Like actual fingerprints, the digital "noise" in original images is stochastic in nature – that is, it contains random variables – which are inevitably created during the manufacturing process of the camera and its sensors. This virtually ensures that the noise imposed on the digital images from any particular camera will be consistent from one image to the next, even while it is distinctly different.

In preliminary tests, Fridrich's lab analyzed 2,700 pictures taken by nine digital cameras and with 100 percent accuracy linked individual images with the camera that took them.

"Not in the form of a new party per se, but a new multi-faceted movement of ideas, organizations, and cultures, based around a vision of democracy which is fundamentally open, participatory, and decentralized."

Kapor is developing those ideas on his blog (posts so far: 1, 2, 3). Here's a preliminary peek at what he's thinking (article continues after the jump):

When it comes to building a new movement, the converse proposition, “politics is architecture” holds true as well. The architecture (structure and design) of political processes, not their content, is determinative of what can be accomplished.

Snip from the manifesto for SaveTheInternet.com, which launches on Monday:

We believe that the Internet is a crucial engine for economic growth and democratic discourse. We urge Congress to take steps now to preserve network neutrality, a guiding principle of the Internet, and to ensure that the Internet remains open to innovation and progress.

Network neutrality is the Internet’s First Amendment. Without it, the Internet is at risk of losing the openness and accessibility that has revolutionized democratic participation, economic innovation and free speech.

From its beginnings, the Internet was built on a cooperative, democratic ideal. It has leveled the playing field for all comers. Everyday people can have their voices heard by thousands, even millions of people. Network neutrality has prevented gatekeepers from blocking or discriminating against new economic, political and social ideas.

Lucy’s Love Shop employee Wanda Gillespie said she was flabbergasted that South Carolina’s Legislature is considering outlawing sex toys. But banning the sale of sex toys is actually quite common in some Southern states.

The South Carolina bill, proposed by Republican Rep. Ralph Davenport, would make it a felony to sell devices used primarily for sexual stimulation and allow law enforcement to seize sex toys from raided businesses.

Memepunks sez,

Architects Lot-Ek have designed a public library made from the reclaimed fuselages of 727/737 passenger jets. The fuselages are the one part on an airliner that is more expensive to recycle than it is to just junk. Hundreds of old jet bodies litter the countryside, and now someone finally found a use for them.

The photo-essay documents the ongoing human impact of Chernobyl on those who survived, their children, and the extended communities around them.

This photo (link to full-size), taken by Knoth in Minsk, Belarus:

Twin brothers Michael and Vladimir Iariga, 16 years old. Michael, with hydrocephalus, is five minutes older than Vladimir, who is deaf.

(...) Some areas in the closed zones around Chernobyl are so contaminated that they will have to remain closed off for up to 900 years.

Link (thanks, Ray Brown)

Reader comment: Mike says,

Thanks for letting people know that there are still repercussions from the Chernobyl disaster 20 years later. I've been fortunate to work with the Chernobyl Children's Project based in Boston as they help children in the region who suffer from radiation-related ailments. CCP provides medical care to those in need and, thanks to the generosity of volunteer host families, brings groups of children to the U.S. for month-long visits. A series of events to commemorate the anniversary of the disaster and to make sure these children aren't forgotten.

The man at first told doctors he had had a "nail gun accident." It wasn't until later that the patient admitted he'd used meth and the injury was a suicide attempt.

The patient was in remarkably good condition when he got to OHSU, according to the study. While even one nail to the head can be fatal, these nails came close to major blood vessels and the brain stem but did not pierce either.

The nails still posed a threat to the patient's health and doctors decided to operate quickly. Because of the number of nails, doctors decided to fully sedate him rather than keep him partially awake, which is done in some surgeries to monitor neurological responses.

Surgeons were able to remove the nails with needle-nosed pliers and a drill because the nail heads did not penetrate the skull.

The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing classified information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency's secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday.

The C.I.A. would not identify the officer, but several government officials said it was Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran intelligence analyst who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, where she served under Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush.

On 26 April 1986, at 1:23 AM, reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded. The radiation released was over a hundred times more than that of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

At Chernobyl.info, a site dedicated to the longterm consequences of the disaster, there's a list of commemoration activities planned around the world for April 26, 2006. The site also contains historic details, an extensive index of projects aiding survivors, and interviews with people who lived through the disaster.

A related NPR news item ran today: "Voices of Chernobyl': Survivors' Stories" by Melissa Block featured some incredibly moving personal accounts from survivors who lost friends, family, and all their worldy posessions: Link to archived audio.

There are plans to install a new, billion-dollar cover over the disaster site to more effectively contain the 200 tons of radioactive fuel still present. The structure will cost about a billion dollars, and is scheduled to be in place by 2009. More info here, and NPR also ran a story on this today with background from Warren Stern of the U.S. State Department: Link.

A "sarcophagus" -- a steel and concrete shell built soon after the disaster to contain the radiation is increasingly unstable. Engineers plan to slide an enormous Quonset hut-shaped cover over a breached reactor to keep more radiation from reaching the atmosphere.

(image: Vladimir Repik/Reuters, 1986. "An aerial view of the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after its explosion.")

Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli,one of the earliest computer programmmers and widow of ENIAC and UNIVAC co-inventor John Mauchly died last night at age 85.

She and other women mathmeticians were recruited to work on the secret ENIAC computer during WW2. Since then Antonelli contributed to the understanding of early computer history through speeches and articles.

I am one of 29 grandchildren of this entirely remarkable woman.

The Redmond, Wash., software maker next week is expected to announce that Steve Berkowitz is joining Microsoft as the vice president in charge of MSN, the Microsoft division that includes the MSN Internet portal and search businesses.

The appointment is part of a recent restructuring at Microsoft that attempts to retool the company to better compete with Internet search giant Google Inc.

This evening is the start of the blockbuster Yale Law School ISP Access to Knowledge (A2K) conference. The conference's major goal is to bring together different strands of the A2K movement -- access to medicines, telecoms, textbooks, software, libraries, to name a few -- and build normative frameworks and coalitions to pave the way for substantial political change. Jack Balkin just kicked off the conference by arguing that A2K is not just an issue of economic development, it is a demand of justice and democratic participation.

The conference brings together an astounding collection of scholars, activists, and government officials to bang their heads together and help figure out how best to promote access to knowledge for human development. Among the leaders here are Sisule Musungu, Jack Balkin, Jamie Love, Manon Ress, Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Geidy Lung, Terry Fisher, Richard Jefferson, Yochai Benkler, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Theresa Hackett, Richard Owens, John Howkins, Ronaldo Lemos, Joaquim Falcao, Madhavi Sunder, Anupam Chander, Volcker Grassmuck, William Drake, Lawrence Liang, Michael Geist, Anriette Esterhuysen, and many many more. Wow.

Conference notes will go up on Lawmeme and the conference wiki. Speakers and the conference schedule are on the official site.

06:06:06 06/06/06 (6 minutes and 6 seconds past 6 on June 6th, 2006)

11:10:09 08/07/06 (10 minutes and 9 seconds past 11 on 8th of July 2006 in the UK system or on 7th of August 2006 in the US system)

See also: A moment in time: 01:02:03 04/05/06

Tichý wandered his small town in rags, pursuing his obsession as an artist with the female form by photographing in the streets, shops and parks with cameras he made from tin cans, childrens spectacle lenses and other junk he found on the street. He would return home each day to make prints on equally primitive equipment, making only one print from the negatives he selected.

The 22nd Chaos Communication Congress (22C3) is a four-day conference on technology, society and utopia. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics including (but not limited to) information technology, IT-security, internet, cryptography and generally a critical-creative attitude towards technology and the discussion about the effects of technological advances on society.

The Chaos Communication Congress is the annual congress of the Chaos Computer Club e.V. (CCC). The Congress has established itself as the "European Hacker Conference" bringing in people from all over Europe and even further away.

Is this the biggest KitKat Chunky in the world – I do hope so! It looks magnificent, and whilst I chickened out of writing “PimpMySnack.com in chocolate dribbles on the top, I started to wonder how on earth this thing could be eaten. I should have realised. The chocolate is way too thick at the corners, but for a first attempt, it is something to be proud of, and to love.

"Fushigi Circus" is a hardcover, clothbound collection of the works of Mark Ryden. This Japanese language book features newer works, including Blood, Sweat, Tears, and The Creatrix, and a survey of 55 of Mark Ryden's most impressive works from past shows to the present.

Mark will have a book signing for "Fushigi Circus" at MOCA in Los Angeles, California on Saturday, May 13th, 3 pm to 5 pm:

MOCA Store
250 S. Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 621-1710 • www.moca.org • mapquest directions

A special boxed limited edition of "Fushigi Circus" will be released in summer 2006. We'll send additional information about the boxed set as it becomes available.

Four men from Nizhny Novgorod found the silo that had had missiles dismantled and put on maintenance decades ago in accordance with the Soviet disarmament program. They targeted the metals inside and said they had had no idea about the money hidden in the shaft.

Web site operators posting sexually explicit information must place official government warning labels on their pages or risk being imprisoned for up to five years, the Bush administration proposed Thursday.

A mandatory rating system will "prevent people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the Internet," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at an event in Alexandria, Va.

The Bush administration's proposal would require commercial Web sites to place "marks and notices" to be devised by the Federal Trade Commission on each sexually explicit page. The definition of sexually explicit broadly covers depictions of everything from sexual intercourse and masturbation to "sadistic abuse" and close-ups of fully clothed genital regions.

[W]e vigorously oppose an added measure included in the draft bill which would require Web sites with sexually explicit material -- material that is legal, but potentially harmful to minors -- to use a government-mandated labeling system. ICRA strongly believes that self- regulation of legal Internet content leads to the best balance between the free flow of digital content and the protection of children from potentially harmful material.

And ISPs are squarely in the crosshairs on this one. Snip from Red Herring article:

“The investigation and prosecution of child predators depends critically on the availability of evidence that is often in the hands of Internet service providers,” he said. “This evidence will be available for us to use only if the providers retain the records for a reasonable amount of time.

“Unfortunately, the failure of some Internet service providers to keep records has hampered our ability to conduct investigations in this area,” he added.

Mr. Gonzales said he has asked experts at the DOJ to examine the issue and provide him with recommendations. He plans to ask the heads of the major ISPs to cooperate with the effort.

Scott Crossfield, a legendary test pilot who became the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound in 1953 and later flew and helped design the X-15 rocket-powered research aircraft, was found dead Thursday in the wreckage of his single-engine plane in mountains near Ranger, Ga. He was 84.

Crossfield's plane, a Cessna 210A, was found about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta a day after it dropped off radar screens during a flight from Alabama to Virginia, authorities said Thursday. There were thunderstorms in the area when radar contact was lost; the cause of the crash was under investigation.

Graham Roumieu, one of my favorite illustrators, has a really funny graphix-essay on the CBC website about what's wrong with the movie theater experience today. Shown here:

Complaint 2:
The bathrooms are just too darn far to walk to.

Trekking all that distance: (a) is exhausting, and (b) takes so long that there is a good chance of missing some of the crucial plot points of Big Momma’s House 2 during the time you are gone. With the new discrete seat service, all you’ll have to do is hit a button on your armrest and an attendant will be with you promptly.

Pirate Baby etc is a screen-movie made from a side-scrolling Mac Classic game that never existed, but should have. It's a demented flick in which two kung-fu player-characters kick the everloving crap out of zombies, monsters, and baddies in a series of progressively weirder battles whose power-ups, animations, and black-and-while pixel-gore are a delight to all the senses. Someone should make this game. Link (Thanks, Carla!)

The questions ask what steps he will need to take to get airplanes and helicopters for use in a series of incredibly dangerous pranks, apparently for the show's next season. The pilots respond with a general air of incredulity and anger:

One sketch involves dropping a load of water from an aircraft onto a group of sunbathers in a park.. I have a PPL so know that there's a lot of issues sourrounding this but this could be rigged with some tricky camera work. The main problem, I think, would be getting hold of an aircraft capable of dropping water- does anyone know of any crop-spraying or firefighting aircraft in the UK that would be suitable for this?

Another sketch is filming a car travelling slowly on what initially appears to be a road- when the camera pans out the car is actually in at the head of a queue of aircraft.. Having spoken to some friends who own aircraft I know this would be not too too expensive with small aircraft e.g. pa28s but does anyone know of any airfields that regularly move larger aircraft and might let us quickly set this shot up with them?? (Unlikely I know!!)

Finally another idea is to use a helicopter to disrupt an outdoor dinner party with its downwash. The shot would be set up so that the party goers are actually extras but do you guys think the CAA would shoot this idea down straight away??

The American businessman at the center of a widening corruption inquiry in Iraq pleaded guilty on Tuesday to federal charges of conspiracy, bribery and money laundering for illegally obtaining millions of dollars of construction contracts at the heart of the American-led rebuilding program in 2003 and 2004.

The court papers describing the plea agreement, motions filed by the legal team representing the businessman, Philip H. Bloom, 66, and interviews with contractors and government officials in Iraq make it clear that the case is certain to expand. The court papers, focusing narrowly on Mr. Bloom's contracting work in the south-central Iraqi city of Hilla, indicate that at least three more senior Army Reserve officers are likely to be implicated.

Link.

Related, previous BoingBoing posts: 
-  Army officer charged with using Iraq $$ to pimp out NJ crib 
-  Report: Iraq bid-rig scheme exposed, ex-con took bribes 
-  Jordan bombings, and the creation of chaos 
-  The Twilight World of the Iraqi News Stringer

dwlfennell says,

I found an educational video entitled "Learn Gun Safety with Eddie Eagle" a few days ago at Goodwill. The video was produced by the NRA in 1992 with "Beverly Hills, 90210" heartthrob Jason Priestley as host. The animated cast includes a group a multi-racial youngsters lucky enough to actually find something interesting in their parents' closets and an anthropomorphic bald eagle who "raps" to the children about what they should do if they find a firearm.

Reader comment: brad says,

The Bay Area magazine The Wave used to run reviews of strange videos written by a guy named 'seanbaby'. This link goes to seanbaby's review of the Jason Priestly/Eddie the Eagle video (from the May 2003 issue of the magazine).

According to Einstein's math, when two massive black holes merge, all of space jiggles like a bowl of Jell-O as gravitational waves race out from the collision at light speed. Previous simulations had been plagued by computer crashes. The necessary equations, based on Einstein's theory of general relativity, were far too complex. But scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have found a method to translate Einstein's math in a way that computers can understand

Before the web as we know it was in wide use, Chaos Control Digizine was published in Macintosh HYPERCARD format. It was cheap (actually free until the color version came out) and provided a lot of possibilities for interactivity and multimedia. These issues were posted on various online and BBS services, as well as distributed on disk (floppy!) Looking at these Hypercard issues again, they stand up pretty well (despite an overuse of Kai’s Powertools in the color editions!). To provide a peek at the origins of Chaos Control Digizine, we’ve posted issues #2 and #8 for downloading. Of course you’ll need a Macintosh to view them, as well as the Hypercard player (follow the link below if you need it.) Unfortunately, Hypercard was never updated for OSX, so it will launch classic mode. Please ignore any weirdness, such as text occasionally getting cut off due to font issues , as these ARE over a decade old!

Creative Commons general counsel Mia Garlick, known in Second Life as Mia Wombat (fetching picture of her avatar here) is speaking tonight at 6pm PST on the big island of Kula, the isle just purchased by Joi Ito for events like this. SL accounts are free, so to attend, just create one and in the interface, click Map, type "Kula 4" in Find Region, hit Enter, then Teleport.

Google says its user-filters work fine, and it won't take money from senders to skip them, as AOL is planning in its Goodmail deal: "Gmail does not accept payment to bypass its filters, nor are there plans to charge senders to reach Gmail users"

An autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, Spray is a joint venture between the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. When deployed, it will act as an aquatic sentinel, gathering data on temperature, currents and salinity that will help scientists better understand the role of oceans in regulating the global climate. The main point of the Greenland-Spain run is to test its endurance -- if successful, the robot will break its own record of 1,864 nautical miles for the longest distance ever traveled by an AUV. But the big goal, which researchers hope to meet by 2011, is to deploy hundreds of these gliders worldwide, giving scientists a constant telepresence in the ocean.

The effects of eating ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes, such as certain mullet, goatfish, tangs, damsels and rabbitfish, are believed to be similar to LSD, and may include vivid and terrifying auditory and visual hallucinations. This has given rise to the collective common name for ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes of "dream fish"...

Indoles, with similar chemical effects to LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) are believed to be responsible and may be consumed when the fish eat algae or phytoplankton containing the chemicals. All of the species effected by ichthyoallyeinotoxism are algal grazers.

Others have claimed that different species of ichthyoallyeinotoxic fishes, such as Kyphosus fuseus, contain much more potent hallucinogens, such as dimethyltryptamine or DMT, which is considered to be one of the world's most mind-bending hallucinogenic chemicals.

Following up on an earlier BoingBoing post that referenced Bruce Sterling's comments about Flarf, The first "Flarf Festival" begins tonight at 8 pm at the Medicine Show Theater, 52nd Street between 10 & 11 in NYC. Admission is $8 each night, or $20 for a three-night pass. Link to event info. Also, there's a more definitive Flarf anthology at Jacket: Link.

While I'm at it, I found a pretty awesome piece of readymade flarfetry in my junkmail folder. Maybe I'm just googly-eyed over spam text because of all the Flarf posts, or maybe it's because 4/20 is the kind of day that tends to make people spaced out -- but this one seemed special. I'll dig some more up and see if I can, like, get a book deal or a federal grant for 'em or something. Full text after the junk. I mean, jump.

The 2004 trade paperback, written by Paul Gravett and published by Harper Design, is a history of Japanese comics, and includes, in several chapters, discussion of adult comics that depict sex and violence. The violence was apparently not an issue, nor was the fact that the reproductions of panels that feature sexual situations were, as far as we could tell, all R-rated and treated in a serious, scholarly way. Postmus' statement and the local newspaper coverage made much of the fact that the book contains "sex with animals," but we couldn't find it; we must not have looked as hard.

"What probably got the book pulled was the fact that it was shelved as a Young Adult book, despite a Library Journal article mentioning the numerous pictures of sex and gore. It's a great book, but it needs to be shelved as an adult book."

Jasmina Tesanovic
Floods and Bombs
April 20, Belgrade

For the first time in my recent life, we Serbians are the first headline on CNN news without any mention of Milosevic or war crimes. Our new specialty is floods, global warming I guess, political neglect I am sure, and young girls in high heels.

Trust me, I am not joking: Serbian young girls whose high heels pierced the sandbags meant to keep the rising water away from decent citizens who sleep innocently... their menacing shoes now outrank Iranian nuclear weapons. Time is money in the world of big broadcast. TV publicity for the Croatian seaside... Montenegro casinos and then surfers in Serbia... and hey, surfers close to my street! Serbian teens dragged past on cars, jeeps, on homemade surfboards.

I am looking for kids that I know personally... It reminds me of the bombing days when our kids used to cruise in those few buses spared in those idle days of no schools. The kids would jump into buses and visit the bombed building and craters in order to see bodies or weapons or soldiers, or fallen planes, anything that would make the invisible long boring bombing into a real issue in their minds. I could never convince them that the dust of a crater might have depleted uranium or that an unexploded bomb might go off. As my daughter put it at the time: if I have to die, I choose to be killed with my best friend Sarah and not with my mom sleeping at home. How could I object to that kind of argument?

"Today at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, we digitized a lesson on design for television written by the cartoonist, Chad in 1960. It has amazing images from 1950s animated commercials and examples of vintage storyboards, from thumbnails to finished boards.

"Chad was a Disney animator who created the very first commercials for television way back in 1938, when there were no more than fifty television sets in the entire country. He was a pioneer of 'funny animal' comics as well. He passed away last year in his nineties.

"Another great cartoonist that more people should know about!" Link

Last May, actor Don Cheadle and his family traveled to Kampala, Uganda for a fundraiser screening of Hotel Rwanda to benefit the "night commuters" of Northern Uganda. These are the children who have to flee their homes every night and hide in urban camps to avoid being forced to fight in the rebel Lords Resistance Army.

Filmmaker and longtime ABC News producer Rick Wilkinson traveled with the Cheadle family, and documented what they found in a 24-minute short called "Journey Into Sunset." The film profiles the lives of some of these children, some of whom did not manage to avoid being kidnapped:

They lived or died at the will and whim of their captors. They were forced to fight. And some commited horrible atrocities. We meet some of the kids managed to escape the clutches of the LRA. They're free now, but the scars on their souls will never heal.

I first heard about the film when I met Rick a few weeks ago in Los Angeles, at the home of a mutual friend. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds and looks incredible, from what's on the website.

Rick now shares word with BoingBoing that the film will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC on April 26, where both he and producer John Prendergast will present for a Q&A. Journey will also be screening at the Boston Film Festival, the Atlanta Film Festival, and (probably) the Maui Film Festival, all of which take place in June.

I can't wait to see this film. Link to website, and here are screening details for the Tribeca premiere on (April 26, with a few more NYC screenings over the week that follows.

Image above: Cheadle with "night commuter" children at a camp called "Noah's Ark," photo by Rick Wilkinson. (Thanks, Scott Shulman and Rick Wilkinson!)

We're holding another Content Crash Course this weekend, April 22nd and 23rd. We’re doing them monthly now. This time around, Tom Krymkowski – a stellar mixing engineer who works on a couple of rather well-known SF podcasts and travels around the country with NPR’s Next Generation Radio – will handle the technical side of the class; he’ll cover things like setting up a mix and choosing a good mic.

As usual, I’ll cover the content stuff: writing for the ear, booking hot guests, streamlining the production process and so on.

(Van Tassel) built the dome for $150,000 over 18 years starting in 1957, claiming that he was inspired by a predawn meeting with a visitor from Venus named Solgonda.

Van Tassel and his family lived in a hollowed-out chamber under Giant Rock, a seven-story free-standing boulder plopped on the edge of Landers three miles north of the dome.

He didn't complete the electrostatic device at the heart of the dome before he died in 1978, and his plans and equipment to finish the 50-megavolt Integratron disappeared soon after his death.

The outlandish dome and its unlikely location are "a monument to one man's field of dreams," said Joanne Karl, 51, one of three sisters who own the dome and have worked to restore it.

On ForeverGeek today, a critical post questions the ranking methodology behind Digg, a website that clusters news and links of interest from around the web. As more readers "digg" a link, that link ranks progressively higher, the idea goes. The higher a url climbs on the Digg charts, the more people end up seeing it, and so on.  But critics say the site's administrators may be skewing the system by applying their own editorial selection.  Link to "Digg Corrupted: Editor's Playground, not User-Driven Website."

Fark.com founder Drew Curtis tells BoingBoing:

About a year and a half or so ago we added headline voting to Fark. The idea was that TFers could submit and vote on funnier headlines for articles approved to Fark's main page that hadn't shown up elsewhere yet.

We had to disable the feature because the funniest ones weren't getting picked.

Social engineering self-selects the least-offensive crap right to the top. It's a great idea but it doesn't scale.

A quick scan of the web doesn't reveal any rebuttal statement from the Digg folks, but I'd welcome the opportunity to post a response here. (Thanks Drew Curtis!)

Reader comment: Andrew Fisher says,

Here is a reply on some Digg practices from founder Kevin Rose: Link.

Recently it was brought to our attention that several users have created accounts to mass digg and promote stories. While these accounts appear to be valid, they have in certain instances been used for automated in-order (scripted) digging. This is a violation of our terms of service and the accounts have since been banned.

As you can imagine with over 250,000 registered users (and adding thousands more per week) we are constantly monitoring and looking for user SPAM/fraud. Internally, we have several methods for detecting fraud which results in DOZENS of banned accounts per day.

The banning of forevergeek.com: Aside from the dozens of user reports, several accounts were created to artificially inflate the digg count of their stories. When a single URL hits a threshold of reports, our standard procedure is to block that URL from submission (spam control). Again, mass fraud digging is in violation of our terms of service.

Missing stories: A common question we receive is the confusion surrounding missing stories. Once a story has received enough user reports it is automatically removed from the digg queue or homepage (depending on where the story is living at that time). The number of reports required varies depending on how many diggs the story has. This system is going to change in the near future. Shortly after the next major launch of digg (v3.1), reported stories will fall into a 'buried stories' bin. Users will have the ability to pick through this story bin and vote to have a story reinstated should they believe it was falsely reported. Expect to see this feature in the next few months.

On a personal note: It has been pointed out that I too have dugg these fraud stories. I digg stories I enjoy reading and currently track over 40 users within digg. If it's good content, I digg it.

This Suji Kabuto features classic handcrafted 16 plate design. Each plate is capped by brass fukurin trim most likely added in the Edo period. The Hachi metal shows a great deal of age and has a beautiful multi layered tehen at the top. The patina on the metal is quite nice. The visor is also trimmed in fukurin. The 5 lame Shikoro is finished with a black lacquer and blue lacing. The liner is partially intact but can easily be replaced. The wakidate are very impressive with the use of Deer Antlers on either side of the Kabuto.

The small rooms were full of eager young Chinese men in hip sweatshirts clustered around enormous flat-panel monitors, debugging code for new Google projects. "The ideals that we uphold here are really just so important and noble," Lee told me. "How to build stuff that users like, and figure out how to make money later. And 'Don't Do Evil' " — he was referring to Google's bold motto, "Don't Be Evil" — "all of those things. I think I've always been an idealist in my heart."

Yet Google's conduct in China has in recent months seemed considerably less than idealistic. In January, a few months after Lee opened the Beijing office, the company announced it would be introducing a new version of its search engine for the Chinese market. To obey China's censorship laws, Google's representatives explained, the company had agreed to purge its search results of any Web sites disapproved of by the Chinese government, including Web sites promoting Falun Gong, a government-banned spiritual movement; sites promoting free speech in China; or any mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. If you search for "Tibet" or "Falun Gong" most anywhere in the world on google.com, you'll find thousands of blog entries, news items and chat rooms on Chinese repression. Do the same search inside China on google.cn, and most, if not all, of these links will be gone. Google will have erased them completely.

Update: SAPO suggests breaking the DRM with MacOS X:

* Open the restricted PDF in ColorSync.
* Choose File: Save as, and name it whatever you like.
* Open the saved file in Adobe Reader or Preview and enjoy!

Mr. Lux knew he should pray, but somehow the pains made prayer impossible. He thought, I am twenty-four years old. I am going to die with my body crushed to liquid and my head neatly garroted off by a thin layer of woven fabric that weighs less than eight ounces. He sensed his mouth moving as if to laugh at the thought, but the laugh was frozen in his immobile torso. Can't laugh. Can't breath. I guess I can’t call for help either. But he could still move his head, which he now did, deliberately, casting his eyes around the sparse cell, nine feet wide by twelve feet long, that had been his home for the last three years.

The ancient whitewashed fieldstone walls did not lend themselves to decoration. Centered on one wall, above him and to his left, there was a simple noosifix precariously hanging from an irregularity in a rock. On the opposite wall, to his right, hanging from a nail driven in to a chink in the cement, there was a kitschy airbrushed painting of a thatched cottage surrounded by flowers and with a pair of bluebirds sitting at the apex of the roof. In the short wall beyond his feet there was a narrow casement window with diamond-shaped leaded-glass panes through which he could see blurry hints of trees green with tiny leaves of early spring. Below the window were a desk and chair. On the desk: a Holy Tibble; a Fredian missal; copies of Byte, Datamation and Electrical Engineering Times; a textbook on nonlinear circuits, and one Alfred the Drinking Duck perpetual motion toy.

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

I don't know the story behind this kooky/pervy morsel. If appearances are true, it's a Japanese instructional video that teaches English phrases for picking up gaijin hotties. It could also be an excuse to drool over chicks clad in teacher and schoolgirl uniforms who say dirty words in lo-res. Perhaps one of our Japanese-speaking readers can clue us in. Link

Reader comment: Anonymous Japanese speaker says,

I think it's the intro gimmick from some porn. Check out the extremely cautious mosaicing when the girl reveals her panty-clad cockpit to Taro. I've got 1000 yen right here that says that after they move onto standard porn sex (maybe with some forced English cries of pleasure). The other proof is the "nukenagara manaberu" that the main teacher says at the start -- "you can learn while jerking off". It's not at all uncommon for Japanese porn videos to be that direct about helping the viewer masturbate. I dunno about overseas.

Also, the reason "omanko" (cockpit) is censored and "ochinchin" isn't because "omanko" is a stronger word than "ochinchin". "Ochinchin" is more like "willy" than "dick", but "omanko" really is like "pussy", or maybe even "cunt".

This *does* appear to be an instructional video on talking dirty in English. I've only studied Japanese for a little while now but I gather that the female host is telling the audience ("mina-san") that she and the women behind her are "sexy teachers" ("watashi-tachi sexy sensei ga") and that they are glad to meet you. Before holding up a giant cue-card spelling out "dick" she explains that they'll begin with "simple study" ("kantana-kara-no-benkyoushimashou"). Following that, but before the totally hot conversation (or train wreck of words, but who's counting?) they go from "simple study" to.... "not-simple study." You wish I was kidding. If you're baffled by what the symptoms of a nasty case of taro could involve, you should see a doctor immediately.

It's indeed an instructional video on talking dirty in English, and it's HILARIOUS. But they encourage you to drool as well - the viewer is offered a choice of studying either conversation or "masterbation" [sic]. After the teachers introduce themselves, they inform us that in order to learn to converse, we must first study some basic vocabulary. (Note to readers: Are you SURE you know the definition of "cockpit"?) As an interesting aside, it's acceptable to talk about dicks, but all the instances of "manko" - "pussy" in Japanese - are bleeped out, and one character is censored when it's written onscreen as well.

After finishing up with vocabulary, the "Sexy Senseis" move on to real world applications - the conversation lesson! It simply must be seen to be believed. Luckily for the English speakers out there, the conversation lesson is all in English, and subtitled in both English and Japanese.

I can't WAIT to try out my new conversation skills and see if they work.

Another noteworthy detail: it's pretty clear that none of the caucasian women in the video are native speakers of English.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they were Russian, as there's a pretty large population of women from the former Soviet republics doing sex work in Japan. But their accents didn't sound Russian, so maybe they're from somewhere else. Anyway, sexual negotiations are definitely one of the more important purposes Japanese men have for conversational English.

On the site hosting the Youtube vid, it said the women were "overdubbed", but it sounds pretty clear to me that those were their real voices; they just don't speak English clearly because it isn't their native language.

I just got back from japan, and the video appears to be a parody of one-minute instructional english videos they're showing on jr trains and subways in japan (at least on the yamanote line).

As far as the "new" canned oxygen product goes, it's not just plain ol' pure oxygen. You don't think that marketers would attempt to sell oxygen in a can without spicing it up and making it a bit more "extreme". Why breathe flavorless, odorless oxygen; when you can breathe "Mountain Breeze", or "Mint Escape". Canned oxygen manufacturers are creating all sorts of flavors and essences to add to their oxygen products including lemon flavor, Eucalyptus, cherry, mint, and a host of others. If you thought bottled water is big, wait until this product hits full stride. If you said to yourself back in the eighties, "who would pay for water in a plastic bottle", you might not want to miss out twice. The market has proven that ideas such as this, built on a foundation of being pure, fresh, and clean; can be destined to succeed.

Dichter's critique is twofold: microfinance has been touted too widely and broadly, which has polluted the pool of microfinance as the technique is applied to individuals who can't benefit from it; and that the lack of microfinance isn't the root of the problem of poor people in failed states -- their problem is that their countries are ineptly led, and microfinance can't fix this.

I think it's useful to keep microfinance -- an idea I find personally exciting, based on the small-time entrepreneurs I've known in the developing world -- in perspective, but I find myself frustrated by this critique.

Every useful movement draws hangers-on who want to hitch their wagons to it -- that's why every dotcom had a P2P strategy when P2P investment was hot. This isn't an indictment of the idea -- just the reverse: carpetbaggers are most likely to affix themselves to useful things, not useless ones. Useful things draw money and attention, money and attention draw hustlers.

And it is certainly true that the problems of the developing world are deeper than the lack of microcredit: bad leaders and manipulation from the developed world are at the root of the problems of the developing world. But Dichter's critique doesn't advance a program for turning these problems around, just notes that microcredit is, of itself, insufficient to solve them. It's true, but to the extent that microcredit turns subsistence living into more comfortable living, it frees up resources for civic participation and political movements.

Richter does note that many microcredit funds target only very poor people who are indeed needy, but who haven't demonstrated any particular entrepreneurial acumen, and so many of those loans don't turn into successful, sustained self-reliance (of course, most businesses started in the developed world fail in the first three years, too). Paradoxically, those who have started small businesses are often ineligible for microcredit, because they've already come up with the money to start a business.

This is indeed a problem, and one that can and should be addressed. But I think that this substantial criticism of the systemic flaw in microcredit eligibility is really separate from the presence of bandwagon-jumpers and the inability of microcredit to topple dictatorships.

Microcredit evangelism is a familiar story for our industry: An idea that, after all, can produce some modest changes in the life of poor people (cash flow smoothing, confidence building, etc.) but that really works well only in some circumstances, is carried off by hype and urgency, offered as much more than it really is, and applied everywhere. As it grows it is inevitably caught up in the decades-old incentive structure of the development aid industry - people and institutions are rewarded for mobilizing and moving money, and for acting on the mistaken notion that the way to solve poverty is to go directly to the poor themselves. Since the 1970s, time and again our industry trades- in complex and contextual approaches to development (institutional, legal, governance, and other reforms) for bandaid solutions that produce at best marginal changes, but satisfy the need to be perceived as "doing something for the poor." Again, the question needs to be asked: Is the goal to ease the pain or to cure the disease?

What else is really hard to eat and keep down competitively?

From what I understand, hot dogs really are the toughest because there's all that sodium and nitrates and then there's the bun -- most eaters dunk the buns in water because they are easier to swallow.

What are "meat sweats"?

When I first heard the term I thought it was another made-up term on the circuit. But then I heard people talk about it, and I don't know what it is about meat, but in the same way that asparagus emanates through your urine, meat perfuses through the skin. It's the essence of meat coming through you.

The "funnies" you read every day bring $8,000,000 a year to a small group of 200 cartoonists. How they rose to the top and how you can enter their select circle is told here by leading comic artists.

THAT laugh you had today over your favorite funny strip is worth money-- $200 to $1,000 a day to the cartoonist that made you chuckle.

His pen and ink characters are part of a great $8,000,000 industry that is far from overcrowded and that is practically depression proof.

Craphoundilla oli rautainen kirpputorikarma viheliäiseksi muukalaispaskiaiseksi. Hän oli niin loistava seulomaan esiin sen ainokaisen kultajyvän hillittömästä hyödyttömyyksien koskesta, etten voinut olla pitämättä hänestä – tai ainakaan kunnioittamatta häntä. Mutta sitten hän löysi cowboy-arkun. Minulle se merkitsi kahden kuukauden vuokraa, mutta Craphoundille se tyydytti vain jotain omituista muukalaisten rihkamafetissiä.

Reader comment: Ike says, "This Little Dee comic from March '06 appears to be the inspiration: Link."

Reader comment: Thomas Shaddack says,

The earliest incarnation of the pink tank meme that's known to me is the art project from April 28, 1991, when a tank standing in Prague as a monument was painted bright pink. The author of the prank was David Cerny, a Czech artist. Link.

Army painted it back green between May 1 and May 2 the same year. A group of members of the Federal Assembly then painted it back pink at May 12, as a reminder that there is no art project that can not be politicized. The monument was later disassembled and the pink tank is now in a military museum in Lesany. Link.

In 2002, a similar tank was painted pink in London: Link.

Monty Python's Big Red Book describes the exploits of the Pink Panzer AKA the Naughty Nazi. I forget if he drives a pink tank.

I used to live in Croydon, a horrible borough of Sarf London mate (South London). There was a builder who caught the second biggest marlin, had it stuffed, shipped back to Croydon and stuck on the roof of his house. But the Council told him to take it down because he didn't have planning permission to put a stuffed marlin on his roof. So to show his distress at the Council's decision, he would drive a pink tank around the Council offces in the centre of town. Around and around and around. It was only a small tank, but it was very pink. He built up a procession of his firm's lorries including one with an enormous pig, which no doubt represented the planning officers he was in dispute with. This went on for months, much to the pleasure of his staff, who got paid to annoy everyone. Every few days, at lunch time, the pink tank and pig procession would begin and go around and around. Happy days. Sadly, I have no photos and I cannot find one online. Perhaps other readers in Croydon can find one?

Link to LA Times article about American Idol.

Link to Zach Trenholm's portfolio.

Draw! magazine, Vol 7, has an excellent interview with Zach Trenholm. The interview is not online, but you can order a back issue for $9 from the publisher.

The journalists' advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports today that newly obtained court documents show Yahoo played a role in the imprisonment of yet another Chinese internet dissident:

Reporters Without Borders has obtained a copy of the verdict in the case of Jiang Lijun, sentenced to four years in prison in November 2003 for his online pro-democracy articles, showing that Yahoo ! helped Chinese police to identify him.

It is the third such case, following those of Shi Tao and Li Zhi, proving the implication of the American Internet company.

(...)According to the verdict, Yahoo ! Holdings (Hong Kong) confirmed that the email account ZYMZd2002 had been used jointly by Jiang Lijun and another pro-democracy activist, Li Yibing.

Link, and here is a PDF Link to the English translation of the court document.

Snip from a related AP item:

Yahoo's Hong Kong unit gave authorities a draft e-mail that had been saved on Jiang's account, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said, citing the verdict by the Beijing No. 2 People's Court. The group provided a copy of the verdict, which it said it obtained this week. (...)

Entitled "Declaration," the draft was similar to manuscripts called "Freedom and Democracy Party Program" and "Declaration of Establishment" that were recovered from a computer and a floppy disk owned by two other Internet activists, the verdict said.

Link.

In other news related to China and the 'net: blogger and filmmaker Hao Wu remains in jail. The former Earthlink and Excite employee was detained by authorities in Beijing nearly 60 days ago, but has not been charged with a crime. And to begin his visit to the United States, China's president Hu Jintao dined at Bill Gates' home last night. Image: President Hu with Ballmer and Gates. (Andy Clark/AFP/Getty Images) 

Previously:
- PEN files complaint against Yahoo over Shi Tao
- HK lawmaker: Yahoo unit had role in Shi Tao's jailing
- Report: verdict confirms Yahoo helped jail Li Zhi
- NPR: Yahoo may have aided in jailing of second China writer
- Xeni's LAT op-ed: war, blogs, news, and profit.

You are the sun, the moon, the Cinderhide Armsplints of the Monkey. There is so much we have to offer one another. Unfailing loyalty, a Strength of 250, someone who can go out for snacks in the heat of battle. Can't you see we're made for each other?

Darling, no orc can keep me from you. I would make my way into the heart of Moonglade and fight an army of trolls just to be by your side. I would go up against Varimathras, the ruler of the Undead himself, if he so much as hinted that he was a danger to you. Make no mistake, I would get aggro on anyone who would threaten you.

This is, of course, provided the system is not down due to a faulty patch.

Link

(Thanks, Evan!)

just curious
question swap
sketch swap
hand collector
visual dictionary
Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

But according to the company, Veoh has raised $12.5 million in venture financing from Eisner, Spark Capital and Time Warner.

"I presume this is what it looks like when you knock up a Realdoll." Link

Larry says: "Armed with no budget to speak of and a 5 megapixel digital camera I was "faced" with the dilemma of creating a classic horror icon without being too dirivative or hokey for my employer, Prestwick House, Inc, an educational publisher of public domain titles. I came up with this idea, and although a bit painful, I achieved my goal and won an award for my efforts to boot! Sales have increased dramatically too. I came up with this step-by-step process and have received a lot of positive feedback from teachers and students." Link (thanks, Larry!)

Kimberly Williamson Butler is the crazy New Orleans mayoral candidate who got busted for using a campaign photo of herself standing in what appeared to be the French Quarter, but which was revealed to be the New Orleans Square at Disneyland. The telltale was that the Disneyland trash-can was visible in the picture.

So Butler's campaign has "fixed" the photo -- they took out the trashcan, after getting threats from Disney's lawyers. Link (Thanks, Travis!)

Update: Ste3ve sez,"J Man, a talented young member of the Doombuggies.com message board came up with a much better photoshop of Kimberly Williamson Butler's photo for her mayoral candidacy."

Update 2: Matt sez, "The website has been updated once again. Now the Disneyland photo is gone completely, replaced by something that looks like a campaign poster."

You've played it. You've rolled it. You've hummed that tune over and over again. And now it's time to put your katamari where your hands are, and join [info]soundhive and i for Bay To Breakers, as we roll a FREAKING HUGE cardboard katamari that shall be carved out of refrigerator boxes, and decorated with elements of the city that we've rolled up along the way. You can come as yourself, or choose from a blithering variety of roll-tastic cousins and kings of cosmoses. It's crowded, it's nerdy, it's way to early in the morning. But by Jumboman, i've got to do something with all this extra carpetfoam that i've got in my garage. The weekends leading up will have katamari construction as well as costume making for those dolicephalic heads.

[Mattel president] Ray Wagner had passed on Star Wars because the license property apparently required $750,000 upfront. At the time, for an unproven property, that was a highly exorbitant sum. So Wagner had Mattel's Prelimary Design Department - of which I was a member - Come up with viable male action figure concepts. I had been real impressed by Frank Frazetta paintings and I [submitted an idea] that I called monster fantasy. But it was actually a barbarian fantasy...

When I first saw the [first year of the] Masters of the Universe line all together I thought it was somewhat weak because it was low-tech and it was conservative. My concept of MOTU was that it combined everything- low-tech, high-tech, past, present and future. I wanted MOTU to be as expansive as possible and do anything that was appealing. I would love to see a G.I. Joe segment in MOTU. I wouldn't mind seeing a character like [Child's Play] Chucky in it.

Were he alive today, Jack Anderson "would probably come out of his skin at the thought of the FBI going through his papers," said Kevin N. Anderson, the journalist's son. If papers were taken -- even if some were stamped "declassified" and returned -- that would "destroy any academic, scholarly, and historic value" of the archive, Kevin Anderson adds.

The FBI would not comment for this article.

Hob Gadling says: If you've visited India, you'll know that driving is akin to a martial art. (They don't give black belts yet, but they should!) Here's a video I found on 'It Rocks Everything' showing a small intersection in India.

Things to look out for:
* The pedestrian momentarily trapped between a car and a scooter
* The white car in the top right corner which goes the wrong way

Of course, India has one of the world's worst automobile accident statistics, but as I kid growing up in Mumbai, I crossed much busier streets and lived to tell the tale. (However, anyone else from India will tell you, I had it easy growing up in Mumbai, most other cities are worse!)

The device, called an Opticon, is similar to what firefighters use to change lights when they respond to emergencies. It emits an infrared pulse that receivers on the traffic lights pick up.

Niccum was cited after city traffic engineers who noticed repeated traffic light disruptions at certain intersections spotted a white Ford pickup passing by whenever the patterns were disrupted.

Reader comment: Trevor says: "I work at a city in Southern California and I asked our Traffic Engineers about 'personal use' of the infrared preemptive devices. Not only did they say you would get in trouble (duh!), but they also said it wouldn't work because for most cities, when you use the preemptive device it changes all the lights to RED. Which makes more sense because it's safer for the emergency vehicle, they already have the right-of-way and with all the lights switched to red they don't have to worry about anybody turning in front of them..."

Reader comment: Jon says:

Just thought I'd contribute a little factual information. I'm a traffic engineer that enjoys designing traffic signals for a living. The use of signal "preemption" equipment is VERY common in Northwest states, (like Oregon where I live) and is installed at 80% or more of existing signalized intersections. The right to preempt signals is normally assigned to fire/paramedic vehicles, though some cities/counties also allow ambulances and/or police this capability. In every case I'm familiar with, the preempting vehicle receives a GREEN light and all other movements are shown a RED light. Why, because the green light is needed to move blocking vehicles out of the way!

The most common technology uses an infrared light, mounted to a vehicle, that pulses at a fast rate (15,000 Hz +/-). If the equipment is less than 10 years old it likely has the ability to ID the vehicle by reading a digital signature in the infrared beam. It is virtually impossible for a unauthorized person to take advantage of this system. Further, most modern signal systems are able to log preemption activity, making it easy to find an offender.

One last thing, it is a federal offense to tamper with traffic signal preemption. SAFETEA-LU made illegal use of a 'traffic signal preemption transmitter' (MIRTS et al). The original bill, HR 1122 introduced in the 109th Congress in March 2005 was incorporated into SAFETEA-LU shortly thereafter and passed with the rest as Public Law No: 109-059 on 8/10/2005.

Reader comment: Jeremy says: "In response to your article about the guy being fined for using a traffic preemption device I thought I'd point out a DIY solution. iHacked.com has instructions that will supposidly allow you to build your own. I haven't tried it, but from reading the instructions it looks like anyone who is comfortable with a soldering iron should be able to put one of these together." Link

* Nanowired: a novel nanoscale transistor

* Island Tales: digging through two thousand year-old garbage

* Improving Impoverished Children's Brains: diet, games, and fun spur neuron growth

A quick Google search revealed the International King Midget Car Club, Inc. which has a nice history of this cute/ugly little vehicle.

Midget Motors Corporation was started in 1946 by a couple of WWII civil air patrol pilot buddies. They sold the King Midget as a single passenger kit. The engine was not included, but you could install any one-cylinder engine you wanted into the car. Later, you could buy the King Midget fully assembled, with a rip-roaring 6-horsepower engine in it. It came in one color: "California Cream."

Among all automobiles ever manufactured, throughout the world, King Midget holds one untouchable record. King Midget was the only small car continuously manufactured for nearly a quarter of a century; from 1946 until operations ceased in 1970. In addition, Midget Motors Corporation was the sixth largest automobile manufacturer in the United States for a number of years.

Reader comment: Joey says: "Just wanted to add that the King Midget Jamboree, an annual event, will be held Aug. 10-13 in Athens, Ohio. More info will be available on the King Midget Car Club website as the date gets nearer.

Police Chases

On average, 15 people in try to drive away from the cops in LA on any given day - much more than any other parts of the country!

Indeed, car chases (remember OJ’s famous slow speed chase?) are a part of LA - they are often televised ("breaking news") and they consistently garner high ratings.

Everyone's got their own method -- some fold, some wrap, some crumple, and all these configurations require different amounts of toilet paper. How can such a personal ritual be standardized? Indeed, should it be?

If you must know more (including the answer to "When I tear the toilet paper, the perforations on the two plies don't line up. How do I fix this?") be sure to read the Cottonelle Kids FAQ. Or, perhaps you'd like to print out some super-fun Cottonelle Kids puzzles and games.

Jasmina Tesanovic
Belgrade, April 13, 2006

Hague Links

Today' s session was closed for the audience, however we Women in Black managed to get a permit to attend since that is our trade, the judge said.  She judged me from head to foot as I entered her office, seated me and signed the permit, but then once inside she asked us not to write about the testimony of the protected witness A because he asked so.

And I won't, also because all he said I already knew and wrote in the sessions before: I guessed out in previous reports what this link witness from Hague said. It wasn't that hard but his testimony has the impact of evidence, that's why it is important and closed for the public.

His body language is that of a troubled man who is hiding something but saying as much as he can He sounds intelligent and sly. He says a historical phrase, there always is one; a normal person would not execute such order, not that I was normal then, but a normal person would say NO, there have been examples in history of people who did it and got away with it.

Asked as to what is normality for him he explained thoughtfully: a normal person would not go to fight a war, he would stay back home. Once you are there you stop being normal.

[Image: Goranka Matic, Srebenica, 2002.]

Kathryn Cramer says,

Ogle Earth's Stefan Gens found some new high-resolution imagery of Iran's nuclear processing facilities and turned them into an overlay: New satellite imagery of Iran's nuclear sites - now on Google Earth.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has released new commercial imagery of Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities taken by DigitalGlobe just a few weeks ago. The images are in a PDF report by Paul Brannan and David Albright, the latter an ex-UN arms inspector and nuclear proliferation expert. (ISIS, whose motto is "Employing science in the pursuit of international peace" has impeccable non-partisan credentials.)

The PDF is fascinating, but the main images lack easy historical comparisons. Luckily, Google Earth already has very high resolution imagery of both the Natanz and Isfahan sites from a few years ago, also taken by DigitalGlobe. What I've done is repurpose the images from the PDF, which are annotated, as overlays on Google Earth, so that we can see the progress in the construction at both sites over the past few years.

Red Lightning is a loose sequel to Red Thunder, an homage to Heinlein's juuvenile novels (hands down his best works, BTW: tight, fast-moving, and funny-inspirational), especially Rocketship Galileo. In Red Thunder, an idiot-savant Cajun physicist invents a physics-defying power-supply that his young cousins use to travel to Mars -- after paying a local graffiti tagger to burn a huge mural down the side of their spaceship. It's boys-own-adventure sci-fi with sex and cussing, and it's just the kind of book that I've loved to hell and back since the age of 13 or so.

Red Lightning is much darker, but also even better. It's the story of the next generation of "Martians" who live on a tourism-driven Mars made possible by the power-source detailed in the first book. Ray is the son of Manny, the hero of Red Thunder, and he's a Martian the way that Heinlein's protagonist in "The Menace from Earth" is a Loonie (just one of many loving, sly nods to Heinlein in this book). He ends up on Earth after a natural disaster threatens his family there, and finds himself embroiled in a Katrina-style search-and-recovery mission -- but he's also exposed to the state of the planet, which is not so good.

Earth has been overrun by Homeland Security. The Internet disappears for days at a time, or is blacked out in some regions. Armored, faceless goons maraud and imprison in the name of "security" with impunity. Ray barely makes it out, and when he does, he's glad to return to the sane and gentle environs of Mars -- until the Homeland Security types land there, too.

Heinlein was an ideological libertarian. You could call his politics right wing, and they were, on many of the left-right axes. But Heinlein never would have sat still for the Patriot Act and the daily and deep incursions on liberties that have come to characterise life in America and increasingly Britain and other parts of the world. He never would have accepted that you had to take away freedom to save liberty.

It's easy to forget that today, amid all the debate, to forget how authoritarian we've become, how much we're willing to put up with today -- indiscriminate wiretapping, illegal detention of "enemy combatants" and a TSA with the charm of Stasi goons and the moral instincts of a viper.

Varley brings it home for us, tells us what old man Heinlein would have said about all of it. And he does it in the frame of a cracking, exciting space-adventure tale that'll have you laughing and cheering as it goes (especially when the vaderoid Homelanders try to take Mars and get destroyed by their own lack of acclimation to low gravity).

There are few writers whose work I love more than John Varley's, purely love -- but now that I've finished Red Lightning, I love his stuff even more. Link

So today there I was minding my own business shooting 45 Fremont in downtown San Francisco when all of a sudden a Shorenstein Company employee security guard decides to give me the finger in my photographs of the building. Next thing you know I get the typical hassle. Except normally when the guards come out all polite like and all this guy instead comes out middle finger a blazing and telling me that I'm not allowed to photograph the building from the public space.

He goes on to tell me how he doesn't like to have his photograph taken, etc. (hint, if you don't like your photograph taken, probably best not to come swaggering out of a public building middle finger a blazin', remember any old asshole can have a blog these days). And insists on telling me how if I want to photograph the building I'm going to need to get approval from building management. blah, blah, blah.

Link (Thanks, Jason Schultz)

Link to AP item by Tom Hays, which includes the predictable line, "Police officials insist that law-abiding New Yorkers have nothing to fear because the cameras will be restricted to public areas." (Thanks, A.V.)

In related news, the NYPD may be snapping images of you, but don't try to snap back. From the Village Voice:

[P]olice evidently aren't so keen on surveillance when the cameras are turned on them­particularly when those cameras show them abusing free-street-parking privileges. On March 27, two volunteers from the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives were detained for taking pictures of police officers' private cars, which were parked on the sidewalk outside the Fifth Precinct in Chinatown. The volunteers say they were held and questioned at the precinct for about 20 minutes and instructed to erase the pictures.

"It was intimidating. I was afraid they were going to arrest me," says Brian Hoberman, 37, who works as a researcher for the city's Rent Guidelines Board.

Reader comment: AV says,

Here's a website that tracks video camera abuses that have made the news: Link. Scroll down or search for the word "troopers" and note how traffic cameras can be tilted and panned and how they were used for non-traffic watching by state troopers: Link, and Link.

The Billboard Liberation Front has "apprehended, rehabilitated, and discharged" another site in San Francisco.

The advertisement, which had been attempting to sell and distribute petrochemicals, was corrected to promote the U.S. Department of Defense and their private subcontractors operating in Iraq.

Link (Thanks, dolface)

Correction: The BLF didn't do this, their comrades at the California Department of Corrections did. Their site's down right now, but here's a portfolio. (Thanks, Milton Rand Kalman!)

The initial aesthetics of Flarf went largely unarticulated, but they can probably be approximated by the following recipe: deliberate shapelessness of content, form, spelling, and thought in general, with liberal borrowing from internet chat-room drivel and spam scripts, often with the intention of achieving a studied blend of the offensive, the sentimental, and the infantile.

Flarf came about a couple of years ago when Gary Sullivan submitted a deliberately bad poem to Poetry.com, one of those vanity companies that lures the unsuspecting with lavish praise of their poetry and then offers to "publish" it for an exorbitant fee. Theorizing that no submission, no matter how heinous, would ever be treated with anything other than solicitous fawning, he sent in a poem titled "Mm-hmm":

Yeah, mm-hmm, it's true
big birds make
big doo! I got fire inside
my "huppa"-chimp(TM)
gonna be agreessive, greasy aw yeah god
wanna DOOT! DOOT!
Pffffffffffffffffffffffffft! hey!
oooh yeah baby gonna shake & bake then take
AWWWWWL your monee, honee (tee hee)
uggah duggah buggah biggah buggah muggah
hey! hey! you stoopid Mick! get
off the paddy field and git
me some chocolate Quik
put a Q-tip in it and stir it up sick
pocka-mocka-chocka-locka-DING DONG
fuck! shit! piss! oh it's so sad that
syndrome what's it called tourette's
make me HAI-EE! shout out loud
Cuz I love thee. Thank you God, for listening!

The Today Show aired a segment today about all the weird crap you can find on YouTube, and I was among the guests.

As usual, though, I'm not the interesting part. The interesting part is the chick with the fake bunny-teeth. Or the dude backwardsbackflipping off a barn. Or maybe the man with the giant wasp in his hand. That is quality internetelevision.

Link to archived "Today Show" clip. PS: I've been lying all along. My real name is "Xeni Hardin," as that NBC link clearly shows, and the ensuing phonetics gags practically write themselves.

Hey, and here's something funny on YouTube. Some people fill this poor guy's office with balloons, and he totally loses his shit. Link to "lookatmebeingserious.com." Dialogue to remember: "Where'd the AIR come from? You used the air that COSTS MONEY!" (Thanks, Andrew)

Jasmina Tesanovic
Belgrade, April 12, 2006

The Muslim Women

Belgrade is sinking today, heavy rain. The link to Hague is back: the cassette owner witness today is going into details with the bad guy who became good by pleading guilty as to how many people he shot. "I don’t know," says the witness, "two or three people."

"For me it is very important if it is three or six," says the indicted. "Because I am a moral person."

Sighs from the audience. Today we are sitting in the usual crowd with relatives of victims and criminals, but there is a new, third lot in dark suits and fancy caps. The wife of one war criminal asked the men in suits, "Who are you, if I may know."

"We are the police," says one, slightly embarrassed. He meant the secret police.

She retreats in awe. I guess her husband claimed too that he was on a secret mission. A mission of secretly executing as many people as he could.

[Image: Goranka Matic, 2002. Jasmina explains what's going on in this photo: "Women cross the borders, starting from Belgrade and going through the countries of former Yugoslavia, meeting women, friends, pacifists. This site is Vukovar Croatia, a city often mentioned in my texts because the Yugoslav army destroyed it. The Scorpions were based there, too, before going to Bosnia."]

Update: Chad sez, "I noticed Pastafarianism was unrepresented in this study. I've remedied this."

This Article is as simple and provocative as its title suggests: it explores the legal implications of the word fuck. The intersection of the word fuck and the law is examined in four major areas: First Amendment, broadcast regulation, sexual harassment, and education. The legal implications from the use of fuck vary greatly with the context. To fully understand the legal power of fuck, the nonlegal sources of its power are tapped. Drawing upon the research of etymologists, linguists, lexicographers, psychoanalysts, and other social scientists, the visceral reaction to fuck can be explained by cultural taboo.

(...) Taboo is then institutionalized through law, yet at the same time is in tension with other identifiable legal rights. Understanding this relationship between law and taboo ultimately yields fuck jurisprudence.

Darpa's "Unique Signature Detection Project (formerly known as the Odortype Detection program)" aims to sniff out genetic markers in "human emanations (urine, sweat, etc.)" that "can be used to identify and distinguish specific high-level-of-interest individuals within groups of enemy troops."

"Recent experimental results" show that chemical compounds in a mouse's "urinary" scent produces an "odortype" that's unique to each individual rodent, Darpa observes in its original solicitation for the project. "Although experimental data for humans is far less quantitative," the agency is hoping that a similarly "genetically determined," "exploitable chemosignal" can be found in people, too.

Reader comment: Jutta says, "the article you posted reminded me of something..." Snip from fas.org item, which appears to be a transcript from a VOA broadcast:

DURING THE COLD WAR, THE STASI ALSO KEPT WHAT MR. LEGNER DESCRIBED AS "SMELL SAMPLES" OF PEOPLE -- CLOTH SAMPLES CONTAINING THE SCENT OF INDIVIDUALS THAT COULD BE USED FOR DOG TRACKING AND IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES. WE FOUND THESE SAMPLES IN SEALED GLASS BOTTLES.

What if the NSA, using the combined research muscle of both Yahoo and Microsoft were developing a supercomputer. ... (dramatic pause) ... A supercomputer that ... (another dramatic pause) ... runs on POTATOES! If that's the case then God help us. God help us all.

Previously:
NSA Echelon Facility at Yakima, WA.

Reader comment: Sej sez,

Did you see this entry about a 500-potato battery on the MAKE Blog? Link.

Thinking about this recently, and about what Manifesto is trying to do, it occurs to me that the video game industry has, in some ways, betrayed the democratic nature of the form it sells. The game industry, even if the product it promotes is democratic and interactive in nature, is structured virtually identically to entertainment media that predate it. Creators contract with publishers, who do their best to screw them financially; marketing is "top-down," broadcast-style, with a carefully crafted message disseminated via PR and advertising to consumers; publishers, console manufacturers, and retailers jointly act as gate-keepers to narrow consumer options; and gamers are viewed as little more than sheep to be fleeced, induced by a glut of advertising and manipulated press attention to go to the store and buy the next game in the franchise.

Now, let's think about this a little. There are essentially two groups in this value chain who love games: the people who create them, i.e., developers; and the people who consume them, i.e., gamers. Everyone in between is a necessary evil, a means of getting games from developers into the hands of gamers. But it's also everyone in between who basically doesn't give a rat's ass about games, and indeed, would probably be happier selling detergent, or working in film. For developers, and for gamers, games are something special; for the intermediaries, they're just another SKU in a packaged goods industry.

At issue is the publicly funded Smithsonian's plan to give the commercial Showtime network the exclusive first-refusal right to the documentary footage in its film archive, a move that would turn Showtime into the sole supplier of documentaries made using the public's video that has been entrusted to the Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian Institution is not merely a business venture. It is a publicly chartered guardian of our national heritage, created by the U.S. Congress "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." In your FY2005 Annual Report, you noted that the Institution receives 75% of its revenue from federal appropriations, government grants, and government contracts. The Institution is governed by a Board of Regents appointed from all three branches of our government. The Smithsonian Institution is a public trust in the truest sense of the term. The Institution, as a public trust, operates as custodian of our shared heritage. As Secretary Joseph Henry stated in his first annual report in 1847 in considering the role of the Institution in formally accepting the bequest of James Smithson: "The bequest is for the benefit of mankind. The Government of the United States is merely a trustee."

See also Smithsonian's Showtime deal: critical attorneys shred it
Smithsonian's Showtime sellout needs FOIA sunshine

In about half the cases, victim and perpetrator appear to be strangers. For the rest, it can be deeply, disturbingly personal.

Earlier this month, a Suffolk County police officer, Michael Valentine, was indicted on 197 counts of stalking, unauthorized use of a computer and other charges after hacking into the Yahoo e-mail account of a woman he had briefly dated and posing as her in online communications.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's office also charges that Mr. Valentine, of Lake Grove, accessed the woman's personal profile on the dating site Match.com, sending electronic "winks" and other communications to 70 different men on the site. At least two showed up at the woman's home for dates.

AT&T's justifications for this are transparent crapola, like accusing Google of wanting to use its pipes for free (Google pays a fortune for bandwidth), and saying that only giant companies like AT&T itself care about this, since "the little guy [in the garage] is not streaming movies" -- despite the existence of companies and nonprofits like YouTube and the Participatory Culture Foundation.

I think it's pretty clear that this is nothing more than raw greed from AT&T, but I'm not sure what to do about it. The leading proposals are to get the FCC to regulate AT&T to ensure neutrality. I can see the logic in that: AT&T gets all kinds of legal breaks and access to public resources, so why shouldn't the public's government muscle it into giving the public the best deal possible?

That said, I'm not sure I agree. What we're talking about here is getting the FCC to write up rules dictating what firewall rules ISPs can and can't have. I'm an ISP right now -- my laptop is WiFi rebroadcasting the Ethernet Internet access I'm getting at my hotel. Anyone can be an ISP. Do we really want the Feds to tell us what we can and can't do with our network configurations? Do we believe that they can move fast enough and smart enough to do a meaningful job of it?

Maybe the answer is just more ISPs. More long-haul pipe (either physical or wireless), more rights-of-way cleared in cities, more of everything -- especially information about what a bunch of carrion-feeding, lying jackals AT&T are, and who else you can give your business to.

Gary Bachula, vice president for external affairs of Internet2, a nonprofit project by universities and corporations to build an extremely fast and large network, argues that managing online traffic just doesn't work very well. At the February Senate hearing, he testified that when Internet2 began setting up its large network, called Abilene, "our engineers started with the assumption that we should find technical ways of prioritizing certain kinds of bits, such as streaming video, or video conferencing, in order to assure that they arrive without delay. As it developed, though, all of our research and practical experience supported the conclusion that it was far more cost effective to simply provide more bandwidth. With enough bandwidth in the network, there is no congestion and video bits do not need preferential treatment."

Today, Bachula continued, "our Abilene network does not give preferential treatment to anyone's bits, but our users routinely experiment with streaming HDTV, hold thousands of high-quality two-way videoconferences simultaneously, and transfer huge files of scientific data around the globe without loss of packets."

Not only is adding intelligence to a network not very useful, Bachula pointed out, it's not very cheap. A system that splits data into various lanes of traffic requires expensive equipment, both within the network and at people's homes. Right now, broadband companies are spending a great deal on things like set-top boxes, phone routers and other equipment for their advanced services. "Simple is cheaper," Bachula said. "Complex is costly" -- a cost that may well be passed on to customers.

Here at BoingBoing, we have an informal moratorium of sorts on any more "Cheney Hunting Joke" or "Easter Peeps" posts. But moratoriums (moratoria?) were made to be broken, and Mark hasn't kept his earwax promise anyway.

Link.
BoingBoing reader Chris, who submitted the image, shares the dialogue that surrounded its creation:

My wife: “Very proud” and “Nice, Hon.”
My five-year-old: “What is dad doing now? He’s out on the deck playing with Easter candy.”
My three-year-old: “I want my truck back! Mom, dad won’t let me have my truck!

Reader comment: Marv says,

"I saw some tacky 'Candy Crosses' at Walgreen's last week and saw an opportunity to hurt a peep and offend a whole bunch of people all while making a tasty snack."

Link. Here at BoingBoing, we prefer to call them "chocofixes."

That summer, a group of us decided to spend a week or so camping on the beach on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, which involved a 12 mile trek from where we left the van. Supplies were divided up between the group, and I wound up lugging some of the food items, including the cilantro. About half way to the beach, my future wife and I halted at a bluff, ostensibly to watch some soaring King vultures. When all of the group had passed by, I threw the cilantro off the bluff. The two of us bonded over our little secret, and love was born. The rest of the group never figured out what happened to the cilantro, which lead to frantic digging through packs and prolonged bitching when dinner time came around. Needless to say, I ate better for that week than I did for the rest of the trip. "

Photos were left behind by anonymous reader at the newsroom.

The man came to our newsroom, spoke to the receptionist and left her an envelope with three photos and a note that read: "This is not a tree trunk with a capricious shape. This is not a wave. Nahuelito showed his face. Lake Nahuel Huapi, Saturday, April 15, 9 a.m. I’m not giving my personal information to avoid future headaches." We are presenting the images. Let each one reach his/her own conclusions.

Anda's Game in Russian, Kurzweil interview in Italian

In the first part of this quarter's roundup, Dave covers off the increased, never-ending growth of the blogosphere -- more blogs, more posts, and lots more spam. Also: bloggers type more about new technology products than they do about the State of the Union address.

* Technorati now tracks over 35.3 Million blogs
* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months
* It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
* On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
* 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
* Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour

During the movie's production, Fizik Baskerville and his team created the Marvin avatar based on the production designer's specs, using that to plan a marketing campaign for their client, Disney. "We did that not only for Hitchhiker's... we did it for Pirates of the Carribean 2/3 and Chronicles of Narnia." Using SL's avatar customization tools, "Within a short period of time we have [characters from these Disney films] walking around those ideas as avatars."

Mobile phones are a lot like mainframes. While it's common for average people to own phones, it's inconceivable that the average person will build, reprogram, or make meaningful improvements to her phone.

Thus the Homebrew Mobile Phone Club: a physical and virtual club to do to mobile phones what Jobs and Woz did to computers.

I'm announcing the formation of the "Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club." Our purpose is to provide support and guidance for individuals building their own "convergence devices." We're going to have monthly meetings where we discuss designs and applications with the idea that two heads is frequently better than one. Don't toil in solitude, trying to get your latest wireless hardware hack to work. We're "hackers" only in the classic sense, no phone cloners please.

Our first meeting will be held at 7:00PM on the evening of the first Thursday of May (May 4th, 2006) at an as of yet undetermined location. (We'll announce the location here as soon as we know it.)

Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.

In Europe, during the early 1800’s, Chocolate was all the rage. It was the treat of choice for most middle and upper class denizens. Chocolatiers sought to use the image of the egg as a way to celebrate Easter and sell their products.

The symbol of the egg, which was already being used in Easter festivities at this time, had been a pagan symbol representing fertility and re-birth in pagan times. It had been adopted as part of the Christian Easter festival and it came to represent the ‘resurrection’ or re-birth of Christ after the crucifixion and some believe it is a symbol of the the stone blocking the Sepulcher being ‘rolled’ away. It was during this time the first chocolate Easter egg appeared in Germany and France and soon spread to the rest of Europe and beyond.

This is a LiveJournal community for writers of McGriddle Fan Fiction, Breakfast Fan Fiction, and McGriddle Creative Writing. While our primary focus is on Fan Fic involving the McDonald's McGriddle, we extend membership to writers of any sort of breakfast food creative writing (i.e. McMuffins, Bagel Sandwiches, Pancakes, etc).

Rules:

I will delete any posts that do not adhere to the rules.

* Keep it reasonably clean. Nothing worse than PG-13.
* Be courteous. If You don't like someone's post, keep it to yourself. No flaming.
* Keep it focused on breakfast products. I don't want to hear about any french fries.

As Lade puts it: "It's colorful. It's bright. It's humorous. It's pointed..."

They added the skeletons for Halloween. For Christmas, they strung 2,800 lights in their backyard. They invited neighborhood children to spray-paint the toilet brushes.

"It's fun," Sutton said. "But it's also a reminder of basic property rights. It shows the absurdity of being told you can't put up a fence..."

Paul Drury, Anderson Township's assistant director of development services, said he gets occasional calls about the yard display.

"Most of them are inquiries about why they're allowed to do that," he said. "We haven't found any zoning violations."

Noted security specialist Bruce Schneier is sponsoring a contest on his blog for people to come up with the most ridiculous yet plausible movie-plot security risk. The winner gets a free copy of his book "Beyond Fear", and maybe even the chance to discuss their idea with a real-world movie producer...

From his site: "It is in this spirit I announce the (possibly First) Movie-Plot Threat Contest. Entrants are invited to submit the most unlikely, yet still plausible, terrorist attack scenarios they can come up with.

"Your goal: cause terror. Make the American people notice. Inflict lasting damage on the U.S. economy. Change the political landscape, or the culture. The more grandiose the goal, the better.

Assume an attacker profile on the order of 9/11: 20 to 30 unskilled people, and about $500,000 with which to buy skills, equipment, etc."

Update: Martin sez, "budding animators may be interested in the full collection of 50 standard symbols available free of charge in .gif and .eps format at AIGA."

Update 2: Chris sez, Here is a link to the full set of symbols in both .eps and .gif format for Windows users like myself.

acculturated objects
actual / virtual / fictional objects
ambiguous objects
appropriated / reappropriated objects
augmented objects
autonomous objects
banal objects
blobjects
boundary objects
bridging objects
by-products
chindogu
co-created objects
co-existent objects
collaborative designed objects
commodities / comm-oddities
computationally enabled objects
container-objects