For the finale of Alexander McQueen's runway show last week, Kate Moss appeared as a hologram:

"Inside an empty glass pyramid, a mysterious puff of white smoke appeared from nowhere and spun in midair, slowly resolving itself into the moving, twisting shape of a woman enveloped in the billowing folds of a white dress. It was Kate Moss, her blonde hair and pale arms trailing in a dream-like apparition of fragility and beauty that danced for a few seconds, then shrank and dematerialized into the ether."

See also: the Girl to Gorilla ghost trick.

Watch the video

Reader comment: Brandon says,

It wasn't just the gorilla/girl thing that's used Pepper's Ghost. The Gorillaz did too, in their most recent live performances. Video link. Story link.

A University of Arizona researcher is cataloging the spectral fingerprints of all known minerals. Robert Downs is using a Raman spectrometer and now has 1,500 of the 4,000 minerals in his data base.

A colleague, M. Bonner Denton, is developing a pocket-size spectrometer that can be used on the 2009 Mars Rover to determine the minerals on that planet. The same technology can be used for handheld instruments on earth.

"We're developing a tricorder," Downs said, referring to the instruments the crew of the Starship Enterprise on "Star Trek" used to analyze the chemical composition of the planets they visited.

Boing Boing reader Liquidmatrix says,

Here’s is a US Presidential Order (13397) to “expand opportunities for faith-based and other community organizations and to strengthen their capacity to better meet America’s social and community needs”. First and foremost DHS is tasked with creating a “Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives”. This center is supposed to be in effect no less than 45 days from the issuance of the prez order. So look for the new org on April 20th or somewhere thereabout…is it ok for me to cry now?

The US has begun issuing passports that contain biometric information stored on remotely readable microchips, in spite of lingering security and privacy concerns. Supporters of the new passports say they enhance border security, reduce the possibility of identity fraud and impose minimal burdens on travellers – all goals the US has been working towards since the September 11 attacks. (...)

Last month, security concerns about the new passports arose anew after a Dutch television programme detailed how, in July 2005, the Dutch security laboratory Riscure successfully penetrated the encryption scheme planned for use in forthcoming Dutch electronic passports.

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Curt says,

Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter working for the Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped in Baghdad over two months ago. All indications are that she is still alive. The Monitor has started a campaign, using Iraqi television, to distribute a video asking for Iraqis to help find and free Jill.

Jill is not a blogger but she's got that spirit. She's an independent intellect who is fascinated by the world and has a desire to speak what she sees. So let's not leave it up to the newspapers and television stations. She's ours as much as theirs. I would like to ask every blogger who gives a damn about individual human life and the individual human voice to post a link to this video on their blog, to blog about Jill and to pass along our concern to friends, family and other bloggers. Of greatest import are Iraqi blogs and blogs in the Arabic and Muslim worlds that may be read by people in a position to do good for Jill.

Link

Today at lunch, we had the chance to see a very cool atmospheric optical effect at the horizon called "fata morgana". Here is a historical explanation of where the name comes from. "Fata Morgana is Italian for "Fairy Morgan", and as legend goes was the half-sister of King Arthur. She was said to live beneath the water and had magical powers capable of building huge cities out of thin air and the make them disappear. There's a certain place in Italy, when in Reggio looking across the Straits of Messina, where this legend has staying power in the eyes of numerous witnesses." This optical illusion is the result of refraction of light though the atmosphere. It happens when a layer of cold air is just above the ground and a layer of warmer air is above it. This causes a mirage which makes an object ( here just snow at the horizon) appear larger or more elevated than it really is. In this case, it appears as a cliff at the horizon, as if a giant iceberg had suddenly moved it. It is quite amazing. Even with binoculars, you see it an you think it real.

Link (Thanks, Holly Beale!) Link to Denis Barkats' "Fata Morgana" mirage photo, and here's a large panorama. Another related photo, and another.

You're digging the live Antarctiblogging? Here are more blogs maintained by researchers in Antarctica: Cynthia, Brian Keating, Cameron Martindell , Neal Sheibe ,
Brian Barnett.

Previously on BoingBoing:
- Another Antarctiblog: PhilJacobsen.com
- Job ad du jour: Raytheon needs writers in Antarctica

BoingBoing reader David Adams says,

There's currently a writer living in Antarctica, over the winter, no less, (though he's also earning an honest living working in the warehouse). His name is Phil Jacobsen, and his blog is at philjacobsen.com.

I'm going to email him about the writer job [BoingBoing post here], and I'm sure he'll be pissed to hear about it, since he's currently doing the writing for free, though I don't suppose Raytheon would necessarily want all those stories about drinking, gambling, and generally goofing off.

Here's a snip from Phil's live-from-Antarctica blog:

The wind. The wind. The wind. Before I came to Antarctica, I logged onto McMurdo's newspaper called the Antarctic Sun and there was a poetry writing contest in the first issue I read. Every single poem was poorly written and always about the wind. Certainly, I thought there was more to inspire a poet than the wind. Last night I wrote:

Must you always blow? Wind.
My hair is messy.Wind.
Ouch, my corneas just froze. Wind.
Why is all this dirt in my room? Wind.
Who left the window open? Me.
Who took advantage of this opportunity? Wind.
Hey there. Wind.
Go to Hell and let the Devil have a snowball fight.

Dumb poem, sure, but for some reason I felt inspired. Wind. Do you remember the cartoon drawing of old man winter, this image of an old man in the clouds blowing winter breezes through his puffy red cheeks. Well last night he was blowing and huffing all of that energy into my room, it was like he thought he could get high if only he blew and toked enough on my bedroom window. He may not have gotten high, but I got cold. When I got to work, my eyes were puffy and my coffee had only begun to reverse the frozen lobotomy going on in my brain, my friend Alia said, "Your eyes look so sleepy."

"It's not just my eyes. It's my body."

Wind.

Previously on BoingBoing: - Job ad du jour: Raytheon needs writers in Antarctica

Belgrade, March 11, 2006 1.p.m

Slobodan Milosevic Died
by Jasmina Tesanovic

B92 is unofficially reporting this news from Hague prison. His family is contacted.

Few days ago a Milan Babic Serbian leader convicted of war crime committed suicide in Hague, before he managed to testify against others indicted for war criminals, Milosevic too... Three years ago the prime minister Zoran Djindjic who arrested Milosevic and sent him to Hague in 2001 was killed almost on the same day.

Few days ago Milosevic was denied to travel to Russia for medical care.

It is a bad moment for justice and war tribunal. The first judge May in the trial against Milosevic died too some time ago. But the trial goes on.

Milosevic was accused of genocide in Bosnia,among other crimes elsewhere. Those people are missing too, unable to plead justice. Someone else will have to do it for them all.

Backlash is expected in this much criticized process, as well as on the local grim political scene. Serbia is divided, the two sides in the historical postwar trial are consolidating, streets may get hot as when Milosevic seized power, waged wars and was toppled by million of Serbian people . This so called transition towards truth and reconciliation may become a dangerous transition to nowhere.

The unfolding debit card scam that rocked Citibank this week is far from over, an analyst said Thursday as she called this first-time-ever mass theft of PINs "the worst consumer scam to date."

Wednesday, Citibank confirmed that an ongoing fraud had forced it to reissue debit cards and block PIN-based transactions for users in Canada, Russia, and the U.K.

But Citibank is only the tip of the iceberg, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner research vice president. The scam -- and scandal -- has hit national banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Washington Mutual, as well as smaller banks, including ones in Oregon, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all of which have re-issued debit cards in recent weeks.

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
- Consumers with Forced Debit Card Reissues Step Forward
- Citibank "live richly" ads remixed for security alert
- Citibank security breach: undisclosed *internally*, let alone publicly?
- Citibank under fraud attack, customers locked out of accounts
- HOWTO Cancel someone else's Citibank credit-card

Reader comment: Seth says,

Saw the story on BB, put 2+2 - my wife got a new debit card *completely out of the blue* a few weeks ago. We were like "WTF?". (Particularly since I didn't get one myself). Now explained. She has shopped at Office Max, Wal*Mart & Costco. I have not. If indeed this is why it was replaced, I prefer their method of sending us the new card right up front. I would have liked an explanatory note, though.

She also designed her own costumes:

From the start, Page — whose measurements were 36-24-37 — preferred the skimpy outfits she designed and sewed at home.

"I made all of my bikinis and most of my lingerie," she said. "My favorite was my first bikini. It was green with a little rickrack all around it."

Almost overnight, she became an underground sensation, attracting the attention of Irving Klaw and his sister, Paula, who operated a mail-order business specializing in cheesecake.

Page soon became the Klaws' busiest pinup and also starred in their peekaboo short films, "Varietease" and "Striporama."

They also had her pose with whips, tied up in chairs and wrestling with other women in their underwear. To hear her tell it, Page was deeply depressed and aimless when she joined the Klaws. The bondage shots are the only part of her modeling career she regrets.

"I had lost my ambition and desire to succeed and better myself; I was adrift," she said.

"But I could make more money in a few hours modeling than I could earn in a week as a secretary.

"But I never whipped anybody in my life; it was all pretend. Under my arrangement with the Klaws, I had to do at least an hour of bondage poses in order to get paid for the other modeling work."

Following up on earlier reports here about the Citibank debit card mess, Consumerist says, "More signs point to OfficeMax and Sam’s Club as being the retailers suspected of letting thousands of customer’s debit cards and PINs to be stolen." Link to post, and here's a scan of one warning slip issued to a Consumerist reader.

Previously:
- Citibank under fraud attack, customers locked out of accounts
- Citibank "live richly" ads remixed for security alert
- Citibank security breach: undisclosed *internally*, let alone publicly?

Nerds from around the world descended on San Diego this week for the O'Reilly eTech conference, and 4/5 of BoingBoing were there (here's 3/5 of us).

Scott Beale took tons of pics: Link to his photos, and here's his set from the MakeFest (highlights: Mark Frauenfelder's cool gocco printing demo, and the Roomba cockfights). Here's some news and blog coverage, including transcripts and live notes for talks from many speakers whose work has appeared before on BoingBoing. It was a terrific event.

See also: other folks' Flickr photos tagged with etech 2006, etech06, and etech.

Mil/Space/Aero contractor behemoth Raytheon is hiring "journalists" must for a year-long assignment in Antarctica. Bloggers accustomed to writing at home in their underwear should plan to bring much warmer underwear. Snip:

Raytheon Polar Services is the primary contractor for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) U.S. Antarctic Program. We are currently looking for a Journalist to deploy to McMurdo Station, Antarctica on a contract basis beginning in August of 2006...While at McMurdo Station the journalist conducts research and interviews with a variety of U.S. Antarctic Program scientists and participants. Writes articles, takes photographs, does editing and layout, obtains approvals, and publishes and distributes The Antarctic Sun.

While BoingBoing readers may be able to read about journalists contracted by Raytheon, the reverse is not true: BB reader Buck Crouch III points out that Raytheon uses SmartFilter to block BoingBoing.

permalink doesn't work, so go here and look for Job ID: TSC105386, " Journalist (2006 - 2007) -- Raytheon Polar Services – Experience Antarctica." (Thanks, Cyrus!) Image: NOAA.

And speaking of Antarctica, a shout-out to all our BoingBoing readers at near the South Pole. McMurdo Station in the hizzouse!

Previously on BB:
- South Pole co-ed Jell-o wrestling
- Will the real Antarctic anti-Santa please stand up?
- Santarchy in Antarctica, and More 
- Life in Antarctica blog, and blogging in Antarctica

Snip from a message posted today on the "captain's log" for the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations:

Our detailed analyses of these images have led us to a remarkable conclusion, documented in a paper [...] published in the journal SCIENCE [...], that the jets are erupting from pockets of liquid water, possibly as close to the surface as ten meters ... a surprising circumstance for a body so small and cold. Other Cassini instruments have found that the fractures on the surface and the plume itself contain simple organic materials, and that there is more heat on average emerging from the south polar terrain, per square meter, than from the Earth.

Gathering all the evidence and steeling ourselves for the "shockwave spread 'round the world", we find ourselves staring at the distinct possibility that we may have on Enceladus subterranean environments capable of supporting life. We may have just stumbled upon the Holy Grail of modern day planetary exploration. It doesn't get any more exciting than this.

A great deal more analysis and further exploration with Cassini must ensue before this implication becomes anything more than a suggestion. But at the moment, the prospects are staggering. Enceladus may have just taken center stage as the body in our solar system, outside the Earth, having the most easily accessible bodies of organic-rich water and, hence, significant biological potential...

Link to report released today in Science, Link to CICLOPS blog post, and here's the media release. Wowza. Oh, right, and here's the NASA website, and here's the Cassini mission. (Thanks, John Parres!)

Previously on BoingBoing:

I was very surprised to see that a Warner Brothers band is doing a Creative Commons remix contest. Fort Minor, which is a side project of Linkin Park (who if I'm not mistaken, is one of the best selling bands of the last few years), put their new single online at ccmixter.org yesterday. That's pretty great to see!

Fante -- the name rhymes with Dante, which must have afforded no end of amusement to someone whose best-known character constantly proclaimed a desire to be "the world's greatest writer" -- is one of the true bad boys of 20th century American literature. Born in 1909 and raised in an Italian American ghetto in, of all places, Boulder, Colo., Fante fits into no particular niche. Many refer to him as the quintessential L.A. novelist -- not exactly the most glowing of recommendations, but one that does take in, after all, Raymond Chandler and Nathanael West, whose "Day of the Locust" was published in 1939, the same year as "Ask the Dust." (Michael Tolkin, author of "The Player," is a longtime admirer of Fante's work. He recently told the Los Angeles Times that if the Los Angeles school system was serious about its curriculum, it would "make 'Ask the Dust' mandatory reading.")

BoingBoing reader Tom McGrenery says,

Over at the Peking duck forum, someone has pointed out that, despite assurances that the unfiltered Google.com would be available in China despite the existence of the censored Google.cn, searches from within China might be being messed with anyway. Rumours are already around that Google.cn may "very likely" be the only Google available soon (Link to the Beijing News report in Chinese, Link to English translation).

I've had somewhat dubious results from time to time, with Xinhua figuring highly in Google.com results, but it's very hard to tell from mere anecdotal evidence. Add to that the fact that the China Net Nanny's restrictions seem to vary depending on time and place, and things are just very confusing. Proxy sites seem to always manage to stay a step ahead, so that keeps the censors at bay for now, but how many net users in China know about them? Ironically, the Chinese Wikipedia includes instructions on how to get around blocks, but if you can read it then you've already done so.

Two guys who dig Ryan Adams' music posted some unreleased tracks on a fan-site. Yesterday, feds busted them for this action as a crime separate from that of uploading already-released music for online sharing. Snip from THR report, via Reuters:

Robert Thomas of Milwaukee and Jared Bowser of Jacksonville, Fla., were indicted under a provision of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (FECA) law that makes it a separate federal crime to pirate music and movies before they are released to the public, Memphis-based U.S. attorney Jim Vines and FBI special agent My Harrison said.

I wasn't sure if just tearing a Credit Card application into tiny bits was good enough to prevent dumpster-diving theft, so I did a test.

I tore one up, then taped it back together again, filled it out with a DIFFERENT address and CELL number.

Sure enough, in four weeks I was rewarded with a shiny new card with a $5,000 limit.

Now I guess I'll go buy a shredder with this card.

The unexpectedly hot output, if its cause were understood and harnessed, could eventually mean that smaller, less costly nuclear fusion plants would produce the same amount of energy as larger plants.

The phenomena also may explain how astrophysical entities like solar flares maintain their extreme temperatures.

The very high radiation output also creates new experimental environments to help validate computer codes responsible for maintaining a reliable nuclear weapons stockpile safely and securely — the principal mission of the Z facility.

“At first, we were disbelieving,” says Sandia project lead Chris Deeney. “We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result and not an ‘Ooops’!”

Nuclear and electric rockets promise huge improvements in efficiency and will be vital to the future of solar system exploration, but they are impractical as a means of getting off Earth: they either don't produce enough thrust to overcome gravity or pose a potentially serious radiation hazard.

On the other hand, space elevators could haul tons of material into space all day, every day. And the core of the space elevator—the cable—could be constructed from cheap, plentiful materials that would last for decades.

A space elevator would be amazingly expensive or absurdly cheap—depending on how you look at it. It would cost about $6 billion in today's dollars just to complete the structure itself, according to my study. Costs associated with legal, regulatory, and political aspects could easily add another $4 billion, but these expenses are much harder to estimate.

Building such an enormous structure would probably require treaty-level negotiations with the international community, for example. A $10 billion price tag, however, isn't really extraordinary in the economics of space exploration.

When either person picks up a glass, red LEDs on their partner's glass glow gently. And when either puts the glass to their lips, sensors make white LEDs on the rim of the other glass glow brightly, so you can tell when your other half takes a sip. Following tests in separate labs, Lee says the wireless glasses really do "help people feel as if they are sharing a drinking experience together".

The outsourcing of key business functions – from textile production to software - to low cost labour countries is one of the key trends of the past five years. The next wave of outsourcing is starting to take place in the heart of the home market: the market itself is taking over all phases of production, from concept development and design to finished product. The phenomenon of ‘user-driven innovation’ goes beyond do-it-your-selfing, customization, and personalization. It’s no longer a matter of choosing between models – consumers are designing the very models they choose.

Boing Boing reader Halli Civelek remixed raunchyfun pottylaffs site Collegehumor in the visual style of CNN.com.

"Works in Firefox, Safari, IE for Mac, and in Firefox for PC," says Halli, "Does not work in IE for PC (who wants to use that anyways)."

Headlines like " Don't tell me you don't like girls kissing," "Lindsay Lohan and her friends love them some drugs," and "Some dudes jumping around like crazy" sure beats actual news.

Link

Reader comment: Jo says,

Xeni's link to the Radiohead graffiti clip made me think instantly of Laith Bahrani, an animator from the UK who painstakingly created a homebrew Flash-animated clip to Readiohead's "Creep". It's brilliant. Bahrani's done some other fantastic stuff as well:

1) His former life as an office gimp inspired a series of 20 second animations (called "Low Morale") depicting his alter-ego dreaming about escape from a soul-destroying office. Available on the front page of lowmorale.co.uk.

2) He also created the amazing Flash-based video clip to the cute song "JCB", sung by an otherwise unknown folk-duo called Nizlopi. (Link) On the back of the gorgeous clip, and an admittedly cute song, the single went to number one on the UK charts for weeks. If you ask me, it's even *better* than a unicorn chaser.

Hi folks -- AudioLuxe has a couple of spots still open for this weekend's Podcast workshop held at the studios of KQED in San Francisco. We teach podcasters how to refine their sound, streamline their production process, write for the ear and stuff like that. The workshops are for people at any level, and include boxed lunches from Whole Foods.

This time around our tech trainer is Michael Johnson, a genius at mixing audio. He can also rattle off random details about every microphone, mini-disc recorder or flash recorder on the market, even down to the subtlies of what kind of bladder is in the mic and how that causes some specific interaction with your cable, or why you might be getting a hum from your Maranz 660. I leave the tech stuff to him for the most part. I cover the content stuff. We really want to help budding hosts and producers to apply professional techniques to their cool indie content.

I love that home producers can now compete directly with mainstream media companies for listeners. (Every minute a listener spends consuming independent content is a minute taken away from the conglomerates.)

Angered and frustrated by the TTC's ability to almost instantaneously flush all this goodwill down the toilet, we at ttcrider.ca have put the original map back online and written an open letter to TTC Chair Howard Moscoe requesting the map be allowed to exist. Moscoe has a good track record of promoting free speech (he led the charge to reinstate NOW Magazine after former North York mayor Mel Lastman banned it from City Hall over its personal ads). We view the TTC as belonging to the Toronto public and feel that celebrating the TTC through projects like the anagram map should be encouraged, not quashed.

"We have the smoking gun" that proves the existence of water, said Carolyn Porco, a Cassini imaging scientist from the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

If Enceladus does harbor life, it probably consists of microbes or other primitive organisms capable of living in extreme conditions, scientists say.

The findings were published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

David Morrison, a senior scientist at NASA's Astrobiology Institute, cautioned against rushing to judgment about whether the tiny moon could support life. Scientists generally agree habitats need several ingredients for life to emerge, including water, a stable heat source and the right chemical recipe.

Many of our locked-out readers were trying to view BoingBoing from libraries, schools and their workplaces. That is regrettable but not tragic, as American viewers generally have other options. But after regular visitors from Qatar and Saudi Arabia complained, we discovered a more worrisome problem: government-controlled Internet service providers were using SmartFilter to effectively block access for entire countries.

Secure Computing refused to provide me with a list of the governments that use its filters. However, the OpenNet Initiative, a partnership between the University of Toronto, Cambridge University and Harvard Law School, has compiled data on how such products are used in foreign nations where censorship is easy because the governments control all Internet service providers.

The initiative found that SmartFilter has been used by government-controlled monopoly providers in Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. It has also been used by state-controlled providers in Iran, even though American companies are banned from selling technology products there. (Secure Computing denies selling products or updates to Iran, which is probably using pirated versions.)

According to OpenNet, filtering products from another American company, Websense, have also been used by a state-controlled service provider in Iran, ParsOnline. Yemen uses Websense products to filter content on its two government-owned service providers. Websense software, the initiative says, filters out "sex education and provocative clothing sites, gay- and lesbian-related materials, gambling sites, dating sites, drug-related sites, sites enabling anonymous Web surfing, proxy servers that circumvent filtering, and sites with content related to converting Muslims to other religions."

The initiative also found that Myanmar, arguably the most repressive regime in the world, uses censorware from the American company Fortinet. And Singapore's government-controlled Singnet server uses filtering technology from SurfControl, a company formed from the merger of several censorware companies that is now technically British but has its filtering operations headquarters in California.

See also:
- BB banned in UAE, Qatar, elsewhere. Response to net-censors: Get bent!
- PRI's "The World" on SmartFilter's BoingBoing "nudity" ban
- NY Times on SmartFilter's not-so-smart "nudity" block
- Saudi Arabia joins league of BoingBoing-deprived nations
- Previous BoingBoing posts on SmartFilter
- BoingBoing's guide to defeating Censorware

Gordon Parks, a photojournalist who later became Hollywood's first prominent black movie director, has died. He was 93 years old.

Image, 1963, Gordon Parks: "Ethel Shariff was the leader of the women's corps of the Black Muslims, wife of the chief of the elite guard, and daughter of Elijah Muhammad, the spiritual leader of the Black Muslim movement. This image was part of the photographic essay on Malcolm X and the Muslims that ran in LIFE, accompanied by Parks's essay 'What Their Cry Means to Me—A Negro's Own Evaluation.'" Link. (Thanks, Mark Ebner)

If you keep your secrets from the market, the market will keep its secrets from you -- entrepreneurs too often worry about keeping their brilliant secrets locked away; we should all worry much more about springing a surprise on a disinterested market (anyone remember the Segway?). To quote Howard Aiken: "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."...

The best investor pitches are plainspoken and entertaining (not in that order) -- think about what this implies. A plainspoken pitch is the surface of a very solid business. If you have to fudge and lie to get investors interested, why is that? If you're running a great business, it is not hard at all to lure investors into it; the worse your business, the bigger (and more odious) your fundraising task is. Entertaining implies a fun person to work with, and VCs like working with people they like as much as the rest of us do. If you don't bring the funny, bring the person who brings the funny.

Q: "Why didn't Penguin want your book to be in Google Book Search?"

John: "They're suing Google over Book Search. They're part of the Publisher's Association suit."

Q: "What are they afraid of?"

John: "They're afraid of the future. Afraid of what they don't know.... It's very irritating to me."

Independently, Wired News found that entries from the smaller cache are listed as mortgage leads on a spammer community site, specialham.com. (The website's homepage offered no contact information and Wired News was unable to reach the registered owner of the domain, one "Juice Wobble.") This suggests that the database was marketed as a lead list for outside businesses. "I can attest to the fact that this goes on with phishing groups," says James. "They break in and steal leads and then sell those leads to (black market) leads companies, who resell them to legitimate companies, and sometimes the same companies they stole them from."

"The fact that a total of 17,781,462 iBill records have been found in the hands of criminal hackers is quite disturbing, be it an inside job or the successful work of criminal hackers," says Thomas.

There's also an interview with Reverend Ivan Stang of the Church of the SubGenius about the Rachel Bevilacqua situation.

And on NeoFiles, RU has an interesting discussion about renewable energy with Peter Asmus, author of "Reaping The Wind." Link

(San Gabriel Transit Authority founder Yosef) Maiwandi said he came in contact with Eriksson from another member of the transit board, Eriksson's civil attorney, Ashley Posner. Neither Posner nor Eriksson would comment.

Maiwandi said Eriksson approached him with an offer. Eriksson volunteered to install free surveillance cameras and a "facial recognition scan" — which could compare a person's image to one depicted in a wanted poster — on a bus to show law enforcement agencies how that could be helpful in catching criminals. He said he had given a similar system to transit agencies in England.

After a background check on Eriksson came back clean, Maiwandi said, he told the businessman he could use the authority's five buses to install the equipment.

In return for his volunteer efforts, Eriksson was made a deputy commissioner of the police department and given business cards...

Although the department's website suggests that it is a fully functioning police agency, Maiwandi acknowledged that it consists of six people, including himself and the chief, who he said is a former Los Angeles police officer who volunteers his services.

“You will exhibit the most delightful trick if you impose one of these appearances on a live cat, as Fr. Kircher has done. While the cat sees himself to be surrounded by an innumerable multitude of catoptric cats, some of them standing close to him and others spread very far away from him, it can hardly be said how many capers will be exhibited in that theatre, while he sometimes tries to follow the other cats, sometimes to entice them with his tail, sometimes attempts a kiss, and indeed tries to break through the obstacles in every way with his claws so that he can be united with the other cats, until finally, with various noises, and miserable whines he declares his various affectations of indignation, rage, jealousy, love and desire. Similar spectacles can be exhibited with other animals.”

Pattern language for moderation strategies

   * Increasingly a developer problem

   * No catalog of successful/unsuccessful strategies

Imagine "communal freedom" -- the X axis

   * How much freedom does the software allow the group to have in intercommunication

   * Notepad can't catalyze group conversation

   * Usenet is for group conversation -- no restriction on user-registration, no control, implicitly global

Imagine "annonyingness" -- the Y axis

   * Flaming, trolling, etc

The more communal freedom, the more annoyingness

Even moderate amounts of communal freedom yields lots of annoyingness

Musical Myware, Felix Miller, CEO Last.fm. Felix introduced me to the term "myware" -- spyware that you run on your own activities, which helps you get a better handle on your needs and wants and helps your computer help you better.

I love this idea: people are good at making decisions and computers are good at counting them (and computers are bad at making decisions and people are bad at counting them). My computer should note, count and process every decision I make -- it should notice that I never answer emials from certain people, it should notice that I never click through certain stories in my reader, that I load certain pages every day, that I often search my mailbox for certain kinds of messages and so on. That's stuff I'm totally unqualified to keep track of, and that computers are really good at:

Myware is like spyware, but it lets you spy on yourself.

Why would you spy on yourself? Why would you share the data with Last.fm?

Last.fm: Tell us what music you listen to, anytime, all the time, without even realizing it

Why?

Napster made all music ever recorded available -- so how do you know what to listen to? Mission: "Harness the knowledge of the crowd." Someone out there knows what you should be listening to; no need to read tedious editorial.

Audioscrobbler installs in media-players like iTunes, etc and reports what you're listening to at any moment and updates your user-profile. Only records stuff you listen to, but not stuff you skip -- just the stuff you pay attention to.

"I have another task for you," the elf says. "In the east there are ..."

> Click Accept

"Take this bag of jelly to Commander Wolfchow in Cramhollow Dale."

> Go to Cramhollow Dale

You run to Cramhollow Dale. You run and run. You run and run and run. You keep on running. Someone runs past you, faster. You keep running. Two gnomes run past you in the opposite direction. Still you run. You're not there yet. What are you going to do?

> Run

That's right, bunky. You're gonna run. You continue to run and run and run and run and ... whoa, you're in Cramhollow Dale. A tall man who looks like a lot of the other tall men around here has a question mark over his head.

> Give bag of jelly to man

"Good!" says ...

> Click Complete Quest, Accept, whatever, just get on with it

"Take this crate of liver back to Elfiwee Muttonscorner near the gully stream."

> Go back to stream

You run. You run and run. You run and run and run.

> Wonder aloud why I find this so damn compelling

You hear a voice in the distance. "Need group! No quitters!"

The process creates a raised area on the skin in a shape of the artist's choosing. The effect is dramatic: Implants can be most any form you can think of, from Star Trek ridges and small horns, to little stars and hearts sprayed across the chest. Many people with body modifications have combined their implants with tattoos to create often beautiful or terrible effects.

¹Or, in the words of the competition judge to Adam Sandler's title character in the movie "Billy Madison," after Billy Madison had responded to a question with an answer that sounded superficially reasonable but lacked any substance,

Mr Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Deciphering motions like the one presented here wastes valuable chamber staff time, and invites this sort of footnote.

Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it. The animal is white and just shy of 6 inches long — about the size of a salad plate.

In what (the French Institute for Sea Exploration's Michel) Segonzac described as a "surprising characteristic," the animal's pincers are covered with sinuous, hair-like strands.

It is also blind. The researchers found it had only "the vestige of a membrane" in place of eyes, Segonzac said.

With 31 quarto pages (a few pages are photocopies) extensively hand-corrected by Leary and his editor throughout, who have both made substantial revisions. The typescripts are mainly for the biographical sketches that Leary wrote about his various heroes, including Hermann Hesse, Albert Hofmann, James Joyce, John Lily, Thomas Pynchon, and Gurdjieff, among others. These profiles appeared at the beginning of each chapter throughout the book. Included are other fragments featuring various observations and recollections by Leary. Also present is the text for the dust jacket flaps, a page of "Notes for T. L. to Do," a page of "Character Tracking," several photocopied pages of the photos used in the book, and a couple of photograph release forms including one signed by Lawrence Schiller. Photocopies and additional paper material inside a manila folder; everything housed inside a three-ring binder.

Together with the typescript of a 4-page letter by Leary to his publisher titled: "Notes on Michael Kennedy Affair." A scathing letter in which Leary talks at great length about his grievances with Michael Kennedy, his former lawyer, who, according to Leary, was guilty of much wrongdoing. Leary goes into great, and previously undisclosed, detail about his escape from prison with the aid of the Weather Underground, with references to Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, Richard Alpert, Nicky Sands, and others. Leary eventually recognized the explosive nature of this letter and never allowed it to be published

I wanted to let you know that we're hosting the first monthly CC Salon tomorrow night in San Francisco (at Shine -- the bar with the Flickr photo booth that y'all blogged about in January).

In the spirit of Remix Reading, Dorkbot, and Copynight, CC Salon will be a casual affair focused on conversation and community-building open to anyone interested in art, technology, education, and copyright.

We've got three presenters onboard for the inaugural salon: Wagner James Au will speak about free culture activities within Second Life, Josh Kinberg will talk about FireAnt and video content on the Web, and Eddie Codel will discuss Geek Entertainment TV. There will also be music provided by the awesome Minus Kelvin (a ccMixter.org contributors who currently provides tracks for "America's Next Top Model").

The idea behind San Francisco's CC Salon is to provide a template for other people to pick up and run with in other parts of the world. To that end, we've set up a wiki where you can contribute ideas, submit proposals, even set up their own CC Salons.

Dear Recipient of Promotional CD,

Just a note to beg (if you were even thinking about it in the first place) you not to post our CD to the "internet" in any way...I know it's offensive even to bring it up, but we have our many babies to consider, and the landlord wants to reposess Donnybrook farm and the album cover art is important. Thanks for your consideration.

SiteShuffle is a project from some old, good friends of mine, two of whom -- John Henson and Grad Conn -- were my business partners back in the days of OpenCola, a P2P software company we founded together. SiteShuffle is their latest effort, and it captures a super-simple, do-one-thing-well aesthetic that I love -- it takes about ten seconds to grok and thirty seconds to master. Link (Disclosure: I am a proud member of SiteShuffle's Advisory Board)

Disneyland was chock full of clever transportational devices. Monorails, trains, People Movers, tram cars, boats, buggies, and yes, even a few moving sidewalks. Walt was big into this transportation thing: from an entertainment point of view, convenient transportation was the key to getting tired guests off their feet and keeping them happy. But perhaps more importantly, these vehicles were all part of Walt's vast laboratory – Disneyland was his place to tinker, evolve and perfect some of the hardware required for his much larger vision: a city.

Reader comment:

Another video of a supposed full screen iPod Video, this one shows the user interface popping up when the guys thumb touches the screen.

And pictures.

They could be fake, they could be real... It's hard to tell.

The list, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, namechecks places that do not typically feature on lists of the world's most threatened habitats. Greenland, the Siberian tundra, the highlands of eastern India and the Patagonian coast are all places where mammals, from polar bears to musk oxen, face an uncertain future.

The work could help to inform future decisions on where to allocate conservation resources, particularly in helping the Convention on Biological Diversity to meet its target of reducing the rate of world biodiversity loss by 2010. "Biodiversity loss is now recognized as a global-scale phenomenon," (Marcel) Cardillo and his colleagues write.

At present, the homes of currently threatened or rare animals are considered to need conservation funds. "This approach is necessarily a remedial one," Cardillo and his team write. "We present a more proactive extension to this approach."

Power workers says the dirt created an arc across the insulators. It acts like a groundwire and shorted out the power. The power crews rerouted the power, but Tuesday morning, they'll have to fix the insulators.

What is the mystery dirt? Utah Power officials say it's salt from the Great Salt Lake. It blew in with the storm. Salt is a conductor...

We called the Department of Environmental Quality, the Health Department, various Police and Sheriff dispatch offices in surrounding counties, the Weather Service, even State Offices in Boise, everybody knows what we're talking about, but nobody knows what it is.

DEQ says it's most likely a natural occurrence, perhaps dust in the air that came down with the rain.

While evidence is soaring for exercise's brain benefits, physical fitness in the United States is plummeting. According to a report issued recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost one-fifth of people 18 and over exercise for less than 10 minutes a week. Only 46 percent of adults performed the recommended 30 minutes or more of brisk walking or other moderate exercise 5 days a week.

Whereas public health experts worry about the effects of a sedentary lifestyle on rates of heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems, (UCLA neurobiologist Fernando) Gómez-Pinilla is concerned that a lack of physical exercise could also foretell a wave of decreasing brain health for the United States.

"Locomotion played a very important role in evolution. Animals had to move to find food and run away from predators. Exercise had a direct action on brain regions related to cognition," he says. "Normally, when two functions evolve in this way, you can't separate them." Link

(UCLA neuroscientist Greg M. Cole) says that both fish oil and curcumin may eventually become widely used in preventing neurodegenerative diseases, while causing few side effects. On the other hand, recently created drugs for treating neurodegenerative diseases are expensive and often have troubling side effects.

Cole notes that people have been eating fish and curries safely for centuries. "We're interested in these approaches that have cost-effectiveness and safety built into them," he says...

Since taking in calories generates damaging free radicals, some researchers have hypothesized that simply eating less may protect the brain from harm. Recent studies support this hypothesis. For example, teams led by neuroscientist Mark Mattson of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore have shown that cutting back calories in lab animals can reduce the symptoms seen in Huntington's- and Parkinson's-like diseases. Link

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance [$6,522]. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.

...

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

...

"The more I'm on, the scarier it gets," he said. "It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy."

Whenever Ali Farka Touré was asked to state his profession, his preferred response was that he was a farmer. He owned and cultivated extensive lands in Mali in the semi-desert region of Niafunké, where in later years he was also the mayor. But he also happened to be arguably the finest guitarist Africa has ever produced.

Under the law signed by South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds, doctors could get up to five years in prison and a $5,000 (£2,800) fine for performing an illegal abortion. (...) The organisation Planned Parenthood, which runs South Dakota's only abortion clinic, immediately said it would challenge the new law.

The abortion ban would take effect on 1 July but it is likely that a federal judge would suspend it during any legal challenge.

The law would therefore not take effect unless South Dakota state gets the case to the US Supreme Court and wins.

The idea of creating the BTL collection stemmed from the conclusions of a joint survey conducted by the ministry of health and the WHO country office in Guinea to define the continuing education needs for health workers based in the health districts. The survey found that these workers needed to broaden their skills. Therefore, the WHO library was asked to compile a collection of appropriate books to suit the different education needs of health district workers at various professional levels. The WHO library in Geneva started the BTL project in 1998. Guinea was the first country to benefit from this prototype [3], which was then extended to other African countries before being taken up in developing countries in other parts of the world. There are English and French versions of the BTL.

The BTL is "a ready-to-use documentation module" [4] of about 150 WHO and non-WHO books and manuals fitted into a blue metal trunk (Figure 1). The materials are arranged and filed in such a way that users can easily identify the ones that they need. Fourteen topics have been chosen using a basic classification code, e.g., General Medicine and Nursing (100), Community Health (110), and these codes are written on each filing box.

"Obesity is the terror within,'' Richard Carmona said during a lecture at the University of South Carolina. "Unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9-11 or any other terrorist attempt.''...

"Where will our soldiers and sailors and airmen come from?'' he said. "Where will our policemen and firemen come from if the youngsters today are on a trajectory that says they will be obese, laden with cardiovascular disease, increased cancers and a host of other diseases when they reach adulthood?''

It's pretty creepy: you have to allow for "system renewability messages" that can revoke features and even disable the DTCP-IP when they're submitted. Ever wonder why enemy space-stations always seem to have a big red "press this to make the whole space-station explode" button in science fiction movies? I mean, wouldn't it be smarter to just not build "self-destruct" into your space-station? Well, that's what DTCP-IP demands of its implementers.

Scariest of all, though, is slide 25, shown here, which explains what happens if your DTCP-IP implementation results in a breach: $8m in fines, more fines from copyright holders (see update below), and revocation of your devices in the field (meaning potential lawsuits from your customers).

The presentation ends with a bunch of "call-to-action" slides for the people in the audience who are supposed to go out and add this to their products. But none of those slides says this: "If you subtract value from your products by adding our crippleware, we might reward you by bankrupting you when the inevitable breach occurs." It would also be nice to see this slide: "All of the 'premium content' crippled with DRM can also be downloaded for free from the Internet without any of these locks. Hey, entertainment industry cats -- do you think that adding DTCP-IP anti-features might provide an incentive to otherwise honest users to get their TV shows from Bittorrent instead?" 1.4MB PDF Link (via Hack the Planet)

Update: EFF's Fred von Lohmann sez,

Here's the accurate description of how the DTCP license works (all of this is in the public documents): 1) Liability to DT Licensing Authority for a material breach is capped at $8 million (DTLA has never sued anyone to date).

2) Liability to qualified third party beneficiaries (i.e., movie studios) for a material breach is limited to injunctive relief only (no monetary damages payable to movie studios for breach).

3) DMCA and secondary liability claims that a rights holder might want to bring for whatever reason are simply not covered by the contract one way or the other . . . they remain creatures of statute that the DTLA agreement does not affect.

So the DTCP license does expose technology companies to breach of contract damages if they fail to meet the relevant requirements (including robustness and compliance rules), but only DTLA can sue for money. Movie studios can sue as third party beneficiaries, but only for injunctions (e.g., stop manufacturing that tamper-friendly chipset).

"Too bad we can't wrap it around our phone wires. The tape's available as a gift to EFF members who renew, or via the EFF store." Link (Thanks, Brad!)

Unfortunately anonomizers don't work out here (never have). Anyway, I had a few minutes today and thought I'd look and see what else was banned on the Marine web here. I think the results speak for themselves:

* Wonkette – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion.”
* Bill O’Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) – OK
* Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
* Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) – OK
* ABC News “The Note” – OK
* Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
* G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) – OK
* Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) – “Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies.”

Today's (March 6, 2006) edition of Public Radio International's "The World" had a short segment about Boing-Boing's filter/censorship woes, including an interview with Mark Frauenfelder.

* Quickly freezes sauces and purees into solid, unique forms — or freezes just the outer surfaces while maintaining a creamy center.

* Minus 30°F ‘griddle' temperature ensures almost instantaneous results.

* Approximately 1 square foot high-endurance cooktop provides an ample, easy-to-clean work surface.

Date: Wednesday, 15 March 2006

Time: 6:30pm - refreshments, 7:00pm - talk

Location: Hewlett Packard (see directions), Pruneridge and Wolfe, Cupertino, Bldg. 48, Oak Room.

Cost: Free and open to all who wish to attend, but membership is only $10/year.

Brian Sharwood, a telecom analyst with the Seaboard Group in Toronto, said it makes sense for a utility to recoup the cost of supporting smart meters by also selling wireless broadband services. "In a way that's the excuse to do all of this," he said. "You're going to run it past a lot of people anyway."

He said Canada's largest municipal electrical utility, which last year purchased Toronto's street light system for $60 million, will likely install the necessary wireless transmitters and receivers atop every fourth or fifth lamp post as a way to blanket the city with coverage -- what the industry describes as "wireless mesh networking."

Send

Science is notoriously unpredictable. The chronicle of recent important discoveries does not tell much about what will be discovered next, important as it may be.

But science may have a deeper arc than discoveries, an arc which is predictive. It emerges if you focus on the tools instead of the paradigms, the desires, or the funding. Early in the several years of study for his forthcoming book, THE TECHNIUM, Kevin Kelly observed, "In researching the trajectory of the scientific method I was shocked to discover how untold its story is."

So Kelly compiled a history of scientific methodology, with its future included. Starting with indexed libraries in 280 BC, through controlled experiments (1590), hypothesis/prediction, peer review, controlled placebo, meta-analysis; on through current breakthroughs like pattern mining, digital repositories (like GenBank), and exhaustive combinatorics; to a predictable future of combined negative results, triple blind experiments, evolutionary search, multiple hypothesis matrices, "zillionics," wiki-science, and defined benefit funding. (That's a sampler list.)

"The Next 100 Years of Science: Long-term Trends in Scientific Method," Kevin Kelly, Cowell Theater, Fort Mason, San Francisco, 7pm, Friday, March 10. The lecture starts promptly at 7:30pm. Admission is free ($10 donation certainly welcome, not required).

John T. Draper --aka Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman -- launched a hacking/security-themed video project called CRUNCHTV a few months ago. Link to the first edition, which just popped up on YouTube. (Thanks, Macki!)

"Open up your perspective: the best of Chinese farmers' wisdom" (my loose translation) shows us some of the DIY projects taken on by those deemed "farmers" (农民) in the current Chinese social system. The car drives on land and in water; the submarine is one of a series of subs built by a 67 year old farmer from a village near Wuhan, China.

Until the 1990s, the farthest that coyotes had ventured into Chicago was to forested reserves near the city limits. But "something happened," says Stan Gehrt, a wildlife biologist at Ohio State University, "something we don't completely understand." Within ten years the coyote population exploded, growing by more than 3,000 percent, and infiltrated the entire Chicago area. Gehrt found territorial packs of five to six coyotes, as well as lone individuals, called floaters, living in downtown Chicago. They traveled at night, crossing sidewalks and bridges, trotting along roads and ducking into culverts and underpasses. One pair raised pups in a drainage area between a day care facility and a public pool; a lone female spent the day resting in a tiny marsh near a busy downtown post office. Perhaps most surprising to Gehrt, Chicago's urban coyotes tended to live as long as their parkland counterparts. No one knows why coyotes are moving into cities, but Gehrt theorizes that shrewder, more human-tolerant coyotes are teaching urban survival skills to new generations...

Should the urban coyote be viewed with trepidation? "Some people have fears that kids are going to be the next ones to be eaten," says (biologist John) Way. "I tell them coyotes have been at the edges of their neighborhoods for years." Way emphasizes coyotes can be an asset to urban ecosystems, keeping a check on deer, rodents, Canada geese and other animals that thrive on the suburbs' all-you-can-eat buffet.

Link

(Thanks, Tim Nudd from AdFreak.com!)

Related: Ben Popken at Consumerist is digging up more detail on the Citibank security breach by calling up and posing as a customer. The rep he spoke with just now claims the security issue was not a class break (definition here) -- this contradicts what another rep told Jake Appelbaum on Saturday, in the course of a call about Jake's affected Citibank account. Link to Consumerist post.

Update: Jake Appelbaum, who first alerted BoingBoing to the story, responds:

A month huh? That's two weeks up from the last time! This new explanation doesn't seem correct. The woman I spoke with on the phone said that the networks in these countries were compromised, she sent a new card to my US address as a result of using said networks. She also told me that if I used these networks again, Citibank might lock my card again. She could not assure me that it wouldn't happen the first time I used the Canadian ATM network with my new card. Her suggestion to withdraw large sums of money was cute, but perhaps not unwarranted given the stupid state of Citibank.

This sounds like an issue that's unrelated to cards just being rejected, doesn't it? If it was just the networks rejecting cards, why did I need to have a new card reissued? I've had fraud issues with my account cleared over the phone numerous times from my insane traveling schedule. Never have I had to have a card reissued because my card was "rejected by some banks." WTF?

Though if anything, it's like there's more than one problem with Citibank and ATM networks in Canada. It seems like we've got a few issues: 1) Citibank cards are being rejected by some Canadian banks on the Canadian ATM network. This is being claimed the consumerist. It happened to me but perhaps this isn't the same case. My card was rejected but it wasn't only rejected by the bank I visited, it was locked by Citibank.

2) Citibank had/has a fraud issue with people generating card numbers and pins. This was disclosed when I called previously. It is unclear if my card was generated or if my pin was generated. I'm of the mindset that this could be the case but they're pretty tight lipped about it.

3) Citibank claims that using any of the Canadian ATM network will result in a card likely being flagged and locked. The only way to reset this flag is to get a new card issued. This does not prevent the issue though. They claim this is because the Canadian network itself is insecure. This is a pretty bold claim and the woman I spoke with on the phone repeated that this has been an issue for two weeks. This was also disclosed when I called.

4) Citibank says this is also happening in the UK and Russia. Again, they told me this over the telephone. The consumerist appears to have gotten the same response to the affected areas of the world.

I say they're doing damage control. Something doesn't sit right with me. How does "some banks reject citibank customers" translate into three nations worth of ATM networks being untrusted?

Reader comment: Bill Hansley says,

I'm a US customer of Royal Bank of Canada / Centura, and they're having similar issues. The word from them was that Visa corp told them that several thousand (65,000 according to the service desk people at my grocery store, who knew about this as well) *cards* (not accounts) had been compromised and were cancelled Saturday and replacements mailed. My card was affected, my wife's, who's on the same account, was not. I wonder how many other banks were affected?

Update: Consumerist posts an official response from Citibank. It's generally short on facts, and fails to address some of the contested details. Link.

Update: Here's another presumably related personal account from a Citibank customer who found himself locked out of his account: Link.

Here's the background: A US-based company, Secure Computing, sells a website censoring product called SmartFilter, which is used by many organizations worldwide to keep their employees/students/members from accessing certain sites that have been tagged (often incorrectly) as having objectionable content. For example, out of the 692 entries posted on Boing Boing last month, only two contained nudity. However, SmartFilter also labels the other 690 posts as "nudity" because Secure Computing can't afford to make a filter that is more than 0.5% accurate.

Another reason we don't like Secure Computing: It helps corrupt dictators oppress their people. In defiance of the US government's stated goal of promoting democracy around the world, Secure Computing has the gall to license its filtering products to totalitarian governments, such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. These countries, which have government-run ISPs, pass all their citizens' web requests through centralized filters. Can you imagine having a business model that includes selling tools of oppression to tyrants?

Also today, we learned another way in which Secure Computing is willing to make the Web worse for everyone in order to keep their inefficient filter from breaking: A Xerox employee told us that SmartFilter "now blocks any use of the Google 'Translate this page' function. Yay."

One reason SmartFilter might be interested in blocking Google's invaluable translation service is because it would stop people who had been using it to outsmart SmartFilter. (Here's Boing Boing's guide to defeating censorware, which includes the now useless Google translation proxy trick.)

If your company uses SmartFilter to block Boing Boing, we'd like you to test Google's translation service and see if it still works for you. Report your results here. It's hard to believe that Secure Computing would behave so irresponsibly as to actually block access to a translation service just to keep its censorware from collapsing.

Link to original Boing Boing story here.

Reader comment:

I work at a Fortune 500 company that runs SmartFilter. I recently experienced the sudden blocking of BoingBoing.

SmartFilter is also blocking Google Translation Services in my company and categorizing the URL as "Anonymizing Utilities."

Another website that kind of works is WorldLingo. You can translate to another language, then "back translate" to English.

It may not be the best translation, but it works.

Reader comment:

I'm currently working for Marconi in the UK and it looks like they are using SmartFilter to decide what their employees can look at whilst working.

Boing Boing has been banned/not banned several times over the past six months and now web translation services have been dumped in the sin-bin too. I tried both Google and Babel Fish with the same result:

Access denied because of its content categorisation: "Anonymizing Utilities"

Update: Kathryn Cramer has collected a great deal of financial information about Secure Computing, including the major shareholders and speaking engagement calendars of Secure Computing executives (so you can ask them why they sell censorware to tyrants). Great stuff. Link

All respondents were relaxed about their personal habits when working remotely. While about 39% of respondents of both sexes said they wear sweats while working from home, 12% of males and 7% of females wear nothing at all. In matters of cleanliness, the difference between the sexes was more pointed: 44% of women surveyed said they showered on work-at-home days, as opposed to men, who were slightly more likely to shave (33%) than wash (30%). 18% of men regularly break off to do household tasks such as laundry, dishwashing or dusting whereas many more women -- over 38% -- found their attention claimed by chores.

Respondents also said they took the opportunity to eat and drink outside standard times (about 35%); listen to music (45%) or watch TV (28%); and 21% of all respondents admitted to sneaking in an afternoon nap. A small percentage of those surveyed (9%) admitted to feelings of guilt about being away from the office. Taking a longer lunch than at the workplace was also relatively rare (12%).

From George Washington's toothlessness (he has no teeth left by middle age), to Grover Cleveland's gout, to Franklin D. Roosevelt's polio, to Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer disease, and finally to George W. Bush's colon polyps, presidents throughout history suffer from the same diseases and ailments like the rest of us.

Find out what diseases you have in common with the leaders of the free world!

Perhaps equally important, this study demonstrates that students who rely on repeated study alone often come away with a false sense of confidence about their mastery of the material.

In an experiment in which students either took quizzes or were permitted to study material repeatedly, students in the study-only group professed an exaggerated confidence, sure that they knew the material well, even though important details already had begun slip-sliding away. The group that took tests on the material, rather than repeatedly reading it, actually did better on a delayed test of their knowledge...

Previous research, says Roediger, offers a number of theories on why this phenomenon takes place. One suggests we learn more efficiently when placed in difficult situations -- think of that sinking feeling in your stomach when a pop quiz is announced.

Others suggest that repeated testing improves long-term recall by forcing students to practice the very skills they will need to recollect this information at a later date, a memory quirk that might be called the "use-it or lose-it" effect.

The car has two engines: the production gasoline engine in the front driving the front wheels and the jet engine in the back. The idea is that you drive around legally on the gasoline engine and when you want to have some fun, you spin up the jet and get on the burner (you can start the jet while driving along on the gasoline engine).

"The 9th Circuit stated in its Gilmore decision that when traveling by domestic commercial air, citizens had a choice: they could either show ID or submit to additional screening.

"Please try doing some or all of your air travel by declining to show ID and report back about what happens to you.

"Be a Freedom Flyer: the Constitutional rights you protect and defend are your own." Link

Snip from a report in today's New York Times by Tom Zeller, Jr.:

"Access denied by SmartFilter content category," was the message a Halliburton engineer in Houston said he received last Wednesday when he tried to visit BoingBoing.net from his office computer. "The requested URL belongs to the following categories: Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies, Nudity." Yep.

"When it happened I was pretty put off," said the employee, who did not want to be named because the topic involved company filtering policies, "as I enjoyed the little distractions it provided me during the workday." It was a sentiment that, over the last two weeks, united oppressed employees — and citizens — all over the globe.

The culprit, SmartFilter, is a product of Secure Computing of San Jose, Calif. It is marketed in a few different flavors to corporations, schools, libraries and governments as a sort of nannyware — a way for system administrators to monitor and filter access to Web sites among users of their networks. This is accomplished with a central database of millions of Web sites organized into 73 categories — things like "General News" or "Dating/Social" or "Hate Speech."

At some point late last month, it seems, a site reviewer at Secure Computing spotted something fleshy at Boing Boing and tacked the Nudity category onto the blog's classification. The company's database was updated and, from that point on, any SmartFilter client that had its network set up to block sites with a Nudity designation would now automatically block Boing Boing.

The impact quickly rippled across the globe, which had the ancillary effect of outing corporate and government SmartFilter clients, as their employees and citizens, now deprived of their daily fix of tech-ephemera, blasted their overlords in anonymous e-mail messages to Boing Boing's editors, who then posted them to the blog. Halliburton is a customer. So, apparently, are Fidelity Investments and American Express. And in the space of a few days at the end of last month, reports came in that citizens in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had also been blocked.

Reg-free Link. Above: what 'net surfers in Saudi Arabia see today when they try to access BoingBoing.

Previously on BoingBoing:

- Saudi Arabia joins league of BoingBoing-deprived nations
- BoingBoing banned in UAE, Qatar, elsewhere. Our response to net-censors: Get bent!
- ISPs in Iran, Tunisia also use SmartFilter (which blocks BoingBoing as "nudity"
- Stick Michelangelo's "David" on your blog to protest censorware
- BoingBoing now censored in the UAE (and elsewhere)
- Argonne National Laboratory is blocking Boing Boing

Apparently [us] employees have no details either. A client came into the branch late last week, she was travelling in Canada, and her card stopped working for no reason. She called up Citiphone (the consumer help line - they’re terrible), and they gave her no reason as to why the card was blocked, and had a new card sent to our branch. Since she was in Canada, this really didn’t help her out one bit.

Your article was the first that I heard of this. When she came into the branch to pick up her new card, there were no notes on her account stating why her card was blocked in the first place. There was no internal memo or email sent out regarding this fraud issue.

Previously on Boing Boing:
Citibank under fraud attack, customers locked out of accounts

BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, servos the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a laser gyroscope, and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge and others.

Tuley, who murdered a 20-year-old prostitute in September 2000, said he had been "refused permission on grounds of 'operational security problems' to purchase a selection of books on the subject of magic, sought in order to be able to pursue my hobby whilst serving a life sentence"...

Magic Circle spokesman David Beckley said: "I can't understand the Prison Service's attitude - unless this man has asked for books on escapology.

"Magicians do have skills which enable them to deceive but this is only in an environment which is controlled by the magician himself."

"Those photoshopping anarchists at somethingawful.com ripped into Kinkade's work 2 years ago, here, and since just one week just isn't enough to do Kinkade justice, followed it up here. Ya gotta love a Kinkade/Fargo mash-up."
Link

Earlier this week on BoingBoing, we shared news of violent raids by police in Kenya on offices of the East African Standard newspaper, and posted screengrab stills from CCTV video documenting the raid. Now, by way of East African Standard editors, we've obtained a copy of a Kenyan news report with the actual security camera footage.

Melodramatic background music makes the segment more surreal, as does the anchor's sarcastic play-by-play. "This light-skinned man appears to be getting instructions from his cellular phone," says the voiceover. At one point, the anchor makes fun of an amply sized member of the jackbooted state thug squad who is "clearly too robust for this kind of hard work." After the police finish trashing all the equipment and terrifying newspaper employees, one of them realizes that everything's been captured on a security camera. "They tinkered with it," reports the breathless video news announcer -- but they did not succeed in destroying it.

And here it is. YouTube Link, and here's a torrent (6.5MB MPEG-4). (Thanks, Kathryn Cramer, and mentalacrobatics )

Previously on BoingBoing:
Kenya: CCTV video of raid on press, blogger accounts
Media shutdown in Kenya -- TV station, newspaper torched

Update: The East African Standard has this story about a second, failed round of police raids aimed at obtaining "subversive material" stored on journalists' computers:

Kenya’s media was gripped by anxiety on Friday night after word went round that police were planning a raid on yet to be established premises. At the Standard Group’s I&M headquarters tension was high as word indicated that the Quick Response Unit was assembling in Nairobi area police headquarters shortly before midnight to prepare for a second raid to retrieve "specific files".

The raids, however, aborted following heavy and long rains and after the media learnt of the police intents. As soon as the media learnt of the intended operation, concerned journalists expressed fear that the QRU squad could have been preparing to raid the homes of media practitioners the government does not like.

The reports emerged a few hours after Internal Security Minister John Michuki had alleged that the Government had found subversive material in computers stolen from the Standard Group on Thursday morning when hooded police officers raided the Group’s premises against the law. (...) Reportedly, the second raid was to target specific editors’ and reporters’ desks in the Standard offices.

To my surprise, the ATM machine rejected the transaction and urged me to contact my financial institution. The machine also reported on the receipt "INELIGIBLE ACCOUNT."

The supervisor identified herself as a manager named Carla ID#CRU194. I identified myself as an upset customer whose account was locked for some unknown reason. She asked me a few questions about my location, my issue and then informed me that my card was suspected of fraud.

Naturally, I perked my ears up and asked for details of any fraud. She informed me that there had been no direct fraudulent transactions on my account. Rather, she informed me that the ATM networks of Canada, Russia and the United Kingdom have been compromised. I used the term class break as a question and she repeated that there has been a class break [ Ed. note: definition here] of the ATM networks in those countries. The ATM network in Canada has been compromised and as a result, using my ATM card over the Canadian network locked my account automatically. She informed me that this has been an ongoing issue for the last two weeks. When I asked why there was no media attention, she said she wasn't sure. I said it was a pretty big deal and she agreed.

She informed me that I would have to return to the United States to change my pin number before my card would be valid and in a usable state again. When I informed her that I would be traveling outside of the United States for at least a few months, possibly up to six, she repeated that I would have to re-enter the United States to fix the problem.

In other words, if you're a US Citibank customer trying to use your ATM card in Canada, Russia, or the UK right now -- at ANY network, not just Citibank's -- you may find yourself totally fuxx0red. The call-and-response goes like this:

Citibank customer:
I'm stranded in a foreign country, I need cash, and I can't withdraw cash from my account.

Citibank drone: 
d00d omfg we wuz 0wnz0red, it is teh suck!!!1!1 Go home and we'll re-issue a new card. Then be prepared to go through this all over again, and again, and again.

Citibank customer:
So even if I fly all the way back to the USA so you can issue me a new ATM card, you can't promise I won't be locked out the very next day?

Citibank drone: 
yup! kthxbi!

Citibank didn't handle Jake's problem in a customer-friendly way at all, and this appears to be standard procedure.

Also, it seems this incident is receiving little media attention, which begs the question: for each massive security breach we do hear about at Citibank or other large financial institutions, how many more occur without our awareness?

This February 2 Fresno Bee article appears to be tangentially related, and here's a story about a criminal conviction related to another Citibank bogus ATM scheme from 2004. But you'd think a security incident with the potential to leave thousands of customers stranded overseas without cash would get more notice. WTF?

Link to the full text of Jake's account.

Reader comment: Anonymous says,

Just wanted to mention that it's not just ATM cards that have been hacked with Citi. I was forced to close my Citi Mastercard by Citibank earlier this week "because one of their 'affiliates' was hacked and my card was affected". I knew it had to be a bad hack since when that _same card_ was involved in the DSW member information theft, they didn't make me close the card then (they never even contacted me). Forcing me to close it now made me suspect it was Citi that had been hacked, and the article about the ATM hack pretty much confirms it.

Reader comment: "Byte" in Poland says,

Not only US customers of CitiBank have problems, Polish have also, but the nature of problems is different.

According to short article: "CitiBank Handlowy S.A was hiding information that it has been robbed" by Rafał Pawlak on hacking.pl (Link, unfortunately in Polish only) accounts of several hundred customers of CityBank Handlowy S.A has been robbed with use of Internet access to their accounts. Translation of fragment of above article:

Robbed bank has not informed its customers that their accounts have been cleaned from money. Today (2003/03/02), bank has been identified to be CitiBank, and it has been determined that stolen money has been transferred through agency in Szczecin.

Robbers have cleaned Internet accounts of several hundred customers of CityBank Handlowy S.A. In virtual robbery citizens of Szczecin have been involved and money have been withdrawn from bank accounts through agency in Szczecin. (...)

Few minutes earlier, the same author has posted article (also linked from above text): "Virtual bank robbery" (Link) with more details about the robbery, but the name of the bank was not known at that time. According to that article twenty citizens of Szczecin have stolen 3 million zlotys (approximately 950 thousand dollars.) Hackers have installed software on bank's customers computers, and used it to collect data, that was later used to transfer money. There were only two hackers, and other eighteen involved people provided their private accounts for transferring stolen money.

Hackers have been collecting and analyzing data, about customers, for longer time. When they finally have decided that they have enough data, they have started the action of robbery, which has taken them about seven days to conduct. Fortunately for bank customers all of robbers has been already arrested.

Since data used in robbery has been collected from computers belonging to bank customers, blaming bank may not be appropriate. Still the bank can be accused of hiding information that it is being robbed (robbery took 7 days!!!), until the sum of money stolen reached 3 million zlotys.

I should also mention that there is bigger article in "Głos szczeciński" ("Szczecin Voice"), unfortunately I have no access to that article which is only available in printed form.

BoingBoing reader Jit in Thailand says,

Thai television has been notorious for remaining silent when historic events are happening.

Right now history is happening -- a mob is marching on Government House with the intent to overthrow the Thaksin administration.

What is Thai broadcast television showing? This.

Full coverage of the recent unrest is here -- this is what blogs are for!

On Saturday Night Live last night, The Lonely Island dudes did a hilarious rap video with intergalactic Star Wars babe (and V for Vendetta star) Natalie Portman, Chris Parnell, and Andy Samberg. OMG! Alert the lawyers! It's already up on YouTube. Link, another, another All dead.(Thanks, hopey and Manu and others)

Reader comment: Bryan says,

It should be noted that this song/video seems based off of the old Eazy-E song, "No More Questions".

Reader comment: Robert K. Brown says,

I wanted to forward the SNL video to some friends today and discovered that there was a nastygram left behind at the YouTube links. After some more Googling, I found the above link to the video on SNL's site. Also thought this note from NBC was indicative of their ignorance on how "borrowed" videos become viral "Now, instead of searching the web for 'borrowed' NBC highlights, you can go to the source! We've taken your viral favorites and gathered them into one convenient location." Link.

Reader comment: Jon says

NBC has apparently Nastygrammed YouTube over copies of Natalie Portman's SNL rap. It's a smart move on their part, as the free advertising they were getting for an incredibly mediocre show just wasn't fair.

Reader comment: Anonymous says

I have to point out the irony of the NBC nastygram to youtube over the Natalie Portman video. From the moment Isaw it, I knew the video was cribbed directly from Eazy-E -- the reference is made explicit in Natlie's closing line "no more quesitons." The song also cops a line from Sir Mix-A-Lot's song "Posse on Broadway" ("I got a def posse, you got a bunch of dudes..."). Apparently, profiting from this uncredited appropriation is completely fine when NBC does it, but when youtube chooses to post and credit SNL's work, making it a viral hit and perhaps getting some actual viewers for a faltering show, NBC releases the hounds. Nice, NBC, real nice. If I didn't love ths video so much, I would say Eazy-E's estate should nastygram NBC, just to bring the world full circle.

Kathryn Cramer writes:

The satrical news website Unconfirmed Sources ran a story the other day on Bush's surprise visit to Kabul. The post contained the following photoshopped picture of Jack Idema & co. with President Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai: The article concludes:

Bush then took the opportunity to meet with Americans Jonathan Keith Idema, Edward Caraballo, and Brett Bennett in a show of support. The three were convicted in 2004 of running their own private prison and torture chamber in Kabul. The three have steadfastly maintained that they were doing the work of the US government and not acting independently. (...)

The Unconfirmed Sources story was by DailyKos diarist Dood Abides, a nominee for the 2005 Kofax Award for Most Humorous Post.

What's funnier than the original is that the story was picked by a news site, Kashar World News, in Pakistan where it appears without the earmarks of satire. They list it as coming via SANA, which I gather is the Syrian Arab News Agency.

This Elephant is in beautiful condition and dates from the mid 1800’s.

The mounted specimen stands approximately 5'3" tall, it’s approximately 7' in length and approximately 3' wide.

The elephant is located in Los Angeles, CA.

This is the information we were given when we acquired the specimen. It was once owned by PT Barnum, and it is said to be a pygmy elephant. We can not be certain if it is a baby or a true dwarf elephant.

It died of natural causes. After it’s death Barnum had it sent to Henry Ward of the Natural Science Museum in Rochester, NY where Henry prepared and mounted it for display. After Henry completed the taxidermy the elephant was returned to Barnum.

First, the Times discusses Kinkade's alleged shady business practices, which have driven at least on gallery owner to ruin. Next the article launches into Kinkade's alleged pattern of drunken and belligerent behavior.

In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.

And then there is Kinkade's proclivity for "ritual territory marking," as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

"This one's for you, Walt," the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade's company, in an interview.

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