Friday, I'll be a guest on CNN's American Morning with Miles O'Brien and Soledad O'Brien for a segment about the recall of Sony batteries in Apple notebook computers. News was posted earlier today here on BoingBoing and elsewhere around the web. Segment airs live around 915am-ish ET/615am-ish PT, Friday.

Reader comment: Andy Sternberg says,

Yahoo vid is hosting the segment here: Link.

Eliot Phillips of hackaday.com says,

BoingBoing has covered Mikey Sklar's projects before. He RFID chipped his hand and also built a trampoline controlled flame thrower. He was on The Daily Show yesterday for a segment on nano machines along with Ray Kurzweil.

Link. (Way to go, Mikey!)

Reader comment: Mark says,

Wow... Mikey's a wild one. I blogged last month about a cool video (both in style and soundtrack) he did awhile back on making a pizza. Here's the original link to his Youtube post, and here's my permalink.

Eliot Phillips adds,

Mikey's friend Dan Lane (also chipped) has uploaded the short clip to YouTube: Link.

BoingBoing reader Mike Guerena says,

I live in Fallbrook, CA which is a conservative rural town in San Diego county. What I didn't know was that Ned Flanders lived in our town. Some guy wrote a letter to the editor in the local paper about his fear for his 6 year old daughter's future because some teenagers put a reference to Barney's penis on a sign outside the local store.

Snip from the published letter:

She said, “Look, Daddy, a Barney movie!” I couldn’t see it, so she guided my eyes to the vulgar obscenity arranged there on the sign. “Look! Up there! Barney’s p***s!” I was shocked when I saw the words arranged on the sign. I quickly averted her eyes and escorted her into the store.

Since then, she has not stopped mentioning Barney’s p***s. This has shaken the bedrock of our family. I made an emergency call to our church’s pastor about this bombshell in my daughter’s life and he is unsure how it will affect her future.

Link. When will the purple-hued sociopath be brought to justice? Why, less than 12 hours ago, my colleague Cory posted this related item on more of Barney's heinous hijinks: "EFF sues Barney the humorless, copyright maximalist dinosaur."

(Ed. Note: Photos by Bruce Sterling.)

Mermaid's Trail
by Jasmina Tesanovic
DUBROVNIK -- August, 2006

The bus from Belgrade to Dubrovnik costs 4700 dinars for a return ticket, and takes 13 hours one way. It goes through Bosnia, Republika Srpska, and stops in several former-Yu war sites, such as Mostar, where the famous bridge was destroyed and recently rebuilt. Mostar's old face was blown away and it has a new face. Except for shrapnel and craters, it has a happy look.

The border crossings are easy, a busywork of transfers and passport-stampings, inflicted on all passengers just alike and done without a word of explanation. The foreigners look scared, but everyone else just does it. The bus stops too often, and people get on and off without schedule. Strange black packages are unloaded from the bus and delivered into private cars in the middle of nowhere. Some Americans in the bus seem troubled by this, but all the locals sleep peacefully.

On our arrival in Dubrovnik, local grannies are waiting with signs about private rooms to rent. I pick the one with mustache, no teeth and a fake smile. She speaks English and tells me she does not like renting rooms to Italians. I reveal that I am a Serb and my friend is American. Now that's nice, says Granny with her fake smile: Serbs and Americans!

We come across a Croatian monument talking about Serbs as aggressors here. I speak with my heavy Belgrade accent, but no hostility is in the air. My American pal is suspicious about Granny: is she really going to shelter us without any American-style paperwork? I say, that how we do it around here: if she is not a serial killer, it should be all right.

[Story continues after the jump]

The War on Moisture continues! BoingBoing reader Dan says,

While listening to this piece on All Things Considered, Tony Jabbour mentions that ice is now prohibited from being carried onto aircraft - because it is a liquid. Though both Tony and Robert Siegel call ice a liquid, I am confident that both men are aware that ice is, in fact, a solid. Only the TSA could decide to either change the laws of physics or to put something (ice) into a category in which it clearly does not belong (liquid).

Link

Reader comment: Lone Locust of the Apocalypse says,

I'm not sure I agree with reader Dan's synopsis, or your headline. Nowhere in the linked interview did either person say the TSA has banned water ice. The TSA's "full list of prohibited items" FAQ does not list water ice.

The whole time during the interview it sounds pretty clear they are talking about gel ice packs being banned. The one time the interviewer says "ice" I infer from context that he is using as shorthand for "gel ice pack."

Note: I am a fairly leftish liberal who thinks we're going about airport security in a stupid way, subscribe fully to Bruce Schneier's ideas about "Security Theater" being ineffective etc. Just so you don't think this is just a knee-jerk political reaction.

George Kind says,

1) After talking about gel packs, Robert Siegel specifically says in the audio: "or you couldn't use ice, because that would be ... liquid." (52 seconds in)

2) The discussion is about the shipping of lobsters. Including live lobsters.... sounds like a set-up for a sequal in the making: "Lobsters on a Plane" !?!?!

Lone Locust of the Apocalypse says,

Siegel may have referred to ice as a liquid, but that doesn't mean the TSA classifies it as such. While I share Dan's confidence that Siegel and Jabbour know ice is a solid, anyone can momentarily slip and say the wrong thing when speaking extemporaneously.

If someone produces a statement from the TSA that ice is banned *** specifically because it's classified a liquid ***, then I'll agree the headline is justified. Until then, let's go back to mocking them for stupid things they've actually done.

Paul Boutin says, "This boat ad for a 37-foot 1964 Wheeler Express Cruiser claims it was used as the S.S. Minnow in Gilligan's Island."

Link. Price: $99,000.

Reader comment: The Liberal Avenger says,

1964 didn't sound right to me for Gilligan's Island. Even though I was born in 1970, I remember black and white episodes of Gilligan's Island. IMDB shows Gilligan's Island starting in 1962: Link.

(Ed. note: I haven't had time to research this one, and I have no idea if the sale listing is legit or not. But thinking out loud here -- it's conceivable that more than one boat was used as the S.S. Minnow during the show's many years of production. If so, it would be possible for this one to have been used from 1964 on. )

Reader Tom L. says,

The Gilligan's Island Fan Club web site page on the Minnow makes it look like this probably is one of the four actual Minnows: Link. They have a story about Minnow #3 being found and restored by a guy in British Columbia. They list the model as 1964 Wheeler, and say it was used in the second season.

FreeEnigma brings cryptography to webmail, with an ingenious set of free and open browser plug-ins that work with Yahoo, Gmail, and others. The plugins implement a version of GPG (the free/open version of Pretty Good Privacy) and scramble and de-scramble the text in your webmail before you send it and after you receive it, reducing the amount of information that webmail providers have on your communications. This is long overdue, as webmail and other hosted mail solutions are a ticking bomb, just waiting for a hacker, spook or copper to come a-knockin', there to get a look at your private communications.

Though this is miles and miles better than the privacy that plain webmail delivers, there are a couple of ways in which this is less than perfect -- the system doesn't protect the To: and From: and Subject: information in your email; an adversary might be able to harm you just by knowing the fact that you've gotten encrypted mail from a specific person. Link (Thanks, Stefan!)

A British company -- Silver Bullet -- and a US company -- Verint Systems (subsidiary of Comverse Technology) -- sold equipment for surveilling mobile phone calls to Vietnam's intelligence services, according to the UK-based publication Jane's Defence Weekly. The report went on to say that a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries served as an intermediary in the transactions. Silver Bullet's website has gone offline. Journalists' advocacy group Reporters Without Borders issued a related statement today. Snip:

"We are appalled to learn that our phone calls with Vietnamese cyber-dissidents have been monitored with equipment provided by European and US companies. Coming a year after it emerged that Yahoo! cooperates with the Chinese police, this new case reinforces our conviction that telecommunications companies must be forced to respect certain rules of ethical conduct. In particular, they should be banned from selling surveillance equipment to repressive governments."

The sales were revealed by Robert Karniol in an article headlined "Vietnamese army enhances mobile phone monitoring" in the 31 October 2005 issue of Jane's Defence Weekly (JDW). He said the London-based Silver Bullet had recently sold two P-GSM stations (portable mobile phone listening devices) to Vietnam for $250,000 each. Elta (a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries) and Aikap Group, another Israeli company, acted as intermediaries in this transaction.

Link

Jason D says, "The organizers of the Sixth Hackers on Planet Earth convention that took place last month in New York City have posted all of the audio from every presentation." Link.

The recently demoted member of our solar system responds: "Planets have feelings, too." Link. (Thanks, Troy)

And this billboard is a likely Photoshop job, but who can argue with a phrase like "Friends of Pluto"? Link (Thanks, Adam Selvidge) UPDATE: Free-vo says, "The billboard you showed about Pluto is from the worth 1000 pluto contest."

Apple will recall nearly two million power devices believed to cause a risk of overheating risk. Sony's stock -- they manufacture the batteries in question -- sank today; recent recalls of its product may cost up to $258 million. Link to news story (Thanks, darkman424).

Here's a snip from the battery recall info page at apple.com, with instructions on how to apply for the exchange program:

Apple has determined that certain lithium-ion batteries containing cells manufactured by Sony Corporation of Japan pose a safety risk that may result in overheating under rare circumstances. The affected batteries were sold worldwide from October 2003 through August 2006 for use with the following notebook computers: 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4 and 15-inch PowerBook G4.

Reader comment: John D. Verne says,

It isn't clear if you just scan the recall details, but if you (like me) purchased a replacement battery for a G3 iBook, you may still have a problem battery. I noted that the replacement was slightly more powerful than the original battery.

"If you participated in a previous battery recall for any of these computer models or recently purchased or received from Apple an extra battery for an iBook G3, please check your battery serial number in case you received a replacement battery that is affected by this program."

Unfortunately, the iBook I need to check is in Ghana right now! Anyway, unless you read all the way down you may not realize that G3s are also affected.

Also worth underscoring: none of Apple's current-generation notebooks are affected. If you walk into an Apple retail store and toss your credit card in any direction -- your plastic won't plunk down on any product involved in this recall, according to the Apple rep I spoke with earlier today. Unless, like, you aim at someone with an older laptop who happens to be standing in line at the Genius Bar.... but work with me here.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, my colleague at the Institute for the Future, just wrote an engaging article for Samsung's DigitAll Magazine about how industrial factories are becoming more like modern offices and design studios. From the essay, titled Raising The Floor:

Almost since the Industrial Revolution began in the 1750s, engineers and managers have sought to make factories more efficient and productive. Industrial engineering and operations research developed in the mid-twentieth century to put factory design on a more scientific foundation. Total Quality Management and Six Sigma brought a new focus to these efforts: they made quality improvements the centerpiece of factory reform, and made quality a key consumer benefit. They also generated vast quantities of information about factory operations, and required large amounts of information to succeed. Likewise, robotics and supply chain management made manufacturing more information-intensive.

Industrial engineers are now looking beyond the production line: Georgia Tech dean William Rouse argues that industrial engineers will design supply chains and entire enterprises, not just factories. Meanwhile, new technologies are moving into the factory floor. Put most simply, they’ll make products more intelligent; make manufacturing more information-intensive; and turn the factory floor into a center for a new kind of knowledge work...

So what will the factory of the future be like? It will be aware of how users are reacting to both its latest products and still-under-NDA prototypes, feeding off streams of information coming in from prototypes, recycled units, market-watching software agents, and blogs and discussion boards. It will be able to shift production lines in a matter of days or hours, and will constantly incorporate the latest insights from the lab and the natural world. The combined effects of cascades of information and pressure for constant innovation will turn the factory floor from a space populated only by machine-tenders, into a space in which production and innovation happen simultaneously. The factory will follow a transformation similar to the recording studio. Until the 1950s, music studios were places where groups just made recordings: they were production lines. Then, rock and roll musicians like Buddy Holly and the Beatles turned the studio into a place to write songs, improvise, and experiment with new sonic effects. As Brian Eno put it, the studio became an instrument, a space for creation and experimentation as well as production.

Link

Snip from an article by John Schwartz in the NYT:

When the floodwaters receded, the yard was a moonscape of cracked mud and debris; the shrubs in front were bleached gray by salt water. Three-foot-high drifts of muck fouled the interior, and the scummy waterline was just four inches from the first-floor ceiling.

In a city that still seems largely stuck in the mud, this nearly restored home represents 11 months of sweat-drenched labor by its owners, Artie Folse and Tonja Osborne, two of a multitude of New Orleans residents who never stopped pushing ahead.

From the earliest weeks after the storm, Mr. Folse and Ms. Osborne defied the conventional wisdom that little could be accomplished in the city, and overcame the doubts and worries even of their own families. Their efforts, observed since last winter by a reporter for The New York Times, were born of an urge to rebuild that is as primal as the force that pushes grass up through cracks in a sidewalk. Rather than wait for advice, direction or help from the city, the state or the federal governments, Mr. Folse and Ms. Osborne simply got to work.

Link. Photo: Lee Celano/NYT.

Link (thanks, Chris Spurgeon) And here's a similarly-themed t-shirt. (thanks, Brady Koch)

In January, I posted about Spain-based art collective ROJO's new series of beautiful mini monographs collecting work from various street artists. I just received the latest four books that feature Lolo, Elton & Nuria, Sakristan, and Juju's Delivery. Argentine artist Lolo's illustrations on the canvas of Barcelona are my favorite.
Link

Weta makes three models of these stupendous steampunk pistols, which they'll be offering for sale within the next year. They look like they'd cost a fortune -- and be worth every penny. Link (Thanks, Stephen!)

The 32-bit-compatible version of Vista, the next version of Windows, won't play back high-def video because they can't get the DRM right. However, it will play back high-def video if, instead of buying HD DVDs, you just download copies of them off the Internet -- talk about a perverse incentive.

"Any next-generation high definition content will not play in x32 at all," said Riley.

"This is a decision that the Media Player folks made because there are just too many ways right now for unsigned kernel mode code [to compromise content protection]. The media companies asked us to do this and said they don't want any of their high definition content to play in x32 at all, because of all of the unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around content protection, so we had to do this," he said.

Link (via /.)

Update: An anonymous Microsoft employee sez

Media Player won't play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but you'll still be able to play them (on XP, even) with third-party programs like WinDVD and PowerDVD, in full HD.

Why? Because the media companies are willing to certify WinDVD and PowerDVD, but they won't certify Windows, basically for the reasons described. The other problem is indemnity - Microsoft has much deeper pockets and the risks of someone hacking Windows and getting the Microsoft keys is too high; Microsoft's payouts to the studios would be enormous. The DRM contracts essentially say that you forfeit all money lost to the studios if your key is hacked. The money "lost" to the studios is of course calculated using the estimate most favorable to the studios - i.e. every copy downloaded off LimeWire is a full-price loss. Intervideo (WinDVD) and Cyberlink (PowerDVD) are small companies and figure they're not the largest targets, or they'll just go bankrupt and start again as a new company. Cyberlink is based in Asia, and suing them would be pricey.

The screwball thing about all this is that essentially the same risks of hacked drivers and whatnot exist with PowerDVD and WinDVD; there's no good reason for the studios to certify them if they really are worried about people using the PC to copy movies. This leads folks at Microsoft to conclude either:

A) The studios don't understand the technology enough to see these risks clearly, or

B) They just want to screw Microsoft

The studios all have tech consultants, and many of them are not fools, so A seems unlikely. B also doesn't seem completely likely. It's probably the usual: human stupidity rolled up in a big ball.

I'm spending the year at the University of Southern California on a Fulbright chair. Yesterday, some of my students forwarded me a memo sent to them by USC Deputy Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Student Affairs on "Copyright Compliance."

It purports to inform students about the contours and boundaries of copyright, but actually presents a collection of scare-tactic half-truths and astonishing statements about the purpose of the university.

In the letter, USC's officers promise to spend students' tuition on policing them on behalf of the entertainment industry, but make no comparable promise to protect them from the thousands of automated, baseless accusations generated by the RIAA, MPAA and BSA.

Worse, the letter completely mis-states the relationship between copyright and scholarship, omitting any mention of fair use and the other user rights in copyright (especially important in an institution like USC with excellent arts programs, where students are apt to making daily unauthorized uses of copyrighted works for the purpose of criticism and study), and making the extraordinary statement that "USC's purpose is to promote and foster the creation and lawful use of intellectual property." (If this is true, the USC will be "successful" when it generates copyrights and patents, not when it generates scholars and diplomas)

It would be interesting to compare USC's policies on this to those at competing schools like UCLA and produce a ranking chart showing which schools side with scholarship and academic integrity, and which ones take USC's approach of putting non-legal notions of copyright ahead of its students' education.

Link

Update: Aram sez, "I got busted for using BitTorrent on the USC network last year. Here's a link to the (unanswered) letter I wrote back to the university's CIO:

3. File sharing is my area of study and expertise.

Although I admit to downloading content I wish to view for entertainment purposes (i.e. [TV show]), my primary purpose in using file sharing networks is research, not entertainment. I am an "expert" in the field of online file sharing, with a paper trail to prove it. I have published both corporate and academic research on the subject, and served as a public voice in the media and at conferences regarding file sharing since the phenomenon first emerged six years ago. In fact, I was an expert witness for the defense in the recent lawsuit MGM vs. Grokster, which was eventually decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Before I am referred to Student Conduct, I would ask that you consider my research and pedagogical purposes for file sharing, and even consider granting me permission to continue file sharing for these purposes.

Bruce Schneier has an excellent piece up today on how to really, effectively fight terrorism: anti-terror:

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.

Link

Derek sez, "Barney the purple dinosaur may teach kids a lot about playing fair, but his lawyers need a lesson in fair use. Yesterday, EFF asked a federal court in New York to uphold a web publisher's online parody of Barney as non-infringing protected speech. Stuart Frankel posted the parody on his website in 1998, and Barney's lawyers have repeatedly sent him baseless cease-and-desist letters over the last four years. Read the press release and complaint [PDF]." Link, Link to the parody site (Thanks, Derek!)

Last week, I posted that an official definition of "planet" was being debated that would have expanded the number in our solar system to at least twelve. In the end though, the International Astronomical Union went with a much more conservative definition. Pluto has been demoted to a "dwarf planet, resulting in a decrease in the number of "classical" planets in our solar system to eight. From the Associated Press:

Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun -- "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

Link

I had an amazing meal tonight at a restaurant that prides itself on its wine-list. I'm not much of a drinker, but I was happy to try the Gewürztraminer grape juice from Navarro Vineyards, a rich, tasty grape-juice that has complexity and flavor comparable to a good wine. Navarro also makes a Pinot Noir grape juice that sounds delicious. I took a pic of the label and checked online later, hoping that Navarro sold the juice over the web, and they do! At $11/bottle, it's not for everyday use, but it sure makes for a great special treat. Pinot Noir Link, Gewürztraminer Link

This HOWTO purports to explain the creation of a fly-powered matchstick airplane. Despite the lavish and handsome illustrations (and the precedent in the form of young Nikola Tesla's june-bug-powered motor) I don't really imagine that this would work, and if it did, it would be pretty squick. Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

Update: Jon sez, "the graphic with the flies & matchsticks is from an Esquire of a few years back."