Florida cops threaten people who ask for complaint forms

By Cory Doctorow at 12:45 pm Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

A CBS undercover reporting team went into 38 police stations in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties in Florida, asking for a set of forms they could use to complain about inappropriate police behavior. In all but three of the stations, the police refused to give them forms. Some of the cops threatened them (on hidden camera, no less) -- one of them even touched his gun.

officer: Where do you live? Where do you live? You have to tell me where you live, what your name is, or anything like that.

tester: For a complaint? I mean, like, if I have --

officer: Are you on medications?

tester: Why would you ask me something like that?

officer: Because you're not answering any of my questions.

tester: Am I on medications?

officer: I asked you. It's a free country. I can ask you that.

tester: Okay, you're right.

officer: So you're not going to tell me who you are, you're not going to tell me what the problem is.You're not going to identify yourself.

tester: All I asked you was, like, how do I contact --

officer: You said you have a complaint. You say my officers are acting in an inappropriate manner.

officer: So leave now. Leave now. Leave now.

Link (via Why, That's Delightful!)

Update: Alex sez, "The Lauderhill cop who was shown intimidating an individual looking to file a police complaint on hidden camera took the news station to court to stop the story from airing."

Update 2: Lee sez, "The Police Complaint Center exists to help citizens file complaints against officers and departments -- an important service, as police officers are supposed to be serving the public."

Toronto Transit Commission censors humorous subway map remix

By Cory Doctorow at 11:58 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

The Toronto Transit Commission has followed the stupidity of Transport for London by sending a spurious trademark threat to a blogger who made an hilarious anagram remix of the stations on its classic map.

I grew up riding the TTC, and the map is burned into my subconscious. It's part of every Torontonian's experience of the city, a part of the cultural fabric. Culture gets remixed -- that's what happens with it. Trademark is supposed to protect rightsholders from competitors who use their marks to confuse the public in the course of commerce. No one who saw RobotJohnny's genius map would have confused it for a second with a real TTC map and sent him a subway token. The TTC's legal bullying here is completely needless -- they face no risk and no loss from letting their riders make turn the map into their own personal remix.

Torontonians go to bat for the TTC all the time, shouting at the province and the feds to beef up funding. We've put up with the disruption of the Sheppard Subway, we've lived through the years when they couldn't even get the platform clocks to work. Where the hell do they get off wasting legal fees threatening bloggers for producing noncommercial humourous, harmless remixes? Link (Thanks, RobotJohnny!)

Anagram transit maps: Berlin, Copenhagen, Baltimore (x2)

By Cory Doctorow at 11:48 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Berlin:

Copenhagen:

Baltimore (I):

Baltimore (II):

(Thanks, Benny, Henrik, Mike, Shiny, Mishhkin and Daen!)

See also: London Anagram Tube Map, Toronto Anagram Subway Map, Amsterdam Anagram Metro Map, Chicago Regional Transit Authority Anagram Map, Maps for Manhattan, Oslo, Boston and Atlanta, Vienna U-Bahn Anagram Map, DC Metro Anagram Map, Stockholm Transit Anagram Map, LA Red Line Anagram Map, Maps for Cleveland, St Louis (x2), BART, and Singapore

Cory's I, Robot podcast concludes

By Cory Doctorow at 10:52 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

I've just posted the final installment of the podcasting of my story, "I, Robot" (a nominee for this year's British Science Fiction Award and Locus Award), which was originally published in the Infinite Matrix online magazine. Next up, Return to Pleasure Island, originally published in my short story collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More.

Link, Subscribe to Podcast

Update: The MP3 was corrupted. There's a new one that's been uploaded and I'm just waiting for some post-processing before I link to it again -- sorry! OK, it's fixed!

BoingBoing now censored in the UAE (and elsewhere)

By Xeni Jardin at 7:57 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

An anonymous BoingBoing reader in the United Arab Emirates says,

And its finally happened... I knew the day was not far.... :(

The sole ISP in this country, which happens to be owned by the government has blocked boingboing.net Apparently boingboing is disseminating information that is " inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates. " See attached/hotlinked screenshot.

Please email me so if you post this on boingboing, so I can VPN to the office back home and read about this on boingboing... Till then I guess am stuck with fark.com which am sure is next. :(

PS - Please remove all personally identifiable information from the screenshot, cause I don't want to end up in jail. Yes they do put people in jail for attempting/bypassing their proxy.

Link to full-size screenshot.

They're pretty good at controlling internet ports. As a reminder, they appear destined to control America's physical ports as well.

Earlier this week, many dozens of readers emailed to inform us that BoingBoing had suddenly become no longer viewable at their place of employment -- government sites and corporate sites around the world. We understand that this is due to the fact that the makers of the SmartFilter software, which is used by governments and private sector customers, just added BoingBoing to a category occupied mostly by porn sites. We have contacted Secure Computing, the makers of Smartfilter and are attempting to help them correct their error. We will post an update on BoingBoing soon.

SF editor: watermarks hurt artists and reward megacorps

By Cory Doctorow at 7:50 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Kathryn Cramer, science fiction editor, writer and investigative blogger, has written a post on how mandatory watermarking proposals like the VEIL initiative will bone individual artists, continuing a trend that started with unfair electronic rights grabs by big publishers in the eighties:

My experience in the early-mid 90s teaches me that part of the purpose of setting the production standards of early CD-ROMs absurdly high was to promote corporate authorship over individual authorship with the idea that digital products could be authored like film and TV, not like books, thus empowering the executive level and disempowering the actual creators, or rather reconfiguring relations such that executives become part of the creative "team."

Now computers are being sold that allow individuals, and small groups of individuals, to produce works to very high production standards on very low budgets. This also threatens the rise of corporate authorship. So watermark-style DRM may do very little to prevent the "piracy" about which the big media corporations are up in arms, it may be the killer app of corporate authorship.

Link

Dangly jewelry for your headphones

By Cory Doctorow at 7:47 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

These Japanese heaphone danglers let you wear dangly ear jewelry without getting it tangled up in your walkman's headphones. Link (via Popgadget)

WELL founder to run Google's philanthropic arm

By Cory Doctorow at 7:33 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Larry Brilliant, co-founder of The WELL and polymath epidemiologist, has been put in charge of Google.org, the billion-dollar charitable arm of Google. Link

Episode six of awesome sysadmin sitcom The IT Crowd is downloadable

By Cory Doctorow at 1:15 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Episode six of Graham Linehan's wonderful, screamingly funny sysadmin sitcom, The IT Crowd, is online for DRM-based Windows streaming from the Channel 4 UK site.

Me, I'm grabbing the DRM-free version from the Mininova torrent linked below (it's coming in fast, too with 30 peers in the mesh) and I can't wait. For the past six weeks, the new IT Crowd episode has been the highlight of my week -- I've always loved nerdy comedy (Real Genius! Sneakers!) and The IT Crowd gets so much right about being a sysadmin (I job I held down in a previous life), and is wicked funny into the bargain (no surprise, since Graham Linehan was previously responsible for Father Ted, an Irish a sitcom about degenerate Irish priests that has made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to be sick).

It says here that my copy will arrive in 25 minutes. Come on, progress-bar, move!

The arrival of Jen's "lady time of the month" has unexpected consequences for the office. Jen's in a bad mood, Moss feels weird, Roy bursts into tears, and even Richmond's been feeling gloomy. The only cure is to have a big girly night out with scented candles and Dirty Dancing saves the day, before cutting a rug at the office party...

Link, Alternate Link (Thanks, Ian, Fabian, Compn, CJ, and Adrian!)

Update: Watched it, loved it, howled with laughter and pounded the table and wept. Christ, this show is the best thing ever.

Update 2: Episode 6 is up on YouTube -- thanks, Tian!

University buildings photo-remixed into mecha monsters

By Cory Doctorow at 1:12 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Cris Rose, a graphic designer, remixed photos of the buildings on London's Brunel University into awesome, science-fictional mecha-monsters. This is beautiful work. Link (via Wonderland)

Homebrew IT Crowd ringtone

By Cory Doctorow at 12:59 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Steve's cut a great little ringtone from episode five of The IT Crowd, the incredibly funny sysadmin sitcom from Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted.

It features Moss saying "Hello?" after some dramatic music and then cuts into a few recognizable bars of the show's themesong. This is my new ringtone -- so long, Louis Jordan's "Stone Cold Dead in the Market," hello "The IT Crowd!" Link (Thanks, Steve!)

HOWTO stream The IT Crowd from outside the UK

By Cory Doctorow at 12:54 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Episode 6 of Channel 4 and Graham "Father Ted" Linehan's amazing, hilarious sysadmin sitcom went live yesterday, and as with the previous episodes, the show is available for download from C4's website.

Unfortunately, as with previous shows, Channel 4 has once again locked the show up with DRM, presented it only as streaming Windows files, and has used crude IP filtering to restrict playback to the UK only.

You can always circumvent this by just downloading the torrent that inevitably goes live within minutes of the show going up on the site -- no geographic restrictions and no DRM, thank you very much.

But if you'd prefer to stream it from Channel 4 with DRM (and if your computer will actually play it back) (mine won't!), and you're outside of the UK, Tian has written up a tremendous HOWTO explaining the best way to get the show online:

1. In Firefox, under Tools, select Options...

2. Under General, click on Connection Settings...

3. Type in "83.100.217.53" in HTTP Proxy field, "80" in Port field, and check Use this proxy server for all protocols.

4. Click OK to return to browser screen and enjoy the show.

Link (Thanks, Tian!)

Update: Messi sez, "please advise people to remove the HTTP proxy entry when they finished downloading the episode from C4. This unknown proxy may collect passwords and other stuff. Thanks!"

Handmade magnetic wooly Katamari

By Cory Doctorow at 12:48 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Laine, a crafty crafter, has made a Katamari (the ball that picks up random oddments in the wonderfully weird games Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari out of wool and stuffing, with a powerful magnet inside that allows it to actually pick up (ferrous) oddments in the real world! Link (Thanks, Pat!)

Pot-hanger in the shape of Chinese word for "luck"

By Cory Doctorow at 12:44 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

This pot-hanger is in the shape of the Chinese word for "luck," rendered in red steel. Link (via Cribcandy)

Princeton prof explains watermarks' failures

By Cory Doctorow at 12:42 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Princeton's Ed Felten has written a terrific article explaining the ins and outs of watermarking for audiovisual material, providing an excellent guide for anyone who wants to understand how the new proposals to mandate watermark detectors are doomed.

Congress is considering a bill to "plug the analog hole," that is, to prevent the use of recording equipment for capturing digital programs while they're been played back (one outcome of this is that you couldn't video your child's first step if he was taking it in the living-room with the TV playing in the shot).

The proposal is to use a "watermark" called VEIL, based on secret technology, and to require all people who build recorders to include VEIL detectors that can shut off the recorder if it appears that it's recording a watermarked program.

Felten is one of the world's leading experts on why watermarking fails, having led the effort to defeat the most ambitious, expensive watermarking system to date, the Secure Digital Music Initiative. In this article, "How Watermarks Fail," he talks about the ways that attackers can circumvent watermarks, in plain language that even I can understand:

[W]atermarks tend to be defeated if an adversary can get his hands on a watermarked file, and the same file without the watermark. By comparing the two, the adversary can determine where the watermark lives, which is usually sufficient to remove the watermark from other files. Alex used this method in deciphering the MediaMax watermark (as described in our Sony CD DRM paper), and my colleagues and I used it also in analyzing the SDMI watermarks back in 2000.

Almost as powerful as a Rosetta Stone attack is a comparison attack, where the adversary does not have an unwatermarked file, but does have the same file with several different watermarks in it. Any place where two of the files differ is a place where watermark information lives. Given several marked files, an attacker can locate all or most of the places the watermark is hidden, which is again the first step in removing the watermark.

Link (via Hack the Planet)

Anagram transit maps for Cleveland, St Louis (x2), BART, and Singapore

By Cory Doctorow at 12:13 am Saturday, Feb 25 • Comments • Share

Some great new anagram transit maps came in overnight:

Cleveland::

St Louis (I):

St Louis (II):

BART:

Singapore LTA:

(See this alternate Singapore map as well)

(Thanks, Billy, Rob, Fred, Peter, and Jesse!)

See also: London Anagram Tube Map, Toronto Anagram Subway Map, Amsterdam Anagram Metro Map, Chicago Regional Transit Authority Anagram Map, Maps for Manhattan, Oslo, Boston and Atlanta, Vienna U-Bahn Anagram Map, DC Metro Anagram Map, Stockholm Transit Anagram Map, LA Red Line Anagram Map

Update: Michael's produced an alternate map of the Singapore system