Sushi pillows! My favoritest food, in cushion form. Link (via Cribcandy)

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.

Link to article. See also related coverage of the incident on The Adventure Blog, GoBlog, MountEverest.net, and The Piton.

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.

Here is a link to a video clip of the shooting on Pro TV's website (warning: graphic violence), and here is the network's interview with the man who videotaped the incident (pop-up ads abound on the site).

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.

Snip from AFP story:

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.

More about the video here, at International Campaign for Tibet's website. The group reports that the refugee children are now in Chinese custody: Link. Here is a photo of the body of the Tibetan nun who was shot.

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)

Link to full-size computer desktop (16K gif), and you can buy t-shirts here. Moscow-born comic artist and illustrator Vera Brosgol designed it for DieselSweeties. (Thanks, R. Stevens!)

Christopher Martin -- formerly "Play" of the '80s hiphop duo Kid 'n Play -- is now teaching a class called "Hip Hop in Context" at North Carolina Central University. ABC News posted a video essay by Martin about his history, and the class, here. The university hosted a HipHop Summit earlier this year, "[offering] a scholarly approach to the music form that university officials believe could provide new opportunities to at risk males, better prepare students for industry careers and serve as a vehicle for creating successful experiences in educating youth." (Thanks, Zach Fanning)

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.

Robert Gale says,

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."

Strand says,

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.

Tinyfrogs says,

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.

An essay by Jasmina Tesanovic. Photos by Women in Black, Serbia (click image to enlarge).

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.]

Link. Like Pepto-Bismol for your eyes. (about)

Artist Andrew Krasnow crafts art objects from human skin. An exhibit of his work will run at Los Angeles art gallery A.D.M. Project from Oct 27 through Dec. 14. Snip from show blurb:

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.

Um. Whatever, man, but, ‹squick›. Seriously. Link

Mark Pesce -- author, lecturer, Virtual Reality pioneer, and co-author of VRML -- says,

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.

Link to his essay, "Trust But Verify." Snip:

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).

Link

India-based blogger and journalist Scott Carney says he will co-author the new Wired News blog Bodyhack "to up the publicity on the open source investigation on the one eyed baby," among other things.

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.

Link.

online classical
12 tone greatest hits
new music box
avant garde project
hooked on classical

plus...
happy 70th steve reich
Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Before Nintendo got into the video-game business, it was a toy and game manufacturer -- here's a gallery of the pre-game Nintendo products. Freaky. Link

Designer Theo Fennell created these pendants, "Baby Devil Art" and "Baby Cross Bone." The devil piece, 1" x .5", is coated on both sides with pavé rubies and the horns and details are 18k white gold. It's $3,330. The cross bones piece, 1" x .75" is covered on both sides with pavé black and white diamonds and also has 18k white gold details. It's $5,550.
Link to Vivre catalog (Thanks, Kelly Sparks!)

Remember the creepy Maine Mystery Beast that terrorizes the town of Turner and, in August, was mistaken for a dead dog on the side of the road? (Background here, here, and here.) Well, Bar Harbor sideshow banner artist Paul Szauter painted this magnificent work to honor our dear Mystery Beast during this Sunday's Mount Desert Island Marathon along the Maine coastline. The acrylic-on-cloth work is 52" x 28" in all its glory. Szauter and other area artists created a series of mile marker banners for a silent auction benefiting the Union 98 Artist-in-Residence Fund.

My cryptozoologist pal Loren Coleman, who helped determine that the dead dog was, happily, not the Maine Mystery Beast, has more details over at Cryptomundo. In his blog post, Loren jokingly asks if a runner in the marathon might nab him the banner. In all seriousness though, it would be incredibly cool if some cryptid-friendly kind soul in the Bar Harbor area placed the final winning bid on the banner at 1pm at the finish line and donated it to Loren's International Cryptozoology Museum for the public to someday enjoy.
Link

Inchworms are kids' shoes whose size can be adjusted up to three sizes -- press a button on the underside and pull or push to change the size. Link (via Gizmodo)

I have more cufflinks than I can ever make use of (I own exactly three shirts that I can wear cufflinks with), but I am sorely tempted by these badass sterling silver Space Invaders cufflinks on Etsy. $35 a pair, cheap. Link (via Gizmodo)

Aunt Fritzi or Bettie Page? You decide!
Link (via Coop's Positive Ape Index)

UPDATE: Mark, who accidentally double-posted this about 27 seconds after me, wrote, "This suggests to me that (Nancy creator) Ernie Bushmiller had a collection of Irving Klaw postcards."

Here's a photo of the drugs found on Willie Nelson's bus.

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.

Link (More Boing Boing coverage here)

Vivek says: "It's a 6 minute animated story about a boy and girl who find a creature that turns bugs into jewels, then try to exploit it and wind up dead. The animation is wonderful."

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)

Barry Isralewitz says:

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!

Link

Artist Lee Stoetzel made this incredible life-size motorcycle sculpture, titled "Chopper," entirely out of Pecky Cypress wood. It's 65 x 100 x 24 inches. He's also made a Pecky Cypress jeep and, according to a great little promotional zine I received from his representing gallery, Mixed Greens, he's currently working on a VW minibus. The Chopper is available for US$25,000.
Link to Lee Stoetzel's home page, Link to Mixed Greens, Link to an unrelated wood motorcycle that isn't art

If you're naive enough to buy a PC with Vista, Microsoft's new operating system, prepare to be reamed: the new license only lets you move it to one other PC before it locks forever. Break your PC twice, buy a new operating system. Nice to see Microsoft doing its level best to screw people who already have it rough.

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.

Link (via Engadget)

Here's a truly moronic article from the Restored Church of God Ambassador Youth site. The author, Kevin D. Denee, seems to think it's OK for him to use the Web to express his opinion, but other people -- both children and adults -- should not. Nearly every sentence in this schoolmarmish screed is funny.

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.

Link (Thanks, Rogier!)

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?”

Treehugger has a timeline that shows how long it would take for traces of human-made things and systems to vanish if we all suddenly went away. Link (Thanks, Phil!)

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.

Legendary hip-hop producer, Dan The Automator Nakamura (Gorillaz, Deltron 3030), is on The RU Sirius Show this week. And there’s a text version of the conversation on 10 Zen Monkeys.

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.

Link

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).

Previously: NASA Mars rover reaches "Victoria Crater"

Human rights activist and journalist Xiao Qiang (萧强), Director of The China Internet Project at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, writes:

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?

Link to full text of article.

Steve Paulson of Salon conducted a lengthy and interesting interview with scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins about his latest book, The God Delusion.

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.

Link (Thanks, C.B. Shapiro!)

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."

In conflict zones, children are often killed by the live leftovers of war -- unexploded bombs or landmines can be mistaken as toys. For a project in Singapore, ad agency Rapp Collins created Frisbee clones that look like landmines, which volunteers are scattering them throughout the city.

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.

Link (thanks, James Hathaway)

The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was today awarded today to Muhammad Yunus, a microcredit pioneer who founded Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. He loaned very small amounts of money to destitute women there, and helped them become entrepreneurs. Some women bought mobile phones and provided phone service on that shared phone in remote rural areas, for a per-call fee. Link to NYT story.

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.

Link to QuickTopic forum: "Wireless cottage industries: 'phone ladies' of Bangladesh"

"Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corp.'s Web site, utube.com, was inaccessible for most of the week, overwhelmed by millions of people looking for the popular online video site [YouTube.com]." Oh, tell it to Fasebook.com. Link to AP story.

Wes sez, "MacInTouch readers have discovered some unusual new clauses in Microsoft's EULAs for Windows Vista. It forbids accessing DRMed content inside virtual machines. Mac users are understandably concerned since many of them run Windows inside Parallels. It's not clear whether Vista will actually disable its DRM subsystem when running in a VM (probably in a futile attempt to slow down reverse engineering) or whether this is just a EULA limitation (in which case, nobody really cares)."

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.

Link (Thanks, Wes!)

Monsieur Coop points to a fun and ridiculous list of rock band name origins, both real and rumored. From the list:

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.

Link

Police confiscated a "mummified human skeleton" that Lynn Sterling of Port Huron, Michigan was trying to sell off on eBay. She said she acquired the curiosity from a friend in the demolition industry who snagged them at a school he was tearing down decades ago. eBay removed the posting on Wednesday after an a browser on the site tipped off police. Skeletons for medical use can be auctioned on the eBay but apparently "human remains" are a violation of policy. From the Associated Press:

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.

Link

I'm giving a keynote at Usenix LISA, the 20th annual Large Installation System Administration conference in DC this coming December. The con runs Dec 3-8, and I'm speaking on the 6th. LISA is the world's coolest, biggest sysadmin conference -- I'm deeply honored to be invited. Here's my talk summary:

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.

I'm also thrilled that they're reprinting my story When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth in the program book.

Link