The eccentric Southern tradition of "eephing" is best described as the hillbilly equivalent of the hip-hop human "beat box" vocal style -- a kind of hiccupping, rhythmic wheeze that started in rural Tennessee more than 100 years ago.

Just like human beat-box artists of the 1980s rendered perfect imitations of drum machines with their mouths, the original eephers of the 1880s imitated the hogs and turkeys living in their backyards.

A trademark's enforceability hinges on whether the public is likely to associate a word or mark with a given company -- in other words, when you hear the word "super-hero," if you think "Marvel and DC," then Marvel will be able to go on censoring and eliminating its competition.

One way of accomplishing this dirty bit of mind-control is by adding a ™ symbol after the word "Super-Hero." That TM lets the world know that you claim ownership over the word it accompanies. If you can get other people to do it, too, eventually you may in fact get the world to believe that the word is your property -- and then, it becomes your property.

"Super-hero" isn't Marvel's property. They didn't invent the term. They aren't the only users of the term. It's a public-domain word that belongs to all of us. Adding a ™ to super-hero is a naked bid to steal "super-hero" from us and claim it for their own.

The latest trick in its move to steal the word is using the ™ symbol in the bumpf for its California science centre show -- they've recruited a science museum to help them steal "super-hero."

Here's a proposal: from now on, let's never use the term "super-hero" to describe a Marvel character. Let's call them "underwear perverts" -- as Warren Ellis is wont to -- or vigilantes, or mutants. Let's reserve the term "super-hero" exclusively to describe the heros of comics published by companies that aren't crooked word-thieves.

Sapolsky's engaging, fascinating lectures trace all the ways that stress creates heretofore unseen ailments in a population that has largely cured all the fast-killing diseases and can now afford to contract slow and lingering ones. From psychogenic dwarfism -- children who stop growing and never go through puberty due to extreme abuse-stress, something that Peter Pan author JM Barrie suffered from -- to the effects of stress on the heart, brain, blood, and long term overall health, Sapolsky's research is mind-blowing to those of us who wear our stress and overwork like badges of honor.

What's more fascinating is Sapolsky's citations to empirical research on the factors that mitigate harm from stress, which are surprisingly simple and intuitive. All told, listening to these two lectures was the best audio experience I've had in months:

Saplosky related a story about a boy from a very psychologically-abusive setting who was hospitalized in a New York hospital with zero growth hormone in his bloodstream. Over the next two months he developed a close relationship with the nurse at the hospital–undoubtedly the first normal relationship he had ever had–and soon, amazingly enough, the growth hormone levels zoomed back to normal. The nurse then went on vacation and the levels dropped again, rising once more immediately after her return.

"Think about it," Sapolsky said, commenting upon the story. "The rate at which this child was depositing calcium in his bones could be explained entirely by how safe and loved he was feeling in the world." He added that while this standard textbook version of stressed dwarfism is rare, there is nevertheless "major league psychopathology" throughout society, retarding human growth.

"Major stress is the police and social workers breaking down the door of the apartment, finding the kids who have been locked in the closet for two months, the food slipped under the door. Total nightmare situations that turn out often in history. . . kids in war zones, kids in areas of civil strife."

Update: Avi sez, "I have a page with links to hard to find articles, interviews and videos of Sapolsky on Stress. Many have found them of benefit both tactically and to understand the wider context of Stess."

In order to protect their ability to deploy this dangerous DRM, they want the Copyright Office to withhold from users permission to uninstall DRM software that actually does threaten critical infrastructure and endanger lives.

Amazon.com is pleased to offer our customers the ability to view copyrighted material from books participating in the Search Inside! program. To protect this copyrighted material, the books are subject to publisher-approved page-viewing limits.

You have reached a page-viewing limit. For security purposes, we are not able to provide further information about the specific limit reached.

We encourage you to use the other Search Inside! features that are available to you regardless of your limit status. These features include the ability to search inside any book in the program and view text-only excerpts from that book. You can also browse sample pages for any book in the program by clicking the links in the "Browse sample pages" box found on that book's product detail page.

Update: Eric says that this is an image of a 50 Yuan note.

Think about this: I can go to the store and buy a five inch reflective disc that holds digital media. If that disc is a music CD, I can pop it in my computer, encode it, put it on my iPod, and listen to it whenever I like. But if that disc is a movie DVD, I cannot, even though the same iPod is perfectly capable of playing the same digital content that I own just the same. (Oh, and by the way, Apple created a billion dollar industry in legal song downloading because of this. Where's the Apple Movie Store? Ask the MPAA.)...

The audience was filled with other examples of an industry gone crazy. One guy moved to the UK and all his DVDs stopped working because they were region-encoded (as most are). Her answer? That was in the contract you agreed to when you bought the DVD. Another guy asked why he can't just download the Sopranos. After all, he's a HBO subscriber, so he paid for it, he just happened to miss the last episode. Her answer, again, was that the time is part of the contract. My answer: Give it a couple years and HBO will be doing this, or they'll be out of business.

Update Alex sez, "A "more ferocious" internet-edition of boggle is available here, using xmlhttprequest for real-time Massively Multiplayer Online Boggling. It's easy to get sucked in to trying just one more game. Also, no registration is needed."

In summary, CRIA's own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders' computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services. I've argued many of these same things, but now you don't have to take my word for it; you can take it from the record labels themselves.

Update: Lia from Gizmodo writes, "Just wanted to point out that Ben didn't actually say what your laptop post quoted him as saying, as I wrote those words for Gizmodo this morning."

In his vision for the Imaginary Foundation, the Director knew that the human mind has more than one mode, that indeed it has an "ecology" of being. He knew that imagination, intuition, inspiration are basic to psyche.... A philosophy of research began to form: imagination as fundamental to all learning; artistic making as a model of integrating vision, materials, structure, and imagery.

Kevin Phillips, no lefty, says that America -- addicted to oil, strangled by debt and maniacally religious -- is headed for doom.

...[I]f Phillips is correct, the coming years are going to be ugly for all of us, not just blithe exurbanites with SUVs and floating-rate mortgages. With oil growing scarce and America unable or unwilling to even begin weaning itself away, we could see a future of resource wars that would inflame jihadi terrorism and bankrupt the country, shredding what's left of the social safety net. As Phillips notes, a collapsed economy would leave many debt-ridden Americans as what Democratic leaders have called "modern-day indentured servants," paying back constantly compounding debt with no hope of escape via bankruptcy. The prospect of social breakdown looms. The desperation of New Orleans could end up being a preview.

Desperate economic times are not good for democracy. The Great Depression, which ushered in the New Deal, was an anomaly in this regard. In an Atlantic Monthly article published last summer, the Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman wrote, "American history includes several episodes in which stagnating or declining incomes over an extended period have undermined the nation's tolerance and threatened citizens' freedoms." During the Midwestern farm crisis of the 1980s, when tens of thousands of families lost their land due to a combination of rising interest rates and falling crop prices, the Posse Comitatus, a far-right paramilitary network, made exceptional recruiting inroads. One poll had more than a quarter of Farm Belt respondents blaming "International Jewish bankers" for their region's woes. The right's ideological infrastructure has only grown stronger since then. Kunstler may not have been exaggerating when he told Salon, "Americans will vote for cornpone Nazis before they will give up their entitlements to a McHouse and a McCar."

Is there a biological basis to Hulk’s transformation? How can knowledge of simple mechanics help us command the strength of Iron Man? Find the answers to these questions and more. Learn about the remarkable achievements of current science and technology – achievements that in many ways give us special powers we dream of through the comics – while living the fantasy of your favorite Marvel Super Hero.

Step into the incredible Marvel® Universe and experience all of your favorite Super Heroes™ (Link to Cory's post calling bullshit on this trademark claim -ed.) and Villains. Over 30 amazing action stations reveal the powerful real-life science within Marvel®'s legends. Discover how Bruce Banner's emotions transform him into the Incredible Hulk! Dangle from the "Spider Web" and climb the walls, Spider-Man style! Destroy evil with Wolverine, Storm and the rest of the X-Men! Take command of Iron Man's armor and lift a car! Sharpen your senses in Daredevil's darkened world! Find it all at the most action-packed science exhibition ever!

Invention #16: SF, Tizzy tube, when your kid has a tantrum, you cover them with a tube. If you have more than one kid, they can crash in to each other. It's a nerf coating for your little ones. The judges calls it a kid prison...kids stop moving too. All no. But one judge says he'd put his kid in it.

The apparitions appeared in a museum gallery and curator’s office during the week of Monday March 13 2006, whilst staff and decorators were involved in a revamp and reorganisation of the museum's displays.

“One of the decorators saw a crouching figure of an old man on Monday,” said museum curator Neil Handley. “Yesterday (Wednesday) he saw another figure of a middle aged man. This figure spoke to him and said: ‘Where’s Mary? I can’t find Mary.’

"He has clearly described the figure as wearing a dark blue frock coat and a tricorn hat with white tassles, so we're obviously talking about quite an old one!"

Neil is now going to look at the records of the building to see if he can unearth any clues as to the identity of the ghost...

"To be honest, I often work alone here late at night,"said Neil, whose office is one of the ghostly locations, "but I've never encountered or sensed anything. Whether the redecoration has created a disturbance or something I just don’t know.”

(The map) is the biggest and most elaborate nanoscale object created in the lab so far.

Yet its cartographer, Paul Rothemund from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, is not satisfied. "I had wanted to make a map of the entire world, but I didn't have enough time," he says. "I feel terrible about it."

Rothemund has invented what he calls 'DNA origami', a method for building just about any two-dimensional pattern out of DNA molecules. His portfolio includes smiley faces, triangles, snowflakes and flowers.

Each item takes a month to plan and a few hours to make. All are made of a standard, single strand of viral DNA folded back and forth over rows of double helices in a template shape. The shape is maintained by DNA 'staples' - specially designed short strands - that stop the viral strand from unravelling.

"This is just artwork," says Rothemund, "but we have faith that if we master the ability to make shapes out of DNA, we will be able to make useful things with them. And it teaches us a lot about DNA structure along the way."

Senators Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Max Baucus, (D-MT) have proposed a bill that would require all commercial websites with material "harmful to minors" (in other words, sexually explicit content) to move to a .xxx domain within 6 months of this bill becoming law -- or face civil penalties. Under the terms of the proposed law, the US Commerce Department secretary would be required to develop a domain name for adult sites (presumably .xxx) with ICANN. Snip from one news report:

Adult industry representatives say the bill if enacted would have a chilling effect on free speech. "This is constitutionally protected speech -- we're not talking about illegal content," said Tom Hymes, a spokesman for the Free Speech Coalition, the trade association representing the adult entertainment industry.

The proposal is an ineffective approach to the problem since many of the adult Web sites are based outside the country and the civil penalties would not apply to them, he said. Hymes said the companies would find ways to circumvent the new designation, including moving their operations offshore. Instead, he proposed setting up a .kids domain name for children-friendly content.

The industry would incur costs from new registration fees and losses from existing marketing campaigns on .com and .biz domains, Hymes said, but he did not think it would get that far. "The likelihood is that this legislation would be challenged as being unconstitutional were it to go through," Hymes said.

Jason Schultz adds, "Talk about a misguided attempt at Internet zoning... also has severe implications for filtering as I'd imagine every .xxx domain would be on the universal black list."

Here's a PDF of the bill (Thanks, Jason Schultz!)

I'm a graduate student in the Kennedy School at Harvard, and am looking for users of collaborative news sites. This research project seeks to get a better understanding of why people use -- and how they value -- these collaborative news sites. You can help by participating in this short, anonymous 5-minute online survey.

When you actually ignore reality for years on end, the payback is a bitch brother! ... We're seeing just frantic collisions of fundamentalist delusion with objective reality... We're on a kind of slider bar between the unthinkable and the unimaginable now, bteween the grim meathook future and the bright green future. There are ways out of this situation; there are actual ways to move the slider bar from one side to the other, except that we haven't invented the words for them yet.

The provision on the internet of 'Open Educational Resources', free at point of use and available to everyone, reflects The Open University's mission of promoting fair access for all. During the initial phase of this initiative, the University will select and make available educational resources from all study levels from access to postgraduate and from a full range of subject themes: arts and history, business and management, health and lifestyle, languages, science and nature, society and technology. Learners will also be able to benefit from a range of study skills development material.

The Open University was a pioneer in making learning materials freely available through its long and successful partnership with the BBC. The University's television programmes are publicly broadcast by the BBC and many are supported by free internet activities and print materials (www.Open2.net). The University is already working with partners in Africa to make educational resources freely available under both the TESSA and Open Door projects (see notes below).

The EU's INSPIRE directive is supposed to harmonize the way that European mapping agencies share their geo-data, but the process has been hijacked. Now it looks more like a proprietary, restrictive, monopoly pricing policy that guts open access.

Geographic data is a key to unlocking information collected by government on behalf of the public - census, voting, planning, utilities, environmental, transport information. Google Maps/Earth mashups are just starting to show us what can be done by overlaying different kinds of environmental and social information over freely available base maps.

The Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee of the European Parliament gets the chance to roll back some of these changes next Tuesday (21st March).

An open letter from Public Geodata urges the Committee to consider this not as a niche technical issue, but as a core component of the management of civil society in the information age. We need your signature -- and particularly the signature of your organisation -- on this letter to prevent the basic information about the lands where we live from being hijacked by a few companies to all our detriment.

We are writing to convey our concerns regarding the current draft of the INSPIRE directive on establishing a common framework for sharing geographic information in Europe. This is an important issue as it is estimated that fully 80% of all information collected by government has a spatial component and geographic information is needed for environmental, census, and transport purposes among many others. Moreover state-collected geographic information is a public good and, as demonstrated by several studies, open access to it is the only way to realize its full social and commercial potential for Europe.

However since the first draft of INSPIRE, a set of amendments have been introduced which restrict the rights of the public to access, or even know about the existence of, geographic information that they have paid to collect. Thus in its current form, as found in the Council's common position, the directive not only fails to promote open access but risks doing the very opposite.

This would be a disastrous outcome and one which ran against the very purpose of INSPIRE. As the Commission itself, has stated in this regard: "the common position could have the effect of reducing rather than increasing the availability of spatial data. ... The text of the common position leaves too much scope for data providers to refuse to give public access to their data and share it with other authorities."

I love this stuff -- I once co-founded a software company called OpenCola that was really, really similar. They're looking at all the hard technical and social problems of P2P, including finding and discarding fake or corrupted files. The LGPL license means that anyone can implement, improve upon and distribute the technology.

We have developed a new cooperative downloading protocol which makes use of social groups, where members who trust each other cooperate to improve their download performance. Peers from a social group that decide to participate in a cooperative download take one of two roles: they are either collectors or helpers (see Figure 1). A collector is the peer that is interested in obtaining a complete copy of a particular file, and a helper is a peer that is recruited by a collector to assist in downloading that file. Both collector and helpers start downloading the file using the classical Bittorrent tit-for-tat and cooperative download extensions. Before downloading, a helper asks the collector what chunk it should download. After downloading a file chunk, the helper sends the chunk to the collector without requesting anything in return. In addition to receiving file chunks from its helpers, the collector also optimizes its download performance by dynamically selecting the best available data source from the set of helpers and other peers in the Bittorrent network. Helpers give priority to collector requests and are therefore preferred as data sources.

Twenty-four feet tall at its highest point and occupying 10,000 square feet, the fully-functional ride towers over the 135 eighth-graders who are its designers, builders and decorators. Students and four teachers have spent thousands of hours measuring, sawing, constructing, painting and decorating the wooden structure over the last three weeks.

The Clip M can be paired with your mobile to act as a standard Bluetooth headset, so that when your phone rings, the Clip M will interrupt your music with a beep and let you answer your mobile phone through your MP3 headphones. Just insert your own headphones to the Clip M, then attach it to your MP3 player with an audio cable. Pair it up with a Bluetooth mobile phone and never miss a call. It has up to 10 hours talk time, up to seven hours music playing time and up to 200 hours standby time.

"[T]he sticker labels on fruit: The numbers tell you how the fruit was grown. Conventionally grown fruit has four digits; organically grown fruit has five and starts with a nine; genetically engineered has five numbers and starts with an eight."

Update: A reader points us to "More than anyone would want to know about produce stickers":

A local grocery carries Buddha's Hand fruit (aka Fingered Citron) when in season, but they didn't always tag it with the little stickers, nor have a proper price posted in produce. So any time I bought one, checkout always involved the cashier looking confused, calling over the chief cashier, who called over to produce for someone, who called over to the shift produce manager, who called over to the store produce manager... who picked something random (and therefore massively underpriced). Amusing, when I wasn't in a hurry.

Having some time on my hands at one point, I went looking on-line to try and find the code, but didn't. (The store used a "Retailer Assigned" PLU, 4469 IIR). I did find the IFPC website (see link), with more than any "normal" person would want to know about PLU codes, and a searchable database of all of the assigned codes.

I eventually mentioned the problem to the store's general manager when I ran into him, who turned understandably ashen. Since then, I've noticed all of their exotic produce is properly stickered, and has MUCH clearer price labeling and item descriptions.

We found similar discrepancies with other PlaysForSure players. The Archos Gmini 402 Camcorder maxed out at 11 hours, but with DRM tracks, it played for less than 9 hours. The iRiver U10, with an astounding life of about 32 hours, came in at about 27 hours playing subscription tracks. Even the iPod, playing back only FairPlay AAC tracks, underperformed MP3s by about 8 percent. What I'm saying is that while battery life may not be a critical issue today, as it was when one of the original hard drive players--the Creative Nomad Jukebox--lasted a pathetic 4 hours running on four AA nickel-metal-hydride rechargeables (and much worse on alkalines), the industry needs to include battery specs for DRM audio tracks or the tracks we're buying or subscribing. Yet, here's another reason why we should still be ripping our music in MP3: better battery life, the most obvious reason being universal device compatibility.

BoingBoing pal Kazys Varnelis writes:

Late last night I was browsing through sci.space.history, a USENET group that still is a great source for information on the topic when I ran across this thread, referring me to a lengthy Aviation Week and Space Technology story on a secret government space plane called Blackstar.

Now AWST isn't the Inquirer. On the contrary, it's published by McGraw-Hill and its usual readers are people in the industry or the government. But if this piece, by William B. Scott, a senior editor of the journal, is to be believed, a two stage-to-orbit space plane was developed in the 1980s and may have become operational in the 1990s only to be cancelled recently.

As the piece details, the program was built in response to the loss of the Challenger and subsequent military concern about access to space. During an ultra-secret crash development program, the SR-3, a mothership based on the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber and the XOV, a low-Earth orbiter derived from the X-20A Dynasoar were developed.

(...) Pentagon officials, the article reports, think that the project may have been owned and operated by companies, not by the government to ensure plausible deniability of its existence. Top military space commanders remained in the dark about Blackstar, which may have been operated by an intelligence agency. Blackstar's existence would explain the mysterious retirement of the Lockheed SR-71 reconnaissance plane in 1990. Observers have long wondered why this program was cancelled. The article concludes with a discussion of sightings of mystery aircraft.

Link.

Update: accusations of bogosity abound. Reader Fred Kiesche says,

At Space Review, Dwayne Day outlines the number of breathless "about to be revealed" military vehicles at "Aviation Leak" has revealed...only to never have them come into existence. For example: "But what they should realize is that Aviation Week also has a well-deserved reputation for publishing poorly-researched articles about top secret aircraft programs that do not exist, such as the 1958 claims about a Soviet nuclear-powered bomber. In fact, the same author who wrote the Blackstar articles, William Scott, has written several previous articles about top secret aircraft that never existed. It is his specialty, and he repeats the same pattern in all of them."

* Did the octopus have sex with the walrus, or where does the baby come from?
* Why does everybody abuse it?
* Are the two octopuses really one and the same person?

I don't know, but the result is what the Teletubbies would look if they were on PCP instead of E. Link to MP4 video, about 10MB, via WFMU's "Beware of the Blog." (Thanks, Coop!)

Jagger: Flowers In Your Hair
What ?
Jagger: What?
Watts: Third time
Jagger: Flowers in Hair
Flowers in Your Hair right
Jagger: A Nicky...
Nicky Hopkins: Yeah?
Engineer: Flowers in Your Bonnet take one
Jagger: Like, like I said...la la la la la la da, but you're on your own, you know
Nicky Hopkins: Yeah. I will...
Keith, just get the levels
Play it then
(Acoustic guitar strums)
Guitar is switched from a left channel mix to center
Hopkins: OK...

1. She's A Rainbow: Takes 1-2 (6:57) - The working title of She's A Rainbow is Flowers In Your Hair! Hopkins goes on to play the loveliest melodic piano lines imaginable. The piano in the left channel is running all through the song with variations not heard on the released version of the track. The trumpet like sound in the right channel is a keyboard and most likely the Mellotron with yet another sound setting selected.

Image (full-size link): robo-tragedy comes in twos. Despite their brave battle, both Kipp (right) and John (left) were forcibly assimilated into 'bot consciousness. Their father, BoingBoing reader Dean Adams, watched in horror.

Post-roboticization, Kipp discovers he has no tape backup, and sees that the battery power gauge on John’s robot costume is spinning higher than his.

This results in tears, which in turn rust parts -- and -- normally this story would have ended badly, but then, dad Dean stuck the robo-boys in a spaceship (image link).

Regarding the "silence" buttons on the boys' cardboard exoskeletons, Dean adds, "Many times I have wished those controls did indeed work." 

More evidence of the insurgency: a robot-child hybrid (thanks, AJ). And why do roboticized children so often smile after assimilation? Link. (thanks, Norm). Some of them look like Vikings, only even more badass: Link (thanks, louisvillestandup.com).  

Previous robot menace coverage: one, two, three. (special thanks, Wil Wheaton).

mibi, the artist who made this chart (with tech contributions from a number of collaborators) explains,

After a year in the making... researching, number crunching, layouts, stock gathering, and lots of procrastinating, i am proud to say it is finally done... Death and Taxes: A visual look at where your tax dollars go. Most people are unaware of how much of their taxes fund our military, and those aware are often misinformed. Well here it is. Laid out, easy to read and compare. With data straight from the White House. I hope this makes people think and ask questions. Why do we spend more on jets than we do on public housing? Why is the Endowment for the Arts so small? Whats with all this foreign military financing?

 I'm sure you can come up with numerous questions of your own. Unfortunately, I dont have any answers. Our leaders do. Your president, his cabinet and your congress person have these answers. Ask them for the answers or better yet, demand them.

Link to "Death and Taxes" project page, with 3500 x 2333 (1.8 MG) jpeg download. A larger version is also offered, at 9000 x 6000 and 5.8 megs. The artist is producing prints for sale from the 12,000 x 8000 @ 400 DPI reso original. (Thanks, Dmitri)

Reader comment:

There's one major flaw with the Death and Taxes chart your pointed to today: the two main funding circles are the Department of Defense and the Congress. The two are not co-equal. Just about everything funded by Congress except the federal courts and the Congress itself are funded through allocation to the Administration, including the funding for the Department of Defense. This chart implies that the DoD is one branch of government and the Congress is the other, with the Congress running all non-military programs. That is simply not the case. The central red white and blue flag should be the Congress, and then you can break down funding by military and non-military. But the way this chart is present significantly mis-states the way our government runs.

This auction is for the piece titled "Nintendo gun shoots Sony Digicube", designed by Roger Ibars. This piece connects two electronic pop icons from the 80s: the famous cube-shaped bestselling alarm clock from Sony and the Nintendo light gun Zapper, launched in 1985 along with the also bestselling 8 bit game console NES. These two devices are hard-wired so the time and the alarm of the Sony clock can be set up firing with the light gun. See the "hard-wired functionalities" below to know how it works. This piece in particular has been featured in the magazine Artinvestor dec. 2005 (special issue on Game Art).

There is undeniably a Blade Runner-like feel to this city. The violence is so pervasive and unfathomable that you wonder what people think they are dying for. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the everyday violence is horrendous, it does not take too many days before the deadly noises and the devastation everywhere seem to become just part of the ordinary landscape. Soon, quite to your surprise, you find yourself paying hardly more attention to the sounds of gunshots than a New Yorker does to the car alarms that go off every night... until, that is, someone you know, a neighbor, or just someone you have heard about, gets blown up, shot on patrol, or kidnapped by insurgents.

Just a few days after I left Baghdad, Iraqi newspapers carried a short notice that a well-to-do Iraqi banker, Ghalib Abdul Hussein, had been kidnapped from his fortified house by gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms. Five of his personal guards were shot execution-style in his yard. This is just one of thousands of such occurrences. But except for obeying the security guards responsible for you (if you have them), there isn't much else you can do.

Driving through the streets of Baghdad, one now sees members of the newly created, blue-uniformed Iraqi Police Service, extolled by the Bush administration as another hopeful sign of "Iraqization." But because police recruitment stations, training schools, and district precincts are favorite targets of the insurgents, many of these new police are afraid of being identified as collaborators with the Americans or the new Iraqi government. Their remedy is to wear black stocking caps with eye, nose, and mouth holes pulled down over their faces so they look like so many bank robbers. One sees these sinister-looking protectors of the peace at traffic circles and intersections, or brandishing automatic weapons in the back of American-bought pickup trucks, which makes them seem far more menacing than reassuring.

Link. (Thanks, hoodster)

Image (AFP/Shawan Mohammed): "An angry demonstrator shows blood on his hand during riots in the Iraq northern Kurdish town of Halabja. A 14-year-old boy was killed when Iraqi security forces fired into a massive crowd of Kurds rioting in Halabja on the anniversary of Saddam Hussein's gas attack on the Kurdish town."

In our research, we have discovered that if certain vulnerabilities exist in the RFID software, an RFID tag can be (intentionall) infected with a virus and this virus can infect the backend database used by the RFID software. From there it can be easily spread to other RFID tags. No one thought this possible until now. Later in this website we provide all the details on how to do this and how to defend against it in order to warn the designers of RFID systems not to deploy vulnerable systems.

While we have some hesitation in giving the "bad guys" precise information on how to infect RFID tags, it has been our experience that when talking to people in charge of RFID systems, they often dismiss security concerns as academic, unrealistic, and unworthy of spending any money on countering, as these threats are merely "theoretical." By making code for RFID "malware" publicly available, we hope to convince them that the problem is serious and had better be dealt with, and fast. It is a lot better to lock the barn door while the prize race horse is still inside than to deal with the consequences of not doing so afterwards.

The "RFID Virus" is absolutely laughable.

If you read the "paper", here's what they do:

1. Construct an RFID middleware system, intentionally design it to have some really obvious security flaws, ones that even most basic web developers know to avoid, namely the two security no-nos of implicitly trusting external data, and treating data as code.

2. Knowing the exact nature of those two obvious security flaws, including the exact implementation of the flaws, send malicious data that exploits those flaws.

This is so laughably stupid, but somehow it got picked up by the news outlets because it contains buzzwords: "RFID" and "Virus".

Really, what they're doing is the equivalent of:

1. Designing a barcode system to automatically self-destruct if it ever reads a barcode of 1337 1337, for no reason other than to prove it's dangerous.
2. Broadcasting to the world that the barcode system will self-destruct if it ever reads a barcode of 1337 1337.
3. Intentionally reading a barcode of 1337 1337.
4. Claiming that barcodes are dangerous.

RFID Tags, just like barcodes are just data. Nothing more than data. If you intentionally design a system to be vulnerable to certain data, then intentionally expose the system to that data, then yup, you'll have a problem.

I'm surprised the music industry hasn't tried this with MP3s. Design a MP3 player that will format your hard drive if it sees a certain often-downloaded song, download that song, show the drive getting formatted, then claim that MP3s are dangerous because they might format your hard drive.

Peanut Butter Fudge Sundae This was SO popular when I made it up, that at the time, we had to BAN the damn thing!
two shots hot fudge
five ounces soft serve
two packets of peanut butter

Place peanut butter in original sealed containers in the HLZ five minutes before going on break. When break commences, open one package of peanut butter and pour into the bottom of a sundae cup. Add one shot of hot fudge. Fill with ice cream. Top with another shot of hot fudge. Open remaining packet of peanut butter and pour over top. (At this point both portions of peanut butter should be melted enough to resemble a liquid.) I'm tell you, this is the MOST amazing concoction... simply amazing.

Britain is worried that the jets could contain back-doors that let the US remotely disable them.

Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning.

"We do expect this technology transfer to take place. But if it does not take place we will not be able to purchase these aircraft," said Lord Drayson.

Update: Beaumains points out that Australia has made the same demands.

Simply point the SkyScout at any star in the sky and click the "target" button. The SkyScout will instantly tell you what object you are looking at...

To locate a star or planet, select the object's name from the menu and follow the directional arrows through the viewfinder...

The SkyScout includes entertaining and educational audio and text information, including facts, trivia, history and mythology about our most popular celestial objects.

From April 21st to April 23rd, 2006, join policy makers, activists, industry leaders, and academics at Yale Law School for a conference addressing this topic in areas such as intellectual property policy, telecommunications, education, culture, science, and health care. Leading thinkers and advocates from North, South, East and West will focus on generating cutting edge research agendas, concrete policy solutions, and strategic partnerships for the next decade.

Plenary Panels defining Access to Knowledge include:

-- Framing A2K in human rights and development
-- Political economy of trade treaties and intellectual property
-- The economics of information
-- Privacy, national security, and free expression
-- Innovative public and private solutions to knowledge access and knowledge production in developing countries

Access to Knowledge Conference
Yale Information Society Project, Yale Law School
April 21-23, 2006

In her book, Cheney travels from coast to coast, tracking the fates of the tens of thousands of dead bodies that end up in the "cadaver trade" each year. The corpses -- including those donated for medical research and those left unclaimed at morgues -- "are cut up into parts, not unlike chickens, and distributed through a complex network of suppliers, brokers and buyers," Cheney writes.

In Miami, she watches urological surgeons learn how to remove kidneys by poking into torsos in the Ocean Room of the Trump International Sonesta Beach Resort. In Gainesville, Florida, she takes a tour of a factory where crushed human bone is turned into precision-tooled orthopedic tools. And throughout, she finds plenty of people in the body-part business who really wish she'd go away.

(Disclosure: I am a proud advisor to the Open Rights Group)

Update: Another link to the story, via MeFi.

Soon-to-be-chosen residents will get access to a a Web site that provides panoramic views of their block, allows them to type in general complaints, pinpoint a problem location, immediately send that information to police headquarters, and simultaneously activate hidden police surveillance cameras, (police director Jose) Cordero said...

"We plan on giving the community control of a very powerful technology," Cordero said.

"We want to now give them shared virtual control of their community," Cordero said. "Essentially, when they see something that alarms them, they can go to the Web site, type in information, and hit send.

"We will then get an alert in our community center, and, automatically, video cameras will turn to what they (the neighborhood resident) are looking at, or what they are complaining about," Cordero said. "We'll see what they're seeing. We'll be able to respond quicker."

I found a video clip of the Japanese "Robocarp" robot fish that BoingBoing posted about yesterday, and uploaded it to YouTube. Scroll to the bottom of the post to see it. The video is from Japanese TV, but has English narration and subtitles.

Okay, you've just escaped North Korea. You were held there for years in the gulag of prison camps. Your only crime? Listening to South Korean radio about the death of Kim Il Sung.

But you're out now. You've made it to freedom. What do you do? Why, put on a musical, of course. Director Jung Sung San's musical, Yodok Story just opened in Seoul. It deals with rape, beatings, murder… great family fare, no?

Audiences have been stunned. Apparently the South Korean media doesn't like to talk too much about what is going on in its neighbor to the north. The South Korean government is attempting reconciliation with the North and doesn't exactly want to shine a bright light on Kim Jong Il's little peccadilloes that keep an estimated 400,000 people in the gulag.

Oh, and the director, he had to put up his kidney as collateral to put the show on. If he can pay them back by next month, it won't be removed.

A Japanese-led research team said it had made a seeing, hearing and smelling robot that can carry human beings and is aimed at helping care for the country's growing number of elderly.

The 100-kilogram (220-pound) robot can also distinguish eight different kinds of smells, can tell which direction a voice is coming from and uses powers of sight to follow a human face.

Reader comment:Ted Mills says: This is a follow up to the post last week about Garfield strips with Garfield removed. I posted my version of this (Garfield removed and replaced with non-anthropomorphized cat) about 2 years ago. Link

Before it arrived in Maritime, the cyclone passed Mongolia, where sand storms had been raging in the desert.

“The winds of the cyclone embraced dust particles that colored the fallouts,” the experts said.

Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
Jasmina Tesanovic
Belgrade, March 15, 2006

Wrapped in a Serbian flag, the coffin was received by a few party members, who kissed it as if it were his hand. Some thousand followers were scattered during his last drive through town.

That's pretty much how he left Belgrade five years ago, in half secrecy, half embarrassment. He was alive then, technically. It was a June night instead of this snowy gloomy March afternoon.

"He didn’t even pay for a return ticket from Hague," as Serbian black humor has it. His family still owns a lot of embezzled money, too much of it to dare to come to Belgrade and answer to the court subpoena. The government and court, every hour, are giving new announcements as to whether the family will be arrested if they step onto Serbian and Montenegro territory.

It is a small war between official institutions and personality cults. Even the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church gave his opinion on humanity and post-humanity. It seems nobody much cares for Dead Slobo as a man. He is simply a hot dead potato, a Big International Deal, for what he has done cannot be undone. Convicted or not, his deeds have transformed too many lives and traced out new maps and countries.

Somehow he was left without a homeland even for his own grave. Crime has no nationality, time, or border.

The Weekly Rundown on Northeast Public Radio covered the story not long ago, and here's an MP3 link to that edition: Link to the entire show (BoingBoing/Smartfilter interview begins at the 18:50 mark), and here's a shorter MP3 clip of the Boingboing/SmartFilter segment alone: Link. (Thanks, Greg)

Previously:
- Distributed BoingBoing, for those blocked by censorware
- SmartFilter, BoingBoing, and Adult Baby - Diaper Lovers.
- Xeni's NYT op-ed: Exporting Censorship

In recent days here on BoingBoing, more compelling evidence that mechanical invaders want to devour the children of Planet Earth and make humankind their slaves.

Today, a fearless ballerina and valiant fireman fight off a robot bully three times their size. Who says bravery doesn't wear a tutu?

Link, and here's DIY defense armor from VHS boxes. Previous editions: one, two. (thanks, woodenturkey and Steve Zimmerman)
Update: Too late. Shortly after the snapshot above, another fireman assimilated into robot consciousness. The struggle was mighty, the force just too strong.

BoingBoing reader and robot resistance fighter Derek adds, "Perhaps this is a clever disguise for a lean mean child eating machine? Link."

Reader comment: defendyourselfhuman says,

"In the vein of your recent posts regarding robot attacks - here's a handbook on "How to Survive a Robot Uprising", by one Dr. Daniel H. Wilson who's packing a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University (so, presumably, he knows what he's talking about). author link, Amazon link."

Reader comment: RTFMPlease says,

And here's a talk by the author of "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" done at Google: Link.

Reader comment: anon says,

Given the frequent occurance of robot invasions, I feel robot insurance proves to be a worthy investment. Old Glory is the only life insurance company to provide full coverage against robot attacks. WMV, Quicktime.

Reader comment: Josh says,

It's not just children robots threaten, they'll get us all if we're not careful. Luckily Humans United Against Robots (HUAR) recognizes the threat already. Link.

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”--E.O Wilson

The First International Arts Pestival is dedicated to raising awareness of the integral role insects play in the global ecosystem and in all animal societies. Many of those insects are increasingly endangered through human action.

Through appreciation of “insects in art and the art of being an insect”, the Pestival aims to create positive PR for this 400-million-year-old, highly evolved taxon that has had thousands of years of bad press.

We are building up a fantastic programme of talks, demonstrations, workshops, art installations, films, music and performance, fusing art and science to reach out to a broad, interested audience of homo sapien adults and children.

MIT’s Rodney Brooks has an adage (to paraphrase): A bunch of working “dumb” bots (i.e. robots w/little computing power that sense and react directly to their environment) is better than one broken “smart” bot (i.e. a robot that maps its world, plans optimal routes through it, etc).

I propose a corollary: A robot that is actually on the market is better than a bunch of bots that are endlessly demo’d at trade shows. Look at the Hondo P3 and the Sony SDR-4/Qrio vs. the Wow Wee Robosapien and the iRobot Roomba. While Hondo and Sony keep parading around these perpetual demobots but never bring them to market (and Sony just turned the development lights out on Qrio), the Robosapien and the Roomba are proven market successes and are now several product generations in pedigree.

NEC’s answer to the Honda and Sony demobots is the PaPeRo (”Partner-Type Personal Robot”). While it’s an undisputedly cute little rug-rover, and has enjoyed plenty of ink and electrons since it was first rolled out in 2001, it remains in the prototype stage and there is still no release date. If you ask me, I think there should be a “put-up or shut-up” statute for such prototypes. If you show off a prototype and it garners a bunch of media attention, and then you don’t bring it to market in, let’s say three years, you gotta retire it; show us a NEW concept robot. Hey, maybe that’s what Sony did on their own. The SDR-4 cum Qrio couldn’t cut the mustard, so they did the only honorable thing, they took it off the world stage and stopped teasing us with it. So, what’s it going to be NEC? The shelves of my local Target or the wayside on the road to Robotopia?

And, in case you didn’t notice, the robots above that are actually on the market are of the “dumb bot” variety while the ones in perpetual prototypical stage are “smart bots.” Coincidence? We think not.

This week on my "tribute to 50's illustration" blog, I'm looking at how illustrators dealt with the presentation of nude subjects. This was a reccuring phenomenom is mainstream magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping and added a bit of tittilation to the otherwise squeaky-clean offerings for which these magazines are remembered.

Reader comment: Jeff Martin says,

Let's not forget the men--check out this legendary campaign for Cannon Towels, 1944. Grrrrow! Link.

DARPA seeks innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately integrating microsystems within insects, during their early stages of metamorphoses. The healing processes from one metamorphic stage to the next stage are expected to yield more reliable bio-electromechanical interface to insects, as compared to adhesively bonded systems to adult insects. Once these platforms are integrated, various microsystem payloads can be mounted on the platforms with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sense local environment, and scavenge power.

Salon has published 279 photographs, 19 videos, and reports about the Army's internal investigation into detainee abuse inside Abu Ghraib -- along with background on how the publication obtained these materials. To date none of the officers involved in the human rights scandal have been brought to justice in a court of law.

Shown here, Cpl. Graner posing with "The mangled corpse of Manadel al-Jamadi, known as the 'Ice Man,' who died during interrogation by a CIA officer. No one at the CIA has been prosecuted, even though al-Jamadi's death was ruled a homicide."  Link to Salon archive. (Thanks, sponselli).

Previous BoingBoing posts on photos and reports related to the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal: Link. And incidentally, internet filtering software maker Secure Computing told us that these photos would be considered sufficient grounds to block a site as a "nudity site" in Smartfilter -- as BoingBoing is. Link to background, here's more.

Earlier this week, President Bush effectively labeled the Los Angeles Times an enemy of the state for the paper's reports on anti-bomb technologies. Defensetech blogger and WIRED contributor Noah Shachtman has written much on counter-IED gadgetry over the years, and is among many who feel the White House and Pentagon are simply trying to bully reporters off of the story. Noah says:

Last summer, a U.S. Colonel in Baghdad told me that I was America's enemy, or very close to it. For months, I had been covering the U.S. military's efforts to deal with the threat of IEDs, improvised explosive devices. And my writing, he told me, was going too far -- especially this January 2005 Wired News story, in which I described some of the Pentagon's more exotic attempts to counter these bombs.

None of the material in the story -- the stuff about microwave blasters or radio frequency jammers -- was classified, he admitted. Most of it had been taken from open source materials. And many of the systems were years and years from being fielded. But by bundling it all together, I was doing a "world class job of doing the enemy's research for him, for free." So watch your step, he said, as I went back to my ride-alongs with the Baghdad Bomb Squad -- the American soldiers defusing IEDs in the area.

Today, I hear that the President and the Pentagon's higher-ups are trotting out the same argument. "News coverage of this topic has provided a rich source of information for the enemy, and we inadvertently contribute to our enemies' collection efforts through our responses to media interest," states a draft Defense Department memo, obtained by Inside Defense. "Individual pieces of information, though possibly insignificant taken alone, when aggregated provide robust information about our capabilities and weaknesses."

In other words, Al Qaeda hasn't discovered how to Google, yet. Don't help 'em out.

Image: an IED (improvised explosive device) in Iraq, constructed with a cellular phone. One call missed. Link.

Reader comment: Not telling says,

If you assemble enough unclassified information into one well organized and cogent document, then you could potentially have created classified information. This is referred to as Classification by Compilation. I'm not saying that this applies to the Los Angles Time in this instance, but given the tenacity of many journalists, and our governments penchant for classifying anything, I'm not surprised this has come to verbal fisticuffs.

Reader comment: Xopl says,

I think Bush is confused when he says Iran is giving Iraq the most sophisticated IED technology. Clearly, the country to blame is Finland.

More here about Bush's attempt to smear the LA Times: "10 months later -- and after a prototype destroyed about 90% of the IEDs laid in its path during a battery of tests -- not a single JIN has been shipped to Iraq. The Times spoke to several Defense Department officials before the article appeared. None expressed concern that publication could endanger U.S. troops (...) Before Bush mentioned the report Monday, no U.S. officials had contacted The Times to raise those concerns."

Paintkakke? Japanese girls in bathing suits pour paint on themselves in bathtubs. For some out there, this is heavy-breathing-inducing. For the rest of the internets, it's worksafe but weird. Link. And if that gets you hot and bothered, try metallic, day-glo, or latex primer! Oh, wait, that last one was whipped cream. (Thanks, Reverse Cowgirl!)

From 1971, the Control Data Cyber 70 Bosom-Goggler, which automatically stares at the secretary’s breasts, freeing up the busy executive so he can stare at her legs.

In talking to Moore – who is just as fascinating and voluble as you've heard – it becomes clear that the situation with his work at DC and in Hollywood causes him a lot of very real pain. As you can see from the transcript, you can disagree with some of his actions, but not with the real passion and love of comics that motivates them.

Since this interview was conducted, V FOR VENDETTA has indeed had Moore's name taken off the credits. The last I heard, his demand to have his name taken off the books he doesn't own still stood.

MOORE: "As far I'm concerned, the two poles of politics were not Left Wing or Right Wing. In fact they're just two ways of ordering an industrial society and we're fast moving beyond the industrial societies of the 19th and 20th centuries. It seemed to me the two more absolute extremes were anarchy and fascism. This was one of the things I objected to in the recent film, where it seems to be, from the script that I read, sort of recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see. The fascism had been completely defanged. I mean, I think that any references to racial purity had been excised, whereas actually, fascists are quite big on racial purity."

Get it put back in, and soon. The longer you remain in this rare condition—known as "globe luxation"—the more strain you'll put on the blood vessels and nerves that connect your eye to the rest of your head. Your luxated globes will also be susceptible to corneal abrasions or inflammation, and the feeling of your eyelids clamped down behind them won't be pleasant.

You should be able to get your eye back in place without serious, long-term damage. (If the ocular muscles tear or if the optic nerve is severed, your outlook won't be as clear.) The treatment for globe luxation is pretty simple: Doctors apply some topical painkillers, hold back your lashes, and poke your eyeball into its socket by pressing on the white part with gloved fingers. (In some cases, they'll use a simple tool like a bent paperclip to shoehorn it back into place.) You might get antibiotics, lubricating drops, or steroids to follow up for a few days while your vision returns to normal. If your doctors can't pop your eye back in—because you've got too much swelling in the socket, for example—they'll give you an eye shield and consider a more invasive procedure.

Kidnapped Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll was still alive and being moved from place to place by her captors.

He would say nothing more about the case.

MetaBrainz is a charitable nonprofit that produces MusicBrainz, a free and open alternative to Gracenote's CDDB data, which is only available on restrictive and cumbersome terms. The Gracenote database was built by volunteers, but the company then fenced off the product of all that volunteer effort and sold it off to the highest bidders.

MusicBrainz's latest deal with MusicIP gives the charity access to a sophisticated fingerprinting algorithm in exchange for its store of meta-data, making it an even more effective competitor to Gracenote.

This is great news -- it brings us one step closer to a world of community ownership of basic, factual information about the cultural goods around us, so that anyone, commercial or free, can produce innovative, valuable services.

Built on the belief that music metadata is public domain information, MusicIP's Music Digital Naming ServiceTM (MusicDNS) is a simple, dependable, inexpensive way to identify digital music tracks and provide basic metadata. Through this partnership, the MusicDNS database of more than 16 million identified and analyzed tracks will grow significantly in conjunction with additional metadata information provided by the ongoing efforts of the MusicBrainz community. In exchange, MusicIP is providing MusicDNS at no cost to MusicBrainz, and for other non-profit projects that are based on the same core beliefs...

MusicBrainz is also supporting MusicIP's Open FingerprintTM Architecture, which consistently and rigorously identifies the sounds in an audio file, regardless of variations in the digital-file details. The Open Fingerprint is designed to work successfully with all of the possible music in the world, and works seamlessly with MusicDNS to provide identification integrity.

"In addition to the sharing of music identification and metadata, MusicIP is proud to be donating 10% of revenue from the delivery of MusicBrainz data via MusicDNS back to the MetaBrainz Foundation to support their continued efforts." said Dr. Matthew Dunn, CEO of MusicIP. "Our partnership with MusicBrainz is our first step into the Open Source community, and we're proud to be taking this step with such a respected partner in the industry."

Over on Slashdot, CmdrTaco shares timely and exciting news for law-abiding Americans who don't care for involuntary three-way calls with the NSA (it's big news for anyone in the world who likes to keep private conversations private):

Philip Zimmermann, creator of PGP wrote in to tell me about Zfone, his new system for encrypting any SIP VoIP voice stream. His first release is Mac & Linux only. I tested it with him using Gizmo as our client and it was pretty trivial to use. While it should work on most any SIP compatible VoIP client, he hopes that clients like OpenWengo and Gizmo will incorporate Zfone directly into the UI. Zfone has no centralization, and has been submitted to the IETF. He hasn't yet determined a license, but he believes strongly in releasing source code for all encryption products. A windows client is forthcoming.

Link. ETA on a Windows XP release: mid-April. And on philzimmermann.com, Philip explains: 

I think it's better than the other approaches to secure VoIP, because it achieves security without reliance on a PKI, key certification, trust models, certificate authorities, or key management complexity that bedevils the email encryption world. It also does not rely on SIP signaling for the key management, and in fact does not rely on any servers at all. It performs its key agreements and key management in a purely peer-to-peer manner over the RTP packet stream. It interoperates with any standard SIP phone, but naturally only encrypts the call if you are calling another Zfone client. This new protocol has been submitted to the IETF as a proposal for a public standard, to enable interoperability of SIP endpoints from different vendors. 

 Link. (Thanks, Jake Appelbaum!)

On Saturday, at the game, when Pruitt was introduced in the starting lineup, the chants began: "Victoria, Victoria." One of the fans held up a sign with her phone number.

The look on Pruitt's face when he turned to the bench after the first Victoria chant was priceless. The expression was unlike anything ever seen in collegiate or pro sports. Never did a chant by the opposing crowd have such an impact on a visiting player. Pruitt was in total shock. (This is the only picture I could find.)

The chant "Victoria" lasted all night. To add to his embarrassment, transcripts of their IM conversations were handed out to the bench before the game: "You look like you have a very fit body." "Now I want to c u so bad."

Pruitt ended up a miserable 3-for-13 from the field.

"My quote from the story: 'This is a guy who the people of California should be thanking and yet he's facing litigation titled 'People vs. Heller.'

"EFF has been trying to find him pro bono counsel, since he's run out of his savings, but we haven't had any luck yet. Some folks have also set up a legal defense fund. Link

 "It's very difficult to play. But an instrument should be difficult to play. That's the only way to master musical materials, by overcoming these difficulties," says Eaton, 70, surrounded in his cramped attic studio by upright pianos, ancient computers and programs and scores from his 20 operas.

What is unique -- and challenging -- about the Eaton-Moog keyboard is how many ways each key can be programmed to respond. How far you depress a key matters. The actual area covered by your finger changes the sound. Sliding your finger across a key's length or width can approximate, say, a vibrato effect on a violin string. How hard you push a depressed key matters, too.

Eaton jokingly dubs this keyboard the "Can't-Resist-A-Sizer." How does it sound? Think theremin -- from quavering soundtracks of cheesy sci-fi movies -- crossed with a baseball organ. Throw in some psychedelic chemicals, and you begin to get the idea.

Windows Live is part of Microsoft's strategy to consolidate a range of Web services -- e-mail, instant messaging, online PC security and blogs -- to compete with Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. for Internet advertising dollars. Windows Live is being tested now and will launch sometime in the second half of 2006.

Microsoft plans to roll out Windows Live Family Safety Settings in the summer, which will allow parents to filter Web sites and receive reports to see what their children are doing online. The company also plans to eventually allow parents to control who communicates with their children over e-mail, instant messaging and in their blogs.

Adam and Eve and ZJ Gifts LLC, the Memphis-based owner of Christal's chain of adult stores, sued the state of Mississippi in 2000. The company, which closed an adult store in Southaven in 2001, claimed the law barring the sale of certain adult devices was unconstitutional.

A Hinds County judge ruled in 2003 that state law does not extend the right to privacy to the commercial sale of sexual devices. The Mississippi high court said there is no fundamental right of access to buy sexual devices.

The justices said while a federal court had found a similar Alabama law was unconstitutional, other courts — including ones in Georgia, Louisiana and Texas — have rejected attempts to expand the right to privacy to include the commercial sale of sex toys.

Law enforcement officials in New Jersey have arrested 14 people in connection with a crime spree that has forced banks across the nation to replace hundreds of thousands of debit cards. The suspects, all U.S. citizens, are accused of using stolen credit and debit card information to produce counterfeit cards that were used to make fraudulent purchases and withdrawals from card-holder accounts, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said. Most of the arrests were made during the past two weeks.

Some of the stolen credit card information came from the office-supply chain OfficeMax and other businesses, DeFazio told CNET News.com on Monday. "We had cooperation from the security people from many victimized businesses," he said.

As part of a state grand-jury investigation over press leaks, the office of Pennsylvania's Attorney General has seized four hard drives from the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal. At issue is whether reporters at that paper were given access to a password-protected law enforcement website with nonpublic information on local crime incidents. The paper is accused of having used some of that information in news reports. Reporters may be charged with felony "computer hacking" if they accessed the website without permission from authorities.

The dispute pits the government's desire to solve an alleged felony - computer hacking - against the news media's fear that taking the computers circumvents the First Amendment and the state Shield Law. The state Supreme Court declined last week to take the case, allowing agents to begin analyzing the data.

"This is horrifying, an editor's worst nightmare," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington. "For the government to actually physically have those hard drives from a newsroom is amazing. I'm just flabbergasted to hear of this."  (...)

In interviews yesterday, the reporters' lawyer, William DeStefano, and the coroner, Gary Kirchner, disagreed over whether Kirchner had given them permission to access the site.

DeStefano said that although he didn't know whether any of the reporters used the Web site, "evidence has been presented to the attorney general which makes it clear that the county coroner, an elected official, invited and authorized the paper or reporters access to the restricted portion of the Web site... . If somebody is authorized to give me a password and does, it's not hacking."

Last night Geoff was a guest on BBC Radio 5 talking about his woes with TfL, you can find an mp3 of this here.

At midnight, Geoff replaced the tube maps page with a series of links to off-site mirrors so his site was no longer hosting any of the material the TfL lawyers found objectionable.

The response of the lawyers to this was to contact his ISP, Claranet, and threaten legal action because Geoff was linking to copyrighted material, as though this was somehow actionable.

Claranet, unbelievably, told Geoff that they would take his site down unless he removed the page of links! As it stands, Geoff's maps page is now gone from his site.

I'd really appreciate BB posting an update on this. My MP has taken case this on board, maybe others' will? Thanks for your efforts so far!

Here's a mirror of the maps.

Update: Here's a torrent for another mix - LO2's mashup with Run-DMC.

Update 2: Dan Lurie is running a remix contest for the theme from The IT Crowd!

* Robobugs, Gecko Tape, and Nature's Inspiration

* Spinning Out the Future of Computing

* Engineering Evolution

The Unidentified finds the links that connect supernatural folklore, religious visions, cryptozoology, and modern-day UFO stories. It documents episodes from the fringes of human experience and exposes what they may tell us about ourselves and the strange world we live in, where things - whether fairies, ghosts, divine apparitions, or ostensible extraterrestrials - may be even more mysterious than they seem.

Creatures of the Outer Edge surveys the cryptozoologically bountiful decade of the 1970s (and more) with accounts of Mothman, Owlmen, Thunderbirds, Phantom Panthers, Devil Dogs, Texas Big Birds, and, yes, of course, Bigfoot. Some of the individually "named" local Bigfoot creatures first appeared in this book, including Momo (Missouri Monster), Lake Worth Monster, Murphysboro Mud Monster, the Enfield Thing, El Reno Chicken Man, Noxie Monster, Navajo's Skinwalkers, and Yukon's Bushman. The book also introduced the now-iconic Dover Demon for the first time to the general public.

''We're not trying to sell them or get someone to pay for them. We're just trying to get the word out,'' López told The Miami Herald.

The strategy seems to be working. In January, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos promised López 12 AK-47 assault rifles, the first three from a 2-year-old peace process between the government and right-wing paramilitaries -- known by their acronym AUC -- that has led to the demobilization of about 24,000 fighters and the surrender of thousands of weapons...

When the car bomb exploded in 2003 in front of Bogotá's most famous country club, El Nogal, killing more than 30 people, López and his mates got government permission to stand side by side with the soldiers.

''We found the worst human invention, which is the gun, and the most beautiful, which could be a guitar,'' López said. ``And in the end . . . the gun dies and the guitar is born.''

Now here's the thing I really like about tartigrades. They are apparently the World's Toughest Animal. You can shoot them into space, take them to the deepest ocean depths and let them go, deprive them of air, water, and food for years and they don't care. Send them into the core of nuclear reactor. They'll be fine.

Reader comment: Peter Hollo says:

Thought you'd be interested that my friend Melbourne singer-songwriter Mal Webb has a song called "Waterbear," all about the little critters. It's pretty cute, although it usually helps if you've seen him live -- he uses an AKAI Headrush pedal to loop his voice and sometimes other instruments; very bizarre, clever and funny.

Here's the song lyrics, with a little spiel about tardigrades, and you download a 2MB mp3 of the song there too!

Reader comment: Tom says: "Architect Eugene Tsui built the Tsui House in Berkeley, California, a structure that mimics the tardigrade form, with emphasis on resilience to extreme conditions."

This structure is based upon the world's most indestructable living creature--the Tardigrade, with its oval plan and parabolic top it utilizes the same structural principles nature employs in creating an astoundingly durable design.

What else can you say about this but "GOOD LORD"? Not only is it a shocking ad for any kids comic, but you get that clever jab at New York from Vampirella! And not even the most hardcore GI JOE playsets came with a guillotine and a kettle full of coals and red hot pokers!

As an added treat, if you look close enough, you'll see they even gave Vampi a camel toe!!!

How could any budding serial killer refuse a cool toy like this?

This morbid series of 8 different model kits featured the evil Dr. Deadly, Frankenstein's Monster, Vampirella, various torture equipments (one lovingly titled "The Pain Parlor"), and perhaps the most disturbing model subject of all "THE VICTIM".

The Genesis blueprint of the Ark detailed the structure as 6:1 length to width ratio (300 cubits by 50 cubits). The anomaly, as viewed by satellite, is close to that 6:1 proportion...

Nevertheless, the anomaly may not be a ridge line of ice, snow and possibly rock, but an artificial ridge line, Taylor said. "I maintain that if it is the remains of something manmade and potentially nautical, then it's potentially something of biblical proportions."

There are also experts in remote sensing who offer a skeptical view.

"Image interpretation is an art," said Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing.

"One has to be familiar with Sun lighting effects on the shape of observed features," El-Baz said. "Very slight changes in slope modify shadow shapes that affect the interpretations. Up to this time, all the images I have seen can be interpreted as natural landforms. The feature that has been interpreted as the 'Ararat Anomaly' is to me a ledge of rock in partial shadow, with varied thickness of snow and ice cover.

In what looked like a confirmation of the alarm raised last week alleging infiltration of ritualists in Patani ... three young men have allegedly lost their genitals in mysterious circumstances Daily Independent gathered that the incident occurred in a restaurant after one of them allegedly gave change to a man after eating. Those involved, according to reports, are Ufoma Julius (24), Stanley Jeremiah (23), and Innocent Ebioma (15), all were said to be eating in the restaurant when the dramatic incident happened

According to one of the victims, Mr. Ufoma, who spoke with Daily Independent at the General Hospital, Patani, where they were subsequently taken for medical check up, “We were all eating in the hotel when he too came in and after eating he paid and as the boy received the N500 note from the suspected ritualist he felt a cold shiver immediately and his penis disappeared.

“Alarmed, he started shouting ‘my penis, my pennies’ and he touched me and immediately I too also felt the same way and my penis also disappeared and so it was with the third victim, so we all raised alarm and a crowd gathered at the scene,” he narrated.

Let's sing hosannas to men this day, for theirs is the triumph of wit! In their long search for better tools and weapons, men at last have found the way of locking a pinch of cosmic force in a sheath of silver-white metal... as well as the means for making it go boom. Any time they wish, or think they must, men can touch off an orgasmic flash, making the oceans boil and seethe with fire, making the soil rise up in crimson dust... Perhaps after the cloud drifts thrice around it, the earth will emerge once more free of living things... In the hush of night this comely planet will go on waltzing in its ordained orbit until God awakens from His sleep and resolves it back to the primordial elements.

I try to shake this thought off; it may be that a healthy planet should have no more life upon it than a well-kept dog has fleas; but what posesses the flea to concoct its own flea powder?

The lettering in the storyboard is remarkable in that it looks exactly the way the characters' voices sound. It's a work of synaesthesic genius.
Link

BoingBoing reader Mark says,

Hey, guys. I really hate SmartFilter, and I just knew there had to be something I could do. This idea came to me a few days ago. It's called Distributed Boing Boing -- it's a very simple script that anyone can put on their server. When people visit that page, it automatically fetches Boing Boing and serves up through their server -- sort of an automatic mirror. The code gets rewritten automagically to keep links working through the proxy server. It doesn't require any configuration, and it's totally safe -- only files hosted on *.boingboing.net will get passed through. Help spread the word and help keep Boing Boing flowing.

PS: You guys rock. Seriously, I love this place.

Previously:
- SmartFilter, BoingBoing, and Adult Baby - Diaper Lovers.
- Xeni's NYT op-ed: Exporting Censorship
- 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
- BoingBoing's guide to defeating Censorware
- More BB posts on SmartFilter

Auto maker Volkswagen teamed up with Google to develop a new in-car navigation system with a touch-screen display, linked to Google Earth for 3D maps and realtime traffic data. Link (Thanks, John Parres!)

Belgrade, March 13, 2006
by Jasmina Tesanovic

The controversial autopsy provokes a diplomatic row, especially the lab evidence of traces of weird medicines in his blood.

USA Network is launching a multi-tiered marketing campaign, Show Us Your Character. The campaign is a digital marketing initiative and centers around the launch of ShowUsYourCharacter.com, USA’s foray into the digital social networking space. Members can upload videos, pictures, and create character profiles or join micro-communities that are USA Network show and advertiser specific. Marketing features will include sponsor-integrated ad banners. The Show Us Your Character campaign marks the second phase of the Characters Welcome brand campaign with a focus shift from the characters of USA Network to the characters of the USA -- the viewers.

Don't get me wrong -- I _like_ unspoiled wilderness. I _like_ my sky clear and blue and my city free of the thunder of cars and jackhammers. I'm no technocrat. But goddamit, who wouldn't want a fully automatic, laser-guided, armor-piercing, self-replenishing personal sidearm?

Nice turn of phrase, huh? I finally memorized it one night, from one of the hoppers, as he stood in my bedroom, pointing his hand-cannon at another hopper, enumerating its many charms: "This is a laser-guided blah blah blah. Throw down your arms and lace your fingers behind your head, blah blah blah." I'd heard the same dialog nearly every day that month, whenever the dimension-hoppers catapaulted into my home, shot it up, smashed my window, dived into the street, and chased one another through my poor little shtetl, wreaking havoc, maiming bystanders, and then gateing out to another poor dimension to carry on there.

At Turn Your Head, we fill the space between two opposing profiles of your face. By spinning that space into a three dimensional "visage" that follows the outlined silhouettes of your two profiles, we create the "Pirolette".

Place the "Pirolette" to your face and it will match your profile. Locate it near a wall and the shadow of the "Pirolette" will be your silhouette.

Your profile captured forever in an object of art. An optical illusion of shadow and light, each one unique because it's you!

Angry Alien, ArtistDirect, Blastro, Blennus, Blip.tv, Bofunk, Bolt, Break.com, Castpost, Dailymotion, DevilDucky, FindVideos, Free Video Blog, Google Video, Grinvi, Grouper, iFilm, LuluTV, Metacafe, Midis.biz, Music.com, MusicVideoCodes.info, MySpace Video Code, PcPlanets, Pixparty, Putfile, REVVER, Sharkle, StreetFire, That Video Site, The One Network, VideoCodes4U, VideoCodesWorld, VideoCodeZone, vidiLife, VIDNET.com, Vimeo, Web62.com, YouTube and ZippyVideos.

When the user starts the hunch engine he is presented with a seed -- a starting point -- and a set of mutations. The user selects mutations that look promising in his eyes, and the application uses that selection to generate another set of mutations, continuing in that fashion until the user is satisfied with what he sees.

Call it guided natural selection, where the selector for fitness is what looks good to the human in front of the monitor...

Bonabeau is trying to build applications compelling enough that people will take the time and get the results they want. One of his first applications, demonstrated at the O'Reilly conference, is a filter for images that allows a naive user to improve digital photos without understanding complex tools like Adobe Photoshop, by choosing from mutations of the picture to make it better. "My grandmother doesn't know anything about improving pictures," says Bonabeau, "but she knows which pictures of her grandchildren she likes."

Apparently, such a model worries the makers of copy protection software. Starforce, makers of a product that has triggered much user wrath, went so far as to make a post on its own forums that contained a working URL where BitTorrent users could go to download illegal copies of Galactic Civilizations II (screenshot). This is the same company, after all, that threatens its critics with lawsuits, so such hardball tactics are not particularly surprising. If companies like Stardock can show the industry that good returns are possible without using draconian protection schemes, the protection makers may themselves soon be in need of protection.

"Although domesticated nature activities -- caring for plants and gardens -- also have a positive relationship to adult environment attitudes, their effects aren't as strong as participating in such wild nature activities as camping, playing in the woods, hiking, walking, fishing and hunting," said environmental psychologist Nancy Wells, assistant professor of design and environmental analysis in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell...

"Our study indicates that participating in wild nature activities before age 11 is a particularly potent pathway toward shaping both environmental attitudes and behaviors in adulthood," said Wells, whose previous studies have found that nature around a home can help protect children against life stress and boost children's cognitive functioning.

"When children become truly engaged with the natural world at a young age, the experience is likely to stay with them in a powerful way -- shaping their subsequent environmental path," she added.

I agree -- I met the guy responsible for this (Update: Eric from CC points out that this originated with Jeff Watson, not Ethan Kaplan)… at last week's O'Reilly Emerging Tech conference in San Diego and he struck me as a hell of a guy who's really pushing Big Entertainment in exciting new directions.

Creative Commons, Warner Bros. Records, and Machine Shop Recordings are proud to present the Fort Minor Remix Contest. Fort Minor is offering the separated audio elements of "Remember the Name" online under a Creative Commons BY-NC license, so that producers all over the world can easily create remixes of the hit song.

To enter, produce a remix of Fort Minor's "Remember the Name" (download the audio sources here) and upload it to ccMixter between March 22, 2006 and May 6, 2006. All entries must be licensed to the public under a CC BY-NC license. After all eligible entries have been received, Fort Minor's Mike Shinoda will choose a winning remix. The producer of the winning remix will be awarded a new Technics SL-1200MK5 turntable, courtesy of Warner Bros. Records and Machine Shop Recordings.

See also: WB band "Fort Minor" does Creative Commons remix contest

Update: Here are free, CC-licensed downloads of the comic, too!

Reader comment:

The book Mind Hacks cites some hypothesis about visual and audio chronostasis: see hack #18 on page 52.

The book gives some scientific search references:

One in Nature: "Illusory perceptions of space and time preserve cross-saccadic |perceptual continuity," Kielan Yarrow, Patrick Haggard, Ron Heal, Peter Brown, John C. Rothwell

SUMMARY: When voluntary saccadic eye movements are made to a silently ticking clock, observers sometimes think that the second hand takes longer than normal to (...)
Nature 414, 302-305 (15 Nov 2001)

And some in Current Biology (full texts available) :

"Auditory Chronostasis: Hanging on the Telephone," Iona Hodinott-Hill, Kai V. Thilo, Alan Cowey, and Vincent Walsh
Current Biology, Vol 12, 1779-1781, 15 October 2002

"Manual Chronostasis: Tactile Perception Precedes Physical Contact," Kielan Yarrow and John C. Rothwell
Current Biology, 2003, 13:13:1134-1139

Current Biology points to a short summary about "Chronostatis" (click on "Article via ScienceDirect").

ANIMALS, CRUELTY TO (in LAW). This is an offence against criminal law, and has frequently formed the subject of legislation, the chief act of parliament being the 12 and 13 Vict. c. 92 (passed in 1849). By this statute it is provided, that if any person shall cruelly beat, ill-treat, over-drive, abuse, or torture any horse, mare, gelding, bull, ox, cow, heifer, steer, calf, mule, ass, sheep, lamb, hog, pig, sow, goat, dog, cat, or any other domestic animal, he shall forfeit a sum not exceeding £5 for every such offence, recoverable before a justice of the peace in a summary way; and if by any such misconduct he shall injure the animal, or person or property, a further sum not exceeding £10 to the owner or person injured. The acts also inflict penalties in thecase of conveying cattle by railway without water-supply, &c., causing unnecessary pain or suffering; in the case of bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and the like; and regulates the business of slaughtering horses and cattle not intended for butcher-meat.

The act of 1839 forbids the use of carts, drawn by dogs. The 39 and 40 Vict. c. 77 (1876) limits vivisection, and forbids painful experiments on animals, unless the operator is licensed by the Home Secretary. The object must be the discovery of knowledge or the prolonging of life; and the animal must be rendered insensible during the operation. The penalty is £50 for the first offence, £100 for the second. The Wild-Birds Protection Act (1880) provides a close time for birds between March and August.

Formerly, in Scotland, this offence was punishable at common law­—that is, according to the Scottish legal principle, common law as distinguished from statute law. An act of parliament, however, passed in the year 1850, put the law on this subject in Scotland on the same footing as it is in England. See ANIMALS, Cruelty to, in AM. SUPP.

On the plus side, Geoff from Geofftech, which hosts all the cool tube-map remixes, isn't taking this lying down. He's posted the full details of his fight with the attorneys at Transport for London's firm, and has yet to comply with their orders.

Lots of London solicitors read this site -- anyone want to make a name for her/himself by taking on Geoff's case pro-bono? Seems like a golden opportunity to set some meaningful precedent in English law.

So I got directly through to the solicitor used by TFL and we spoke pleasantly for about ten minutes, whilst I rather (pointlessly?) argued my case whilst they said lots of things referring to "My Client" (meaning TFL) which always makes me chuckle under my breath as it sounds so fucking poncy.

The long and the short of it is, is that I can't afford any legal representation to argue this one, so when I said "What will you do if I don't remove the images that you want taken down?" they said that they would get my site taken down for me.

So at the moment, I have "by Monday" (which led to another fun email exchange shortly after as we argued exactly what time on Monday 'by Monday' meant), to remove all the 'offending' maps that are on this page here, meaning that if you want copies, then go and grab them now.

This is the best toy I have seen since Lego. I recently purchased a set for my 3 year old son, and we both have been having a blast with it ever since. The basic idea is simple: marbles and a track. The interesting thing is that the track is built out of individual wooden blocks with curves and channels cut into them, allowing you to create a track of whatever shape your imagination can conceive. The marbles are moved along strictly by gravity, falling from one level to another and cutting back and forth through hidden tunnels.

Update: Robotech Master sez, "There is applause on the audio track because Garfield STOLE THE AUDIO FROM CHRIS BLISS'S VIDEO, applause and all. This point is driven home by the bit right near the end where Garfield is aping Bliss's bowing and so forth and you're treated to a *video clip* from that video showing the audience and a stage in long-shot. I expect the point of this was so you could mentally compare what Garfield was doing to what Bliss was doing at the same point, but still."

Computers are not "smart," in any useful sense of that term. They don't "think." They don't have "intelligence." Computers don't "know" things and they don't have any literal "memories." They're not artificially intelligent sci-fi beings like HAL 9000. Computers are boxes of circuitry, with strings, and slots for the strings. They are not alive and mentally active, they are just sitting there, ordinating. What is "ordinating," exactly? Well, if we'd invested our attention in figuring that out, instead of awkwardly struggling to make these devices think like a human brain does, then we would have successfully explored the very large set of interesting problems that computers turned out to be really good at .

If you look at today's potent, influential computer technologies, say, Google, you've got something that looks Artificially Intelligent by the visionary standards of the 1960s. Google seems to "know" most everything about you and me, big brother: Google is like Colossus the Forbin Project. But Google is not designed or presented as a thinking machine. Google is not like Ask Jeeves or Microsoft Bob, which horribly pretend to think, and wouldn't fool a five-year-old child. Google is a search engine. It's a linking, ranking and sorting machine.

Linking, ranking and sorting don't sound very sexy, glamorous or philosophically crucial. Instead of nostalgically clinging to the words - the neologisms of the past, which are now archaeologisms - we should pay more attention to the facts on the ground. What works? What matters?

Thanks to the perseverance of amazing people at the National Park Service, the camera has made it home.

Thank you to those of you who took an interest in the story, especially those who respected my desire to pursue this through official channels rather than invade the family's privacy. In the end, it all worked out for the best.

I've reopened comments, in case anyone has anything else to add. Friends and family should look for my Hawaii photos on Flickr in the next few days.

Toughprint InkJet paper is suitable for Colour and Black & White inkjet printers/copiers. The paper is ideal for printing maps for outdoor use as it is waterproof, resists crumples and tears and any moisture or dirt can be wiped clean. The micro porous surface delivers vibrant colours and crisp clear high definition photographic prints. Suitable for printing double sided.

Update: Several readers note that a similar product has been marketed by National Geographic as "Adventure Paper." Andy sez, "I've seen it in sporting goods stores where they have printed a map on it, then stuffed it in a Nalgene bottle filled with water."

Loop extenders connect target line to a designated "friendly" line. The part at the telco is the loop extender, and the part attached to the friendly line back at the LEA is called a dialed number recorder (DNR) or collection device. The loop extender must perform some kind of electrical isolation to prevent detection. Interestingly, all of the audio is always sent over the friendly line; the only difference between a pen register and a full-audio collection is the configuration of the collection device equipment at the LEA's premises. The phone company can't directly control what LEAs see.

It's inconvenient to get this equipment in order to study it because normally only authorized agencies are allowed to possess it. 18 USC 2512 may make it a felony to own the equipment. Vendors also won't necessarily sell it to just anyone.

"So, we had to shop on eBay."

LEAs, like everyone else, sell their used equipment on eBay. Within about a month, you'll get a lab full of wiretap equipment sold at bargain-basement prices. (Also, they often accidentally sent you recordings of old taps!) And it even looks like wiretapping equipment.

The Sfera alarm clock hangs from the ceiling above your bed. When the alarm goes off, you can reach up and touch it to activate the snooze function causing it retract towards the ceiling. When snooze goes off again, you have to reach a higher to activate the snooze again. Each time you activate the snooze function the alarm retracts a little higher to the point that you get your butt out of bed.

According to "Anakata," one of the site's operators, subsequent MPAA lawsuits have continued to drive more users to The Pirate Bay, which today boasts 1 million unique visitors a day. The Pirate Bay's legal adviser, law student Mikael Viborg, said the site receives 1,000 to 2,000 HTTP requests per second on each of its four servers.

That's bad news for the content industries, which have fired off letter after menacing letter to the site, only to see their threats posted on The Pirate Bay, together with mocking replies. Viborg said that no one has successfully indicted The Pirate Bay or sued its operators in Swedish courts. Attorneys for DreamWorks and Warner Bros., two companies among those that have issued take-down demands to the site, did not return calls for comment.

Viborg credits The Pirate Bay's seeming immunity to the basic structure of the BitTorrent protocol. The site's Stockholm-based servers provide only torrent files, which by themselves contain no copyright data -- merely pointers to sources of the content. That makes The Pirate Bay's activities perfectly legal under Swedish statutory and case law, Viborg claims. "Until the law is changed so that it is clear that the trackers are illegal, or until the Swedish Supreme Court rules that current Swedish copyright law actually outlaws trackers, we'll continue our activities. Relentlessly," wrote Viborg in an e-mail.

And a special shout-out to BoingBoing's rockstar sysadmin, Ken Snider. If this were the Oscars, we'd have to thank God -- Ken's pretty close.
-- Xeni, Cory, Mark, David, and John "Reuben Kincaid" Battelle.

A high-profile Quebec lawyer ... said his client threw out the [specially marked paper] cup and should get the "Roll up the Rim" prize that is being fought over by two Montreal families.

Earlier this week, a 10-year-old girl found the unrolled cup in a garbage can in her school. She enlisted the help of a 12-year-old friend to roll up the cup's rim. They discovered the cup was the winner of a $28,700 Toyota RAV 4.

"My client bought the cup and my client went in the school and there was only one cup in the garbage and another witness saw him with the cup."

Archambault wants the cup tested for his client's DNA and has formally asked Tim Hortons to keep the prize until this is settled.

Link (Thanks, Justin Watt)

Spore's creature editor, says Wright, is "a mixture of Mr Potato Head, an Erector Set, and Clay."
Link (thanks, Steven!)

(Reader Comment) Brian says: "The unabridged version of Will Wright's talk is here."

Following up on last week's report that China is blocking the uncensored Google.com, but leaving the censored Google.cn reachable -- an anonymous BoingBoing reader in China says,

Search results from google.com from outside China are already being messed with. For 2 years, I was able to search for a certain website to see early adopters of internationalized domain names (IDNs). Now, the search doesn't work from google.com, only from google.cn. Similar results from other China owned IDN TLDs. Also, before you ask, yes, I tried both kinds of period characters from both sites, the RFC 3490 says that both should yeild same result, but they don't. Either period still yields no results from google.com.

Also: Internet censorship researcher Michelle Levesque has an interesting post on her blog about Google's decision to filter Google.cn search results in cooperation with China's communist government. Link (Thanks, Scott Ruderman)

You posted that " Update: reports China is blocking Google.com, censored Google.cn becoming only option" It's news to me, I've been using google.com without interuption. Sometimes there are localized blackouts (something that works in Beijing might not work in Shanghai -- but usually I only hear about it if it's my website). I get the same results searching for "site:.cn" and "site.[China in Chinese]" from both Google.cn and google.com -- which is to say nothing for the latter one. Of course I also get nothing from google.ca when I search for "site:.canada"

Thanks for keeping track of things, but China is NOT redirecting traffic to the censored Google and neither is Mountain View. The uncensored Chinese-language site is fully reachable. On the Peking Duck thread you linked to Kevin has admitted his error. Link.

This week's edition of WBEZ radio's This American Life, "Habeas Schmabeas," examines the importance of the right of habeas corpus in America's legal tradition:

It means the government has to explain why it's holding a person in custody. But now, the war on terror has nixed many of the rules we used to think of as fundamental. At Guantanamo Bay, our government initially claimed that the prisoners should not be covered by habeas – or even by the Geneva Conventions – because they're the most fearsome terrorist enemies we have. But is that true? Is it a camp full of terrorists, or a camp full of our mistakes? Reporter Jack Hitt unveils everything we know about who these prisoners are. In interviews with two former detainees, he finds out the consequences of taking away habeas, for them and for us.

The whole episode is outstanding, but the personal testimonies of Badr and Abdullah (sp?), two Pakistani men wrongfully detained as terrorists, are some of the most powerful radio moments I've ever heard. All I could think, listening to this, was -- 'We are being lied to.' Here's my hasty transcription of one portion of Abdullah's story, about 40 minutes into the hour-long show: 

 [The other detainees who'd been through interrogation] told me they had put electric shocks on them, and one was certain he was going to be raped, they took off his pants. I was thinking what am I gonna do?

They took me at night there was two or three interrogators. They wanted me to say I was a terrorist. I told them, "No, I am not." And then, they started pushing me and everything.

They brought a cigarette the interrogator was smoking. He blew the smoke on my face and then he came very close, very very close to my face, and he brought the cigarette between my eyes, and he said, "I swear to got I'm gonna put this out on your forehead if you don't tell me what I wanna hear."

I thought about it. I felt like... this is a jungle. And only the strong live in it. But still there are small creatures who can live, not by facing lions and big animals, but by maybe hiding, or changing their colors as the trees.

So I just told them, "Whatever you want to hear from me, I'm gonna tell you." I said, "What do you want me to say?" And he said, "Tell me you're a terrorist."

"Are you gonna let me go sleep?" Because a way of torture was not letting you sleep, keeping me awake all the time.

So I said "Okay, whatever you want. I'm a terrorist, and go tell your bosses." And they left me.

Link (via, thanks, magnus!)

Link to site, and link to launch announcement.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) completed a flawless 310-million-mile trip Friday to sweep smartly into orbit around Mars, dropping out of radio contact behind the planet for a nail-biting half hour, then re-emerging on schedule.

"Look at that!" yelled one engineer at Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Right on the money!" another shouted.

"It was picture-perfect," Project Manager Jim Graf told NASA television. "We couldn't have scripted it any better. It reappeared from behind Mars almost to the second."

(...) The 2-ton, school bus-size probe carries the largest telescope ever launched beyond Earth's orbit, and researchers hope it will provide surface pictures of unusual resolution and clarity, imaging items as small as a foot across.

Reader comment: In related news, JP adds:

The Google logo contains a telescope, martians and Mars. It links here, appropriately, after NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter successfully entered orbit around Mars this weekend Visitors can check out landing sites, craters and mountains. I can't wait to see what we will all be able to see when the MRO starts sending high resolution pictures back to Earth later this year!

This looks like the first public result of the Google/NASA relationship announced in September.

Google blog on Google Mars: Link.