A group of ethnic Tibetans trying to flee Tibet were shot dead by Chinese troops on September 30, at a Himalayan pass near the border of China and Nepal (Tibet is an "autonomous region" of China, having been taken over by the PRC in the 1950s). Reports are emerging that Communist party officials have attempted to silence witnesses, including Western trekkers who were in the area when the killing occurred. Snip from The Independent:

Chinese diplomats in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu are tracking down and trying to silence hundreds of Western climbers and Sherpas who witnessed the killing of Tibetan refugees on the Nangpa La mountain pass last week. This ominous development comes as fears grow for the safety of a group of Tibetan children, aged between six and 10, who were marched away after at least two refugees including a nun, were shot dead.

Today, a Romanian television network released a video said to show PRC guards fatally shooting one of the refugees. Snip from Associated Press report:

The video from Pro TV shows a distant figure that its narrator says is a Chinese border guard firing a rifle and a separate scene of a person in a line of figures walking through the snow falling to the ground. An unidentified man near the camera can be heard saying in English, "They are shooting them like, like dogs." Pro TV, Romania's biggest private TV station, said the video was shot Sept. 30 by Sergiu Matei, a Romanian cameraman with an expedition climbing Cho Oyu, a Himalayan peak near China's border with Nepal. The activist group International Campaign for Tibet, in a written statement, said the video proves Chinese troops fired at unarmed Tibetans and disproves Beijing's statement this week that its forces acted in self-defense after being attacked.

Adam of the adventure travel website Getoutdoors.com says,

The Agence-France Presse has picked the story up and is reporting that the Chinese claim their soldiers acted in self defense. Right. The nuns and kids tried to kill them in a barrage of snowballs.

China admitted that its soldiers killed a person who was trying to flee Tibet, but the official account contradicted eyewitness reports that the troops had shot at unarmed refugees.

The state-run Xinhua news agency released a short report of the September 30 incident that occurred near Mt Everest, saying soldiers had found nearly 70 people trying to illegally cross the Tibetan border into Nepal.

The soldiers tried to persuade the group to go back home, according to Xinhua, which was citing an unnamed Tibetan government official. "But the stowaways refused and attacked the soldiers," Xinhua said.

When I traveled to this region earlier this year, I heard personal accounts of incidents like this from Tibetans who crossed the border to refugee camps in India. If their stories are to be believed, what is remarkable about this incident is not that it occurred, but that it receiving any attention in the West at all. (thanks, Adam)

Reader comment: Colleen Muldoon says,

I just read the post, "Kid 'n' Play alum now teaches history of hiphop", and read "the music form that university officials believe could provide new opportunities to at risk males." At risk males? Isn't that just reincforcing the concept that hiphop is only for black gangsters in ghettos, or as put, "at risk males"? I'm sorry I couldn't phrase it better, but I hope you get what I mean.

I don't see the problem with the university's word choice. The view that hip-hop is only for gangsters is not problematic because it exclusively connects the two, but because it puts hip-hop in a negative light. This program, and the university's phrasing, doesn't negate the connection between "at risk youth" and hip-hop, but rather redefines that connection. The program and its publicity allows people to see how hip-hop can be a positive force in violent, low-income neighborhoods. Even better, this class will most certainly teach how hip-hop historically has been a positive force in low-income neighborhoods: no history of hip-hop is complete without stories of Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation's efforts for "at risk youth."

The Sound of Young America, mentioned in a recent Hodgmania post has an excellent podcast episode with Killer Mike, a rapper and entrepeneur who has toured with Outkast. He was an at risk male. In the podcast he talks extensively about how rap gave him an out when life had given him few options.

[at 27:10 in the podcast] "Well The only people that seemed to care about the world to me were rappers. Public Enemy, NWA with "F the Police," Ice T with Power and later on The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just watch What You Say So if it wasn't for these revolutionary teenagers at the time being willing to simply say "Hey, the emperor has on no clothes," to be like that little boy in that play they take you to when your a kid. If rap hadn't had the courage to do that, I don't know where I'd be today. So rap was my friend."

While it would be absurd to say that rap and hip-hop is only for black males, it would be hard to deny how powerfully it speaks to "at risk males," black or otherwise.

I've lived in Chapel Hill, next door to Durham, for 6 years. NCCU (it's an HMU) serves the large black community in Durham, and though most of the town is middle-class, there are some poor areas with significant gang violence (that spills over to clubs in Chapel Hill a couple of times a year). Durham also has a small but vibrant and growing rap scene. I think it's fantastic that NCCU is doing something to serve the poorest communities of Durham in a culturally relevant way, which is a lot more than Duke has been willing to do. That class alone could give a lot of gangsters a reason to enroll at Central, and thus, a means of escaping the gang life.

WHERE ARE YOUR AMERICANS NOW?

Today , in the special court for war crimes in Belgrade, eight paramilitary police were indicted for torturing, killing, looting and dispersing the Albanian civil population in March 1999, when the NATO bombings against Yugoslavia under Milosevic started.

This specific trial is concerned with 48 members of an unlucky family named Berisha, who were executed in a couple of hours in a village called Dry River. The dead included women, children, the elderly: from yet unborn babies to a 100-year-old grandmother. The Dry River is bloody and full of tears.

The eight out of ten indicted (two others died in the meantime) are sitting in the courtroom in front of us. They look so normal and common that, compared to them, their lawyers seem like freaks. They are men, along with one young curly haired blonde with a gypsy skirt like mine.

This morning I thought twice when I dressed in order to be admitted in the courtroom. My clothes are simply not proper for this country and its dark history; the best I could find was a black T shirt with the English word REVOLUTION written on it in big letters of hot pink.

[Continue reading this essay after the jump: 2500 words.]

Of Jewish descent, Krasnow's work recognizes inevitable associations with the holocaust. In the past, he has expressed his own fears about clinical distance, the ability of audiences to overcome repulsion and the process of dehumanization that this kind of art making requires. While the work does raise the ethical question of making human skin into art, it also deconstructs the predication of prejudice and hatred upon skin-deep identity, assessing sources of cruelty, legend, and mythmaking along the way.

After reading the recent BoingBoing post about Craigslist and the TOUs of relationships (hilariously well put), I put down my own thoughts about how to improve the CL experience for all its millions of users.

You need present no credentials to post to Craigslist, other than a valid email address. Since these are notoriously easy to acquire – and easy to spoof, or make opaque and anonymous – an email address provides no trust information whatsoever. Yet Craigslist does have a login capability, so it can potentially record each of the interactions users have through the system. It could collect data about the quality of the trust interactions users experience on Craigslist, and use this information to annotate all of the postings on the system.

In short, every posting on Craigslist could be accompanied by metadata which allows users to have some basic sense of the trustworthiness of the other participant in a given transaction. With each successive transaction, Craigslist could begin to model an emergent digital social network, developed from observation, and supplemented by a user’s list of first-degree contacts.

With over 10 million visitors a month – many of them repeat users – it should be relatively easy to develop a strong trust model, combining elements of both the eBay and Friendster systems, to produce an effective and anonymous solution (anonymous, that is, from the user’s perspective, as this information can be maintained opaquely within Craigslist, though this brings up a further question of whether Craigslist itself can be trusted, which can only be learned via a user’s long-term interactions with Craigslist itself).

He tells BoingBoing, "Now with a little editorial backing behind me, I hope to be able to get bloggers to send in their tips about unethical pharma trials, all manner of medical foibles, and, of course, infant cyclopses."

Background: Scott broke the story of the one-eyed baby girl born to a mother in Chennai, India (BB posts: 1, 2). The child died. When Scott continued to pursue the cause for the baby's condition -- possibly a fertility drug clinical trial gone horribly wrong -- the hospital and other authorities cut him off.

Chris says,

Montreal photographer François Brunelle is trying to track down and photograph 200 people with their doppelgängers. His website has a form where people who've identified their nonrelated look-alikes can sign up.

When Willie Nelson's bus was searched on Monday in Breaux Bridge, LA on Interstate 10, a "routine traffic stop" turned into a drug bust. Louisiana state troopers found more than a pound and a half of marijuana (0.7 kg) and more than three ounces (91 grams) of psilocibin mushrooms.

I love this cartoon. It's super-creepy and brilliant. You can read about the creator, Run Wrake at PingMag, and order the handsome DVD box here.Link (Via Metafilter)

Wikipod installs a user-selectable portion -- or maybe all -- of Wikipedia into the Notes folder on any recent iPod; it does not require any new software (e.g. ipodlinux) to be installed!

Wikipod will be stunning to the many people who are not keen on messing with their iPod's OS, but who would like to carry a Healthy Portion Of World Knowledge in 1.46 cubic inches. User specifies a size limit, say 10 MB, and a starting word, and Wikipod spiders from there, installing a subset of Wikipedia around your favorite topic. Article hyperlinks work quickly (on my nano, at least), and a moderate-sized topic listing is suprisingly browsable via scrollwheel.(The full text of Wikipedia these days is about 1.1 GB, but not sure yet if Wikipedia connectivity is such that the current script can get the entire thing to an iPod)

Wikipod works on a standard iPod; it does not require ipodlinux to be installed; the related (Encyclopodia, which was reported in Boing Boing back in Feb. 2006, does require ipodlinux to be installed).

A a tiny test, I tried just 10 MB starting from "Essence" -- my nano soon became a teensy creditable guide to Existentialist philosophy and related movements. Darn thing didn't pick up "nominalism"; I'll try for 100 MB of Essence next.

Minor cons: Wikipod doesn't install graphics, makes the occasional mistake with pages (it's new; fixes may come soon). Big pros: overall works shockingly well with the existing Apple Notes hyperlink interface. I wouldn't read too many novels on my nano screen, but a reference like Wikipeda is perfect for it!

The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device becomes the "licensed device," reads the license for Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Business. In other words, once a retail copy of Vista is installed on a PC, it can be moved to another system only once.

Let me emphasize that no one — including adults — should have a blog or personal website.

...

The Internet—and more specifically blogs—has enabled everyone to have a voice on any matter. Now everyone’s thoughts are “published” for all to see. Whether or not it is effective, as soon as something is posted the person has a larger voice. It often makes the blogger feel good or makes him feel as if his opinion counts—when it is mostly mindless blather!

...

Blogs can be summed up as people talking about almost anything, but really nothing. There is no purpose to much of the contents — no direction. [...] The contents of blogs can often best be described as trash and the expression of shallowness. What is deemed as a higher level of communication is simply a mindless form of entertainment.

...

Some questions naturally arise: “Can I have a photo gallery?” For example, maybe you visited an exotic country and want to share your photos with close friends. This can be done, but certain guidelines apply. Of course, there should never be any inappropriate pictures (again, be careful of the appearance of evil); it should be private and password protected, and only shown to family and closest friends.

Reader comment:

Rick says:

Jesus wouldn't blog, but he'd IM. Blogging is bad, but apparently, Jesus is down with IM...though, of course, there are some righteous guidelines to observe:

Take extra care if messaging or “chatting” on the Sabbath. It should be done in moderation, as this is a time to draw close to God. Do not drift into worldly topics. Be aware of a conversation’s direction, and steer it back into Sabbath-appropriate subjects if necessary. You could discuss last week’s sermon, upcoming Holy Days, changes in world events, announcements about growth in the Church, etc. Challenge yourself! During the week, be mindful of things you may want to discuss with your friends (online or at services). Then when the Sabbath arrives you will have a long list of items to discuss. A great underlying principle of appropriate IM subjects is this: “Would I feel comfortable discussing this subject with my parents? What about with God?”

Reader comment:

Uriel says:

This article in NewScientist describes in detail what the image you posted is showing.

It's a fascinating read, but somewhat dissapointing: It's as if all the things we might want to leave behind will vanish into nature, and all the unitentional and harmful byproducts of our society will remain for ages.

LISA REIN: You donated a track to the Creative Commons -- Relaxation Spa Treatment.

DAN: First of all, the Creative Commons thing -- the whole idea was to give music that people could freely use and license. Part of what's going on right now in music, sampling -- taking little bits of songs -- it's become a very expensive endeavor. I don't mind the fact that it's expensive because if you're using someone else's work, you should pay for it. That's my personal opinion. If they don't want you to use it, that's their business. That's okay.

But on the other side, I worked with (DJ) Shadow -- we made really interesting recordings. And it's like Musique Concrete, which you could never do at this juncture in time because it's too expensive. It can't exist. You're losing a form of music. So I felt like I would like to at least contribute to the side of things where -- if people do want to use something, or chop it up, they can do that. The thought that goes into that kind of stuff can bring out new ideas. And that will bring about more different kinds of music. I'd hate to see that whole thing go away.

Scott Matthews says,

Not to be outdone by those two snot-nosed rovers on Mars, the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn sends back this spectacular shot of Saturn and its rings (Color-exaggerated version: Link, Original version: Link), a mosaic composed of 165 images taken from within the darkness of Saturn's shadow.

But wait, there's more. Cassini also recently swooped down for a few more snaps of (Saturn moon) Titan's presumed lakes of liquid methane (Link).

Last week, Foreign Policy published an interview with Li Wufeng, the director-general of China's State Council Information Office (SCIO), the agency in charge of regulating Internet content inside China.

The Foreign Policy reporter Mike Boyer called Li "China's Top Internet Cop" and then quoted Li as saying "We have neither the technology nor the manpower" to censor or filter the Internet, ...... We have just dozens of people in the Internet affairs bureau. Half of them are here today [in the room] "

In fact, Li is not a "cop," as the Information Office of the State Council is neither a public security nor state security agency. The real Internet cops are elsewhere. For starters, we could search "Internet Police" (网络警察）on Chinese search engine Baidu, and we will get 292,000 results. Page after page are Internet Police websites in different cities and provinces outlining their functions. Read this, this and this.

What about the technology that Li claims he doesn't have? Another search through Chinese blogosphere and BBS will uncover some very useful answers, including to the question, Who is China's top Internet cop?

SALON: What do you do with consciousness? I mean, do you really think the mind is totally reducible to neural networks and the electro-chemical surges in the brain? Or might there be something else that goes beyond the physical mechanics of the brain?

DAWKINS: Well, once again, let's not use the word "reducible" in a negative way. The sheer number of neurons in the brain, and the complication of the connections between the neurons, is such that one doesn't want to use the word "reducible" in any kind of negative way. Consciousness is the biggest puzzle facing biology, neurobiology, computational studies and evolutionary biology. It is a very, very big problem. I don't know the answer. Nobody knows the answer. I think one day they probably will know the answer. But even if science doesn't know the answer, I return to the question, what on earth makes you think that religion will? Just because science so far has failed to explain something, such as consciousness, to say it follows that the facile, pathetic explanations which religion has produced somehow by default must win the argument is really quite ridiculous. Nobody has an explanation for consciousness. That should be a spur to work harder and try to understand it. Not to give up and just say, "Oh well, it must be a soul." That doesn't mean anything. It doesn't explain anything. You've said absolutely nothing when you've said that.

Update:

Here's a 22 minute TEDTalks video of a Dawkins' presentation, "Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science." In it "he suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved to understand the 'middle-sized' world we can observe."

When someone picks one up, a message on the other side tells the person doing so that the simple act of picking up what you think is a toy in landmine plagued communities can get you killed... it then encourages people to go to the web site of Clear Path International to help landmine and bomb survivors.

I blogged about the "phone ladies of Bangladesh" in 2003 (link to BB post), and the story of how these women created sustainable cottage industries is fascinating -- but to me, equally fascinating was the odd fate that befell the messageboard we set up for that post (back then, each BoingBoing post had open comments). It began as a perfectly on-topic discussion of the transformative power of microcredit and internet loans, but about 50 posts in, all hell broke loose.

Perhaps because the post title contained the words "ladies," "phone," and "Bangladesh," a lot of horny guys looking to hook up for phone sex with Bangladeshi babes climbed on and never let go. A taste:

* SHAGOR: I will help you to feel a complete women from head to toe. I am looking for girls/women to have free sex from any where any age. Only for babes want to have alternate harmony. First I am not sure if you going to get this mail. I am looking for a person who is understanding and likes to explore the fantasy of life. Have you ever wanted to explore your fantasy? Have you ever thought about having a wild erotic experience of wilderness? This is only for woman seeking erotic experience head to toe and feel the aroma of life. This change is to fulfill your inner desire & feel complete women. Explore the unsaid of life. I will surely come over to your dreamland.

* RATUL: I am also available for chatting.....Oh one thing, mind that I am direct, no hunkipunki.

* R: i want sex and willing to do it. it will be safe. no body will know about it. i am very excited and neavous

* RAHMAN: I want to make a top secret physical relation someone who is unhappy like me.

* MONIM: mwah.mwah.mwah.mwah.mwah.mwah.mwah. And lot of kisses for ur hot lips.MWAH

* MITH: I am boy , who want to enjoy sexy girl. I will give 110% sattispection.

You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system. If you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services or use BitLocker. We advise against playing or accessing content or using applications protected by other digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other rights management services or using full volume disk drive encryption.

AC/DC - 1) It is said that one of the band member saw it on an appliance and thought it had something to do with power. (It does mean "alternating current / direct current".) The band used it not realizing it was also slang for a bisexual- the band claims NOT to be bisexual. 2) In the vogue of other anti-everything bands it stands for Against Christ/Devil's Children.

ALICE IN CHAINS - a funny rumor is that they were named after a lost episode from The Brady Bunch series!...

CHUMBAWAMBA - In a band member's dream, he didn't know which door to use in a public toilet because the signs said "Chumba" and "Wamba" instead of "Men" and "Women"...

JETHRO TULL - popular 70's band that is named after the rather obscure inventor of the farmer's seed drill...

JUDAS PRIEST - originally a mild curse said to avoid saying "Jesus Christ" - also from the Bob Dylan song "The ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest"...

T PAU - after a high priestess from the planet VULCAN in the American TV series STAR TREK...

YO LA TENGO -translates to "I have it" from Spanish - said to be the phrase called out by Hispanic baseball players when fielding a pop fly ball. Singer/guitar player Ira Kaplan got the expression from a book he was reading about baseball called The Five Seasons.

ZZ TOP - taken from the name of a Texas Blues man ZZ Hill. Though a rumor is that they got their name by combining Zig Zag and Top, two well known brands of "cigarette" rolling papers.

Sterling likely won't face charges, Port Huron Police Capt. Don Porrett said, though officials said the remains will be sent to an anthropologist at Michigan State University for further examination...

Curiosity did attract at least one bid before the posting was removed.

"There was a bid on it for $500 from `Satan's Child,'" Porrett said.

Pwned: Hollywood's Secret War on Your NOC

The entertainment industry has tried to ban every new technology from the record player to the VCR, but when it comes to the Internet and the general-purpose PC -- the battleground of the war on copying -- Hollywood has far grimmer plans. Under a variety of legislative, standards, policy and treaty negotiations, the people who brought you Police Academy n-1 are working to prohibit open source, to make open ports a crime, and turn Web 2.0 into AOL 0.9b. You can fight this -- you can put a stake through its heart. If you don't, kiss everything you love about the Internet goodbye.

Link

Steven's talk is part of my ongoing series of talks by copyright scholars, engineers, security experts, policy wonks and other people with interesting things to say about the copyright wars. We podcast every one, and they're attended by a really eclectic mix of artists, hackers, international development types -- even lawyers from major studios.

Steven's talk fits in by talking about new platforms for creativity that embrace the Internet's fundamental nature as a machine for copying bits fast and freely -- business models that don't try to change the world, but rather, capitalize on it.

Where: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, main campus, Annenberg School, Room 207

When: Tuesday, October 17, 2006, 7PM-9PM

Link

Audio from previous talks:

• Wendy Seltzer, ChillingEffects/Digital TV Liberation Front
• Bruce Schneier
• Bruce Sterling
• Michael Ayers, Toshiba
• Jason Schultz, EFF

E! and Style chief Ted Harbert has been given the newly created title of CEO, Comcast Entertainment Group. He will continue to report to Comcast Programming Group President Jeff Shell. G4 President Neal Tiles, who joined the network in September 2005, will now report to Mr. Harbert. G4's executive staff will move into E!'s Los Angeles offices. Sources said layoffs among the G4 staff are likely, though Mr. Harbert said it's too soon to tell.

"When there is consolidation, if we find there's overlap in administrative and support positions, we'll have tough calls to make," he said. "But we haven't looked at that yet." Mr. Harbert said he has not yet decided whether G4's Santa Monica production facilities will move as well. "They're shooting shows in very expensive space, but we're already maxed out at this building," he said. "I don't know what the answer is, but nothing will happen for a while."

Reposed possessed girl flails up to begin violently thrashing front to back side to side to swirl & contortatop the bed. Includes steel queen sized “mattress”frame, character, mech & pneumatic pkg.

* Viagra Spam Recipes: Link.

* Oh, others may see Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich, the Virgin de Guadalupe in a tortilla, or a vagina on a carrot. Frankly, who hasn't. But BoingBoing readers are a different bunch: you see aliens in naan. Link. Peter and Gaynor Flint tell us, "We bought some garlic & coriander naan bread from our local Tesco store and found two aliens in the packaging! The linked photos were shot just moments before the bread was consumed with a very nice curry."

* These lamps are made of salt: Link.

* The Ambien Cookbook: "Take Ambien, fall asleep. Sleep 3-4 hours. Roll out of bed, wake up on floor. See extension cord, think, What a big delicious licorice rope that is!. Chew on essentially flavorless cord until you get to the metallic center, where the surprise is."Link

* Rainbow carrots: purple, red, yellow, and white. Link.

* Rainbow roses. Not edible, but equally apropos for Pride day picnicking, or an afternoon tea party with Deadheads. Link

* Just because it's low-carb doesn't mean you wanna EAT it: Hot Dog Loaf. Link.

* Voice-activated microwave oven. "Cook me some food, bitch!" Link.

* "I'm going to eat everything there is to eat at McDonald's, and blog about it." Link.

* A happy meal that fits in the palm of your hand. Link.

* Lego ice cube tray: Link.

* Plan59.com, an online shop specializing in midcentury illos, has many wonderful vintage food ads. Here's a flickr set of some of their best, gathered and posted there by a fan. Buy gorgeous, high-quality repros here (as cheap as $9 for a 13"x19", all the way up to $250 for a 44"x45" humongoprint on archival paper.)

* Strange medicinal or edible plant-thing found in Chinatown: what is it? Link.

* The annual "What the Fluff? Festival" celebrates a sugary foodstuff called Marshmallow Fluff: Link.

* Pumpkin pie coffee beans: Link.

* A resume constructed from fortune cookies: the better to nail a Fortune 500 job with? Link.

* From BoingBoing's growing collection of Wonderful Wedding Cakes:

Guillaume says, "The cake at my wedding featured 400 Emperor Penguins standing in line around a bunch of icebergs. My uncle took 72 hours to create all the penguins out of cake, almond paste and chocolate, carving them by hand one after the other. Yup, I've been to Antarctica 5 times. And they were excellent too. Some people have kept theirs to this day instead of eating them." JPEG Link.

(Thanks, R. Stevens of dieselsweeties fame, kosmonaut, Marc, Wayne Correia, Andy Yang, Glenn, Mike, Michael, Jim Mookstein, Charlie B., and Austin Sipes.)

Previous Omakase Links on BoingBoing:

- I wanna tear you apart
- Sexy taco, space gun, deli flesh.
- Arabic smokes, Norway bimbo, Danish BB ringtone
- Post-holiday bluesnixer roundup

Reader comment: Andy Fischer says,

You might be interested to know that the salt lamps you show in this post also appear as pension gifts to retiring German salt mine workers in Shultze Gets The Blues, which is fantastic even apart from the salt lamp.

Tom Parker, author of Rules of Thumb, created a washer out of a penny instead of spending a lot of pennies to buy a washer. (Thanks, Kevin!)

A prestigious journalism fellowship says it has no plans to return a $1 million grant from Yahoo, despite a spirited debate over the company's record on freedom of expression. But the director of the John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University said the program is considering holding a forum to engage Yahoo and other media companies about operating in repressive countries.

Yahoo intended the donation to "demonstrate our support for freedom of expression," said a spokeswoman, but it has instead revived attention to the company's controversial practices in China, where it has turned over user information to Chinese authorities. The Sunnyvale company has supplied information to Chinese law enforcement that led to the arrests of two journalists and two other Chinese dissidents, according to Human Rights Watch.

Here are pointers to some of the reasons why people are upset with Yahoo over these issues, and here are more: Link.

(1) The first case in which Yahoo is said to have helped Chinese authorities jail a journalist involved Shi Tao. He's still in prison, and is sentenced to stay there for another nine years.

(2) Yahoo was also implicated in the case of internet dissident Li Zhi. He was sentenced to 8 years.

(3) The third case involving reported data-sharing by Yahoo with PRC authorities is that of Jiang Lijun. He's incarcerated, too, serving a four-year sentence.

That's three lives, for a total of 21 years in prison. When I interviewed a Yahoo spokesperson earlier this year about this series of incidents, I asked whether the company (and specifically Yahoo! China, now controlled by China-based Alibaba, which Yahoo owns 40% of) may have been involved in more cases. I never received a definitive response.

But today, great news for fans of the show: they've announced that they will change their policy, and begin offering episodes via RSS for free! Link

Gibson told us that he's currently thinking about how to use technology to deal with the "probability characteristics of space." In other words, how do you create an accurate high-tech map that reflects the fact that a given geographical location has a high probability of being referred to as "the Mission," but at least 10 percent of the time might be referred to as "Noe Valley"?

This kind of question might sound silly if you look at neighborhoods purely as the creation of real estate companies that have rigid ideas about where the Mission ends and Noe Valley begins. But geowanking is all about making maps democratic and creating representations of space that reflect ordinary people's lived experiences. The idea of letting a real estate agency call the shots on where your neighborhood's boundaries are is absurd to a geowanker. Why not just build a digital map in layers so that you can see the real-estate-defined neighborhoods, then click into another layer that shows what ordinary people on the street think are the boundaries, then move to another layer to see where all the rivers run underneath the city?

Liebhold pointed out that as more and more people start creating their own maps and putting them online, we're going to need to invent a system where we know which maps are "trusted" and which are just somebody rambling about how there are many paths to Blue Bottle Coffee from the Haight.

Reader comment:

Kevin Kelly says: Whenever you see the claim "giclee print" just substitute the word "inkjet." Same thing, but without the $64 dollar fake french accent. A giclee is a nice inkjet print, but inkjet nonetheless. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giclee

Link to video, the whole show is a blast and also features a bit about some great new books from Disinformation (I'm right about halfway through the show). Speaking of Disinfo, one of those new books is by Graham Hancock, and they're doing a tour right now: Link.

For insiders, the highlight of the conference was a new bit of rocketbelt lore. During a talk to 100 people—and just before debuting on the ukulele an original song he wrote—Graham for the first time told the story of his only crash. He recounted falling 22 feet and landing on his head during a secret demonstration at Cape Canaveral, a mishap that left him unconscious for half an hour. Graham retired from the rocketbelt biz shortly thereafter. "It's not a matter of if you get hurt, it's when," says Eric Scott, a 43-year-old former stuntman who flies for the sports-marketing company Go Fast in the rocketbelt you see in the video at the top of this article. All would-be rocketbelters practice on a tethered safety line for months before attempting a free flight. And most never make that flight: To date, only 11 men in history have free-flown a rocketbelt. More men have walked on the moon.

If you have yet to try and carve a pumpkin in a 3-D manner you need to. Its fun and everybody enjoys a cool pumpkin. Unfortunately they begin to rot less than a week after carving so be sure to take plenty of pictures. You can experiment with ways of preserving them but I find nothing works better than a nice photo. Some chefs that I have carved for put lemon juice on the faces to help slow down the natural molding process that will occur.

Picking out the right pumpkin is very important. You need a pumpkin with a thick wall. To get this kind you will have to choose one that is very heavy for its size. Also avoid perfectly round pumpkins and opt for ones that have a protruding ridge that sticks out on one side. These shapes make nice faces as you could imagine how difficult it would be to carve a 3-D face onto a shallow flat surface.

Imagine the things a terrorist could do with perfect knowledge of the location of every passenger in the airport: "I think we'll put the bomb there."

But potentially, said Dr Brennan, the tags could aid security by allowing airports to track the movement patterns of passengers deemed to be suspicious and prevent them from entering restricted areas.

They discovered that women whose antibody count was high - suggesting a substantial infection - had a much higher chance of having baby boys. In most populations the birth rate is around 51% boys, but women infected with toxoplasma had up to a 72% chance of a boy. Toxoplasma causes congenital defects in newborns and can trigger miscarriages, but a link with the gender of newborns has never been identified before...

In most cases the parasite is harmless in humans but it is still unclear what the infection does to people in the long term. Researchers at Oxford University have proposed that the parasite could explain altered personality and changes in IQ levels after their research on rats showed that infection can persuade rats into a suicidal attraction to cats.

Carl Zimmer over at The Loom has an excellent article on another recent study involving the toxoplasma parasite that links it to cultural differences between nations, and provides further details on the personality changes it can induce. Link

Gonzales deep-fries Coca-Cola-flavored batter. He then drizzles Coke fountain syrup on it. The fried Coke is topped with whipped cream, cinnamon sugar and a cherry. Gonzales said the fried Coke came about just from thinking aloud.

Gonzales' diet-buster wins the creativity honor at the second-annual Big Tex Choice Awards Contest...

Gonzales achieved notoriety in 2005 with the fried peanut butter, banana, and jelly sandwich -- selling an estimated 25,000 of the treats, according to the fair's Web site. The site said London got media attention in 2004 with her fried marshmallows on-a-stick.

Update: Da Mystic Homeboy sez, "Ammonia Coke is a delicacy/tonic I have yet to try. Mix in several drops of ammonia with your Coke, and apparently you get relief from a variety of hypertensive related disorders."

Update: Adam sez, "It's not a 'sculpture' -- it's a working computer. In his notes, the creator resists comparisons to Gilliam and Cronenberg, saying "if you look carefully, you'll see it's totally different."

Update: Nym sez, "Disneyland security used to call the People Mover the 'People Maker' because of how many people they had to stop having sex on the slow moving ride."

Update 2: Dan sez, "The proper nickname for the Peoplemover is the "PeopleRemover" -- coined by morbid cast members shortly after the first kid was killed."

And next week I will show a work done in my "officetel" (office-hotel=a korean type of dwelling for mixed use), mirroring my miniroom.

My main reasons for doing this work is a fascination of how much young Koreans live online plus the variety of accommodation types that exist in this city (from regular 3-4 bedroom family apart

Emil Goh moves seemingly effortlessly between countries and cultures. Malaysian born of Chinese descent, brought up and educated in Australia (and Goldsmith’s College in London) and now for the time being settled in Seoul, he manages to melt in pretty well almost anywhere. The place he stays in also provides his working material. His works are entirely about urban phenomena – lovers dressing codes for instance, or the Umbrella Taxi service he provided for pedestrians in a downtown area in Seoul. His currently most ambitious project is on the particular Internet culture in Korea relating to the “Cyworlds” that are created on a number of web-pages. Here young (and not-so-young) Koreans create their own Internet blogs, where they establish alternative personas and homes, complete with wallpapers and interior decorations. Much of the energy in Emil Goh’s work comes from his ability to become part of the phenomena he describes, not as a spy or observer, but as a participant and social chameleon.

The first one is online and is nightmarishly excellent. Link (Via Drawn!)

If only Google, Microsoft and Yahoo had the same courage as Wikipedia, the same confidence that their search-engines were valuable enough to be indispensible.

Wikipedia reported on its site that it had received word from multiple users in the country on Chinese-forums.com that the site had been restored. The most recent blocking was the third such outage reported by Wikipedia.

Update: John Mark sez, "Reports on Slashdot from folks in China indicate that, while Wikipedia is currently not being blocked in its entirety, certain parts are still being blocked. Readers in China report having problems getting to the Chinese language version, and English-language articles on certain subjects, such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989."

That's predictable enough -- but it means that Beijing is now stuck playing cat-and-mouse with Wikipedia, having to ferret out every potentially sensitive page and update its filters accordingly. If MSFT, Yahoo and Google followed Wikipedia's lead, we could force Beijing to devote ever-escalating resources to this effort, a denial-of-service attack on its censors.

QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM), a leading developer and innovator of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and other advanced wireless technologies, and the Mozilla Foundation, a public-benefit organization dedicated to promoting choice and innovation on the Internet, today announced that future versions of Eudora® will be based upon the same technology platform as the open source Mozilla Thunderbird™ email program. Future versions of Eudora will be free and open source, while retaining Eudora's uniquely rich feature set and productivity enhancements. QUALCOMM and Mozilla will each participate in, and continue to foster development communities based around the open source Mozilla project, with a view to enhancing the capabilities and ease of use of both Eudora and Thunderbird. QUALCOMM also today announced that it has released the final commercial versions of the current Eudora products for Windows and Mac operating systems. The open source version of Eudora is targeted to release during the first half of calendar year 2007. Once the open source version of Eudora is released, QUALCOMM will cease to sell Eudora commercially. In the interim, QUALCOMM will continue commercial sales, at a reduced price of $19.95 and with a six-month period of technical support. Existing technical support commitments will be honored in their entirety.

"My wife Carla and I started Boing Boing as a print zine in 1988," [Mark] says. "We were living in Colorado at the time and were interested in zines, the Church of the SubGenius, Timothy Leary, cyberpunk, underground comics, high weirdness, brain machines, and computers." Frauenfelder’s love of all things weird exploded exponentially as the Internet grew, and a phenomenon was born. The blog grew so large; he eventually had to recruit like-minded folks to help feed the public appetite for all things odd.

Physicists love explosions. We owe our nuclear predicament to a quirk of human nature: designing, making, and testing nuclear explosives can be fun. “The sin of the physicists at Los Alamos did not lie in their having built a lethal weapon,” physicist Freeman Dyson (my father) has explained. “They did not just build the bomb. They enjoyed building it. They had the best time of their lives building it. That, I believe, is what Oppenheimer had in mind when he said that they had sinned.” Eight years ago, I began interviewing retired (and semi-retired) nuclear weaponeers who had worked on Project Orion — the technically promising but politically unacceptable effort, begun in 1957, to build an interplanetary spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs. The project’s leader, physicist Theodore B. Taylor (1925-2004), exemplified the conflict between love of explosions and fear of the results.

“I was given a chemistry set when I was 7 or 8 and that rapidly turned into a laboratory for making explosives, with one restriction set down by my mother: never, never under any circumstances was I allowed to make nitroglycerine,” said Taylor. “So I didn’t.” He experimented with more explosive and less stable alternatives instead. “I was fascinated by explosions. I still am. Without any attraction to the damage. I hated to just fiddle around. I wanted to go to extremes.”

Taylor promised his mother, in the aftermath of Hiroshima, that he would never work on nuclear weapons, but the temptation proved impossible to resist. After an unsuccessful first attempt at a Ph.D., Taylor with his wife, Caro, and four-month-old Clare, drove their 1941 Buick to Los Alamos from Berkeley in November of 1949. “Within 24 hours of our arrival at Los Alamos, I was deeply immersed in the nuclear weapons program. Within a week, I was hooked on understanding what went on at these enormously high energy densities, clear off any human scale.”

"If we manage to do this Sweden will be the third country to occupy the moon", said SSC's Fredrik von Schéele.

A competition has been arranged for students to construct a little red house that is suitably sized for placement by a moon landing device. The construction may not exceed eight square metres and can weigh a maximum of four kilos.

Episode #4 of the Boing Boing Boing podcast (our motto: "B cubed or be square") is ready for downloading. Each block of the photo-mosaic above shows you what's inside.

Our guest this week is Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of "The Long Tail." With Chris, we talk about:

Robert Anton Wilson, Jon Lech Johansen, GooTube, book burning, John Hodgman's book tour, and how the infinitely versatile longtail theory applies to matters as diverse as low-grossing grossout movies, coffee, beer, public access cable TV shows, George Lucas, and Disneyland rides.

UPDATED Links (earlier published file was truncated at the end): Podcast, Podcast Feed, Subscribe via iTunes, MP3 Link (64K). Total time of podcast: 40:57.

UPDATE 2: Here's an MPEG-4 version (aka .m4a) of this week's episode, with support for chapters: Link. MP3 is the more standard format for podcasts, but I love that MPEG-4 allows you to divide a long audio file into bite-sized chapters, and embed art, descriptions, and links for each. Hope you enjoy it.

BONUS: The music you hear in this week's episode is by Q-Burns Abstract Message, aka producer and indie digital music entrepreneur Michael Donaldson. The song featured in Boing Boing Boing is his remix of "Angel Soup" by Cold Hands, recently released on vinyl and digital via Blunted Funk Records. He has very kindly uploaded this tune for free listening in entirety: Link, with info on where you can purchase this and other music by Q-Burns in delicious DRM-free MP3. I don't have a PhD in jamology like he does, but even a layperson like me can detect powerful dance waves and funkton particles emitting from this song.

Conflict in Iraq has killed more than 600,000 people since the US-led invasion in March 2003, according to a controversial study published online on Wednesday by the Lancet, a leading medical journal. The researchers said their figure, far higher than any previous estimate, was more accurate than the death tolls produced by official Iraqi sources.

Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, carried out the survey with doctors from Al ­Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, using a technique based on interviewing a random sample of households throughout Iraq. They concluded that there were 655,000 “excess deaths” as a result of the war, equivalent to 2.5 per cent of the population; 601,000 died through violence, usually gunfire.

Update: More now at the NYT, and Sean Bonner of metblogs says,

MBNYC has the scoop on the crash: Link.

CBC's Quirks and Quarks, my favorite science radio program, has run a couple of pieces recently about the idea that some of what we think of as "disorders" in human behavior can be more usefully treated as speciation -- a different kind of human.

Psychopaths: Quirks talks to research psychologists about the biological basis for psychopathy -- and the fact that psychopaths are sexually profligate and have lots of kids. Psychopathic rapists target fertile women -- not children or old women.

Dr. Marnie Rice is a psychologist with the Mental Health Centre Penetanguishene, in Penetanguishene, Ontario. She studies criminal psychopaths who are incarcerated there. She views psychopathic behaviour as an evolved survival strategy. She says that there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that psychopaths are mentally ill but there’s good reason to believe that their disturbing behaviour is an evolved trait. She says psychopaths have evolved to capitalize in a particular environmental niche -- namely preying on the rest of society.

The two researchers make an unlikely team. One is Dr. Laurent Mottron, a psychiatrist and cognitive neuroscientist at the Riviere-des-Prairies Hospital. He has been studying autism for 25 years. The other is Michelle Dawson, who is autistic. Ms. Dawson has never been to university, but is working at the level of someone with a PhD. For the last couple of years, these two have been collaborating on research into autism. They argue that autism should be recognized as a different way of being human, rather than as a disease or series of defects to be eradicated.

Low got the idea of pink jumpsuits from a sheriff in Arizona, Joe Arpaio, who bought pink boxers to keep inmates from stealing the underwear and other clothing. In Mason, Low dyed the jumpsuits and slippers pink, and the color later bled to sheets, underwear and other articles during washings.

Low, who was a deputy in Mason before being elected sheriff, estimated the re-offense rate in the county is down 70 percent since he switched to pink jumpsuits for the inmates. He also said there have been no fights between inmates in the jail since it was painted.

"I wanted to stop re-offenders," Low said. "They don't want to wear them. Working inmates get a choice to work outside or sit inside, and some choose to sit inside because they don't want people to see them. They would rather stay upstairs."

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement)

Your Pete Bagge posting today reminded me of a Thanksgiving illustration I worked up a few weeks ago after travelling in the middle of the liquid explosives scare. (I hate taking off my shoes, and thought of those huge buckles on the cartoon pilgrims).

Update: Margaret sez,

Apparently Einstein left school when he was fifteen, a high school in Munich. He was not particularly interested in school, but he 'jumped' a class to join an older class. He moved to live with his parents in Milan. A year later he applied to a technical college in Zurich, but he was turned down. He then decided to go back to school and get his Matura (Reifeprüfung / matriculation). He did that at the school in Switzerland the graphic shows. He passed it in 1896 as the best in the class. I gather 6 is the best mark there.

I read German language and literature 5, French 3, no English, Italian 5, history 6, geography 4, algebra 6, something mathematical (geo something including trigonometry) 6, some form of geometry 6, physics 6, chemistry 5, natural history 5, mystery (some form of drawing) 4, technical drawing 5

Update 2: Haun sez, "On the diploma, Geometry is divided into planimetry, trigonometry, stereometry & analytic geometry The 'some form of geometry' line reads: Descriptive geometry. The 'mystery' is Artistic draftsmanship."

By including Macrovision with its products, TiVo is designing a product that is intended to control its owner and treat its owner (TiVo's customer) as an attacker. They've added a swatch of functions that act directly against a user's interests (there's no time at which it's in a user's interest to have her device refuse to record a show the user wants to record). In so doing, they've created a bunch of potential failures in which the user is locked out of her own equipment.

It's like those movies where an accident or a bad guy triggers the "self-destruct button" on a spaceship. Often the self-destruct button is locked away behind plexiglas and padlocks for safety, but wouldn't it be safer not to include a single command that blows up the whole space-ship?

TiVo's problem is a "glitch" but the reason they're having this kind of glitch is that there's a single command that can tell the TiVo to stop listening to its owner. Wouldn't it be better if TiVo didn't build in any technology that attacks its customers?

Our initial test was smooth: we got high-def HDMI output to the JVC receiver and the attached HDTV, and a simultaneous standard-def signal from the TiVo's S-Video and composite outputs (which we were watching on separate monitors). But when we moved onto another program--Revenge of the Sith, recorded off of HBO-HD--the screen suddenly went gray, with a TiVo warning emblazoned across the bottom: "Viewing is not permitted using the TiVo Digital Media Recorder. Try another TV input." Several other programs--Empire of the Sun (HDNet Movies), Simone (HBO-HD), and episodes of Battlestar Galactica (Universal HD) all yielded the same result. Further investigation revealed the culprit: hitting the Info button from the program listing page (TiVo's Now Playing screen) on these programs included a section called "restrictions": "Due to the policy set by the copyright holder, this recording: Cannot be transferred to VCR, DVD, or any other media device. To learn more, visit www.tivo.com/copyprotection."

Visiting that link will reveal apparent culprit: TiVo's Macrovision copy protection. Apparently, these programs were flagged as "copy never," so the box was dutifully following orders, and allowing video only via the copy-protected HDMI output (which is, to date, impossible to record). This isn't new: as far back as 2005, there were reports of TiVo boxes imposing restrictions on the viewing of certain TV shows. At the time, TiVo blamed the restrictions on "false positives"--saying the viewing restriction technology, ostensibly designed for pay-per-view and video-on-demand programming, was being turned on (by the cable companies) to cover a wider array of programming.

When we contacted TiVo about the issues we were having, a company engineer was stumped: he reiterated the same claim from last year, that the content flags should be appearing only on PPV and VOD programs. He suggested that the problem was twofold: our local cable company was "overflagging" its content, and/or the JVC receiver was not properly interpreting the copy-protection flag.

Here's an interesting swipe discovery: Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, swiped an illo from a 1938 issue of a pulp magazine called Gang Busters In Action for the Batman story in Detective Comics #33 (November 1939.) Check out the fingers of Bruce Wayne's left hand. They are green in the panel, but should have been skin colored. Link (Thanks, Eric!)

Over the years, as new subdivisions have stretched farther and farther out onto the plains, their names have become wordier, more elaborate, and more pretentious. Today, there is an obvious trend in the naming of new subdivisions in metro Denver. Developers now use a variety of semantic tricks in their attempt to increase the perceived exclusivity of the development. No longer would something simple and unassuming like "Columbine Knolls" suffice. These days, the first part of the name must clearly identify that the development is not only a residential community, but also one of great distinction, and that these homes of great distinction are located at a place of even greater distinction. Thus, new suburban development names now begin with phrases like "The Estates at..." or "The Preserve at..." or "The Retreat at..." followed by not just one or two words to describe the incredibly special patch of prairie on which these homes have been built, but three words or more.

"We understand now that piracy is a business model," said Sweeney, twice voted Hollywood's most powerful woman by the Hollywood Reporter. "It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price and availability. We we don't like the model but we realise it's competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward."

Sweeney outlined Disney's strategy as: being primarily about content because it drives everything else...

To enhance my speech, I nestled one of my favorite specimens between my underwear and shirts in a carry-on bag because I never check luggage on business trips. My banded chunk of the Hebron Gneiss (pronounced "nice") resembled a broken slice of layer cake composed of licorice and cream cheese.

In retrospect, I suppose I could have put the grapefruit-sized specimen inside my sock, swung it around my head like a mace, charged the cabin and attempted to hijack the flight. This, of course, never occurred to me until the zealous inspector declared my rock a "dual-use" item.

"What, pray tell, is a dual-use item?" I asked. I'm afraid I chucked just a little, causing her to glare, withhold a satisfactory answer and call her supervisor. He hefted my rock, scrutinized it for a moment, and agreed that my specimen was indeed a dual-use item, meaning a potential low-tech weapon. During those uneasy moments when I thought I would be detained, I wondered if a doctor's stethoscope would also be declared a dual-use item, since it could be used to strangle a pilot.

A 2-deck vehicle parking system rigidly bolted together in the field of operation by a heavy-duty scissors style lift designed to lift (2) 5,000 lb. vehicles at the same time. The deck structure and lifting/synchronizing components are completely concealed below ground so there is no indication that a lift (or second car) is present when lowered.

A sensor in the front of the helmet detects anybody within a 2 metre range, at which point the mouth is pulled into a broad grimace by a small servo motor and some concealed fishing wire. The helmet addresses the facades of social interaction and explores our responses to affected expressions.

When my wife and I got married I found out that her late grandfather had said to the family that, when married, I was to get my choice of all his old tools. That alone was amazing, given the excellent collection of vintage woodworking tools and special-built power tools. But, it got better.

I found Pop's collection of vintage Handyman Magazines and oh how glorious they are. So, I decided to share! Every Monday I will post a "new" magazine, in its entirety, here for all to enjoy!

"The fire brigade always has to assume a worst-case scenario," said a fire brigade spokesman. "We conducted a variety of tests and figured out it was jelly."

He said the newly wed groom, who was pulled out of bed at noon following a tipoff, confirmed that the jelly, known as Jell-O in the United States, was a party leftover -- and agreed to clean it up.

The fact that it was built from parts readily lying around makes, for example, that MOSFET T1 is a rather strange type. In principle any P-channel MOSFET can be used for this, as long as it can cope with the peak current of about half an amp. The coil L1 does not have a critical value either. The author's coil comes from a backlight-inverter, but any slightly hefty coil will do. If the 20-V power supply is actually in the vicinity of 20 V, then all is well.

Given the uncertainty about the risks of consuming new nano products, many analysts expect near-term investment to focus on novel food processing and packaging technology. That is the niche targeted by Sunny Oh, whose start-up company, OilFresh, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is marketing a novel device to keep frying oil fresh. OilFresh grinds zeolite, a mineral, into tiny beads averaging 20 nanometers across and coats them with an undisclosed material. Packed into a shelf inside the fryer, the beads interfere with chemical processes that break down the oil or form hydrocarbon clusters, Mr. Oh says. As a result, restaurants can use oil longer and transfer heat to food at lower temperatures, although they still need traditional filters to remove food waste from the oil.

Food and Wine: "Shaw told me he hoped to convene a summit meeting with some of the smartest people in the food world to hammer out a workable model for copyrighting food. First, he’d propose changing the copyright code, possibly by making cuisine a subdivision of the existing category for sculpture or acknowledging recipes as a form of literary expression. For enforcement, Shaw leans toward creating a system like ASCAP, an association that collects composers’ royalties for public performances of songs—on the radio, in nightclubs and so on..."

Megnut: "The culinary world at its best is a world of craft and art. A fine meal is a performance, not a soulless assemblage of ingredients. I feel good when I eat Grant Achatz's "Hot Potato" at Alinea. I don't want to eat "Hot Potato™ by Grant Achatz" rotely created at some food counter in the airport. Clearly there are issues with how chefs get rewarded for their creativity and effort, and I would love to see the best get the recognition they deserve. But bringing the lawyers in? I don't see how that benefits chefs in the long run, or diners, or amateur cooks. In the end, I suspect the ultimate beneficiaries would be the same people who always win. As we get ensnared in the webbing of our increasingly-complex legal system, the ones who always make the most money are the lawyers."

The proposed tariff says that, as a condition of the licence, "an online music service shall use all technical and other means available to it to ensure that reproductions made by a user are exclusively for that user’s private use." Is this provision really what it appears to be: mandatory DRM for Canada's online music market?

Would the tariff require online music services to use TPMs? Would “other means” require strict end user licence agreements? What happens if a popular online music store like eMusic wanted to continue selling DRM-free music? Could they be sued? Could they negotiate a separate agreement, and even if so, would they be at a competitive disadvantage? Will consumers just have to accept DRM if they want to pay for music? If all or most online music services must use DRM, would that limit creators’ freedom to sell online music on their chosen terms? What would be the broader public policy implications of mandatory DRM?

Link (via Michael Geist)

Christian music sales, both on CD and via paid download, over the first six months of 2006 were 11% higher than during the same period in 2005. That double-digit surge stands in stark contrast to the rest of the music industry, which experienced a 4% decline during the same time period. And no other genre has a 2006 sales jump anywhere near the level of the Christian sector.

When the six-month numbers were released, industry leaders said the figures showed that efforts such as the "Millions of Wrongs" campaign were making in-roads. But that view may be a leap of faith, says Joe Fleischer, chief of marketing for Big Champagne, a top barometer of online media activity.

Fleischer said the uptick in Christian music sales was more than matched by a jump in Christian music that was traded on peer-to-peer networks, e-mailed as file attachments and (the new popular mode of youth distribution) via digital files tucked into instant messages.

Mark Cuban, who last week said that only a "moron" would buy YouTube, today writes in a post titled "I still think Google is crazy :)" --

It will be interesting to see what happens next and what happens in the copyright world. I still think Google Lawyers will be a busy, busy bunch. I dont think you can sue Google into oblivion, but as others have mentioned, if Google gets nailed one single time for copyright violation, there are going to be more shareholder lawsuits than doans has pills to go with the pile on copyright suits that follow. Think maybe how Google discloses what they perceive the copyright risk to be in the SEC filings might be an interesting read ?

I think there will be supoenas to get the names of Youtube and Google Video users. Lots of them as those copyright owners not part of the gravy train go after both Google and their users for infringement.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts DRM. As it stands now, there is no DRM on all that video being offered from Google or YouTube. Millions of copyrighted videos that their owners spent a boatload to copyprotect that is available to everyone and everyone without it. (Personally i think DRM is a waste of money, but will all those labels and content providers ?)

BoingBoing's "band manager" John Battelle posted some thoughts about this possibility months ago, and today shares his initial reaction here:

I am mixed on this. I think it's wise to frame this as "the companies will stay separate" kind of acquisition, even if in the end that's not the intent. But this marks Google's first significant "out of brand" acquisition, the company's first true brand-management challenge. I'm not counting Blogger in here because, well, it wasn't this big. More to come...

Google was slammed by free speech advocates for complying with authorities in China to launch a filtered google.cn this January. And YouTube has been the subject of growing criticism for takedown policies which are at best erratic, and at worst, de facto censorship.

In the New York Times, Tom Zeller writes:

YouTube users can flag any video as containing pornography, mature content or graphic violence, depicting illegal acts or being racially or ethnically offensive. A video is removed — as [Michelle] Malkin’s was on Sept. 28 — only if a review by the company’s customer support department agrees that it is inappropriate, or that the video is on its face in violation of the site’s terms of use.

But the incident raised some questions about the fine line YouTube’s administrators walk when they decide to respond to users’ complaints about contributions to the site — a mechanism that is fraught with the potential for vindictive shenanigans.

"Short Arm" Baxter was yet another strange case. The poor guy was born with short arms, and they didn't grow with his body. You've all heard of the guy who never reached for the check. They say he had short arms and deep pockets -- could never get his money out. Well, "Short Arm" Baxter couldn't reach his pants pockets. He always wore a shirt with a pocket to keep his folding money in. He wore his house key around his neck on a long chain. When he changed a dollar, he'd put the change in his mouth so it wouldn't spill out of his shirt pocket.

One day he was window shopping and a friend walked up behind him and greeted him with a slap on the back. "Short Arm" almost went into convulsions. His friend thought he was choking to death. At last, "Short Arm" got his breath -- and just in time. He was turning purple. "Goddamn it, Burt -- you just made me swallow 98c!"

Reader comment:

Tal says:

The village's name is Nahalal, it's in Israel. I went to middle school there but lived in a rather nondescriptly-shaped development about ten minutes away. I don't know if the people there really "enjoy" living in a circle or whether they spend any time really thinking about it, but I've definitely always thought it was strange.

Reader comment:

Amos says:

See a brief history and some more photos of Nahalal here.

A copy of the interesting Jerusalem's Post obit on architect Richard Kauffmann who designed Nahalal, among others such as the current official dwelling of the israeli prime minister.

In the video, Curtis testifies that Feeney asked him to write a program for touchscreen voting machines that could undetectably "flip the vote 51-49 to whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win."

Yang claims that Curtis' allegations are untrue, and Tom Feeney denies ever meeting Curtis. But in 2005, Curtis was given a polygraph test.

The test was given by Tim Robinson, the retired chief polygraph operator and 20-year veteran of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The test did not detect any attempt at deception on the part of Curtis in any of his responses. Curtis has stated that the test was based on all the allegations in the affidavit that was provided to Conyers' Voting Forum.

Reader comment:

John says:

Interesting post, but polygraphs are dubious at best for evidence. There's a Boing Boing post by Cory from 2003 on that very topic.

The site mentioned there, antipolygraph.org, is still around, BTW.

If there's other evidence about to corrobrate his story, though, it would be interesting to see.

[I]f it is spared we risk the moose’s breeding qualities spreading. Soon we might two, three, four or five albino moose in these wooded areas, something which in the long run can weaken the herd.

Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead this Saturday. The Russian journalist was known for her critical reporting on the government of Vladimir Putin and its handling of the Chechen conflict. The day of her death was Mr. Putin's birthday, and some see significance in this fact. Also on that day, she had planned to file a story on the Chechen authorities' torture practices with the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where she was a correspondent. The identity of her killer or killers is unknown.

Jasmina Tesanovic knew and worked with Politkovskaya, and shares this with BoingBoing:

Anna Politkovskaya Silenced

The Russian icon was finally done in by a hitman, after many failed attempts on her life in the past years.

Some years ago, I was in Stavanger (Norway) at a PEN Conference. The topic of the round table was writers and wars in Israel and Palestine. Jacques Derrida was there as a moderator.

In the midst of our difficult peace negotiations around the table, alarming news arrived: Anna, a fellow member of PEN, the Russian journalist who wrote against her own government's military abuse, had been transported to Vienna. Due, of course, to the death threats, at first dismissed by some media as signs of her own paranoia.

The Writers in Prison Committee of PEN was engaged in helping Anna protect her own life and freedom of expression. I witnessed a few phone calls. I remember her unwillingness to leave her country or her work, or to seek any safety through silence in exile.

PEN provides certain possibilities to a writer whose life is at stake in their home country. I met a writer dragged out of a Yemeni prison by an activist from Norway. As a member of the Norwegian Pen Center, I was also being offered some possibility of Norwegian asylum.

But what is a real option for a journalist and a writer whom freedom of expression is denied at home? Prison in one's own country, silence in exile? Silence is not an option, and Anna clearly stated that, by turning on her heels, going back to her Moscow home, remaining active, writing constantly and narrowly escaping attempts on her life.

The experiment shows that this part of the cortex "is clearly very important for our social behavior, our societal evolution," Sanberg said. The right side of the DLPFC helps people resist those strong urges for sex, money and general acquisitiveness that come from more primitive sites outside the cortex, he said.

"It provides modulation of those urges, so that you can have control over them," Sanberg added. "As we evolved, we somehow developed this control over our basic needs."

One intriguing line of research is whether the right-side DLPFC functions similarly in everyone -- even hardened criminals or sociopaths.

"This is a very interesting question which we are just exploring now," Fehr said. "Preliminary results suggest that the right DLPFC has very different activation across individuals."

(The Incredible Mouth Band) reminded me of a song done by The Who, back in 1966, called "A Quick One While He's Away." The band wanted to put string parts on the song, but the band's manager said that they couldn't afford the costs ( which is not surprising as the band was many tens of thousands of pounds in debt at this time ). So, as a joke, they sang the word "Cello" repeatedly where they thought the cellos would play in the song. Link

"These people could appeal for therapies or cures," he said.

Lorek, 41, is pinning his hopes for success on a German law which grants kidnap victims the right to state compensation.

This was a lot of fun for me to do, especially since it gave me the chance to ask David many of the questions that you and I have both had about Getting Things Done — so, as you might expect, there’s a heavy focus on implementation and best practices, as well as how to troubleshoot problems in your own GTD system. Lot of good stuff that I think you’ll enjoy and learn from it as much as I did...

Tomorrow’s inaugural episode is on procrastination, with more episodes coming once a week or so for the next few weeks.

4:55pm PST: There was a slight delay to our rolling restart while we continued our investigation. The rolling restart should begin soon, if you are currently in-world you will get a warning before your region is restarted - allowing you to teleport to another region. We hope to have logins open again very soon. Thanks again for everyone’s patience during this issue.

4:35pm PST: As part of our effort to counter the recent grey goo attacks, we’re currently doing a rolling restart of the grid to help clean it out, this means each region will be restarted over the course of the next few hours. Thanks again for your patience.

4:15pm PST: We are still in the process of investigating the grid-wide griefing attacks, as such we have momentarily disabled scripts and “money transfers to objects” as well on the entire grid. We apologize for this and thank for your patience. As soon as I have more information, I will pass it along.

A meeting of the internet's top brass as well as UK politicians, businessmen, and academics will take place in London at 2pm today - and bloggers have been asked to make their voices heard.

Discussion will cover the future of the internet and seek answers to the problems the medium has thrown up, including spam, phishing, freedom of speech, and child pornography. The results will then be fed into a global meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) that will be held in Athens at the end of the month, and that meeting's chair, United Nations representative Nitin Desai, will be present and giving a speech alongside trade minister Alun Michael

So, if you have something to say or just want to hear what the experts think, view the webcast from 2pm and blog on events, tagging posts "igf" or commenting at the IGF2006.info blog.

The full agenda for the meeting is here [pdf].

Update: Here's LL Cool J's "Something like a Phenomenon" mashed with "Mahna Mahna" -- thanks, McBoozo!

The field of scientific research in the DPRK successfully conducted an underground nuclear test under secure conditions on October 9, 2006, at a stirring time when all the people of the country are making a great leap forward in the building of a great, prosperous, powerful socialist nation.

It has been confirmed that there was no such danger as radioactive emission in the course of the nuclear test as it was carried out under scientific consideration and careful calculation.

The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent. It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the KPA and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability.

It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it.

Reader comment: bbum says,

If North Korea did manage to blow up a nuke of any sizable yield, it would show up as an earthquake on the various monitoring sites. Sure enough. There is a quake in NK at about the right time. Shows as a magnitude 4.2 blast. Link.

The USGS page that you've linked to shows some basic maps, but here's a way to see it in Google Earth. This link is to a Google Earth .kmz file from the USGS, showing the locations of earthquakes within the last week, indicating their locations and magnitude. Navigate over to North Korea, and you can see where the blast took place. The resolution in that particular area is surprisingly high.

Here's the Google Maps link to the satellite image of the epicenter.

You mention that NK is the 8th nation to acquire this capability (US, Russia, UK, France, Israel, India and Pakistan being the others). You forgot South Africa (Link) which developed 6 weapons and tested one in 1979.

armscontrolwonk.net had a google earth kmz file up of suspected helicopter pads, vip housing, tunnel-digging equipment, and tunnel entrances a few weeks before the actual test: Link.

This link provides the Google Maps coordinates for the North Korean nuclear facility (as opposed to the presumed testing site, which has already been posted). I used the image and description of the facility from an article on the China Daily website (Link) to find the place. Pretty good resolution. Note the silo on the south end of the facility. Also, note that this facility is not exactly in the middle of nowhere, as there is a reasonably-sized town just to the west.

An additional frightening aftereffect of underground nuclear tests is the potential for more earthquakes, volcanic activity, and so on, especially if the test is done near a faultline. This was, of course, along the Pacific Rim. See this (long-dormant) article:

Science 19 September 1969:
Vol. 165. no. 3899, pp. 1255 - 1256

"Underground Nuclear Explosions and the Control of Earthquakes" by Cesare Emiliani 1, Christopher G. A. Harrison 1, and Mary Swanson 1 1 Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Miami, Miami, Florida 33149

Abstract: Underground nuclear explosions trigger significant earthquake activity for at least 32 hours afterward and to distances up to at least 860 kilometers...

Link

I believe the list submitted by WillS omits China. The current list of 8 "official" nuclear weapons states, in order of acquisition is:

United States (1945)
Russia (1949)
United Kingdom (1952)
France (1960)
People's Republic of China (1964)
India (1974)
Pakistan (1998)
North Korea (2006)

Israel is, of course, suspected. And South Africa recounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons program in the 1990s. So that is either 9 or 10, depending on how you are counting.

In the updated list, a ninth country actually is still missing. This, of course, is China (the People's Republic of -- ), which developed nuclear weapons in 1964, before Pakistan, India, or nuclear upstart North-Korea had even started their programs. China also developed hydrogen bombs, not long after. For some strange reason, when reading the news about North-Korea, the country had initially escaped my own mental list of the nuclear club as well. It might also be worth mentioning that South Africa disassembled its nuclear arsenal in the early 1990s.

Not all of that history, however, is being left behind. Owner Hilly Kristal said he's negotiating to open up a CBGB in Las Vegas, as early as March...

Wherever the next CBGB ends up, Kristal said he's planning to take everything he can with him: the stage, the bar, the floorboards and assorted memorabilia. The scraps, he said, may be auctioned on eBay.

"We're going to take the urinals," Kristal said. "Joey [Ramone] went to the bathroom there.

"We can charge admission," he said, laughing.

Q: How are the figures made?

A: The figures are built on a Z-Corp rapid prototyping machine. One 4000th of an inch at a time, the machine lays down a plaster powder that it covers with a type of colored glue.

Q: How do the colors get applied?

A: Color is applied as the figures are built, this has a couple advantages over paint:

1. Very fine texture details can be reproduced: words, tattoos and subtle things like fingernails and eyebrows all show up great
2. Color actually extends slightly into the figure (like a candy shell), reducing the visibility of small scratches and bumps

Gary Kleiman, who owns BookBeat in the northern California community of Fairfax, decided the way to do it was to get rid of the clutter and make his store a gathering place.

"We had 10,000 or 13,000 books in the store," said Kleiman. "Now we have maybe 1,500." Last fall, Kleiman gave all but a handful of his used books to charity. Then he tore down shelves and in their place put tables and chairs and a small stage for live performances. He started offering free wireless internet access. And to help convince people to take advantage of it all he got a beer and wine license.

As for the books, most of the ones left are new and they're confined to the perimeter walls. While he's selling about the same number of books as he used to, new books are selling better. And his store has a lot more customers -- eating, drinking and listening to music -- than he did before. About 60 percent of the store's profits come from the cafe.

Kleiman's drastic move after six years of business is in large part the result two things he came to understand about the internet.

The first was that there were just too many used books online and they were just too cheap -- far cheaper than he could afford to sell them.

The second was that for all the talk about the speed of ordering books online, he could be faster. "I can order today and they will be here tomorrow," he said -- one reason customers choose him instead of the internet.

It was built by a local metalworker who has a studio on the same street I was staying at (I don't recall his name now, but I have his business card at home, with a website, which I'll post later tonight). On our last day in Brugge, I went out for a little walk around the block, and ended up on the open-air dining area of this small restaurant two buildings down from our B&B. I saw the mechanical lion standing there, but at first I thought it was a bitchin sculpture (Brugge is the kind of town where you can see open air art displays). Then the guy stood up and turned it on and I could not hold my geekness inside.

I spoke with him a little (him in much better English than me in my horrible Dutch) and he told me this was the first time he had taken it outside the studio and was having a celebratory beer. He then stood up and proceeded to ride the mechanical lion!

"I said, look, it's on the record. He then used a word I can't repeat on the air, and I said look, on the record is on the record, and he hung up on me... He said what I was saying was bull-something... He hung up!

...It's a metaphor for what's going on. Hang up when someone's got a different point of view, or information you don't want to deal with.

Project Posner is a free and fully searchable database of Judge Richard Posner's 2100+ opinions. It is one of a very tiny handful of free legal case searches on the internet right now.

The law supposedly belongs to the people, but it can be surprisingly hard to find. American case reports -- which are the real law of the nation -- are hard to get at, and even when on the internet, rarely searchable. To get real access you generally need a Westlaw subscription which costs a small fortune. Wikilaw is a great effort to try and change this, but it is still primitive.

We chose Posner because he was my old boss, and because he's arguably the most influential judge in the nation (including those on the supreme court). Project Posner is just a beta. It is a test project for will be more to come.

Update: Tim sez, "I wrongly and evilly forgot to properly credit my programmer, Stuart Sierra, who actually did the coding for Project Posner."

Update 2: John sez, "The Legal Information Institute is another project that aims to make US laws more accessible. The LII is a free service of Cornell Law School, and contains links to US cases and statutes, introductions to areas of law, and lots of other content for nonlawyers and lawyers. (Full disclosure: I am a student at Cornell Law, but I do not work on the LII.) Enjoy."

"Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers," said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press...

"When we looked at the first six months of stats, we saw that 30 percent of Google Book Search clicks went directly to our site, while roughly 40 percent went to Amazon," said William Shepherd, Osprey's managing director.

"Our sales through the Web are steadily increasing in proportion to our total sales, and we're confident that Google Book Search will accelerate this growth."

Walter de Gruyter/Mouton-De Gruyter, a German publisher, said its encyclopaedia of fairy tales has been viewed 471 times since appearing in the program, with 44 percent of them clicking on the "buy this book" Google link.

One of its many scientific titles, "Principles of Visual Anthropology", has seen about one-quarter of the 1,206 views click on "buy this book".