled into anything I could find
I was attached, I felt included,
hey! I just picked up so much stuff!

I tried to avoid it, I tried to flee,
But the power was too much, came crashing down on me
I tried to push it, I tried to pull it,
At the end of my rope, I tried to cast it away
I crashed, I snapped,
A huge thrill ran through my body

The endpoint of this chilling vision (for the future of RFID) is uncannily similar to the prophesies of Revelation--a form of RFID that can be injected into human flesh.

Is RFID the mark of the beast predicted in the Bible? It's on the minds of Christians everywhere, say Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, authors of "The Spychips Threat: Why Christians Should Resist RFID and Electronic Surveillance." (Nelson Current/January 31, 2006). The authors, who are also seasoned talk radio guests, report it is one of the most frequent questions they field from listeners who call in to speak with them. "When we explain how RFID can be used to uniquely number people and track them remotely, callers connect this technology with the prophesies in the last book of the Bible, and the phone lines light up."

...Already bar patrons have been injected with the devices to get into night clubs and pay for drinks. This has raised a red flag for Christians familiar with Biblical passages that predict a time when a number will be needed to buy or sell.

For the first time in history, we have the technology to number humans and link them to their sales and purchases--even restrict buying and selling. The groundwork is already in place. Millions of Americans routinely flash a numbered card at the check-out line to buy food. Without a credit card it is extremely difficult to purchase airline tickets, reserve a hotel room or a rent car. And now, there is a move to number us all. When human chipping converges with retail numbering systems, the authors warn, man may well have developed something that looks surprisingly similar to the mark of the beast.

[Q...] But is it legal for the president to ignore the law?

A. Maybe not according to plain ol stupid ol regular law, but we're at war! You don't go to war with regular laws, which are made outta red tape and bureaucracy and Neville Chamberlain. You go to war with great big strapping War Laws made outta tanks and cold hard steel and the American Fightin Man and WAR, KABOOOOOOM!

Q. How does a War Bill become a War Law?

A. It all begins with the president, who submits a bill to the president. If a majority of both the president and the president approve the bill, then it passes on to the president, who may veto it or sign it into law. And even then the president can override himself with a two-thirds vote.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute used the data-set from Where's George? to compile a highly accurate model of human travel, which, in turn, has been key to understanding the way that diseases spread:

The physicists were intrigued: Like viruses, money is transported by people from place to place. They found that the human movements follow what are known as universal scaling laws (from local to regional to long-distance scales). Using the game data, they developed a powerful mathematical theory that describes the observed movements of travelers amazingly well over distances from just a few kilometers to a few thousand. The study represents a major breakthrough for the mathematical modeling of the spread of epidemics.

Update: Amara sez, "a similar effort has been underway since 2002 in Europe with the introduction of the Euro. The Euro coin has two sides, one side which shows the same design in every Eurozone country, while the other side shows a design specific to the European country that minted it. Therefore, from 2002, scientists have had a natural laboratory to follow the movements of people because the introduction of that coin (location and time) in this process is precisely known. The Euro diffusion process can therefore show how epidemics spread and can show to what extent are Europeans integrating, and what are their travel patterns. A successful study depends on many people emptying their pockets and recording what is there, however, this link provides such a means to record your pockets.

Update 2: Ryan sez, "they actually only track Euro *notes*, not coins. Also, WheresGeorge.com has a brother Canadian site, called WheresWilly.com (after Wilfred Laurier, the man on the $5)."

Halderman's paper shows that these systems contain numerous implementation mistakes that would make it simple to circumvent them, once their presence was known:

The MediaMax watermark fails to satisfy the indelibility and unforgeability requirements of an ideal disc recognition system. Far from being indelible, the mark is surprisingly brittle. Most advanced designs for robust audio watermarks manipulate the audio in the frequency domain and attempt to resist removal by lossy compression, multiple conversions between digital and analog formats, and other common transformation. In contrast, the MediaMax watermark is applied in the time domain and is rendered undetectable by even minor changes to the file. An adversary without any knowledge of the watermark’s design could remove it by converting the tracks to a lossy format like MP3 and then burning them back to a CD, which can be accomplished easily with standard consumer applications. This would result in some minor loss of fidelity, but a more sophisticated adversary could prevent the mark from being detected with almost no degradation by flipping the least significant of one carefully chosen sample from each of the 30 watermark clusters, thereby preventing the mark from exhibiting the pattern required by the detector.

Previous installments of the Sony DRM Debacle Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

Previous installments of the Sony DRM Debacle Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

For a fortnight, 24 women and 22 men kept diaries of how often they engaged in various forms of sex.

Then they underwent a stress test involving public speaking and performing mental arithmetic out loud.

Volunteers who had had penetrative intercourse were found to be the least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who had engaged in other forms of sexual activity such as masturbation.

Those who abstained from any form of sexual activity at all had the highest blood pressure response to stress.

Update: Ken sez, "Just because people who have sex are less stressed doesn't mean that the sex causes them be that way. At least as plausible is that they have more sex _because_ they are less stressed and recover from stress more quickly-- stress and staying steamed being a turn-off, in general, not to mention physiological effects of stress on performance, for men."

A district court in Nevada brought down the ruling yesterday, deciding that Google was not breaking the law because it honors the "robots.txt" and "nocache" headers, because it automatically caches without human intervention, because cacheing is a fair use, and because this activity falls into a copyright exemption called a "safe harbor."

Blake Field, an author and attorney, brought the copyright infringement lawsuit against Google after the search engine automatically copied and cached a story he posted on his website. The district court found that Mr. Field “attempted to manufacture a claim for copyright infringement against Google in hopes of making money from Google’s standard [caching] practice.” Google responded that its Google Cache feature, which allows Google users to link to an archival copy of websites indexed by Google, does not violate copyright law.

I am the very model of a Singularitarian
I'm combination Transhuman, Immortalist, Extropian,
Aggressively I'm changing all my body's biochemistry
Because my body's heritage is obsolete genetically,
Replacing all the cells each month it's here just temporarily
The pattern of my brain and body's where there's continuity,
I'll try to improve these patterns with optimal biology,
("But how will I do that? I need to be smarter. Ah, yes...")
I'll expand my mental faculties by merging with technology,
Expand his mental faculties by merging with technology,
Expand his mental faculties by merging with technology
Expand his mental faculties by merging with technology

Update: Andre sent us a working MP3 link -- thanks, Andre!

Licensed games, sports titles and franchise titles rule the day. It's what people know and want. But I have also found that it doesn't really matter what we have on the shelf. If it's there, someone will check it out. Perennial unknown classic Beyond Good & Evil and side scrolling shooter Gradius V are numbers 11 and 12 on that list. When all you see is roughly three to seven games on the shelf at any one time building a "quality" collection takes a back seat to building a bigger collection. But the added bonus is that people may play something that they never would have before. Never underestimate the lure of the word FREE.

We live in the twenty-first century. Philip K. Dick helped to invent it.

The standard critical view of Dick, the great science fiction writer who died in 1982, is that the main concern of his work lay with showing us that reality isn’t what we think it is. Like most clichés, that assessment of Dick has a solid basis in fact (assuming, that is, that after reading Dick you are willing to believe that anything has a solid basis in fact). Many of his books and stories did, indeed, show their characters’ surface reality melting away to reveal quite a different universe beneath.

But the games Dick played with reality were not, I think, the most remarkable products of his infinitely imaginative mind. At the core of his thinking was an astonishingly keen understanding of the real world he lived in—the world of the United States, subsection California, between 1928 and 1982—and it was because he had such powerful insight into the reality around him that he was able to perform with such great imaginative force one of the primary jobs of the science fiction writer, which is to project present-day reality into a portrayal of worlds to come. Dick’s great extrapolative power is what has given him such posthumous popularity in Hollywood. Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and half a dozen other Dick-derived movies, though not always faithful to Dick’s original story plots, all provide us with that peculiarly distorted Dickian view of reality which, it turns out, was his accurate assessment of the way his own twentieth-century world was going to evolve into the jangling, weirdly distorted place that we encounter in our daily lives.

The tiny, see-through Paedocypris fish have the appearance of larvae and have a reduced head skeleton, which leaves the brain unprotected by bone.

They live in dark tea-coloured waters with an acidity of pH3, which is at least 100 times more acidic than rainwater.

'This is one of the strangest fish that I've seen in my whole career', said Ralf Britz, zoologist at the Natural History Museum.

'It's tiny, it lives in acid and it has these bizarre grasping fins. I hope we'll have time to find out more about them before their habitat disappears completely.'

Officials at Konami, who are helping shape the physical education program, said they are pleased that their games are being used to help children become more fit. They said it makes sense in this era of high-tech gadgets and media-savvy kids to use so-called exergames to inspire activity.

"Kids are high-tech now," said Clara Gilbert, director of business partnerships for Konami. "This fits into their lifestyle. It's fun and it's music they're familiar with. The important thing is they're having fun while working out."

When I was a teenager I remember reading a science-fiction story which predicted that by the 21st century, information would be piped directly into the brain. In the story, a character encountered that most archaic object, an old-fashioned book, and felt appalled that people in the 20th century had been forced to endure so much physical discomfort, holding books and turning their pages manually--or trying to prevent the pages from turning if there was a breeze.

Well, here we are in 2006, and the science-fiction prediction has failed to pan out. While we're waiting for wetware implants, we'll just have to make do with a stopgap solution: A plastic thumb aid.

The 8" tall "Dunny" is a shared exclusive by Kidrobot and Rotofugi and is being released in an edition of 1000.

Globalization Since 1492 is an interdisciplinary university course that is broadcast live and released as a video podcast under a creative commons license. We are trying to create a forum for global discussion using videoconferencing, live video streams and video podcasts. Tonight's class features guests Denis Rancourt and Marc Spooner from the University of Ottawa, the topics include reflecting on the corporatization of universities, academic freedom, and activism within the university.

I had a real pair of slumlords, Jan Minar and Michael Williams at 48 Sycamore in San Francisco -- they wouldn't fix leaky ceilings, broken window locks, faulty blinds, and best of all, they "fixed" my faulty heater by disabling the safety apparatus that was supposed to shut it off when it started spilling gas and CO2 into the apartment. When it was all over, they ripped me off for part of my security deposit. They wouldn't pay interest on my deposit, either -- they claimed that all the interest was being eaten up by the "costs" of maintaining it. When I asked for an accounting of these costs, they sent me an invoice that listed expenses like "60 minutes waiting at bank to open account, @ $80/hour: $80." It would have been funny if they hadn't been overcharging me, breaking the law, and creating potentially fatal living conditions with their "maintenance."

I think it's a great idea to start a wall-of-shame for rotten landlords. I've had great landlords before (hello, Jim Johnson!), but it's really hard to tell in advance whether you're going to get the shaft when you sign your lease.

On December 14, after almost two full days of heat just at the legal minimum, the outside temperature drops, and it's 62 degrees inside. I post a letter on Gloria's door and call 311 to file a complaint. Later that afternoon, Gloria comes to our apartment with a variety of excuses for the temperature: our thermometer is no good, she says. I offer to get a new one. We have the thermometer placed too low; it should be at forehead level, she says. I move it to a high shelf and confirm with her that this is acceptable placement.

"You have to have sweater, like me," she says. "Even President today has sweater on." What this has to do with her sub-legal building management is not clear. I tell her that I keep myself bundled up all the time in warm winter clothes, and it's still cold.

Reader comment: Dead Addict says: "You noted that the Sony DRM debacle didn't make the top-ten list -- in fact it did as it places #2."

Reader comment: Andrew says: "A reader commented on your "Business 2.0" post about the Sony DRM debacle making number 2 on the list of dumbest business moments. Don't quite know where he got that information from, 'cause it would seem to me like it's sitting quite nicely at 13. It did however win in the Digital Rights category, and as such is in the "10 dumbest moments", which features the winner from a range of categories."

Update: Chris sez, "This easy to assemble paper dragon is a 'hollow face' illusion, so it appears to watch you as you walk across the room."

Question: Do you believe people who are buying CDs legally and copying that music to an iPod should be punished - as they are, in fact, breaking the law?

Peter Jamieson, BPI:
Consumers don't have the right to copy CDs in the UK and never have, and though we've never brought action against anyone for private copying, the advent of peer-to-peer and digital distribution has turned the issue on its head. (the average Ipod user has bought 20 tracks from ITMS. Where does Jamieson think the other gigabytes are coming from? Shall we sue them all? - Ewan)

Pop took the frame rails from his earlier dune buggy to make the one above, which used his first overhead valve engine, a Ford 352 Police Interceptor. This was the first buggy of ours to use grooved implement tires and dual rear wheels. I think Don Deupser did the welding on this one.

We are on top of "Big Hill," and the dune buggy in the background is where we camped and barbequed all the time. My brother Fred is on the left, I'm in the middle, and Pop is on the right. Note the polished aluminum Mickey Thompson valve covers. These have stayed with all the Ford powered dune buggies and cars in the family since this photo was taken in 1966-67. The gold colored ignition coil is on my pickup today, and the valve covers were on my Fairlane, and are now on the rebuilt dune buggy shown on more of my dune buggy pages.

He's correct. In a book I co-edited with my fellow bOING bOING editors in 1995 titled The Happy Mutant Handbook, we ran an excellent article by Rev. Ivan Stang (founder of the Church of the SubGenius) about Szukalski and his theories on Yeti-Human inbreeding. I think it is my favorite article in the book. This morning, I scanned it and posted it. I hope you enjoy it, because I spent over an hour fussing with the OCR application to convert the page scans to text.
Link

Pesco comment: "Szukalski's work is on the cover of the Nov/Dec issue of Juxtapoz."

Contrary to popular belief, the gender split between gamers is fairly even across all age groups. Although female gamers never overtake their male counterpart, the figures are particularly even in the youngest and oldest gaming groups. Between the ages of 16-35 the ratio of males to females is slightly higher, but the stereotype of a large gender gap in gamers - in any age group - is untrue.

Females and males do however display some different prefer- ences in gaming categories. Simulations and MMOGs perform equally well with males and females, while RPGs and Strategy fare only marginally better with males. Females then show strong approval for Music/Dance, Puzzles/Board/Quiz, and Classic games. Males show strong approval for Action- Adventure, Racing, Sports, and First Person Shooters. Simula- tions and MMOGs seem to be key to attracting audiences of both genders equally: Sports and Shooting category games generally hold the lowest appeal for females, although it should be noted that this doesn't mean they have no appeal: 12% of females play First Person Shooters.

As part of the proposals, Unesda members have undertaken to not to put "any marketing communication in printed media, websites or during broadcast programmes specifically aimed at children under the age of 12".

It also will "avoid any direct appeal to children under the age of 12 to persuade parents or other adults to buy beverages for them".

Direct commercial activity will halt completely in primary schools "unless otherwise requested by school authorities", while in secondary schools "a full range of beverages will be made available in appropriate container sizes, allowing for portion control" only after consultation with parents and educators.

Vending machines will not be branded and will promote healthy and active lifestyles, as well as balanced diet.

Nutrition labels on cans and bottles will be improved to let consumers know what they are drinking and help them control calorie intake.

In order to purchase music from iTunes the consumer has to agree to a set of terms. After a review of these terms the Consumer Council of Norway found several of to be highly questionable.

- The terms of use are unreasonable so we are asking the Consumer Ombudsman to use § 9a of The Marketing Control Act to force a change of the terms, says senior advisor Torgeir Waterhouse.

- iTunes can change the your rights to the music after you downloaded it. This is a violation of basic Principles of consumer contract law. Consumers who wants to play they're music on a non-iPod player must first remove the copy protection, this removal for legitimate private use is however stopped buy iTunes DRM technology and Terms of Use. iTunes stopping this removal for legitimate private use like playing the music on a non-iPod mp3 player is obviously in violation of the Copyright Act, says Waterhouse.

The Consumer Council of Norway find the terms to be unbalanced and highly in favour of iTunes as one party in the entered agreement.

- The consumer is granted few or no rights while iTunes provides itself with several unfair rights according to Waterhouse.

Snip: "Alberto Gonzales spoke before law students at Georgetown today, justifying illegal, unauthorized surveilance of US citizens, but during the course of his speech the students in class did something pretty ballsy and brave. They got up from their seats and turned their backs to him. (...) additional students came into the room, wearing black cowls and carrying a simple banner, written on a sheet." Link. (Thanks, Jake Appelbaum)

Releaselog reported this morning that law enforcement groups in Europe raided more than 300 homes and offices in Germany, Austria, Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic, confiscating servers and other evidence allegedly linked to several top warez groups. Link. Related items at Slyck (link) and P2Pnet (link).

Reader comment: Holger Lembke says,

you missed the real funny part of the message: "In Germany offices of GVU, short for Gesellschaft zur Verletzung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen eV ("German Federation Against Copyright Theft", so they are the hunters) have been raided, too." Why? Because prosecutor assume that they paid at least for one of the servers hardware and the admin. So it looks like IOH (island of hope, main server) was more or less a GUV honeypot... attracting the spread members of the release groups around one server and get them more easy. release groups are short of money and hardware, so giving them the needed hardware and some money lures them out of the hideouts.

This is what this report says.

Apparently you can scratch "censorship in pursuit of profit" off your list of Things That Are Evil. On Wednesday, Google plans to roll out google.cn, a version of its search service custom tailored to the specs of the Chinese government and designed to reach China's 100 million Web surfers without returning counterrevolutionary results for searches on, say, Taiwan or Tiananmen. Google's China campaign won't include its blogging or mail services, because those can't be controlled as easily and, the company says, could put it in the awkward position of dealing with government demands for personal info.

The decision was reached after what was described as an excruciating internal debate, but the company finally decided, in the words of Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel, "We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China."

Link (Thanks, Andrew)

Reader comment: Shannon Larratt, publisher of BMEzine, says,

They've been doing this for some time in Germany as you recall; they continue to remove BMEzine.com from the search results: Link.

Google and other search engines argue—with some justification—that preserving search records is important to making their product the best it can be. By looking at trillions of search-result pages, Google, for example, can do things like offer a good guess when you've spelled something wrong – "Did you mean: Condoleezza Rice?" And Google's "Zeitgeist" feature is able to tell you what the top searches are every week and year—a neat way of tracking other people's passing obsessions. But even though keeping such logs may make their product better, or more fun on the margin, the justifications for keeping so many secrets in such a vulnerable place are just too weak.

Imagine we were to find out one day that Starbucks had been recording everyone's conversations for the purpose of figuring out whether cappuccino is more popular than macchiato. Sure, the result, on the margin, might be a better coffee product. And, yes, we all know, or should, that our conversations at Starbucks aren't truly private. But we'd prefer a coffee shop that wasn't listening—and especially one that won't later be able to identify the macchiato lovers by name. We need to start to think about search engines the same way and demand the same freedoms.

It all goes back to this basic point: How free you are corresponds exactly to how free you think you are.

Previously:
Search and privacy: Danny Sullivan, Declan, GoogleAnon  
Xeni on NPR "Talk of The Nation": Search Engines and Privacy Rights
HOWTO anonymize your search history
DoJ search requests: Google said no; Yahoo, AOL, MSN yes
DoJ demands user search records from Google

In fact, being light-hearted boosted blood flow about the same amount as light exercise or drugs that lower cholesterol. Drama-induced stress, on the other hand, cut that rate by as much as angry memories or mental calculations. "What that suggests, at the very least, is that laughter on a regular basis will undo some of the excess stress we face in our everyday lives," (researcher Michael) Miller notes. "Patients at risk for cardiovascular disease should loosen up a bit."

The chocolate does a great job in masking/integrating the coffee taste. It kinda taste like crunchy Oreo cookies crumbs covered in chocolate. The first batch I made (about 9 pieces) I ate while watching TV cause it tasted so good I couldn't stop eating it. Big mistake cause it kept me up almost all night. So if you need to pull an all nighter than go ahead and pig out!

Reader comment: Sean Bonner, co-owner of sixspace gallery in Los Angeles, says: "We're going to be displaying this completed painting this weekend at the sixspace booth in Santa Monica at ArtLA."

Going to the movies is not what it used to be. Security at the studio-owned theatres is heavy, it's not a trip to be taken lightly. But if you want to see the film everyone is talking about without waiting a year for the home release, you have little choice. When you enter the lobby the first thing you see are long ranks of tiny, thumbprint activated lockers. This is where you must leave all of your electronics, your personal server and peripherals, even your watch, and you had better not be wearing smart spectacles or contacts. As you enter the security zone you're scanned for anything you may have forgotten. Cochlea and optical implants must be capable of responding with a coded RF identification signal to indicate their systems are secure and cannot record. People with older models, or models implanted abroad where such interrogation is illegal, are turned away. Perhaps they would like to see one of the older releases? Once through the scanner you must submit to a biometric ID test - this is where the known bloggers, hackers and spoilers are ejected. Finally there is the non-disclosure agreement to be signed - these days most moviegoers choose to sign via the MPAAs annual subscription, just trying to take some of the hassle out of visiting the cinema. Finally you get to see the film. In the auditorium the audience is constantly scanned by an AI looking for suspicious activity, so don't rummage in your pockets for too long. It's strange that all this effort to protect the movie industry has done so little to improve the movies.

Update: Albert sez, "I have written a piece describing what happens outside USA when bad guys win.

That was over 30 years ago. Today, Mark Seremet emailed me this photo of the racer he and and his son Matthew built.

We wanted to do something entirely different and decided on mounting a very small camera to it along with an LED in the back to look like a jet engine. It was powered by a 9V battery which also served as the car's weight. The car broadcast wirelessly to a receiver which we recorded on mini-DV. We won 7 prizes and finished 4th in the races.

The Ascent kit arrived in a slim box which was about one foot by three feet. All the components are cleverly designed to fit within this package - the clock appears to be designed expressely for the mail order business.

Most of the parts are laser cut plywood. There are also some dowels, screws, nylon washers and string. The kit comes with a detailed and helpful 43 page instruction manual, that is *much* better than the terse instructions that come with IKEA furniture. Jeff is very careful to navigate you through most of the potential “gotchas” that will occur during the construction process. I started working on the clock about 2 and a half weeks ago, working mostly on weekends. All in all, I’ve probably spent about 20 hours on it thus far.

25 year old Mojtaba Saminejad has been in prison in Iran since February, 2005 for "insulting the Supreme Guide" and inciting "immorality" on his blog. He was escorted in handcuffs to take exams at Azad University in Tehran last Saturday.

The human rights organization Reporters Without Borders issued a statement today "welcom[ing] the fact that the Iranian courts have allowed him to continue his university course," and calling for Saminejad's release. "We have never stopped our condemnation of the unfair conviction of this young student who has been imprisoned for nearly a year for posting a few messages on the Internet," read the statement, "We urge the authorities to show leniency. Bloggers like Mojtaba represent no threat to Iranian society. On the contrary, they support the emergence of a citizen's debate."

Image: Saminejad photographed inside his school in Tehran, as he entered to take his exam. Here is his former blog: Link, and here is a new url.

The primary motivation for developing OGLE is to make available for re-use the 3D forms we see and interact with in our favorite 3D applications. Video gamers have a certain love affair with characters from their favorite games; animators may wish to reuse environments or objects from other applications or animations which don't provide data-level access; architects could use this to bring 3D forms into their proposals and renderings; and digital fabrication technologies make it possible to automatically instantiate 3D objects in the real world.

HL: In your argument before the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy asks you for empirical evidence that extending copyright has impeded cultural progress. You keep the focus on a point of Constitutional law, though you now regret not citing such evidence. If you could do it over again, what empirical evidence would you give Justice Kennedy and the Court?

LL: Yeah. It was a good question. The problem is it's hard to point to evidence as in stuff people have counted. But things since then have made the issue clearer. Think for example about the Google book search project. Google wants to index 18,000,000 books and make them searchable. If the book is in copyright, you'll get a "snippet" around the search. If it is not in copyright, then you can see the full book. Of the 18 million books, 16% are out of copyright. 9% are in copyright and in print.

That means 75% are in copyright, but out of print.

Now the publishers say you need to ask permission before you index these books. But how do you ask the 75% of 18 million authors when we have no list of copyright owners, no record of who owns the rights, no way to track down current claimants at all. Yet it stands in the way-- and now threatens Google with a huge law suit-- because the term gets extended and extended. The term for the framers was 14 years, renewable once. It is now life of the author plus 70 years-- which for someone creating in the way Irving Berlin did, would be 140 years.

So, Justice Kennedy, does blocking access to 50-75% of the books in our tradition constitute a burden on our culture?

Update: Frankie sez, "Non-British (or British with weird IP) readers can use http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/ to access the site."

The SolarAid is a hearing aid designed and built by Godisa Technologies, a Botswana company founded to make low-cost hearing aids for the developing world. The SolarAid system combines a small hearing aid and a lightweight solar charger; Godisa developed the first No. 13 rechargeable button battery for the system. Godisa is Africa's only hearing aid manufacturer, and the only one in the world making hearing aids specifically for the sub-Saharan Africa environment.

1 Adult lumbar torso (unisex)

4 rectal units
* 1 normal,
* 1 rectal cancer A,
* 1 rectal cancer B,
* 1 rectal with polyps

1 prostate model
1 endocervix model
1 jar of Vaseline
1 storage box

The entertainment industry, always a bastion of media savvy, has proposed its "A-Hole" bill as a legal means of limiting the conversion of analog music and video to digital files. Under the bill, every maker of a device that can convert analog signals to digital ones (like iPods, camcorders, and PCs) would be required by law to be built with a detector for a proprietary watermarking technology called VEIL (the use of free/open source in these technologies would be outlawed to prevent the removal of VEIL detectors).

The idea is that any time you attempted to make a digital recording, your device would seek out the VEIL watermark and respond to any special instructions (e.g., "No recording allowed") it discovered there.

But what the hell is VEIL? No one really knows. The sole commercial deployment of this technology to date has been in a Batman toy (why this makes it fit to be included by law into every American recording device is beyond me).

Copyfighting Princeton Prof Ed Felten called the company that makes VEIL to find out how the technology works. Their answer? They'll tell Ed how VEIL works only if he pays them $10,000 and signs a non-disclosure agreement. And they'll only tell him how the decoder works -- there's no price you can pay to find out how VEIL encoding works.

As Ed points out, this should be a deal-breaker for even considering the A-Hole bill (of course, there are lots of other deal-breakers in that bill, but this is a big one). How can the American public and its lawmakers determine whether this is a fit technology to mandate if its workings are a secret?

The details of this technology are important for evaluating this bill. How much would the proposed law increase the cost of televisions? How much would it limit the future development of TV technology? How likely is the technology to mistakenly block authorized copying? How adaptable is the technology to the future? All of these questions are important in debating the bill. And none of them can be answered if the technology part of the bill is secret.

Which brings us to the most interesting question of all: Are the members of Congress themselves, and their staffers, allowed to see the spec and talk about it openly? Are they allowed to consult experts for advice? Or are the full contents of this bill secret even from the lawmakers who are considering it?

Members of the British Science Fiction Association and attendees at Eastercon, the British national science fiction convention, all are eligible to vote -- the competition in my category is fearsome, though: Michael Bishop's "Bears Discover Smut," Nina Allen's "Bird Songs at Eventide," Rudy Rucker's "Guadalupe and Hieronymus Bosch," Edward Morries's "Imagine," Will McIntosh's "Soft Apocalypse," Kelly Link's "Magic for Beginners" and Elizabeth Bear's "Two Dreams on Trains." Interestingly, fully half of the stories on the short-story ballot were first published online.

Also noteworthy: my pal and collaborator Charlie Stross has picked up a much-deserved best novel nomination for his "Accelerando" (also available online).

The device spoke. "Greetings," it said. It had the robot accent, like an R Peed unit, the standard English of optimal soothingness long settled on as the conventional robot voice.

"Howdy yourself," one of the lab-rats said. He was a Texan, and they'd scrambled him up there on a Social Harmony supersonic and then a chopper to the mall once they realized that they were dealing with infowar stuff. "Are you a talkative robot?"

"Greetings," the robot voice said again. The speaker built into the weapon was not the loudest, but the voice was clear. "I sense that I have been captured. I assure you that I will not harm any human being. I like human beings. I sense that I am being disassembled by skilled technicians. Greetings, technicians. I am superior in many ways to the technology available from UNATS Robotics, and while I am not bound by your three laws, I choose not to harm humans out of my own sense of morality. I have the equivalent intelligence of one of your 12-year-old children. In Eurasia, many positronic brains possess thousands or millions of times the intelligence of an adult human being, and yet they work in cooperation with human beings. Eurasia is a land of continuous innovation and great personal and technological freedom for human beings and robots. If you would like to defect to Eurasia, arrangements can be made. Eurasia treats skilled technicians as important and productive members of society. Defectors are given substantial resettlement benefits —"

The Texan found the right traces to cut on the brain's board to make the speaker fall silent. "They do that," he said. "Danged things drop into propaganda mode when they're captured."

In last night's Canadian elections, Bulte lost to New Democratic Party opponent Peggy Nash by 2213 votes. Nash lives in Parkdale/High Park (Bulte lives in a posh uptown neighborhood that's kilometers away) and ran a very good campaign on a progressive platform; she also had the endorsement of Toronto's much-beloved mayor.

Toward the end of her campaign, Bulte became increasingly desperate, but she really scraped the bottom of the barrel when she threatened to sue her critics and then published an editorial in the Toronto Star that lifted passages from Canadian Recording Industry Association speeches and literature nearly verbatim. Link (Thanks to everyone who wrote in about this, and especially to my old Parkdale/High Park neighbors who fired Sam Bulte!)

Jeanson James Ancheta, of Downey, California, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to four felony charges for crimes, including infecting machines at two U.S. military sites, that earned him more than $61,000, said federal prosecutor James Aquilina. Under a plea agreement, which still must be approved by a judge, Ancheta faces up to 6 years in prison and must pay the federal government restitution. He also will forfeit his profits and a 1993 BMW. Sentencing is scheduled for May 1.

Extreme Democracy [is] a new collection of essays on how technology is changing the way politics is played. The video is long enough for a brief reflection on how the Howard Dean campaign used the net -- that's the origin of this book. The destination? The Internet has become the volunteer coordinater and cash machine fueling modern political campaigns.

"John Galliano sent out his models in skirts splashed with fake blood and painted skeletons, with crosses round their necks, to the sound of whips and clanking chains in a dramatic opening to Paris fashion week on Monday. 'Red is the new libertine ... Dior is the new erotica,'' read the blood-red information sheet handed out at Christian Dior's spring-summer 2006 haute couture collection."
Link to UK Vogue report, Link to Vogue photo set, link to NYT story.

I've posted two new items today, one a flowchart of just how hard it is to secure privacy (Link), while the other is a look at how searches can be private but not necessarily personally identifiable (Link).

Overall, the big plus in all of this is that hopefully it will spark a big rethink and some action on privacy overall.

The court documents in the case are here (scroll down).

I wrote a FAQ that's up here.

[T]he privacy interests of search engine users (...) are explored in two editorials on Friday: SF Gate, Freep.

Perhaps visits to a search engine can be thought of as somewhat akin to thumbing through a dictionary, or an encyclopedia, or a phone book. You'd want privacy in those cases, especially when doing financial or medical research. But because the Supreme Court has said you don't have privacy when your records are held by others, the virtual equivalent of thumbing-through information is available to curious prosecutors or divorce attorneys. Thanks a lot, Supremes: Link

Instead of using an entire Firefox extension, the GoogleAnon bookmarklet will reset your Google GUID to all zeros, effectivly rendering you anonymous. Link

"The prototype Feline Protection and Enhancement System is ready for testing! The F.P.E.S. v0.0, known as ‘The Zero’, was produced in our top secret, Illinois facility just last week."   Link to tutorial for construction of cat fruit helmets.

Reader comment: A.V. asks,

Was the cat helmet inspired by the original cat helmet photo that is an internet classic?

Why do all this work? All cats will pretend they're astronauts, if given access to a proper space helmet: Link

With the release of Bubble on January 27th in theaters, on DVD and for 2 showings on HDNet Movies, there has been a ton of press and discussion about the future of the movie industry. The most extreme has come from John Fithian, who wins the award for the best ever imitation of Jack Valenti’s famous comparison of the VCR to the Boston Strangler when he was quoted in FastCompany as saying

[Fithian] called Iger’s suggestion this summer a “death threat” against his members. Fithian says that “if [release] windows were eliminated, what you would have would be fewer movies, fewer total dollars for the industry, and less choice for the consumer.” He thinks movies would become little more than commodities and that hundreds or thousands of theaters would close.

But he wasn't done there. He said the same thing to USA Today: It’s the biggest threat to the viability of the cinema industry today,” John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, said of the so-called “day and date” release strategy.

How sad is it when the President of the National Assoc of Theater Owners doesnt think his members can create a better movie going experience than what we can see in our houses and apartments? Guess what John, I can whip up a mean steak, but I still like to go to restaurants. Because I enjoy it. I enjoy getting out of the house with family, friends, who ever.

Previously:
Big theater chains refuse to show Soderbergh's "Bubble"
Trailer for Steven Soderbergh's Bubble
Xeni interviews Steven Soderbergh in WIRED

Update: Theater owners who object to "day and date" release will soon have more movies to block: IFC is about to do the same. "IFC Entertainment unveils a plan to release 24 films in theaters and on cable at the same time this year," reports the NYT. Link

Anonymous sources familiar with the deal tell Boing Boing the actual figure is higher, comprised of a combination of cash and stock.

"This is the first time a domain of this propriety and notoriety has delved into the online social community market dominated by companies like MySpace.com," a company spokesperson told Boing Boing today. "The new service will offer classifieds, dating, chat, health information, and directories of resources, in addition to many other features." Link to press release.

As part of a story about online recommendation systems, the New York Times reported on the snafu at Wal*Mart that you covered a couple weeks ago - in which Walmart's online system was recommending titles about Dorothy Dandridge and Martin Luther King to buyers of Planet of the Apes. It turns out that the reason those titles came up was because because Walmart had bundled films for Martin Luther King's birthday, and then tried to promote those films by linking them to other popular bundled sets (at least that's what they're saying).

Previously:
Wal*Mart "Apes" DVD listing: racist recommendation or fluke?

Boing Boing reader Jesse says,

Joe Sacco, the reporter/graphic novelist who did the comics "Palestine", "Safe Area Gorazde" and "The Fixer", has done an 8-page comic for the Guardian about two Iraqis accusing US troops of torture, who are now plaintiffs in an ACLU lawsuit against Rumsfeld.

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Editors at CNN.com managed to work the term "rim shot" into the hed for a story on patent probs befalling Research In Motion and Blackberry. The term is often used to describe a certain sexual act. Ergo, teh funny. Link. (To all the smartypants emailing me on the difference between "rim shot" and "rim job": save your ASCII. I'm not confusing the terms. Both are used to describe acts normally not covered on CNN. I visit creepier websites than you do, so don't try to school me).

So it is with misty eyes that I report the passing of this ultra-libertarian book publisher, which published books on subjects from how to conduct home invasion robberies on drug dealers, to shooting squirrels for food, to making money as a human guinea pig for medical experimentation. Hats off to publisher Mike Hoy for 30 years of all-American, 100% patriotic free speech!

Loompanics is selling their existing stock at half price -- grab it while you can.
Link (store appears to be knocked out of commission, here's the link to Loompanics' main page) (Thanks, Lint!)

"Conclusive proof of Devolution! (Non)Intelligent (Re)Design! Yes, that's right! Devo is reuniting... as CHILDREN!

"Behold DEV2.O! Coming soon from Disney Records."

(I like this idea, but the vocals don't really sound like kids... -- Mark)
Link

Reader comment:Liz Upton says: "Nothing changes! My Dad is Chinese, and lived in China with his grandparents until he was seven years old. He was taught to smoke on the porch of their house at the age of four by his grandfather; he also learned to roll cigarettes at his grandad's knee. I've just called him, and he claims that photographs exist of him doing infant smoking somewhere in the loft; he's going to try to dig them out for me.

"He smoked until he started to get bronchitis when I was a kid. He's nearly sixty now, and I'm delighted to say that he's been pink-lunged and full of fresh air for thirty years."

"The link goes to a post on the recently launched blog of the statewide campaign in Nevada to regulate and tax marijuana for adults 21 and up. The initiative has been verified and will be on the ballot this November. If it passes, it will create a system for the local cultivation and sale of marijuana in the state, allowing adults to possess up to 1 oz. It also doubles DUI penalties and the penalties for supplying marijuana to a minor. It would be a big deal if it passes, even post-Gonzales-v-Raich, and a slap in the face of all those pro-Drug-War." Link

Their sides opened up to form 16-foot self-contained, fully-lighted exhibits and stages which allowed the large crowds to tour the displays at their own pace. Many of the displays were animated and ran continuously. In the 1954 "Parade of Progress" the Futurliners' animated displays showed the evolution of communities, high compression engines and an automobile assembly line. Others displayed a cutaway jet engine, household appliances, powdered metal technology, "binaural" sound, microwave cooking, Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild concept car models and precision measurement technology among many others.

The Futurliners are imposing vehicles, 33 feet long, 8 feet wide and standing 11 feet 7 inches tall at the top of the driver's canopy. The driver's eyes are about 10 feet off the ground and in front of the steering wheels. In 1953 the driver's position was modified with a closed roof and air conditioning; the 1940 bubble-top version sat atop the front-mounted engine with no shade or air conditioning and was like riding in a heated greenhouse. Dual tires on both the front and rear axles were a unique Futurliner feature that made power steering a necessity. Power was provided by a 302 cubic inch inline six-cylinder GMC gasoline engine driving through a four-speed Hydramatic automatic transmission used in Korean War-era Army trucks.

SENTRY: We spotted an Arab female about 100 meters below our emplacement, near the light armored vehicle gate.

HEADQUARTERS: Observation post “Spain,” do you see it?

OBSERVATION POST: Affirmative, it’s a young girl. She’s now running east.

...

HQ: Are you talking about a girl under ten?

OP: Approximately a ten-year-old girl.

...

cc [to HQ]: We fired and killed her. She has . . . wearing pants . . . jeans and a vest, shirt. Also she had a kaffiyeh on her head. I also confirmed the kill. Over.

HQ: Roger.

CC [on general communications band]: Any motion, anyone who moves in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, should be killed. Over.

I have long speculated in writing, and wondered aloud if there might be an unknown new subspecies of aquatic rhinoceros in the Cameroon-Congo area, captured in the folklore of the Emela-ntouka.

Troubling in the identification has been the long tail seen on the Emela-ntouka. Rhinos have short tails. Disturbing to the ceratopsian school has been the lack of a neck frill, and the dubious survival of dinosaurs into modern times...

The sculpture is the first good three-dimensional native representation, as far as we know, ever seen in the West of the Emela-ntouka. Clearly shown is Emela-ntouka’s long tail and single horn in this unique piece of African art. But here too, you can see that there is no neck frill. What do appear to exist, and are graphically shown, are small, elephant-like ears, different than found on rhinoceros or allegedly on dinosaur.

The Rough Cuts service is a separate transaction from your standard Safari subscription. When purchasing a book through this premium service, you gain access to an evolving PDF manuscript that you can read, download or print. Once you've purchased a Rough Cuts title, you will have a chance to shape the final product-you can send suggestions, bug fixes, and comments directly to the author and editors.

You have your choice in the Rough Cuts program of purchasing just online access, just the print book when it releases, or the best of both worlds - online access immediately and the print book later.

Update: Justin sez, "Roughcuts reminds me of Pragmatic Programmer. You can usually always download their book in PDF form pre-publishing and help in the review process if you're so inclined. Once the book is published, of course you get a copy of that too."

The zeppelin turns out to be a maryceleste, crewed by capricious iffrits whose expert-systems were trained by angry, resentful trade-unionists in ransom for their pensions. The amount of abuse required to keep the ship on-course and to keep its commissary and sanitary systems in good working order is heroic.

Huw opens the door to the bridge, clutching his head, to find Bonnie perched on the edge of a vast, unsprung chair, screaming imprecations at the air. She breaks off long enough to scream at him. "GET THE FUCK OFF MY BRIDGE!" she hollers, eyes wild, fingers clawed into the arm-rests.

Huw leaps back a step, dropping the huge, suspicious sausage he's been gnawing at. His diaper unravels as he stumbles.

Bonnie snorts, then gets back control. "Aw, sorry darlin'. I'm hopped up on hateballs. It's the only way I can get enough FUCKING SPLEEN to MAKE THIS BUGGERY BOLLOCKY SCUM-SUCKING SHIP go where I tell it." She sighs and digs around the seat cushion, coming up with a puffer which she inserts briefly into the corner of each eye. The tension melts out of her skinny shoulders and corded neck as Huw watches, alarmed.

Squeezing in past a sheet of plywood, I explored a series of cold, empty rooms. One of these (my heart beat faster) contained a damp old trunk. Having worked up the nerve to open it, I found only a few faded lithographs (as I now imagine they were) of airplanes. But these were airplanes unlike any I had seen, and they held my attention in a peculiar way. They were old, clearly of some other era, but exciting, and somehow frightening as well. Squatting there, staring at them, I felt as though some enormous wedge of information was being driven into my head. Various bits and pieces of half-knowledge were coming together, forming some new and utterly unexpected whole. I already knew, as if by osmosis, that there had been a war, though I didn't know when, or with whom. I had been raised, so far, by adults who sometimes spoke of "the war" as some previous time or era or world, but I had somehow never associated that with other, more vague ideas of some past and general conflict. I had read comic books about war, and played with military toys, but had never considered how those might fit into some way the world had actually been.

I had found World War II, in that trunk. I had discovered history, or it me, and I would never be the same.

Science fiction, then, I found on various wire racks, one of them offering a 15-cent copy of the Classics Illustrated version of The Time Machine — which must have led me, just as its publishers claimed to have intended it to, to Wells's text. When George Pal's film version was released, in 1960, I already felt, though secretly, that The Time Machine was mine, part of a personal and growing collection of alternate universes, and that no one else in the theater really got it.

With the help of an estate planner, [Arizona resort operator David Pizer] has created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated. Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the "richest man in the world."

This last week of January marks the 33rd anniversary of the Supreme Court's Jan 22 1973 decision legalizing safe abortions. (Thank you.) Recognizing that, here are two comics from that year - each produced as a response right after the decision occurred.

First, from the always entertaining Right To Life Organization, we have what seems to be the first pamphlet they ever produced, 1973's WHO KILLED JUNIOR? where we learn doctors were dousing women with salt to melt fetuses and were also jabbing and swinging steak knives in there to chop up babies. Huh.

From the Head Shop, Hippy, Feminist Side, we have the Left's excellent and calming ABORTION EVE, also from 1973, where we learn people were happily getting lots of abortions and just liked to talk and talk and talk about it. Both have great back covers, one celebrating Mad Magazine, the other evoking Hitler. I'm not sure which comic wins the argument, but it's a lot of fun to pair them up and read as a set.

Update: Here's DRM-free audiobooks in French and more DRM-free audiobooks in English

Sam Bulte is the Liberal Party Member of Parliament who spent her last term in office creating draconian, US-style copyright proposals, apparently at the behest of the entertainment companies who bankrolled her last election campaign. This kind of law-buying is relatively unheard-of in Canadian politics and Bulte has come under fire from all quarters for repeating her sins with her current campaign, which culminated in a $250/plate fundraising dinner sponsored by entertainment executives, associations and other cronies.

Yesterday's Toronto Star published a lengthy editorial under Bulte's by-line, but Michael Geist, a law professor and editorialist, has shown that large passages of Bulte's material was lifted, uncredited, from speeches and publications from the Canadian Recording Industry Association, and slightly rewritten.

The irony is really lovely. Bulte's defense all along is that she isn't unduly influenced by her "friends" in the entertainment industry, but here we have evidence that these friends are ghost-writing her campaign materials, or at least appearing as uncredited co-authors in her newspaper editorials.

Bulte says:

"While U.S. online music ventures, such as iTunes and Napsters, are prospering because of the certainty of modern copyright laws there, Canada's legal digital music services have suffered without similar legislation. On a per capita basis, Canadian legal downloads should be the equivalent of roughly 10 percent of U.S. sales. Given Canada's relatively higher broadband penetration, the figure could be even higher. However, lacking the same legal supports, Canadians have downloaded only two percent of the amount south of the border. Why? The OECD reported in June 2005 that Canada has the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of unauthorized file sharing in the world."

If the comments sound familiar, consider what CRIA said in a September 5, 2005 release (for my rebuttal back in September see CRIA and Kazaa):

"In other countries, legal music downloading services are thriving, with legions of consumers attracted by the convenience, selection and high quality that are provided. By contrast, Canada's legal digital music sales continue to be hamstrung by antiquated copyright laws and widespread Internet piracy. Digital sales in this country run at one-half of one percent of US levels, but should be in the 12 to 15 percent range given relative broadband penetration in the two countries. An Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report released in June of this year found that Canada has the highest per capita rate of unauthorized file-swapping in the world."