San Francisco artist Rio Yanez hosted "The Great Tortilla Conspiracy" at the De Young museum last week, inviting artists to come by and have their art silkscreened onto tortillas with edible inks.

Starting [Saturday], all media operators, including Internet media companies, face immediate closure if any news articles or comments, which could be deemed a threat to Thailands national security and monarchy, are published.

The Information Ministry invited all companies and operators to discuss cooperation methods in helping the government "to restrict, control, stop or destroy information deemed to affect the constitutional monarchy".

Chief internet inspector Kritpong Rimcharonepak told reporters: "We seek their cooperation not to present articles, remarks, or information that will infringe the democratic reform under the constitutional monarchy. They can still present political comments on their media, but if anything goes wrong, the caretakers of those media must take responsibility."

There’s a bill pending in Zimbabwe’s parliament - the Interception of Communications Bill - which would establish a government center for the interception of communications: email, web page downloads, instant messaging, financial transactions, as well as postal mail and courier services. The Chief of the Defence Intelligence, the Director-General of the President’s department on national security, the Commissioner of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Commissioner-General of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority would be able to apply to the Minister of Transport and Communications to intercept communications - requests will be granted if the minister has reason to believe “a serious offence has been or is being or will probably be committed or that there is threat to safety or national security of the country.”

To comply with the bill, Internet Service Providers would - at their own cost - have to install hardware and software to allow such communication interception to take place. Because of the financial burden this would put on providers - and because they’re concerned about the loss of privacy of Internet users - ZISPA is challenging the bill and has written a detailed response to the bill.

Job responsibilities include:

* Creating powerful images about key issues for our website
* Coordinating and developing graphics for grassroots awareness campaigns that can drive people to our website and to take action
* Working with other public interest groups on grassroots campaigns
* Editing written materials for the website

Required:

* Intimate knowledge of Photoshop and Illustrator
* Experience designing for web and print
* Excellent writing skills
* Great project management skills
* A passion for internet civil liberties issues

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement)"True Films" contains the best 100 documentaries I've reviewed on True Films as of December, 2004. I winnowed some from the larger list, and came up with an alphabetical collection of 100 documentaries I feel are worth your time. Most people will enjoy the majority included. There's been one private film club launched around this list. What you get for your $3: a downloadable PDF file of a color version of the book (which was printed in B&W).

* Stéphane used DVDdecrypter to transfer a legally purchased DVD onto his portable DVD player, and risks a € 3,750 fine;

* Tangui read a DVD on an open-source Linux software; and

* Jérôme bypassed DRMs on music legally purchased on iTunes and another French online provider, explained how to bypass DRMs on a webpage, and translated a software that gets rid of protections on digital content; for all that, he risks a € 30,000 fine and up to six months in prison."

Link (Thanks, Bruno!)

FT: The film, as you say, doesn’t take the easy route of poking fun at what some ‘normal’ folks might consider to be weird behaviour, even when it borders on the absurd…

(AP:) Truthfully, of course, some of the film is funny; but Klingon speakers would see that too – they’re definitely in on the joke, and that’s what makes it great. But there’s a difference between finding this weird and laughing at what they do and dismissing their activities. Yes, it’s funny. Yes, it’s absurd. But that’s precisely the type of subculture that makes our world so endlessly fascinating. In this era of globalisation, I think it’s great that people try to assert their identity by embracing such communities. And what I’m personally particularly proud of is that I was there to create a lasting document proving the existence and the worth of this unique linguistic phenomenon...

DM: Everyone we met during the filming process, and all the Klingons we have met since, are virtually the same – gentle, intelligent people. Many of them are genuine Trek fans and this is their way of exploiting their love of the franchise. Many are linguists and language experts; in some cases Klingon is the sixth or seventh language they speak. And many of them are in it for the social aspects. I will say that while KLI members for the most part don’t indulge in dressing the Klingon way, they do take on a different persona when in Klingon mode. The large groups of people who like to dress as Klingons really take on different personalities while in the role. They act boisterous and aggressive... but when they change back, all is normal.

Among the highlights:

• Anderson says he was a "complete fuck-up" who graduated high school late and flunked out of the University of Maryland with "a 0.0 G.P.A."
• Calls himself a "small 'l' libertarian" who nonetheless voted for Al Gore in 2000: "But I’m not proud of this. I wish the system would put forward politicians that I could vote for."
• Says being a parent of four young children "has made me a better boss."
• Dismisses the Wall Street Journal's Lee Gomes' criticism of The Long Tail: "I struggled a little bit with some of those statistics in my first week of researching this, too, but fortunately, I had time to actually do the math."
• Takes on social theorists such as Paradox of Choice author Barry Schwartz who fear that too much choice is paralyzing: "The answer to the paradox of choice is help."
• Talks about his musical past in a band called R.E.M., which lost a Battle of the Bands to the famous band of the same name.
• Discusses his proudest achievement at Wired: "What I’m most proud of is that we made our very optimistic message about how technology can change the world [matter again] after many people had written that off after the dot-com bust. I’m very proud that we stuck to our mission and that that message resonates [again]. I don’t think we caused it to resonate, but when the world recognized what sort of felt obvious to those of us who live in this world, I was very proud that we were still leading that."

“According to the reading on my equipment up front, there is still one cell phone turned on, so please check that you have turned yours off.”

Obviously, she has no equipment for detecting this, but you should have seen the passengers scramble to check their bags. Except for me, of course. My laptop hummed happily along under the seat in front of me. Still, brilliant on the part of the flight attendant, although I think it would have been more convincing coming from the pilot.

... TSA just confiscated my deodorant and my toothpaste. Of course they let me keep my contact lens solution. Hmmm…if I were a terrorist, don’t you think that I could figure out how to take the top off a bottle of contact lens solution and put my explosive liquids in there? It is totally pointless to enforce rules which impose costs on innocent people, but are easily circumvented by terrorists. Can anyone think this is accomplishing anything productive?

Businessbibs are hand-made from recycled materials and are supposed to be sturdy and stylish. Priced between $135-150, they can be ordered online.

What the fuck is up with Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) and his "freaky jack-o-lantern head contemplating sacred desert bird doodle?" If that's not a 'shroom-fueled Meat Puppets album cover, I'm a mindless idiot on the lake of fire.

It took Pierre 15 years and more than 20,000 hours to build this car. He learned to make glass so he could make the exact pattern lens for the operating headlights. He learned to make rubber so he could mold his own tires. His computer mainframe design background with the French telecommunications system allowed him to duplicate the Ferrari electronics system in exact miniature. It also provided him with the understanding needed to make a 1/3 scale operating fuel injection system identical to that in the full-size Ferrari.

With the inaugural 700 members all settled in and working on opening up the next membership opportuntity as well as the setup for the film, they're opening up the first "voting day" to settle the big questions that the project is working on now:

* How to reward members who complete tasks in the critical path?
* What the project's tagline should be
* What to do with any excess money from the project?
* Which poster should the project use? Link (Thanks, Matt!)

(Disclosure: I am a proud member of the advisory board of the nonprofit Swarm of Angels project)

The Fine Cut Seville Orange Marmalade with Whisky, Champagne and Gold mixes the finest Seville fruit with vintage Dalmore 62 whisky from Whyte & Mackay (valued at £32,000 per bottle), topped off with a splash of Pol Roger Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill 1996 vintage champagne and garnished with flakes of 24-carat gold leaf.

The resulting spread, encased in a custom-made crystal jar valued at £1,100, would cost £76 to cover a single slice of toast.

"No." I state plainly. "I am not married. I've been in a relationship for several years and I have three children, I don't want a fourth." I respond tersely.

"Oh, I see." He says and then he hurries on, "Well, see. *I* understand. I want you to know that I understand what you're saying. But see, the problem is that we have 4 doctors here right now but only one of them ever writes EC prescriptions. But see, the thing is that he'll interview you and see if you meet his criteria. Now, I called the pharmacy but I also talked to him and well....*clears throat*....you can come down and try to get it. You know, if you meet his criteria he'll give you a prescription, I mean, there's really no harm in trying." the nurse trails off, his voice falters as I realize what I'm being told.

He continues, almost over eager at this point to distance himself from the hospital, "See, I understand what you're saying and all. I think it's a good thing that it's going over the counter. I just thought I should tell you what he told me. You know, you'll just have to have an interview with him and he'll see if you meet his criteria. He'll only be on duty until 2pm today though and you should ask for him if you decide to come down because he's really your only chance."

I sigh and thank him before hanging up. I know exactly what he was telling me. If I wasn't raped and wasn't married then too damn bad for me.

"What I want people to know is that they call me a cold-blooded killer when I shot a man that shot me first. The only thing that convicted me was that I am a Mexican and that he was a police officer. People hollered for my life, and they are to have my life tonight.

"The people never hollered for the life of the policeman that killed a 13-year-old boy who was handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. The people never hollered for the life of a Houston police officer who beat up and drowned Jose Campo Torres and threw his body in the river. You call that equal justice. This is your equal justice. This is America's equal justice.

"A Mexican's life is worth nothing. When a policeman kills someone he gets a suspended sentence. When a Mexican kills a police officer this is what you get. From there you call me a cold-blooded murderer. I didn't tie anyone to a stretcher. I didn't pump poison into anybody's veins from behind a locked door [ ... ] I hope God will be as merciful to society as he has been to me. I'm ready, Warden."

These days, DRM hardware and media seems to all come on terms like this: a license, a rental, anything except a plain, old-fashioned sale where you end up owning property.

The DRM people tell us that rentals are great for the poor and disenfranchised, since these rental "offers" can be made for less than a real purchase would cost. But I think this is more representative of the trajectory of rentware models: you pay, and pay, and pay, and pay.

It's not a coincidence that rich people who have a choice almost never choose to rent. They own their homes, their cars, and their TVs. Rich people don't sign "agreements" that let repo men come over and take away their stuff. Even if you know you'll never miss a payment, we all know that owning enriches you, renting enriches someone else.

The number of customers leasing phones dropped from 40 million nationwide to about 750,000 today, said John Skalko, spokesman for Murray Hill, N.J.-based Lucent Technologies, a spinoff of AT&T that manages the residential leasing service.

"We will continue to lease sets as long as there is a demand for them," Skalko said.

Benefits of leasing include free replacements and the option of switching to newer models, he said.

Well, some folks on the alliance side of We K(no)W finally figured out something useful to do there - plan raids during Tuesday downtime. Above is my Avatar standing on the UBRS map with a few notations. I'll admit I only lasted a few minutes in there again this time, but at least it was interesting finally!

SoundExchange (which is in charge of collecting and distributing royalties collected from satellite radio and webcasting) can't seem to locate the artists to whom these royalties are to be paid. If the monies are not disbursed, SoundExchange gets to keep them. Apparently SoundExchange was worried about publishing the list for fear that "middlemen" would try to swipe a piece of the action for connecting artists with their royalties. (Did they ever think to reach out to the fans?)

They finally published a list of the artists they "can't find."

Check out all the major label artists they can't find:

Cassandra Wilson (Blue Note)?
J. J. Cale (Mercury)?
Jane Siberry (Warner)?
Jeff Buckley (Columbia Records -- they're still putting out his stuff posthumously, with help from his mother!)?
Loverboy?!!
Booker T & the MGs?!!!
Public Enemy? !!!!!!
SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES? !!!!!

Not to mention major indie artists like:

Pizzicato Five
L7
Pete Rock

And they can't find Public Image Ltd, despite the fact that they found Johnny Rotten's "other band," the Sex Pistols? They can't seem to find "Neko Case & Her Boyfriends", despite the fact that they seem to have found Neko Case?

The only silver lining here is that to look at the list is to realize that webcasters are bringing real musical diversity back to America -- it's a much richer list than you'd get by aggregating playlists from FM radio!

For SoundExchange's sake, I hope there's a reasonable explanation for this.

Update 2: Fred sez, "Turns out SoundExchange WAS part of the RIAA until 2003. Now it's independent -- although each of the major labels has a board seat. Anyhow, the point is the same -- SoundExchange certainly has deep connections with the major label establishment, so. Here's the FAQ re SoundExchange.

Update: Laura sends in links to other pools of unclaimed royalties for artists: EMI, EMI music publishing, Sony BMG, Universal Music, Harry Fox, CMRRA

Like many, I first encountered McCloud's books with Understanding Comics, a comic about what comics mean and how they mean it. It's a guide for readers who love comics, and for readers who want to know why they might love comics. It's incredibly lucid and inspiring, and it explains some of the fundamental ways in which stories happen and some of the fundamental ways in which we perceive them. Reading that book was a watershed for me, something that made me reconsider every story I read, watched or heard.

After that came Reinventing Comics, a highly speculative book about what comics might be on the Web. In Understanding Comics, McCloud was telling us something he really knew cold, these incredible insights he'd had about how comics work. In Reinventing Comics, McCloud is more making it up as he goes along, talking about how he thinks comics might be someday. Like many predictions about the Web, some of it was obsolete by the time it went to press, and some of it was shown up over time. Reinventing Comics is an interesting book, but it's not a book that inspires the way that Understanding Comics did (McCloud seems to know this -- the third book contains some slightly wry jokes to that effect).

In Making Comics, McCloud presents a subject that blends the best of both of Reinventing and Understanding Comics. Like Understanding Comics, Making Comics visits territory where McCloud is a master. His explanations of how comics are made, the mechanics of the decisions that make a successful story out of words and pictures, are both theoretical and highly practical. McCloud is a great explainer, someone who makes the subject come to life -- even for someone like me, who'll likely never draw or write a comic. The insights he offers into how comics are made touched me like those in Understanding Comics, making me re-think the way that I see the world and understand it -- seeing how anything gets made tells you more about how to use it.

But there's some of the best of Reinventing Comics in this, too. Like any author, McCloud doesn't know exactly how he does what he does, and in the tradition of the best books about creating, this is a book where McCloud asks himself hard questions about how and why he tells his own stories. So he's not only visiting turf he knows intimately, he's also blazing new trail.

The book is in seven chapters, and each chapter ends with several pages of prose notes, which contain further explanations and exercises for the student comics-ist. It's a handsome, easy-to-absorb gift for the aspiring comics creator in your life. And it's a fine book for anyone who wants to understand how to take apart a comic and see how it works. Link

See also:
Scott McCloud takes "Making Comics" on the road with daughters

Making Comics site

About Shivaree, Wikipedia sez, "In the American Midwest, along the Missouri River in Nebraska and Missouri, the term takes on the meaning of playfully kidnapping the bride, curiously similar to some Central Asian traditions." Link to Vader flower-girl post, Link to practical joke post (Thanks, Bill)

The attendees were split on this -- some people from the Disney studios attended, and they, too, were conflicted about this. All in all, it was one of the meatiest, most interesting and wide-ranging talks about DRM, copyright and freedom I've been a part of.

Link, Podcast feed, Subscribe to podcast (Thanks, Andy!)

Reminder: The next two speakers in the USC Annenberg series are Bruce Sterling, 2PM on Monday, Sept 25; and Bruce Schneier, 7PM on Tuesday, Sept 26. These are free, public talks, and I'll post the audio for them as well. Link

The system is constructed by the Pileus Umbrella and the Pileus WebService. User can see and take a photo and video with the PileusUmbrella. User can hand on own experience in rainy day to next user with an umbrella type photoset. User Connects the Grip with the Screen, then the Grip reads the Screen’s ID and login to own Pileus Account. When user takes photos or videos, Pileus WebService evaluates media-type of data and uploads it to Flickr or YouTube, and then set a tag by screen ID. In addition, user twists the grip, it searchs contents at Flickr and YouTube by tag of screen ID, and displays contents in order.

Using forensic photographs, written historical accounts, and techniques used for creating horror effects in film, special attention is given to the details of the injuries sustained during the final moments of each character's life. All of the eyes are glazed over to produce the lack-luster stare of the dead. Torn flesh and deep gashes are shown in all their gory details and for decapitations the severed muscle tissue and bone is visible in the wound...

These dolls were designed and created by a couple of artists who share a love for history and for horror, two things that often share the same stage in textbooks and films but are rarely seen together in commemorative dolls.

"The Virtual Bible will enable the Bible Society to supply the Bible to every modern cell phone user in a fast and affordable format," Rev Gerrit Kritzinger, chief executive of the Bible Society in South Africa, said in a statement...

Customers can choose between the traditional King James version of the bible or more up-to-date translations. Zulu and Xhosa version will be available soon and other languages will follow.

It says, "Hand washing reduces the spread of germs. Thank you for washing your hands!"

The manufacturer claims it increases hand washing by 12%. Link (Via Neatorama)

The 75th Commemorative Edition Travel Trailer combines ultra-refined, polished aluminum interiors with rich, natural materials such as warm wood veneers materials and details which pay homage to founder Wally Byam’s original designs.

Designer David Winick took the lead in creating an interior space that is both ultra modern and retrospective. Natural linoleum in warm tones brings out the highlights of genuine wood veneers. Upholstery inspired by 1940’s tailoring heightens textural contrasts, reflecting in an array of aluminum surfaces. Porthole windows, round vents and yacht-inspired details further integrate the past and future in this very special travel trailer.

Chew and swallow one of these crunchy, wiggling critters and Six Flags will also give you a Flash Pass for the evening that will let you bypass the line on many thrill rides...

The cockroaches, which Six Flags will buy from local pet stores, were chosen because they are considered a delicacy in many Asian and African cultures.

(Photo thumbnail from a larger picture entitled Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches by Flickr user Corwinok)

The project has been painstakingly completed by more than 300 contributors, including a group of gay men knitting in Brighton, and a 12-year-old boy in Sussex, who spent six months making the pond and waterfall.

Ms Bolsover, 46, of Dorking, Surrey, estimates her team made 4million individual stitches, knitting together 80km (50 miles) of wool.

I tried hard to buy us another spray can. I'm a street poet, so really, I tried. I walked up to the mall-store register, disguised in my Dad's business jacket, with cash in hand. They're cheap, aerosol spray cans. Beautiful colours of paint, just screaming to get sprayed someplace public where everybody has to see what's on our minds. The store wouldn't sell me the can. The e-commerce system simply would not allow that transaction. The screen just went gray and stayed gray.

That creepy "differential permissioning" sure saves a lot of trouble for grown-ups. Increasing chunks of the world are just... magically off limits. It's a weird new regime where every mall and every school and every bus and train and jet is tagged and tracked and ambient and pervasive and ubiquitous and geolocative... Jesus, I love those words... Where was I?

One of the problems with WiMP11 is licensing and backing it up. If you buy media with DRM infections, you can't move the files from PC to PC, or at least you can't and have them play on the new box. If you want the grand privilege of moving that content, you need to get the approval of the content mafia, sign your life away, and use the tools they give you. If you want to do it in other ways, you are either a lawbreaker or following the advice of J Allard. Wait, same thing...

Yes, WiMP11 will no longer allow you the privilege of backing up your licenses, they are tied to a single device, and if you lose it, you are really SOL. Remember that feeling I mentioned earlier? This is nothing less than a civil rights coup, and most people are dumb enough to let it happen...

But it gets worse. If you rip your own CDs, WiMP11 will take your rights away too. If the 'Copy protect music' option is turned on, well, I can't top their 1984 wording. "If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you might be able to restore your usage rights by playing the file. You will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times." This says to me it will keep track of your ripping externally, and remove your rights whether or not you ask it to. Can you think of a reason you would need to connect to MS for permission to play the songs you ripped from you own CDs? How long do you think it will be before a service pack, masquerading as a 'critical security patch' takes away the optional part of the 'copy protection'? Now do you understand why they have been testing the waters on WiMP phoning home? Think their firewall will stop it even if you ask?

I've done this before with a big milk-carton -- just cut the top off and slide the bottle in, then fill with water and pop it in the freezer. You can even do things like suspend flowers, curios and other detritus in the ice. Link (via ShinyShiny)

This is the dance of the Ghosts sequence from 'Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne', Satyajit Ray's rare 1968 film fable. The action occurs in an ... all imaginary land. Goopy the singer and Bagha the drummer are untalented musicians whose playing provokes as much ridicule from the peasants as it does contempt from the king. The only audience they manage to charm is the ghosts. Wearing magic sandals, they arrive in the kingdom of Shundi where, to everyone's amazement, the ruler admires their music. Meanwhile, the king of the neighboring realm of Halla, who is the twin brother of the king of Shundi, wants to declare war. Goopy and Bagha do everything in their power to dissuade him, and finally it is their singing that demobilizes the troops at the last moment. Reconciled, the twin brothers offer to reward Goopy and Bagha with their daughters in marriage.

On Wed. Sept 13, 2006, the FCC issued one of the worst decisions it has ever issued on closed captioning. The Order is on the web site shown below. Basically the order grants two requests for exemptions from the requirement to closed caption, a requirement in place since 1996 and that has ensured more and more closed captioning on television.

In taking this action, the FCC states that it is "inclined favorably" to grant new exemption requests to organizations that do "not receive compensation from video programming distributors from the airing of [their] programs," and who also say they "may terminate or substantially curtail [their] programming" or "[curtail] other activities important to [their] mission" if forced to caption.

The gist of what the FCC has done is to open the door to many more exemptions. It appears also the FCC's action creates a rule change that defines a new category of exemption from the captioning rules, cutting the legs out from the current "undue burden" proof currently needed to get an exemption for captioning requirement.

Update: François sez, "The adverse impact goes much beyond the hearing impaired: close captioning attaches a synchronized stream of text to a video stream, which opens up useful ways to index, search and retrieve video for anyone, deaf or not."

Kuniholm was an engineer before his Marine reserve unit was sent to Iraq, where he lost his arm to an IED. His engineer/design partners in North Carolina worked with him to improve the nonfunctional smooth plastic prosthesis he was issued by the VA, making substantial improvements over the basic design. Then they decided to open up the designs to help other amputees. The site has grown into a collection of prosthesis hacks that includes mounting a Spider Man fishing rod on a child's prosthetic arm.

All this week, Garry Trudeau has been running a Doonesbury series about BD, the football jock/veteran amputee just back from Iraq, who goes to a tattoo parlor motorcycle shop with his prosthetic leg to get the man there to "pimp his gimp."

Founded last year, the nonprofit Open Prosthetics Project applies the ethical and intellectual property foundation of open-source software to the task of building better artificial limbs. The project releases its experimental designs to its website in the public domain, free for anyone to use, forever. Anyone can download the STL files, tinker with them in CAD software, and submit them to a rapid manufacturer, such as a prototyping 3-D printing company.

This lets anyone turn out a customized prosthetic device without incurring tens of thousands of dollars in production costs. A user with a few hundred dollars to spend can be holding the physical reality within a week, though the post processing would still require some expertise...

Open Prosthetics' experimental design incorporates both modes in one hook, using a pin/spring/cam set-up controlled by the intensity of the wearer's shrug: A limited shrug momentarily opens or closes the hook, just like the traditional design, while a full shrug acts as a toggle, reversing the hook from open to closed, or visa versa, and leaving it there until the next actuation.

They've built and rebuilt two versions of this positional hook, and they have a working prototype of the entire limb made from LEGO Technic parts. (This video demonstrates the strength difference of the two modes in picking up a small object.)

Doonesbury mod-your-prosthetic strips: 1, 2, 3, 4

(Thanks, David!)

Update: The Lizardman sez, "This reminded me of Amina Munster, a Suicide Girl who had her prosthetic leg pimped on an episode of Inked. I remember seeing the episode being stunned when she handed the leg to the artists to be 'tattooed' and mentioned how much it cost - he seemed suitably awed as well. Here's an NSFW interview from BME/News which includes her.

Update 2: Nick sez, "I work on a public radio program, The Story: with Dick Gordon. We recently aired an interview with Jonathan Kuniholm and Chuck Messer, two founders of The Open Source Prosthetics Project. The same show also features an interview with Robert Haag, a man who was motivated to design prosthetic devices--including a screw-on fishing pole--for his son Michael, who was born without a left hand. The show aired on August 17, and can be heard here."

Update: Lee sez, "The full set of Japan Tobacco's wonderful 'smoking manner' poster campaign can be found here."

Update 2: Hiro sez, "The Japanese sensibility on this is beyond 'bordering on' the absurd. It's funny and sad and charming: see this image of a roadside ashtray being grossly overfilled, but yet people still take time to squish more butts in."

The product's sell-sheet is a wiki and the first batch are only available to Linux hackers who will test, tweak and extend them.

Standard Power Adapter
Imagine you'd like a cigarette adapter for the OSD, or a second wall adapter. Instead of using an expensive proprietary part, the OSD uses a standard power adapter that you can buy at your local electronics store. It's the same Power Adapter the Sony PSP and the Dell Axim X5 use.

Remote Control
The OSD remote control uses a set of standard codes that emulates a Sony VCR. This means that it's easy to replace with a Universal remote of your choosing. If you lose the remote or want to consolidate your remotes, it's easy.

Programmability of the Included Remote
The included remote can control the TV volume and power which means that you can use it to replace the remote that came with your TV. You can flush your TV remote down the toilet (but we recommend you first make sure your toilet is capable of processing such it - consult the user's manual).

I'll Fix Your Computer if You Let Me Feel Your Boobs - 26 (haight ashbury)

Cute/nice IT guy/PC specialist will fix your computer in exchange for a gentle feel of your boobs. I'm a totally non-creepy (really) professional who will repair your hard drive, back up files, install software and peripherals, whatever, for an innocent grope. I have a lot of tech knowledge in my life and regrettably no boobs. Serious inquiries only and thanks.

We discovered Bill Hufnagle's cooking show several years ago while flipping through the cable channels. Bill is a freewheeling food lover, pepper gardener, vegetarian and Harley rider, totally committed to getting people to play more with their food, cook healthier and ride safe. Hot peppers, Bill says, make for more fun and more flavors than any other vegetable. So take your taste buds on a culinary road trip with our hot Biker Billy pepper seed.

This jalapeno is really packed with rich flavor. Billy likes 'em best when they are flaming red and at their sweetest. Fruits are very large, measuring 2" at the shoulder and 3-1/2" long. Upright plants up to 24" tall. Burpee Exclusive. Grows best in full sun. Harvest 66 days after transplanting into the garden.

Reader comment:

Ethan says:

Burpee has a Flickr page of our Harley "pepper bike" which we custom created for Biker Billy. Flames shoot out of the tail pipes! The bike has a gold leaf hand-drawn logo inspired by an old 1892 Burpee catalog cover, and the paint changes color like a ripening pepper.

This massive art exhibition features over 100 original pieces by dozens of authors published by Fantagraphics over the last 30 years, including Daniel Clowes, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Chris Ware, Peter Bagge, Jim Woodring, Joe Sacco, Carol Tyler, Ivan Brunetti, Tony Millionaire, Roberta Gregory, Bill Griffith, Richard Sala, Bob Fingerman, Steve Brodner, David B., Kim Deitch, Al Columbia, Drew Friedman, Kaz, Frank Frazetta (!) and many others. It will be an amazing show, with many iconic pieces from Fantagraphics' history.

On the Boing Boing Boing podcast, I mentioned that I had been passed a phony $1 bill, but now I'm not so sure. Here's why.

Last Sunday, I bought my kids some ice cream ($7 plus tax for two small cups!) and gave the girl at the counter a $10. She handed me two $1 bills and some coins. One of bills was normal looking. The other one was as white as a sheet of photocopy paper, and just as thin. It was very wrinkled and the edges were frayed. It felt extremely flimsy.

When we sat down, I showed the bill to my 9-year-old daughter and I told her that I thought it was counterfeit. She wanted me to go back and exchange it for a real dollar, but I told her that a counterfeit $1 bill is worth more than a dollar to me.

At home, I looked at the bill under a microscope. The printing looked fuzzy, but the paper contained telltale red and blue fibers, the kind found in real currency. I don't think a counterfeiter specializing in $1 bills would use this kind of paper. Also, when I held a magnet close to the bill, it clung to the magnet (as explained here).

My conclusion: the money is real. I think it went through the laundry, though.

Reader comment:

Adam says:

The story of your possibly counterfeit $1 bill (and your recent mention that you lived in Japan) reminded me of the time I found a 10,000 yen note in the gutter on my way to work on a rainy morning. I'm almost certain that the plenty of salary men and office ladies saw it but because it was so dirty they were not interested in it. Not me. When I got to my office I asked what I should do with it. The majority felt I should take it to the police station and that it would be given to me if nobody claimed it.

To my surprise my supervisor said I should just keep it. She had once found some money on a train and turned it in. Six months later she came home from a two week vacation to discover that during that time a postcard with directions to pick up the money had arrived. Unfortunately the date by which she had to pick up the money had already lapsed.

With the decision to keep it made, I took the note home where I laundered and ironed it. Needless to say the color was washed out. Additionally, the bill was no longer square and had two permanent creases - presumably the result of having been run over by cars a number of times. The most anonymous way I could think to spend the note was to buy the cheapest one way ticket at the train station. At first the ticket agent tried to ask a lot of questions but I said I didn't speak Japanese and could he please speak English. I imagine that ultimately he decided that whatever trouble might arise from this note was probably less trouble than trying to deal with a gaijin.

As for counterfeit money, after I returned from Japan (1993) I ended up working on a prototype electronic notebook for some microscopists. They had a contract to try to determine the origin of some extremely good counterfeit $100 bills. If, on a scale of 1 - 10, a bill only has to be a 5 to be easily passed these bills were a 9. As I recall, there were two theories. One was that some other country planned to flood the market with these super counterfeits. The other was that it was the work of a hobbiest hence the extreme attention to detail. In either case, the goal of the microscopists was to look for particulate matter either in the paper or trapped between the paper and the ink with the hope that the particulate matter would reveal where in the world the bills were made. I believe it was these bills that prompted many of the subsequent changes in bill design. My favorite proposed protection scheme involved the use of genetically modified cotton. While it satisfied the requirement that it would be hard to duplicate, the time required to identify a counterfeit meant that you only knew long after it was passed.

POLICY

Paper toy is:

REPLICABLE, but SHIN makes only one model per a design.

DISTRIBUTABLE, but SHIN's toy is only for the designer and SHIN.

MASS-PRODUCABLE, but all SHIN's toys are made by his hand.

The Quadro Corporation of Harleyville, South Carolina, had an impressive client list: public schools, police agencies, the U.S. Customs office, and Inspector General’s offices to name a few. The product they sold, the top of the line Quadro QRS 250G (also known as the Quadro Tracker, available for $1,000), boasted the ability to find drugs, weapons, or virtually anything worth looking for. The small plastic box supposedly contained frequency chips of an advanced sort not known to regular science. Driven by static electricity, the Quadro would resonate at exactly the same frequency as the searched-for item. When the FBI opened the box, however, they found nothing inside. Quadro threatened to sue Sandia Laboratories when Sandia suggested that the device was fraudulent, but eventually Quadro became the bigger company, and just closed shop.

Reader comment:

David says:

#4 - the peppered moth experiment is not a hoax. The idea that it is has been widely promoted only by creationists. The moths were glued to trees for the sake of photographs, not during the actual experiment/observation, the experiment took into account different places where moths rest, and birds will pretty much eat whatever they can get their beaks on. Link

That rather calls the validity of the list into question...

One of the things that makes me truly happy to be a Angeleno is the handpainted signage of this crazy city. Everywhere you go, there are crudely-rendered depictions of bleach bottles, Mickey Mouse, and polar bears drinking Coke. I have often thought about trying to document some of my favorites, and produce a book/art object, Ed Ruscha-style.

I drive by this tire place almost every day on my way to my studio. Of all the signage in the city, this masterpiece is the one that I always come back to, the one that just blows my mind.

Reader comment:

Maury says:

Also a lover of handpained signage, I enjoyed the post of the Michelin man sign.

Recently in San Blas Mexico, I took a few and here's a link to a small flickr set

Attached is my fave: Tuberculosis.

After being invited to Foo Camp, I decided I wanted to bring something cool to show off and I thought it would be a clever way to get out of hosting a session. Plus, I have a backlog of projects that reach from here to the top of Jack's Beanstalk. Sometimes I think that I should create a list of all the projects, but that invariably leads to an upset stomach and an immediate desire to take a nap.

A favorite idea was to sell books in a standard bulk gumball and sticker machine. Small books. Very small books. A specific volume that would have just enough information to get you started on a new path in life. I have a shelf at home that is dedicated to inspirational books that open a foreign world and change you in a fundamental way. I am not talking about going to Morocco. I am talking about "Getting Started Right with Turkeys." Or "Shop Work on the Farm", "5 Acres and Independence", "Aircraft Sheet Metal Construction", "Locksmithing", "Your Self-Service Store" and "Backyard Poultry Farming". These books give a peek into what might be. One day, you are Joe Average. A nobody. End of the week comes and you are tending baby chicks and picking locks. A transformation has taken place. You are a giant.

Okay, the title lies. It's not really a robot, it's a little one-motor walking machine (no sensors, no feedback), but the project does teach you about basic breadboarding, soldering, use of the BEAM Bicore control circuit, how to hack a servo motor, and other deep geek mojo you can apply to building actual bots.

This is a version of the project that was in my book, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots, and pictured in Make Vol. 6 and on the issue's Web page. The illustrations were done by Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder and the photos are by Street Tech's court photographer Jay Townsend.

Among the drug hip, the use of the word narcotic to describe mind-active drugs other than opiates carries with it an implicit irony. (Implicit only because irony, by its nature, can’t be explicit.) On the other hand, the mainstream media, even the San Francisco Chronicle, from the drug-sophisticated Bay Area, tends to use law enforcement misnomers for illicit drugs, when reporting news around drugs. For instance, one report called the disassociative hallucinogen Ketamine a “date rape drug.” There is, of course, no such thing as a date rape drug. There are drugs that were developed to be used — and are used – for other purposes that are, on rare occasions, used for date rape. And then there’s alcohol, which has been the more easily available and frequently used substance of choice for date rapists since time immemorial. Unlike some other US papers, The Chronicle, at least, never reported on an LSD overdose, something this is virtually impossible to achieve, however hard some of us may have tried back in the days of heroic dose experimentation.

If you would prefer not to be stripped of your home and dignity, please send us $3,750 in the return envelope. If your toddler has been named in this lawsuit, explain to them that the fruits of their labor as an adult will go to pay a debt that will ultimately lead to their death at a young age due to their inability to afford medical insurance. Toddlers never understand that, but they'll get the point if you make them cry. If your household pet has been named in this lawsuit, it will be euthanized. If you are a 13-year-old girl, do not expect that the bad publicity in the past has made us hesitant to sue little girls—it has only made us hate you even more. If you, your household pet, or your toddler did not commit any of the acts above, then we will sue you and ruin your life forever for lying. Then we will sue you again, because it's not about the money anymore. It's about revenge.

If you would like to make an excuse, please mark one of the boxes below with a No. 2 pencil and return.

1. My computer was hacked.

2. I am poor and cannot afford music. That is why I download songs at the public library. Please don't sue me or my children will starve. :(

3. One of your goons was in a van outside my house using my wireless connection to frame me.

4. Other children were singing the "Happy Birthday" song, but I was just lip-synching.

It tells the stories of seven young men who were compelled to become kamikaze pilots – essentially airborne suicide bombers, flying into Allied warships (the Wikipedia entry on kamikaze is here) – by the Japanese military. Most of the seven had been students at elite universities, and they kept diaries, which form the basis of the book.

It’s an invaluable study. It makes clear that high levels of coercion were used to compel the students to “volunteer” for their assignments. And it shows that these were no grinning fanatics – the image that many in the West have of the kamikaze pilots. (An image I vaguely held myself, despite having lived in Japan. It’s not a topic that the Japanese discuss much with Westerners.)

Government-owned TelOne, which owns the country's main satellite Internet link, said satellite firm Intelsat had cut its international bandwidth because it failed to pay the $700,000 fee.

"The link is slow because they reduced the megabits on our satellite link until the payment is made," TelOne spokesman Phill Chingwaru told Reuters on Wednesday.

"We have approached the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe for foreign currency and they are working on that, but meanwhile there would be delays in browsing because of the partial cut-off."

More here, here, and here. Josh's last video post before returning to prison is here today. Previous BB posts about Josh's case here, also in this week's BB podcast. Benefit concert tomorrow night, details here. Wolf plans to blog from prison, by way of paper notes presumably. RSF says:

Reporters Without Borders today accused the US justice system of “persecuting” freelance video journalist and blogger Josh Wolf after three appeal court judges decided on 18 September to revoke his bail and send him back to prison for refusing to hand over his unedited video footage of a demonstration to a grand jury.

Wolf had until 1 p.m. today to report to the federal prison in Dublin, California, where he was already held from 1 August to 1 September.

“We say again that the federal judicial authorities cannot invoke national security to imprison Wolf, as they have - abusively - in contempt of court proceedings against other journalists involving professional secrecy,” Reporters Without Borders said. “At no time has Wolf tried to run away since these proceedings were brought against him. The month he already spent in prison was both absurd and unjust. Sending him back is cowardly and persecutory.”

The press freedom organisation added: “Would Wolf be suffering this fate if he were not a 24-year-old freelance journalist? We doubt it. And he was given such a short deadline to return to the prison that his lawyers did not even have time to appeal against the latest ruling.”

Each member of the family is blogging about the trip over on Live Journal. And they are working together to produce a series of podcasts which they are calling Winterviews (after youngest daughter, Winter, who will be the on-camera presence in these films). The daughters will research about some of the comics people they will meet along the way, read and discuss some of their work, prepare questions, do interviews, and edit them for transmission via the web. Sky is also preparing an evolving powerpoint presentation as they travel to explain to various audiences about the trip and what they have learned along the way.

Meanwhile, she remains in contact with a larger circle of home schooled kids who are also tapping into their interests in popular culture (in this case, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars) to inform critical essays and research projects. We all concluded that Sky could be a poster child for the new media literacies we have been exploring through our project with the MacArthur Foundation -- someone who is tapping the full range of new media technologies to learn and share what she is learning with a larger community. Sky is incredibly articulate, holding her own debating the fine points of comics aesthetics with her dad and fully comfortably plopping herself down and conversing with a room full of graduate students. We were delighted to hear her say she was potentially interested in being an MIT student some day. She won the hearts of many of us here.

Began yesterday. There's more on Bangkok metblog, start here: Link. Image: Daniel Cuthbert, © 2006.

Mark Howe, who sells the devices for £1,000 from a workshop in Sheffield, claims his software will also work on level wheels. Surrounded by the soldering irons and laser sensors he uses to make his devices, he gave the Guardian an apparently successful demonstration of the software he said earned him a substantial sum before he was banned from British casinos in the 1990s.

The equipment consists of a clicker that records the deceleration speed of the rotor and ball, a remote computer device concealed inside a mobile phone or MP3 player, and an earpiece that instructs a player which zone the ball will land in.

Mr Howe says a gambler with the equipment can gain an edge of between 20% and 100% over the casino, overturning the casino's normal 2.7% edge over customers. "Next year is free hunting for anyone interested in making money from casinos," he said. "All you need to use this is nerves, a good front and consistency."

Update: Charlie sez, "Like many NiMH rechargeables in the AA and AAA form factors these are 1.2 VDC and not 1.5 volts like 'real' batteries. This is usually not a problem when a device only uses one or two batteries, but anything that uses four or more in series is unlikely to work properly due to the cumulative difference in voltage. My son's giant robot battle scorpion, for example, requires six batteries in series for 9 volts total, but rechargeables typically only provide 7.2 even at peak charge, and this leaves the scorpion unable to fend off enemy robot cockroaches or the neighbor girl's robot kissing bug."

Join Cameron Sinclair, Kate Stohr and Cynthia Barton of Architecture for Humanity, editors of the book Design Like You Give a Damn, along with cultural commentator John Hockenberry as they discuss how a new breed of designers is responding to humanitarian crises and rethinking the social and economic future of the more than two billion people currently surviving in sub-standard living conditions.

Sanger himself experienced [interminable fights over credentials] in his fight with Cunctator at the dawn of Wikipedia; Cunc questioned Sanger's authority, leading Sanger to defend it with increasing vigor. As Sanger said at the time "...in order to preserve my time and sanity, I have to act like an autocrat. In a way, I am being trained to act like an autocrat." Sanger's authority at Wikipedia required his demonstrating it, yet this very demonstration made his job harder, and ultimately untenable. This the common case; as any parent can tell you, exercise of presumptive authority creates the conditions under which it is tested. As a result, Citizendium will re-create the core failure of Nupedia, namely putting at the center of the effort a process whose maintenance takes more energy than can be mustered by a volunteer project...

Citizendium is based less on a system of supportable governance than on the belief that such governance will not be necessary, except in rare cases. Real experts will self-certify; rank-and-file participants will be delighted to work alongside them; when disputes arise, the expert view will prevail; and all of this will proceed under a process that is lightweight and harmonious. All of this will come to naught when the citizens rankle at the reflexive deference to editors; in reaction, they will debauch self-certification (leading to irc-style chanop wars), contest expert preogatives, rasing the cost of review to unsupportable levels (Wikitorial, round II,) take to distributed protest (q.v. Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf), or simply opt-out (Nupedia in a nutshell.)...

The philosophical issue here is one of deference. Citizendium is intended to improve on Wikipedia by adding a mechanism for deference, but Wikipedia already has a mechanism for deference -- survival of edits. I recently re-wrote the conceptual recipe for a Menger Sponge, and my edits have survived, so far. The community has deferred not to me, but to my contribution, and that deference is both negative (not edited so far) and provisional (can always be edited.)

The benefits of lunar storage are that there is no oxygen to erode the material, constant sub-freezing temperature and the Moon is currently free of all of the havoc wreaked by humankind...

Families could even pay a fee to preserve photographs in the lunar library for future civilizations. McKay calls it the "ultimate time capsule."

Your post reminded me of the superb novel by Jack Williamson, "Terraforming Earth," which I believe was overlooked at the time it came out. In his story, Earth is at a nuclear dead-end, and one scientist manages to take several people, vast stores of knowledge, and flora/fauna archives to a previously established moon base. Computers clone and teach "descendents" from time to time over millions or perhaps hundred of millions of years. Sometimes they find that earth belongs to alien species. Sometimes, Earth is back to high technology. Once, they save future humanity from total extinction. Link

Your post reminded me of an article I wrote over the summer for the science section of the New York Times, about the alliance to rescue civilization and its efforts to store -- not just a compendium of human knowledge -- on the moon, but also an ark of all genetic material as well.

For whatever it's worth, the idea of putting an information repository on the Moon is something I've been writing about for awhile, too. I first discussed it in a column in 1999 (an archive copy of the article is here) and brought it up again on WorldChanging more recently (link) in connection to the massive seed vault being built in Norway to protect plant DNA in case of global catastrophe. The ARC folks first wrote about their version of the idea in 1999, as well. While we all came up with the concept independently, I would not be surprised to find even earlier non-fiction iterations of the proposal.

It all boils down to making backups. As anyone who has done tech work (even for themselves) knows, backups are not substitutes for maintenance. Dealing with disasters after the fact is always far more costly, time-consuming and frustrating -- and, on the scale we're talking about, life-threatening -- than performing regular maintenance. Maintenance projects (fighting global warming, eliminating global poverty, eradication of pandemic diseases) reduce our need to use backups; backup projects are our last hope when maintenance fails.

The reoccurrence of this idea is an acknowledgment that sometimes maintenance fails, and that if human civilization is worth keeping around, we need to think big.

While good machinery can produce parts of great consistency and accuracy when properly operated, without the craftsman's touch the results will be acceptable but not noteworthy. Pieces that truly grab our attention and admiration go beyond the minimum of what is required to add what we can only call the "craftsman's touch"... This museum will feature works that represent the spirit and skill of individuals; not committees or manufacturing companies. These projects were built by people with skilled hands and brains, but, most importantly, they were built for the love of doing it. Coming from the hands, the brain and the heart, they should be judged not just as a collection of parts, but rather as art.

"Nature's given us pretty much the most powerful and reliable early warning center out there," said Bill Lawler, co-founder of Intelligent Automation Corporation, a Southern California company that makes and sells the bluegill monitoring system. "There's no known manmade sensor that can do the same job as the bluegill." Bluegills -- a hardy species about the size of a human hand -- are considered more versatile. They are highly attuned to chemical disturbances in their environment, and when exposed to toxins, they experience the fish version of coughing, flexing their gills to expel unwanted particles.

The computerized system in use in San Francisco and elsewhere is designed to detect even slight changes in the bluegills' vital signs and send an e-mail alert when something is wrong.

San Francisco's bluegills went to work about a month ago, guarding the drinking water of more than 1 million people from substances such as cyanide, diesel fuel, mercury and pesticides. Eight bluegills swim in a tank deep in the basement of a water treatment plant south of the city.

[The] anonymous, fully portable Web browser [is] based on Mozilla Firefox. Torpark comes pre-configured, requires no installation, can run off a USB memory stick, and leaves no tracks behind in the browser or computer. Torpark is a highly modified variant of Portable Firefox, that uses the TOR (The Onion Router) network to anonymize the connection between the user and the website that is being visited.

"We live in a time where acquisition technologies are cherry picking and collating every aspect of our online lives," said Hacktivismo founder Oxblood Ruffin. "Torpark continues Hacktivismo’s commitment to expanding privacy rights on the Internet. And the best thing is, it’s free. No one should have to pay for basic human rights, especially the right of privacy."

Torpark is being released under the GNU General Public License and is dedicated to the Panchen Lama*.

Reader comment: Amos says,

It might be worth reminding people that your identity and information when using tools like this is only as secure as the computer you are running it from. While suspect the Torpark folks did a very good job of ensuring that it won't *leave* any information on the system it's plugged into, there is nothing they can do to keep a keyboard logger (trojan or otherwise) from logging everything you type or, as we've seen recently, logging everything you see and everything your mouse clicks too.

Booting from a "Live CD" such as Ubuntu's avoids the whole malicious logging software issue, but info could possibly(?) still be written to swap disk and there could be a hardware key logger and/or video recorder capturing everything. Anyway, no security is absolute and using Torpark is certainly better than not using it. Just don't forget to make a judgement call about the environment you're running it in too - including the space around you.

I have known about torpark nearly a year now and have been using it frequently for about 4 months. It is most certainly not new, and I should also direct you to a new related project, i can't remember the name now (aargh) which is the same thing but with thunderbird, possibly they called it torbird (?)

Torpark and Torbird are both services that run on the TOR network. The former is for browsing and the latter is for email. They're derived from Firefox and Thunderbird respectively, and by the same developer. Also these tools are not brand spanking new and have been floating around the haxor world for a while. However, the improvements and added stability were deemed worthy of a more mainstream release, so we took it to the people, yØ.

The Torpark site seems to be down atm, but here are the direct links to the files on the evilshare download site that Torpark links to off their page: Executable, and Source.

The Torpark is just for Windows machines (for nw). Vidalia is for Macs & Windows and there is a Linux/Unix package as well: Link.

Yahoo and Current TV are teaming up to launch four new internet "television channels" that comprise the new Yahoo! Current Network, and all four go live tonight.

Earlier today, Xeni spoke with former Vice President Al Gore, internet godfather and co-founder of Current TV, about "Yahoo Current." Here's what he had to say:

- - - - - -

BoingBoing / Xeni: What will Yahoo Current be?

Al Gore: Four broadband channels, each consisting of a combination of professionally produced and viewer-contributed content. For Yahoo Current Buzz -- see Yahoo's Buzz Index for an idea of what this will be. We brought Madeleine Smithberg on board for this channel; she was a co-creator of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show." Yahoo Current Action will offer sports programming. Yahoo Current Driver will be an auto destination. And Yahoo Current Traveler is our travel channel. That will include video postcards submitted by viewers, as well as Bono's directorial debut with a video he recently made. I've seen it, it's very interesting and very funny.

BB: Why is Current TV partnering with Yahoo for this?

Al Gore: Current has pioneered the use of viewer-created programming, and Yahoo has incredible resources with regard to networks, distribution, and community. It just made sense to join forces. The new project will take advantage of Yahoo's worldwide distribution capability on video delivery.

BB: What should we expect in the way of format? Will the video we see online at Yahoo Current also be broadcast on Current?

Al Gore: Yes, there will be some crossover. We're talking about short form video, updated constantly, and some of it will also show up on TV. These four channels are each based around parts of the Yahoo community, and the idea here is that this online community can generate a lot of interesting content.

BB: Sports, pop culture, travel, automotive -- are you planning additional channels for the future, based on other interests or lifestyle themes?

Al Gore: Well, we've got a lot on our plate with these four for now. We're going to focus on making these four channels the best they can be, and see where that goes.

Update from Xeni: As with Current TV's satellite programming, Yahoo Current will also pay viewers for selected contributions, as if to woo video authors away from uploading to non-paying sites like YouTube. You'll get $100 for each video featured on the broadband network, and if your video is selected to air on Current TV, you receive an additional $500. The Yahoo! Current site does include lawyertalk worth reading before you submit, naturally. By uploading your file, you grant Current a

...worldwide, exclusive, royalty-free, fully paid, restriction free license for a term of three (3) months (...) to distribute, reproduce, copy, record, modify, add to, combine with other materials, remove, adapt, publicly perform, publicly display, sublicense, freely assign, create derivative works from and otherwise use and exploit any of same, or any part thereof, in any medium now known or hereinafter known, in any language and by any means or manners now or hereafter developed. Further, you hereby grant Current an option to acquire the exclusive right to broadcast, exhibit or otherwise distribute the Submitted Material in all media throughout the world in perpetuity (the “Option”), which Current may exercise within three (3) months of the date you provide us with Submitted Material.

The Current.tv/Google site is still live for now, and spotlights a Google Current episode that ran today about the Thong Girl debacle. No word from Google or Current on the present or future status of the companies' relationship.

The San Francisco Chronicle's "Tech Chronicles" blog has an item about the deal, with details on the sort of craziness former Daily Show producer Madeleine Smithberg is planning for the "Yahoo Current Buzz" channel:

One of the first bits: She sent a correspondent to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border with one of the female members of the anti-immigration Minutemen organization. The woman wants to rename Los Angeles the "City of Angels" and prefers the term "spicy folders" to tacos.

There are actually two license options: one exclusive, and one non-exclusive. If producers choose the exclusive option, their videos that are featured on the Yahoo! Current Network will receive $100 and be eligible to air on Current’s TV broadcast for additional payment starting at $500. For producers who choose the non-exclusive option, their videos featured on Yahoo! Current will not be compensated or eligible to air on Current TV. We also have only one month from upload to option the piece.

In 1888, Thomas W. Holley, a 24-year-old paper mill worker in Holyoke, had an idea for how to use the paper scraps, known as sortings, discarded by the mill. Sortings were anything trimmed away as scrap or considered of lesser quality than the writing paper eventually packaged and sold. Holley's notion was to bind the scraps into pads that could be sold at a cut rate. Convinced he had a winning idea, he founded his own company to collect the sortings from local mills (Holyoke was then the papermaking capital of the world) and began churning out bargain-price pads.

The legal pad's margins, also called down lines, are drawn 1.25 inches from the left edge of the page. (This is the only requirement for a pad to qualify as a legal pad, though the iconic version has yellow paper, blue lines, and a red gummed top.) Holley added the ruling that defined the legal pad in the early 1900s at the request of a local judge who was looking for space to comment on his own notes...

Some believe that writing on a yellow pad is easier to read than writing on a white pad. But Israel Abramov, a professor of psychology at Brooklyn College and a specialist in color vision, dismisses the theory. Readability, he says, is more a matter of contrast—how the color of the ink interacts with the color of the paper—than of the paper color alone...

Abramov prefers a psychological to a physiological explanation for yellow's predominance. "White paper that sits around starts to look yellow and old," he said. "I heard of one professor who used yellow paper for his lecture notes because he didn't want his students to know how old the notes were."

Here's an excerpt:

Try this: put a couple of drops of Tabasco Sauce on your tongue. Hot, right? Tabasco Sauce rates between 2,500 and 5,000 on the Scoville scale, the standard measurement system for chile pepper heat. Now try a drop of Mad Dog Inferno, a ridiculously hot sauce that clocks in at 90,000 Scoville units. As I chewed ice cubes and blinked away tears after touching a miniscule droplet of Mad Dog Inferno to my tongue from the tip of a toothpick, I knew I’d never make it as a chilehead.

That’s because I’m not a nontaster, explains Dave DeWitt, author of 30 books about chile peppers and spicy foods, including The Whole Chile Pepper Book and The Hot Sauce Bible. DeWitt is referring to a Yale surgeon’s study in the 1970s that identified three types of people: nontasters, medium tasters, and supertasters. Nontasters are born with as few as 11 taste buds per square centimeter of tongue, while supertasters can have as many as 1,100 taste buds crammed into the same area. Capsaicin has no taste, but taste buds not only sense flavor, they also transmit pain and temperature signals to the brain. That’s why nontasters can tolerate high doses of spice, says DeWitt, who considers chileheads to be on the far right side of the pepper bell curve. “In any movement you have your fringe element,” he says.

For a chilehead, 90,000 Scovilles is pabulum. Andy Barnhart, a recently retired chief scientist for a telecommunications company in Maryland, likes to dump habanero powder (400,000 Scovilles) on his ice cream “until it turns almost black.” But even that doesn’t turn Barnhart’s crank like it used to. “I’ve now gotten into Pure Cap; that is really hot stuff,” says Barnhart, 61. “I blend it with a little alcohol to preserve it and I put it in a bottle with an eyedropper and I carry it around with me.” (Pure Cap, a 570,000 Scoville unit extract, isn’t the same as pure capsaicin, which, at 16 million Scovilles, is as hot as it gets.) If Barnhart comes across a bowl of soup or a drink that doesn’t provide a sufficient jolt, he pulls out the eyedropper and gives it a squirt.

Barnhart’s 38-year-old son, Douglas, shares his father’s taste (or lack of taste buds) for hot stuff. The burly barbeque grill salesman has been known to polish off eight “Biker Billy” jalapeños (an extra large, extra hot variety) in thirty seconds. Peppers are a part of Barnhart’s daily routine. “I’m definitely addicted,” he says. “I get a little grouchy if I don’t have anything hot. I can’t explain it other than that. I just become unsettled. If I don’t have hot peppers around, I start looking for the next best thing, and that’s black pepper. But you can’t get enough heat off black pepper.”

"We're trying to be realistic," said Ken Bunt, senior VP of marketing at Hollywood Records. "Jesse's single is already online and we haven't put it out. Piracy happens regardless of what we do. So we're going to see how Jesse's album goes (as an MP3) and then decide on others going forward."

Link (via Deep Links)

The MIT team has now used this process to make all the components needed for their engine, and each part works. Inside a tiny combustion chamber, fuel and air quickly mix and burn at the melting point of steel. Turbine blades, made of low-defect, high-strength microfabricated materials, spin at 20,000 revolutions per second -- 100 times faster than those in jet engines. A mini-generator produces 10 watts of power. A little compressor raises the pressure of air in preparation for combustion. And cooling (always a challenge in hot microdevices) appears manageable by sending the compression air around the outside of the combustor.

"So all the parts work…. We're now trying to get them all to work on the same day on the same lab bench," Epstein said. Ultimately, of course, hot gases from the combustion chamber need to turn the turbine blades, which must then power the generator, and so on. "That turns out to be a hard thing to do," he said. Their goal is to have it done by the end of this year.

I've built a booth inside the gallery and, during the opening and closing, I'll have a scantily-clad girl selling betelnut stickers to viewers. There's also an accompanying video with footage of actual betelnut girls in Taiwan and prints of Taiwanese models in some pretty kitschy scenarios.

Ho simulates a vending stand of the sort that becomes, in effect, a free-standing display case, where the "betelnut beauties" function as commodified mannequins. She includes an example of the accompanying neon business signs often phrased to sound like the names of love hotels in East Asia. In Binlang Shi Shr (Betelnut Girls), Ho not only expresses a concern over the "entrapment" of women in sexual-economic exploitation, but also exoticizes this selling process, as an actor hired for the performance interacts with viewers like a betelnut girl. Ho assumes her role as a stand owner who monitors the girl's behavior. Bringing this simulating experience of betelnut girls to the space of the art gallery, Ho also raises a larger issue of what's being sold in contemporary commercial galleries, as she uses the actor and the performance piece as a means to sell her installation.

The rewards for being a high-level drug dealer are great, precisely because the punishment for failure (imprisonment or getting rubbed out by a rival) is equally great. In this harsh environment, dealers go to great lengths to conceal their products during storage and shipment.

The photos of confiscated drugs in Microgram Bulletin are good examples of dealer ingenuity, but remember: these are the guys who got caught. Tons of drugs move across borders around the clock, and the best smugglers are hiding them in ways that the DEA hasn't wised up to yet.

HEROIN-LACED BATTING IN FURNITURE (FROM VENEZUELA) IN MIAMI, FLORIDA

The DEA Southeast Laboratory (Miami, Florida) recently received 23 bags of grey colored batting that had been removed from two pieces of upholstered furniture, suspected to be laced with heroin (see Photo 11). The furniture (a chair and sofa) had been shipped from Venezuela, and was seized at the Miami Airport by Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel. Analysis of extracts from the batting (total net mass 62.16 kilograms) by GC/MS and FTIR confirmed 14 percent heroin hydrochloride, equivalent to approximately 8.7 kilograms total net mass. This was the first submission of this type to the Southeast Laboratory.

I love that cheap-ass robotics platforms are coming out of big toy companies now. Can't wait to see what the hardware hackers do to this thing (if they can get one, that is -- speculators are snapping up supplies and putting them on eBay at double retail). Link

This week's guest was the incomparable Mr Jalopy of the Hoopty Rides blog. Mr Jalopy is an incredible craphound and gearhead, a talented yard-saler, maker, and hot-rodder. In this 'cast, Mr Jalopy discusses his new book, his philosophy of yard sales, and the relative value of Yu-Gi-Oh cards versus Hot Cheetos.

Podcast, Podcast Feed, Subscribe via iTunes, MP3 Link

Update: Andrew sez, "Your Hot Cheetos story w/ Mr. Jalopy reminded me of a story from a year or two ago. A friend of mine was on a bus in Chicago, and witnessed a high school-aged girl perform a rather involved ceremony with a bag of Hot Cheetos and a vacuum sealed pickle. Before opening the Cheetos, she mashed them into tiny crumbs. She opened the cheetos and the pickle, setting the pickle to the side, and pouring the juice from the pickle packaging into the Cheetos bag. She then mashed this into a type of Cheetos/pickle juice slurry, and proceeded to squeeze the concoction into her mouth by turning the Cheetos bag into a sort of junk food pastry bag." Squick, squick, squick.

Update 2: Mark sez, "I have been fascinated by the Flamin Hot Cheetos phenomenon for a couple months now. I love looking around youtube for videos and searching the web for mor kids talking about how they love Flammin' Hot Cheetos on their myspaces. For a couple weeks I have been thinking of starting a blog where I can post the best stuff I find. I just didn't think there were many other adults interested. I thought that I must be some sort of creep or something. Then I listened to your podcast and I flipped out. I didn't know other grown people were into this. After listening to it I decided at work that the next day I would start my FHC blog. I just want to let all of you know that because of you I saw my idea to completion."

Ayers works for a consumer electronics and computer company, so he's often an advocate for user-rights in DRM negotiations, but at the end of the day, he's there to cut a deal that lets Toshiba ship without worrying about getting sued.

We've often been at the same DRM negotiation and though we were rarely on the same side, I always respected his ability to broker compromises, as well as his integrity and candor.

September 19, 7PM-9PM
University of Southern California, Annenberg School, 3502 Watt Way
Room 207

Link

It's hard to convey just how cool-ass these cards are. They feel like a fetish object, the thick card and soft laminate finish create a great hand-feel, and they're visually stunning -- playful and intensely personal.

They've got an engine to make cards from your Flickr stream, and for $20 they'll send you 100 custom cards -- Flickr Pro users can get 10 cards for free, just as a try-out. We got a box to 100 here this week and when I took them out of the box, it was like Christmas -- so bright and colorful and fun. So many different designs, and all of them from our most beloved Flickr snaps.

I've been making my own business-cards since I was 18, playing with the designs and the stock. I've had folding cards, embossed cards, letterpress cards, oversized and undersized cards. My latest ones are taken from an old ad I found on the Modern Mechanix blog. There's definitely a fraternity among the business-card-proud -- a flicker of recognition when you exchange cards with someone else who takes unseemly pride in his bits of pocket-paper.

There's lots of free stuff on the Internets, but the 10 free cards from Moo might just be the coolest thing for 0 dollars you can get. Link

A 1936-38 Jensen steam engine (flywheels from a later models are used in this video) runs a small generator that puts out the 3VDC needed to run a Gameboy color.

I've written about on-screen keyboards before -- I think that these things are bad news. They make banking sites un-accessible to people who are blind or have some physical disabilities, and while they defend against keyloggers, they also force you to have short, weak passwords. What's more, it's apparent that keyloggers can handily adapt to these screen-boards.

Today we will analyze a new banking trojan that is a qualitative step forward in the dangerousness of these specimens and a new turn of the screw in the techniques used to defeat virtual keyboards. The novelty of this trojan lies in its capacity to generate a video clip that stores all the activity onscreen while the user is authenticating to access his electronic bank.

The video clip covers only a small portion of the screen, using as reference the cursor, but it is large enough so that the attacker can watch the legitimate user's movements and typing when using the virtual keyboard, so that he gets the username and password without going into further trouble.

Update: George sez, "Just read the piece about virtual keyboard loggers (with the Citibank screenshot) on BB. As I am a Citibank customer (well more like thorn in the side - their service is variable to say the least) I immediately went to log in to my account to send them a message asking them if they had seen this story. When I got there I had a new message:"

...Rather than entering your password using the screen keyboard, you will now simply use your computer's real keyboard. You will also be asked to answer an additional question that only you know the answer to when you log in, to further increase security....

Seuss embarked on an ingenious project in the early 1930s as he evolved from two-dimensional artworks to three-dimensional sculptures. What was most unusual for these mixed-media sculptures was the use of real animal parts including beaks, antlers and horns from deceased Forest Park Zoo animals where Seuss’s father was superintendent. Unorthodox Collection of Taxidermy was born in a cramped New York apartment and included a menagerie of inventive creatures with names like the “Two Horned Drouberhannis,” “Andulovian Grackler,” and “Semi-Normal Green-Lidded Fawn.” Shortly after Seuss created this unique collection of artworks, Look Magazine dubbed Seuss “The World’s Most Eminent Authority on Unheard-Of Animals.” To this day, Seuss’s Unorthodox Collection of Taxidermy remains as some of the finest examples of his inventive and multi-dimensional creativity.

Last Thursday Sonos announced a partnership with Rhapsody, the music subscription service from RealNetworks. Now I can play two million songs on any stereo system in my house, using Sonos' portable iPod-like controller. It's an incredible experience being able to call up almost any song you can think of and start playing it. I showed it to my wife, and she immediately began playing all of David Bowie's '70s songs. She's hooked. I've been teaching my 8-year-old about punk by playing Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Ramones, Clash, and Buzzcocks. You get a free 30-day Rhapsody trial with Sonos. After that, you pay $10 a month. It's a bargain.

You don't even need a PC to run Sonos with Rhapsody, because the Sonos hardware plays the Rhapsody streams. Maybe that's why there are so few hiccups or glitches.

My family is now listening to a lot more music than we ever were (my 3-year-old likes the kid's "radio station," which has everything from Burl Ives to Ralph Covert) because we have easy and instant access to music like never before. Link

The citations were issued after a commercial vehicle inspection of the country music star's tour bus, state police said in a news release.

"When the door was opened and the trooper began to speak to the driver, he smelled the strong odor of marijuana," the news release said.

Striking 18" tall lamp features a very hard & heavy painted plaster base, lead spaceman with dome helmet and litho paper shade. I have never seen one of these in over 20 years. Working properly with original cord intact. No cracks, breaks, tears or repairs. Paint on base has a few smalls chips. The shade has a few very light and thin scuff marks but is otherwise like new. Does look like a scene from (Rocketship) X-M as I recall. Rare lamp in excellent condition.

After 10 days, tests revealed the organ had a rich blood supply and the man was able to urinate normally.

Doctors have previously succeeded in reuniting men with their sexual organs after traumatic accidents or attacks, but the Guangzhou operation is the first in which a donor penis has successfully been attached to another man.

"Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," Dr Hu said. An examination of the organ showed no signs of it being rejected by the body.

That's why we created the Boing Boing Digital Emporium, launching today. We'll be selling our favorite DRM-free digital goods and giving the the majority of the proceeds (minus the transaction charges imposed by Paypal and Payloadz) to the creators of those goods.

In the coming days and weeks, look for songs, albums, comics, novels, videos, and anything else that can be delivered digitally.

To kick things off, we're proud to offer Mister Jalopy's Pocket Guide to Life & Death with Modest Automobiles. Mister Jalopy of Hooptyrides knows a great deal about older cars, and he knows how to explain the way they work to people like me, who consider the stuff that goes on under a car's hood to be scary and utterly mysterious.

Mister Jalopy has condensed a lifetime of experience working with used cars into a single page PDF document called Mister Jalopy's Pocket Guide to Life & Death with Modest Automobiles. It's truly the best thing I've ever read about cars, and if you are considering buying a used car, then the $1 you'll pay for this downloadable document will pay for itself a thousand-fold. Even if you aren't interested in buying a car, you will undoubtedly enjoy reading this super-dense document, loaded with hard-won wisdom.

Buy for $1 | More Boing Boing Digital Emporium Goods here

Since I am spending a lot of time working far from my usual home, I attempted to rent an apartment last week. The apartment complex conducted a criminal background check, and told me I was ineligible as a tenant, because the background check turned something up.

What, precisely, did it turn up? Ah, the woman could not tell me that, because she herself did not know. She merely entered my name, birthdate, and SS# into her computer terminal, and a service provided by First Advantage SafeRent Inc. told her "no." So, the apartment complex kept my $75 application fee, showed me the door, and left me to deal with the nice people at SafeRent on my own. This entailed downloading a PDF form from their web site, printing it, signing it, and mailing it to them with a copy of my driver's license, to prove my own identity. Presumably this is purely for financial reasons, since SafeRent must prefer to sell its information, and will only give it away if I can convince them that I am the "person of interest."

Since I didn't feel like waiting for a response that may take several weeks, I decided to satisfy my curiosity with one of the many online services that now offer background checks. I paid a total of $78 for a nationwide search on myself. And, what do you know, there I am, listed as being guilty of a misdemeanor.

Only one problem: I was indeed charged, many years ago, but the charge was dismissed with prejudice, and I have a copy of the court document to prove it.

That document is not going to do me a lot of good. Let us assume that I can correct any error in the records maintained by the state criminal justice system. Actually this itself is a major ordeal, entailing an application which must include a set of my fingerprints; and then of course I will also have to go through the same thing with the FBI, since the state cheerfully admits that it tells the FBI everything.

I will still have to go after more than 100 online background-checking services, one by one, because, inevitably, they are creating their own databases derived from second-hand or third-hand sources. (A local database is so much cheaper for them to search, obviously.) One of the services I looked at states that it will not correct any error until compelled to do so by a court order. And of course new services are popping up all the time.

Already there have been some reported instances of rejected job applicants filing suit against background-checking services, alleging negligence.

What interests me is that this whole phenomenon is only just beginning to get rolling. Criminal background checks are still a little too expensive right now for most apartment landlords, home-owner associations, and employers. That obviously will not last, since apparently those millions of paper documents in county court houses have been largely digitized. Now that the data entry has been completed (competently or otherwise), information just wants to be free, right? Certainly it wants to be cheaper than $78. In a few years (or maybe months) from now, when you can check any job applicant or prospective tenant for $5, or maybe for free if the service is supported by context-sensitive popup ads, everyone will be checking everyone. Already it costs me nothing to view a map of the alleged child molesters living in my neighborhood. (I wonder how many errors are in _that_ database.) Can other felons be far behind?

Maybe one of your readers has some ideas on how this can be fixed. I don't see any way. It makes the fuss over Wikipedia look pretty trivial; John Seigenthaler certainly didn't have to submit a set of fingerprints to get _his_ error corrected, and it didn't deprive him of a place to live, either.

David says:

I suggest that your friend get a lawyer that handles defamation lawsuits and sue everyone of those background check companies that is reporting false information.

Defamation -- communication to third parties of false statements about a person that injure the reputation of or deter others from associating with that person.

Gabrielle says:

Perhaps your friend can't do anything about the errors in these numerous databases without suing many pants off, but he could take preventative measures so that this doesn't happen again. If I were him, I would pay the not-too-terribly expensive fee that the FBI charges to have a federal criminal background check run on yourself. And, for good measure, he could have a state check done as well. I had both of these done before beginning my immigration process to Canada. In New York City, the state criminal background check was around $50 and they e-mailed me the results the very next day. It was very painless. The FBI check is less so, and entails having fingerprints done and mailing a bulky package to Virginia, but the end result of having a definitive document telling future landlords you're not a dangerous felon would be worth it. I imagine if you had an FBI clearance in hand when you applied for the apartment, the landlord would forego the entire "background check" process just to save themselves the trouble.

Tor says:

I for one would be extremely suspicious of someone who offered their FBI background check along with their rental application. As with any other document, if you haven't recieved it from the Bureau yourself, it could be easily altered using a photocopy machine and microsoft word (and tape) or photoshop. Boingboing posted a while ago on electronic bording passes being altered to show a different name. This kind of document would be even easier to alter. The best way, in my opinion, to do this would be to check your background yourself, apply normally, and only if they discovered a criminal record in error, to provide a letter explaining the truth, and volunteering to provide back-up documents. You don't need to raise any red flags if you don't have to do so. Many landlords, unless they are desperate, will simply take a pass on a tenant who seems to have issues, after all, there are other prospective tenants out there.

Sanford says:

No one brought this up so I thought I would. Aren't their laws about denying for misdemeanors things like employment, credit and housing? It's my understanding that most or all of these things can only be denied for felonies or in some cases for misdemeanors that are what they call crimes of moral turpitude -- prostitution, theft. Drug crimes, assaults, DUI/DWI, other serious traffic violations are not crimes of moral turpitude, and these make up the bulk of misdemeanors. My wife does a fair amount of hiring in her job and they are prohibited from even asking about misdemeanors. Seems that when you can be denied housing for a past drunk driving charge or a cup throwing incident at a sporting event things are getting out of hand.

Tor says:

A number of states (including NY and Wisconsin) as well as some cities and localities prohibit some forms of employment discrimination against people with a criminal history.

Federal housing law prohibits generally discrimination based upon race, religion, ethnic background or national origin, sex, familial status (including having children or being pregnant), or a mental or physical disability. In addition, some state and local laws prohibit discrimination based on a person's marital status, age, or sexual orientation. However, I am not aware of any place in the US where a person is protected from housing discrimination based upon their criminal history - the cases I found, in fact, explicitly say that it is legal to ask if a prospective tenant has a crimnal history, and to base a decision on those grounds.

Also, while your friend should be able to get the online services to correct their records (a threat of a defamation lawsuit should work, once he/she has informed them that the record is incorrect) - he or she will never be able to totally expunge the federal records - NCIC (from what I understand) will not destroy fingerprint records even if the person is found innocent. That being said, their records will (should) indicate the true resolution of the charge - whether it was dismissed with prejudice, guilty or innocent.

The team from U.S.-based Conservation International also warned that the area--known as Bird's Head Seascape--is under danger from fishermen who use dynamite and cyanide to net their catches and called on Indonesia's government to do more to protect it...

"Above and below water, it's simply mind blowing," (said Mark Erdmann of Conservation International.)

Erdmann and his team claim to have discovered 52 new species, including 24 new species of fish, 20 new species of coral and eight new species of shrimp. Among the highlights were an epaulette shark that walks on its fins, a praying mantis-like shrimp and scores of reef-building corals, he said.

"For example, if an operative now sees someone dropping litter, they can tell them to pick it up, or if they see an incident starting to get out of hand, they can give advice that will hopefully nip it in the bud," (said Barry Coppinger, Middlesbrough Council's executive member for community safety.)

"I think that it will give people extra confidence as they go about their business and re-enforce the message that Middlesbrough is a place that is constantly thinking about community safety."

Murder suspects in Nigeria, where many people believe in black magic, sometimes claim spirits tricked them into killing. In 2001, eight people were burned to death after one person in their group was accused of making a bystander's penis magically disappear.

Canada's DMCA, Bill C-60, is slated to be one of the first orders of business for the new Parliament. Today, Geist has posted a list of thirty things you can do to fight Bill C-60 in Canada. This is the make-or-break moment, when Canada decides whether it is going to follow the US down the same tiger-pit it fell into in 1998, giving American media and technology companies the legal tools to clobber Canadian culture and industry, or whether Canada is going to learn from America's mistakes and produce a copyright law for the digital century that promotes new forms of expression and creativity.

1. Write to your local Member of Parliament.  Letters (which are better than email) from just a handful of constituents is enough to get the attention of your local MP.  Contact information for all MPs is available here.  Online Rights Canada also provides an easy way to write to your local MP.
   
2. Write to the Prime Minister of Canada.  Contact information here.
   
3. Write to Bev Oda, the Minister of Canadian Heritage.  Minister Oda is one of the two ministers responsible for copyright policy in Canada.  Prior Canadian Heritage Ministers have been perceived to be close to U.S. copyright lobby groups and copyright collectives.  Ministry contact information here.  Minister Oda's contact information here.
   
4. Write to Maxime Bernier, the Minister of Industry.  Minister Bernier is responsible for the Copyright Act in Canada.  Despite the fact that Minister Bernier is viewed as a strong advocate of reduced government intervention, the rumour mill suggests that he supports DMCA-style reforms. Minister Bernier's contact information here.
   
5. Ask each political party where it stands on copyright.  Copyright policy could prove to be a divisive issue in the months ahead - ask each political party for their views on the issue.
   
6. Write to Canadian Heritage's Copyright Policy Branch.  The Copyright Policy Branch is home to a large contingent of bureaucrats focused on copyright matters.  Contact information here.
   
7. Write to Industry Canada's Intellectual Property Policy Directorate.  The IPPD is Industry Canada's counterpart on copyright policy, though it addresses a broader range of IP issues.  Contact information here (scroll to the bottom).

The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet...

Using such a standard key doesn’t provide much security, but it does allow Diebold to assert that their design uses a lock and key. Experts will recognize the same problem in Diebold’s use of encryption — they can say they use encryption, but they use it in a way that neutralizes its security benefits.

The bad guys don’t care whether you use encryption; they care whether they can read and modify your data. They don’t care whether your door has a lock on it; they care whether they can get it open. The checkbox approach to security works in press releases, but it doesn’t work in the field.

Comparing official mortality data with the number of Americans who have been killed inside the United States by terrorism since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma reveals that scores of threats are far more likely to kill an American than any terrorist -- at least, statistically speaking.

In fact, your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is.

With that in mind, here's a handy ranking of the various dangers confronting America, based on the number of mortalities in each category throughout the 11-year period spanning 1995 through 2005 (extrapolated from best available data).

Under the deal, AOL will let owners of Viiv PCs, an entertainment PC platform designed and promoted by Intel, to download episodes of "Welcome Back Kotter" and studio movies to the PCs, according to sources close to the companies. These consumers can then watch these movies on plasma TVs or LCD TVs. Consumers will also be able to download music, sources said. (...) Under the AOL-Intel deal, any screen works.

Previously:
- Amazon Unbox to customers: Eat shit and die

Reader comment: Bryan Hurley says,

Just some constructive clarification thoughts. The ViiV PC is meant to be a media hub for the home, and connected to a Plasma TV or LCD TV already, running Windows XP Media Center as part of the ViiV definition. Therefore they can claim it will play on those displays. If you have iTunes or Amazon's service on your ViiV system setup like that then of course you can display those on those same output devices. Unless they say you can transfer it to another device or burn to DVD there is no difference because it is just how it is hooked up to your display.

The Dopyera brothers were born in what is now Slovakia, and came to the U.S. with the wave of Eastern European immigrants around the beginning of the 20th century. (In fact, the word “Dobro” is both a contraction of “DOpyera BROthers” and the word for “good” in their native tongue.) Engineers, tinkerers, businessmen, and accomplished musicians (their family had a history of violin making going back centuries, and Rudy was by many accounts an exceptionally talented and soulful Gypsy-style violinist), the two Dopyera brothers combined their Old World skills and traditions with the booming technology and futuristic tastes in art of pre-WWII America. Who else thought that spun aluminum might be a good material for sound projection? Who else engraved beautiful Art Deco designs on the bodies of their guitars? Only the Dopyeras.

The unusual, experimental, and mostly one-of-a-kind instruments in this collection – John’s unusual (and spectacular sounding!) resophonic violin, Rudy’s balalaika-inspired Lullabyka, the Art Deco-influenced steel body uke and tenor guitar, even the actual workbench on which John perfected the fabled tri-cone resonator system – are uniquely American (and uniquely Dopyera) innovations.

After a few minutes of editing i realize that, just putting characters in a race, make them run from a point to an other, should be boring. So i had the idea to put in it some "Chibi Things"-like fighting. Now my race became a fighting race. A sort of "Wacky Race" with participants, tricking, cheating, to win the great prize. I was prepared to do a lot of rotoscoping, but at this point i never imagined how much of cutings i'm going to do, to complete this project. After 1 year of editing, and many stops caused by boringness, world of warcraft or my Ph D. rush ... i finally finish the vid.