For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don't show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves.

Meanwhile, colonels and generals have asked their bosses for more troops. Service chiefs have asked for more money.

And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand.

Now, the president says he'll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.

This is a mistake.

It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation's current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.

These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.

Most British copyright law gets written at the behest of giants like EMI, without any public interest analysis -- and it's time that changed.

IPPR deputy director Dr Ian Kearns said: "When it comes to protecting the interests of copyright holders, the emphasis the music industry has put on tackling illegal distribution and not prosecuting for personal copying, is right.

"But it is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have that is the job of government."

Report author Kay Withers said: "The idea of all-rights reserved doesn't make sense for the digital era and it doesn't make sense to have a law that everyone breaks. To give the IP regime legitimacy it must command public respect."

I saw this first hand, as when the London Underground phased out almost all forms of paper tickets in favor of the inherently less private RFID-based Oyster card (the only paper tickets remaining were single-rideday tickets, and the LU doubled the price of those). Even the banks get in on the act -- Citibank UK sent me a "mandatory questionnaire" that demanded that I disclose every source of income I have or might have or had, all property I owned all over the world, whom I loaned mney to and why, and so on -- they claimed that this was to comply with British terrorism rules. When I confronted them on this, they backed down and said it was an optional mandatory questionnaire.

Not only are cameras all over Britain -- especially London -- but many indoor spaces have rules that say you aren't allowed to shield yourself from their gaze, prohibiting motorcycle helmets and even hooded sweatshirts. The hoodie has become a symbol of surveillance-dodging hooligans -- a favorite (ab)use of the expansive, extra-judicial "anti-social behaviour orders" (ASBOs) is to order kids to stop wearing camera-foiling hooded jumpers.

The report's co-writer Dr David Murakami-Wood told BBC News that, compared to other industrialised Western states, the UK was "the most surveilled country".

"We have more CCTV cameras and we have looser laws on privacy and data protection," he said.

"We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us."

Shaping rice for your sweet sushi treats is best down when the krispy mixture is still slightly warm. If it cools and firms up too much, warm it slightly in the microwave for easier forming.

Rolls: The rice base for the rolls is easily shaped when one finds the appropriate sized circular object to cut out cylinders of rice krispy pieces. The average sushi roll slice is just over 1 inch across. Many circular cookie cutter packs will come with a circle small enough to cut pieces for the rolls. When in doubt- make your piece small so that it is bite sized and can be popped into your mouth in one fell swoop.

Nigiri: To shape the rice base for sushi draped nigiri, I was fortunate to have a nigiri press (featured in the picture) on hand. It produces a piece that is a 1″ x 2″ rectangle with rounded corners, much like a pillow. Alternatively, this shape can be formed by hand.

See also Chocolate sushi

Now Warner Music, EMI, Sony BMG and Vivendi Universal are suing her children, alleging that they are the infringers. It's apparently a publicity stunt, as the record companies leaked the news of the suit before they served the children with papers.

It said Michelle Santangelo, 20, has acknowledged downloading songs on the family computer and that her brother, Robert, 16, had been implicated in statements his best friend made. It accuses the two of downloading and distributing over 1,000 songs, including "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" by the Offspring, "MMMBop" by Hanson and "Beat It" by Michael Jackson.

"In short, each of the defendants participated in the substantial violations of plaintiffs' copyrights at issue and then concealed their involvement, standing idly by as Patricia Santangelo repeatedly protested their innocence and chastised plaintiffs for filing allegedly frivolous litigation," the complaint said.

The Santangelos' lawyer, Jordan Glass, disputed the recording industry's allegations and said he was at Michelle Santangelo's deposition and does not recall her "admitting or acknowledging downloading."

See also:
Interview with mom who won't pay off the RIAA shakedown
RIAA using kids' private info to attack their mother
Judge to RIAA: Keep your "conference center" out of my court
Anti-RIAA lawyer: no limit on how many people we can defend
Online fundraiser for mom being sued by the RIAA

Make magazine publisher and editor Dale Doughtery is at the Punkin Chunkin' World Championships (where contestants build machines to fling pumpkins as far as possible).

He says: "I thought you'd like the Loaded Boing truck, which accompanied a huge slingshot pumpkin thrower. It's clear and crisp in Delaware."

Link | Flickr photos of past Punkin Chunks

The ISP in question runs a broadband video service that is being creamed by a competing Internet service. In order to "compete" better with the winning player, they simply cut off access to it for their customers, saying "IPTV is a broadcasting, not a telecommunications service."

Two million cable modem subscribers and one million LG Powercomm broadband customers are being blocked from watching video from video on demand service HanaTV, Korea Times reports. Korea’s innovative Hanaro, #2 to Korea Telecom in broadband, has signed up 60,000 customers for video on demand in the first three months. KT Vice President Shim Ju-kyo tells Korea Times ``We are 100 percent ready to introduce Internet TV services and we will do so next year as soon as the legal framework is set up,’’ LG’s sister company, Dacom, has an IPTV offering of their own in the works. Hanaro is controlled by U.S. investors AIG and Newbridge, while Goldman Sachs and Bill Kennard’s Carlyle Group have been investing in Korean cable companies.

The Korea Cable TV Association is maintaining “IPTV is a broadcasting, not a telecommunications service” and boycotting the Hanaro offering. Cable networks have been fighting a regulatory battle to keep telcos out of the TV business.

A team led by Thierry Heidmann at the Institut Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, France, near Paris, decided to try to awaken the ancestor of an entire family of HERVs called HERV-K(HML2). To "correct" for mutations, the researchers took dozens of known HERV-K(HML2) sequences and aligned them to create a so-called "consensus" sequence. Then they converted this information into a complete viral genome.

The researchers showed that the newly crated virus could infect a variety of human cell lines and replicate. But its infectivity was extremely low, perhaps because human cells have evolved resistance against such viral invaders.

Above, a page scaned from a zine produced by residents of a WWI prisoner of war camp. What follows is without a doubt one of the most incredible reader submissions we've ever received. Daniel J. Geduld says,

On a recent trip to visit my parents, I was given several documents which belonged to my late grandfather, Sol Geduld. He led an amazing life. Born in Germany in 1905, he was put, along with his father, Harris Geduld, in a POW camp when World War I broke out because his father was a British subject. His mother, Bertha, was German and was not put in the camp. He and his father were traded for two German POWs and went to live in England. My Grandfather didn't know any English, but picked it up very quickly and ended up going to a prestigious high school where he showed an early aptitude for art and was on his way to becoming an architect or commercial artist.

Unfortunately, when his father died, he was pulled out of school at age 16 by his mother and taken back to Germany and forced to work odd jobs which is where my English Grandmother found him, working in an ice cream parlor in 1930 and they married that year and moved back to England. This was very lucky as they were both Jewish.

Although he continued to work various odd jobs during the depression apart from a few months where a serious bout of dermatitis made work impossible, when WWII broke out, he was incredibly active in the war effort despite being too old to join the military. He painted huge posters seen all over London to promote the war, he volunteered as an air raid warden meaning he was outside of a shelter during air raids, making sure others got to safety. He also got a job as an aircraft inspector, first for Handley-Paige and their Halifax Bomber and later for DeHaviland and their Mosquito fighter/bomber. Being an inspector meant he actually had to go up in the planes with the test pilots and make sure everything was working properly.

Eventually, they emigrated to America to be closer to my father who had moved to Indiana after receiving his PhD in London to work at Indiana University but only moved to Indiana itself shortly before I was born and they had retired. They both lived out the rest of their days there and my Grandfather spent his retirement volunteering for a community guarden and head start programs while doing much of the promotional artwork and advertising for them. He was a brilliant man and unfortunately died when I was still in high school but I still miss him very much.

Now, on to the documents. Although there are more than these two and I plan to scan more in later, I will share these first. They are from two very different points in my grandfather's life and you will see why I gave you his biography first.

The first document was a souvenir from his days in the POW camp, known as Ruhleben camp. It was in Germany on a former race course and around 4000 English men lived there. The document was a magazine which was printed at the POW camp called In Ruhleben Camp. It is sometimes very funny and sometimes very poignant (the story about the camp orchestra actually brought tears to my eyes: page 1, 2, 3, 4). Above all it is very, very English. Ridiculously English in the way only people away from their beloved homeland could be. There are more issues which I will scan in at some time in the future, but they are all in bad shape and this one was the most deteriorated. It is missing its cover. You can see it here: Link.

The second document is his notebook from when he was training to be an aircraft inspector in the second world war. Despite never finishing high school, he had to learn some pretty complex engineering, but his skills definitely helped him out. All of the illustrations were hand-drawn by my grandfather with a fountain pen. I don't understand a lot of it, but it is still just a beautiful document to look through. There is a second, longer notebook I will scan in at some point which is better preserved as it has been re-bound. You can see the notebook here: Link. I hope you enjoy these two little pieces of history.

I found myself poring over the elder Mr. Geduld's drawings for hours, and the prose in the camp zine is incredible. I think the inside cover is my favorite scan of all, if only for this one short line:

This is our first number, alas,
it will not be our last --
a quaint wish but our readers will understand.

Stories should not exceed 1600 words,
and and it should be borne in mind
that they have to pass the Censor.

See also: Kick-ass free software/open source con coming to Toronto, Oct 26-27

Previously on BoingBoing:

* Gizmondo's Spectacular Crack-up
* The phony police business is alive and well
* Rare Ferrari busted in half

Here are the details of the missing pieces along with URL links to images. (Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

“Scatterbrain”

Cel Vinyl Acrylic On Wood

10.5” x 7.5”

“Monster”

Cel Vinyl Acrylic On Wood

12” x 10”

Please help in any way you can. Post the information online and of course, if you hear or see anything about where these painting might be contact Tim Biskup's publishing company, Flopdoodle INC. by email.

I grew up in the country; my dad was a conservation officer in Ontario for 35 years, and he *knew* the great outdoors. Sometime in the mid '60s he gave me a copy of Ernest Thompson Seton's Two Little Savages. Adventures, common sense, philosophy, woodlore, respect for the environment and indigenous people, and *lots* of makin' stuff: Two kids from disparate backgrounds living as "Indians" in the early 1900's. Why this book isn't a constant kidslit best seller speak volumes about post millennial society in a way that saddens me deeply. Thankfully, it's in the common domain.
(It's worth noting that while the book contains many admirable elements, its title and characterization of Native American people would now be widely acknowledged as racist. Like other artifacts of this period, this book reflects the popular culture of its time.)

Reader comment:

Ben says: Along with Robert Baden Powell, Seton is the lesser-known co-founder the Boy Scouts of America. This old Outside Magazine article gives some insight into Seton and his Little Savages.

93 million miles: distance from Earth to the Sun.
93 million dollars: cost of transforming the Griffith Observatory.

After five years of darkness, Hollywood's historic Griffith Observatory re-opened yesterday with much hoopla, and many happy nerds.

------------------------------
TINY VIDEOS shot with a tiny camera:
* Ribbon cutting with Mayor Villaraigosa (0:27)
* Zeiss 12" refracting telescope (2:41)
* A walk on the roof, with Jen Collins. (2:07)

PHOTOS: Link to Flickr photoset.
------------------------------

I went to the ribbon-cutting ceremony with my pal Jen Collins, who art directed a documentary about the reconstruction (which stars Leonard Nimoy who was present, too).

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Observatory director E.C. Krupp, and a host of celebs and politicians were there speechifying. But the real stars in the house were all the astronomers and old-school science buffs, some of whom were part of the Observatory's history since its early days.

Jen and I wandered around and drooled over the Zeiss 12" refracting telescope, the Tesla Coil, the camera obscura, and lots of amazing hands-on astronomy exhibits. Thankfully, the extreme makeover left the spirit of this beautiful 1930s site intact.

My grandfather Leo J. Scanlon was an amateur astronomer. He was a "maker." Born to an Irish immigrant family in Pittsburgh, PA, he made his living as a plumber but used to dumpster-dive in steel mills and glass factories with pals, scavenging glass and metal to build telescopes and backyard observatories. He built the world's first aluminum-domed observatory in Pittsburgh, and Einstein came to visit it once. His observatory was torn down, but I have a marker and an asteroid to remember him by.

Yesterday at the opening ceremony, Griffith Observatory resident Astronomical Observer Tony Cook told me one of the astronomers involved in the original design of this site was part of the same amateur astronomy scene as my beloved "pop-pop," during the Great Depression. They may even have been friends. I can't wait to learn more about the history those two men shared.

A love of the stars connected them back in the '30s, when Griffith Observatory was built. That same love still connects me and my grandfather, even now that he has left this planet to join those far-away specks of light.

David "eecue" Bullock from blogging.la was there at the Observatory opening, too. Here are his pics from the grand opening yesterday: Link. Here is his photoset of HDR pics from a tour last week: Link. Here is audio he captured of Villaraigosa and others, during the ribbon cutting ceremony: MP3 Link.

Tech notes: video and stills shot with the itty bitty Canon Powershot SD360, photos and video edited with iMovie and iPhoto. Linux users: if the embedded video above makes your browswer farty, try the new Flash 9 beta which includes Linux support: Link. (Thanks, Micki Krimmel and Steven Starr / Revver.com)

Reader comment: Jim Winstead says,

As the page you linked to says, "Since opening in 1935, more than seven million people have put an eye to Griffith Observatory's original 12-inch Zeiss refracting telescope." What is new is an attached telescope (or two?) that allows a live video feed to be shown down in the main building, for guests who can't (or don't want to) make the climb to the telescope. Link

What? A whole article about Griffith Observatory and its history, but no mention of the fact that it figured prominently in "Rebel Without a Cause"? You must be saving that for an "Observatory Zen" entry, huh? Here's the famous fight scene at the observatory: video Link. (look for Dennis Hopper in the background at 1:48 into the clip) This follows a lengthy scene inside the observatory, but alas there is no clip on the YouTube.

Mindful that a 6-inch metal awl wrapped in black electrical tape could be used as a weapon, officers kept their weapons trained on the 33-year-old.

Sheehan went quietly afterward, without explanation.

Sheehan was paroled from state prison last week... Police booked him into County Jail in Martinez on suspicion of parole violations, indecent exposure and one felony count of possessing a concealed weapon.

When a hognose snake that's facing a predator flips belly-up, its mouth opens and stays agape, sometimes oozing drops of blood. And the snake defecates or otherwise releases an unappetizing smell. "It's spectacular," says Gordon Burghardt of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Grossly dead as the animal may look, Burghardt and Harry Greene, now at Cornell University, found that it's paying attention. Even snakes just 2 weeks old resurrect themselves sooner when a nearby human is looking away from them rather than directly at them.

Europe's grass snake puts on an even more realistic death act, says Patrick Gregory of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. When he caught his first grass snake years ago in France, it went limp. "I thought I'd accidentally killed it," he says. A death-feigning grass snake stays in character, not flopping back to its original position after it is turned over.

The relationships among the great range of freezing behaviors have yet to be clarified. "I see them as part of a continuum," Burghardt says.

Many questions remain: Are some of the activities seizures? A mental meltdown in response to disorientation? And how do some feigners remain conscious of vital details such as the gazes of observers?

U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers released Jo Hovind until sentencing but denied Kent Hovind's request to be released. He most likely will be detained at either Escambia County Jail or Santa Rosa County Jail until sentencing.

(Assistant US Attorney Michelle) Heldmyer said Kent Hovind was a flight risk and a "danger to the community."

His attorney, Alan Richey, argued that the Internal Revenue Service pursued his client because of his religious beliefs.

Kent Hovind, whose life's mission is to debunk evolution, says he and his employees are workers of God and therefore exempt from paying taxes. He pays his employees in cash and does not withhold their taxes or pay his share as an employer.

As for those who have bought MSN Music tracks, Microsoft said on its Web site that users will still be able to use their songs, transfer them to compatible music players and burn them to CD.

You were a sucker if you bought MSN Music tracks. You're a masochist if you buy Zune tracks.

Link (Thanks, Brent!)

Richard Sanders, a voice expert who worked on the Oklahoma bombing, JonBenet Ramsey murder, and Kobe Bryant cases, says voicemails left on a gay escort's answering machine belong to megachurch pastor and Bush ally Ted Haggard.

The voice mails for from a man who calls himself "Art." It should be noted Haggard's middle name is Arthur.

The first voice message, left on August 4 at 2:18 p.m., says:

"Hi Mike, this is Art. Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply. And I could pick it up really anytime I could get it tomorrow or we could wait till next week sometime and so I also wanted to get your address. I could send you some money for inventory but that's probably not working, so if you have it then go ahead and get what you can and I may buzz up there later today, but I doubt your schedule would allow that unless you have some in the house. Okay, I'll check in with you later. Thanks a lot, bye."

The second voice message, left on August 4 at 5:10 p.m., says:

"Hi Mike, this is Art, I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I'll get it sometime next week or the week after or whenever. I will call though you early next week to see what's most convenient for you. Okay? Thanks a lot, bye."

Jones claims Art is referring to methamphetamine in the messages.

Also, according to the Non-Prophet blog, the New Life Church Board of overseers has sent an email to members of the church mailing list that states that Haggard has confessed to at least some of the charges:

Since that time, the board of overseers has met with Pastor Ted. It is important for you to know that he confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true. He has willingly and humbly submitted to the authority of the board of overseers, and will remain on administrative leave during the course of the investigation.

An ambulance sped him to a hospital, where a C-T scan revealed he had a dissection of the aorta. The lining of the main output vessel carrying blood from his heart was torn, creating a two-channel pipe where there should be one.

Some of the people who loved him prayed for him during his recovery. He responds to those friends in this essay, thanking "goodness," not God, and explains why.

As I now enter a gentle period of recuperation, I have much to reflect on, about the harrowing experience itself and even more about the flood of supporting messages I've received since word got out about my latest adventure. Friends were anxious to learn if I had had a near-death experience, and if so, what effect it had had on my longstanding public atheism. Had I had an epiphany? Was I going to follow in the footsteps of Ayer (who recovered his aplomb and insisted a few days later "what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief"), or was my atheism still intact and unchanged?

Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say "Thank goodness!" this is not merely a euphemism for "Thank God!" (We atheists don't believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.

The New York Times is reporting that the feds have shut down the Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal (old Link) due to concerns from weapons experts that the "papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs."

One diplomat is quoted as saying, “If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.” I was able to find indexes to older (less sensitive) documents (and some html from pdfs) still cached at Google tonight. Rep. Pete Hoekstra pushed for the public release of the archive (Wiki link) to help determine "whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them". Critics have said the archive was created to perpetuate misinformation about WMDs (Salon link, subscription required) .

This is sure to reignite the debate over which party is best protecting the country's national security interests.

This is a piece of software that comes with a gag order.

Granneman covers other ways in which the Vista "agreement" takes away the freedom you'd assume you'd get when you shell out your hard-earned dough for a product. The key here is that Microsoft, and innumerable others, have elevated the user license to a high art. Practically every vendor now believes that it can turn a sale into a "license" just by putting a sticker on the package that says, "by opening this box, you agree."

Real agreements are negotiated. You and I sit down at a table and hammer it out. Real agreements aren't "subject to change without notice." Real agreements don't make you agree not to sue for negligence. Real agreements don't make you agree to treat your property as if it still belonged to the guy who sold it to you.

This is an obscene legal fiction, for if all it takes to form an agreement is to announce that it has been formed, then the very idea of legitimate agreement is dead. How can you have a social contract if the notion of contract has been strangled by innumerable shrinkwraps, clickwraps, and EULAs?

The draconian limitations I've discussed could only be enacted by a monopoly unafraid of alienating its users, as it feels they have no other alternative. Microsoft may yet learn, however, that there are limits to what its users will bear.

See also:
Vista licence: Microsoft's abusive relationship with you
Vista license only lets you reinstall your OS on new PCs twice

Called targeted spam or spear phishing, this type of spam that’s currently on the rise is particularly vexing because the spammer is able to “spoof” the sending e-mail address to make it look like it’s coming from within the organization of the recipient, making it difficult for spam filters to catch. And, unlike traditional spam that is sent in the thousands, spammers are sending just handfuls of these messages at a time, again making it difficult for antispam technology to detect.

Update: Jennifer sends us a link to box rivets -- "For building box mazes (work on coroplast, too) way better than bolts!"

While the idea of US-VISIT is universally lauded within government, the program's implementation has faced a steady barrage of criticism from congressional auditors concerned over management issues and cybersecurity problems. When Zotob began to spread last year, DHS' inspector general had just finished a six-month audit of US-VISIT's security; the resulting 42-page report, released in December, would conclude that the system suffered "security related issues (that) could compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of sensitive US-VISIT data if they are not remediated."...

A before-and-after comparison of those documents offers little to support CBP's security claims. Most of the now-revealed redactions document errors officials made handling the vulnerability, and the severity of the consequences, with no technical information about CBP's systems. (Decide for yourself with our interactive un-redaction tool.)

See also US-VISIT immigration system spent $15 million per crook caught

Come support the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and hear DRM-free tunes from Calabash Music this Sunday at Little Baobab in San Francisco.

Calabash Music is a leading online distributor of music from around the world, providing its entire catalog in MP3 format and splitting sales revenue 50-50 with artists. Local DJ and Calabash Music General Counsel Jim Sowers will be spinning African, Caribbean, and Latin music all night long. Part of the proceeds from the cover charge ($5) will go to EFF, and EFF staff members will be there to chat (and dance, if you're lucky).

WHAT: EFF and Calabash Music Mixer
WHEN: 8 PM until late, November 5
WHERE:
Little Baobab
3388 19th Street
San Francisco, CA, 94110, (415) 643-3558

More details at EFF's site and at Upcoming.org.

Chris Spurgeon says,

Each month at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA, just down the road from where I live, there's a huge flea market. Last month I made a major score...twenty large glass slides from the dawn of the manned space program.

The slides (back then there was no Microsoft PowerPoint of course, talks were often accompanied by slides) appear to be from a presentation outlining how the U.S. could get a man on the moon. The best I can tell, the slides are from 1962 or 1963, just a year or two after President Kennedy set the goal of getting to the moon by the end of the decade.

There's some great stuff here, if I do say so myself...artist illustrations of what landing on the moon might look like, models of the lunar module prototypes, and some great weird graphs of the rise in transportation speeds and weapon destructiveness over the centuries.

Reader comment: NASA Apollo Lunar Surface Journal contributor Markus Mehring says,

A really nice find. I could swear I've seen some of those slides before, possibly in the one or other NASA center archive. I'll look around and report back in case I dig something up.

Anyway, on to the point:

You just have to appreciate the little bugs throughout some of these slides, such as the orientation of Earth (uh, landing on the lunar north pole?), and most of all its illumination in this scene. With sunlight coming in from that angle, we should obviously be seeing a crescent Earth, not a full disc like this. Certainly not every illustrator is a science artist of, say, Don Davis or Rick Sternbach proportions.

I wonder how many Moon Hoax Believers™ will take this as proof for, well, whatever exactly. After all, they also tend to argue that just because some "NASA illustrations" depict a stark burned-in crater underneath the LM descent engine (unrealisticly, and not in accordance with the local circumstances and laws of physics), there has to be one in real life too, and that the absence of same thus has to be "proof" for a faked landing. Ironically, the way these slides show a charred and swept soil under the lander is quite correct, and -not surprisingly- pretty much exactly what actual Apollo photos document.

What do we learn from all this? A concept illustration is (1) conceptual and (2) illustrative. It's artwork, not a real-life photograph, not an accurate design diagram. There are limits to how much realism and flawlessness one can expect from it.

Good Lord, it doth suck. The interface is simply abominable. Unintuitive and careless, it copies the major features of Tivo's approach but fails at every single detail - and in UI design, everything is in the details. No surprisingly, it utterly misses the core purpose of a DVR: to treat television as a conversation instead of a dictation. Without a doubt, this is an interface built either by Machiavelli's cohorts, or by graceless bureaucrats, or both. No, wait, it's worse. This is a product built by people who fundamentally don't understand the computing paradigm. That's it - they really don't get television as a database. Imagine the folks at DEC trying to build a Macintosh. That's Comcast's DVR.

Not to mention, the damn thing is slow - beyond unresponsive. There's no way you can accurately predict where and when the thing might stop and start when you are fast forwarding or rewinding. The Tivo is like an Audi, but the Comcast drives like a 1972 Gran Torino Station wagon. And the remote? My God, what a piece of sh*t!

But that's not where the crappiness ends. No, not by a long shot.

Reader comment:

Aaron says:

FYI, the blog this story links to is angry because he thinks the comcast dvr uses flash ram instead of a HD (which is why he thinks he lost his programming when he lost power.)

Some of what he mentions is true, the dvr is slow as hell, and not very feature rich. But I can tell you that the dvr most assuredly does have hard drive storage, not flash ram.

I've got a comcast dvr in my bedroom - a few times when I've had the space heater on while my GF dries her hair the fuse blows and we lose power. But after flipping it back on my dvr hard drive is fine. No lost programming.

I'm not a comcast tech, so I can't say why this happened to him, what I can say is that it was not the same as my experience when the power goes out.

As I wrote in 2005: "The vulnerability is obvious, but the general concepts are subtle. There are three things to authenticate: the identity of the traveler, the boarding pass and the computer record. Think of them as three points on the triangle. Under the current system, the boarding pass is compared to the traveler's identity document, and then the boarding pass is compared with the computer record. But because the identity document is never compared with the computer record -- the third leg of the triangle -- it's possible to create two different boarding passes and have no one notice. That's why the attack works."

The way to fix it is equally obvious: Verify the accuracy of the boarding passes at the security checkpoints. If passengers had to scan their boarding passes as they went through screening, the computer could verify that the boarding pass already matched to the photo ID also matched the data in the computer. Close the authentication triangle and the vulnerability disappears.

But before we start spending time and money and Transportation Security Administration agents, let's be honest with ourselves: The photo ID requirement is no more than security theater. Its only security purpose is to check names against the no-fly list, which would still be a joke even if it weren't so easy to circumvent. Identification is not a useful security measure here.

PREVIOUSLY:
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator mirror site
* NPR "Xeni Tech": update on FBI raids fake boarding pass website
* Ceci n'est pas un fake boarding pass (10-29-06)
* Congressman on Boarding Pass Generator guy: Uh... oops? (10-29-06)
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)
* FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers (10-28-06)
* Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI (10-27-06)
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested (10-27-06)
* Website generates fake boarding passes (10-26-06)
* Slate's Andy Bowers on airline security loopholes (02-07-05)

It's easy for politicians to claim to have done well by technology. Democratic Sen. John Kerry, for instance, made fundraising pilgrimages to Silicon Valley and claimed to have a reasonable tech platform. But in a scorecard rating tech-related votes that we've posted today, Kerry came in second-to-last in the entire U.S. Senate.

I don't mean to pick on Democrats (in fact, the Democrats did slightly better overall than Republicans in the House of Representative), just political hypocrisy. And of course most everyone failed.

[By] CNET’s own admission in their linked article (by Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache), their system for ranking lawmakers’ “tech voting records” gives lawmakers points for supporting a substantial list of big-business priorities, such as increased government handouts to high-tech corporations and further restrictions on the rights of individuals to bring lawsuits against them. It also gives the same lawmakers no points at at all for supporting net neutrality, because “that legislation has generated sufficient division among high-tech companies and users to render it too difficult to pick a clear winner or loser.”

Snip from a NASA announcement:

The Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on Japan's Hinode spacecraft has opened its doors and started snapping pictures. Shown below is a "first light" image taken Oct. 23rd. The light and dark blobs are solar granules, masses of hot gas that rise and fall like water boiling atop a hot stove. Each granule is about the size of a terrestrial continent. SOT has no trouble seeing such detail from Earth-orbit 93 million miles away.

Previously:
* Hilarious pie-chart/video-game joke

Classified data from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the first US nuclear-weapons lab, turned up last week at the home of a drug dealer in New Mexico. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the breach, the latest in a string of security-related embarrassments for the lab. In 2000, two hard drives containing classified data disappeared briefly. And in 2004, the lab was shut down for months after two disks were reported missing; it later turned out that the disks never existed.

Local police have now found three flash drives containing classified material during a search of a trailer home occupied by a known methamphetamine dealer. A former subcontractor at the lab was also living there. At least one of the drives was traded for methamphetamine, the dealer told the local newspaper from his jail cell.

An island off Australia's eastern coast which is governed as an external territory will soon be home to the world's smallest digital mobile phone network. Norfolk Island was recently in the news following the arrest of a suspect in [its first-ever] a murder case. Link (thanks, Vikram)

Reader comment: Freelance Journalist Tom Reynolds says,

The recent murder (now solved) was not the first ever. Norfolk Island was a penal colony and it has a history of murder and horror. The recent murder was the first in 150 yrs! Link.

In response to your news of Richard Dawkins being in South Park, I felt the need to make a RICHARD HAS A POSSE image in the same vein as other notable figures. I think I picked the right license for this so others can copy it and do with it as they please.

As a side note, I saw the episode in question and the makers of South Park have FINALLY managed to piss me off, portraying my non-spiritual leader in the fashion that they did.

Reader comment: Mike Estee says,

I just finished ready Mr. Dawkins new book, "The God Delusion" and absolutely loved it. A few days later I was over at a friends house and saw the South Park episode that finally managed to piss you off. For a brief millisecond my liberal knee-jerk reflex kicked in, and I too felt what it must be like for all those christians, muslims, and jews who watch South Park scribble all over their beautiful faith with a box of badly colored crayons.

Then I got over it and laughed my ass off. I love South Park because it never pulls punches. Someone else's sacred cow always tastes better than your own, but I still found it hilarious :)

The Richard Dawkins Posse grows ever-stronger! Now with more references to "The God Delusion." Link.

Regarding your coverage of the so-richly-deserved EFF suit filed against Michael Crook on 27b/6 & boingboing, you both repeat the assertion that an ISP has to (BoingBoing) "take immediate action, even before proof of copyright ownership was examined" or (27b/6) "act immediately to have an image removed, even before they check if the claim is correct."

An ISP has to act "expeditiously" under the Act, and the Act was totally designed to work just like you describe, BUT this doesn't prevent the ISP from notifying her client/subscriber BEFORE pulling the content . This might seem like nitpicking, but it can be vital because it can let lawyers get involved to enjoin the takedown, all without risking the ISP safe harbor.

Say Laughing Squid gets a DMCA notice from the DoJ in the email Monday morning over Xeni's scoop publication of the "Pentagon 2" papers - critical stuff for free press and democracy - if they notify Xeni, saying they're pulling at 5pm, she can call Jason Schultz, who can get an injunction at the courthouse that very afternoon telling Laughing Squid to ignore the DMCA notice. Speech isn't censored, the press isn't restrained, all's well...

The point of your statements, that the takedown process is "shoot first, ask ?s later" is totally spot-on, and a major flaw of the Act, but there are still other meaningful checks within the legal system to ensure fairness.

The more ISPs know that notice CAN happen first, even though it only HAS to happen after pulling, the better off the internet is. Better to spread the word that the takedown process isn't a lockstep, uninterruptible process, even if it was lobbyist-designed to be one. Then the Michael Crooks of the world might be less likely to abuse it.

Mike Jones, 49, of Denver told The Associated Press he decided to go public with his allegations because of the political fight. Jones, who said he is gay, said he was upset when he discovered Haggard and the New Life Church had publicly opposed same-sex marriage.

"It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex," said Jones, who added that he isn't working for any political group.

...

Jones said he has voice mail messages from Haggard, as well as an envelope he said Haggard used to mail him cash, though he declined to make any of it available to the AP.

"There's some stuff on there (the voice mails) that's pretty damning," he said.

Update: Harper's Magazine has just posted a long article from May 2005 about Pastor Ted Haggard and his megachurch.

In a sign that PMP predicted some staff would leave, the information package given to the walkers with the tracking devices - chirpily entitled "GPS Is Here!" - included a resignation form.

"Under the process I feel I no longer wish to walk for PMP Distribution and herewith terminate my position," it says.

But yesterday the company's managing director, Brian Evans, said most walkers supported the move.

"The professional people who do this job are happy they can now prove they have done a good job," he said.

"I was enjoying their smell," Masashi Kamata, 28, a resident of Moriyama-ku, Nagoya, was quoted as telling investigators. "Indoor shoes for school sexually stimulate me. I couldn't throw away the shoes I obtained."

I have no problem with people asking for money for a good cause, and I think wind power is a good cause. But I do have a problem with people who use questionable tactics to get you to donate money. And I think the use of these cards and the campaign around them is misleading.

Take a look at Renewable Choice Energy's home page. It says: "The Wind Power Card is a first-of-its-kind product that makes purchasing wind power easier than ever before!" and has a button below it that lets you "Activate the card." That doesn't seem right to me. Renewable Choice Energy is using a card style traditionally associated with cards that have some kind of stored value in them. For instance, the $15 card has an indicated value of "750 kilowatt hours." And their claim that you are "purchasing wind power" is sneaky. I guess you are purchasing wind power, in a roundabout way, but not in the simplistic way they state on their Web site.

Now, several bloggers have taken me to task for not understanding "green tags" and for not reading the FAQ on the Renewable Choice Energy Website. But the part that describes what a "renewable energy credit" actually is doesn't do a very good job of explaining what actually happens to the money from the cards people purchase:

A renewable energy credit -- also known as a wind energy credit --allows individuals and businesses to choose clean power and support the development of renewable energy resources. When a wind farm produces electricity, it also issues renewable energy credits, equal to the amount of power added to the electric grid. It generally costs more to produce electricity with wind power than by burning fossil fuels. These credits capture the additional cost and value of wind power to consumers. Renewable Choice sells these credits, on behalf of our partner wind farms, to companies and individuals around the country. Wind farms rely on this revenue to make wind farm developments.

I would like to see a flow chart of where the money goes. This graphic doesn't answer that question.

Others have said I'm stupid for thinking that these cards are like a Starbucks card. But isn't Renewable Choice Energy's responsibility to inform stupid people like me how they use people's donations? The problem, for me anyway, boils down to this: it's lame to use cards that look like stored value cards when they are nothing of the kind. This sneaky tactic could give the false impression that the company is sneaky in other ways, too. I'm not a marketing person, but I would much rather walk into a Whole Foods and see a representative from Renewable Choice Energy standing at a table explaining how the program works and asking me to sign up.

I'm happy to hear your thoughts on this.

Tons of eader comments in extended entry

(Story background here). Serial internet bully Michael Crook, whom the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is suing for sending phony DMCA takedown notices to critical blogs in an attempt to silence them, has issued a phony DMCA takedown notice to BoingBoing in an attempt to silence us.

Here is a copy of the bogus DMCA notice: Link.

Crook (an assumed and self-chosen name, according to this website) is most recently known for copying fellow "griefer" Jason Fortuny: both Fortuny and Crook posted fake, sexually explicit ads on Craigslist, to trick sexually adventurous guys into sharing their photos and personal information. Then, Fortuny -- and later, Crook -- posted the victims' photos and data on the internet.

The homemade DMCA takedown notice (sent as an MS Word email attachment) which Crook sent to BoingBoing's ISP (based in Canada, where the DMCA don't shine) pertains to this image, which is a screengrab from Crook's appearance on the Fox News channel program, "Hannity and Colmes." Crook appeared on that show to talk about websites he'd made -- on those sites, he denied the existence of the Holocaust, said soldiers who die in Iraq get what they deserve, and police in the US deserve the same, among other things.

The notice is bogus for a number of reasons. First, fair use. Second, the image was produced by Fox, not Crook. Third, the image in this BoingBoing post is not hosted on boingboing.net, but on xeni.net. The ISP behind xeni.net is Laughing Squid -- also the host of the 10zenmonkeys blog named in the EFF lawsuit.

And irony abounds: On his website, Crook published photos of Craigslist users he tricked. Now he's abusing the law to try and trick other websites into removing *his* photo.

WHY THIS MATTERS:
Crook is a deranged, serial troll, and his behavior is consistent with that of someone who craves attention, no matter how negative. But what does matter is the fact that the DMCA is so poorly conceived and written that even the nuttiest, most deranged of trolls can abuse it into silencing constitutionally-protected online speech.

For instance, others might use the same tactic to chill political speech: what better way to see to it that your opponent's campaign ads are yanked from YouTube a week before the elections?

More here from Wired News: Link. 10zenmonkeys, the blog which Crook first DMCA'd, has more here: Link. More here on thomashawk.com: Link. Tailrank's Kevin Burton weighs in here: Link.

See also this BoingBoing post for background: Link.

An admin contact at Prioritycolo.com, the righteous, kickass upstream provider to BoingBoing.net's ISP, replied to Crook's phony takedown notice thusly:

The irony of the fact that you've just sent us a clearly illegitimate DMCA notice, relating to an article documenting a lawsuit against you for sending similar such notices is not lost on me. We do not host the content in question, and you've already acknowledged that. You have no case, and your disruptive activities are not welcome here (BoingBoing's content clearly qualifies as fair use on a variety of levels; see Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation if you disagree). -- Myles Loosley-Millman

"Michael Crook has been filing false DMCA claims against websites that post a headshot of him from a recent appearance on Fox News. So let's photoshop him. Theme: Michael Crook as famous criminals in history."

UPDATE 2, 1130AM PT: I just spoke to a producer on the Fox News program "Hannity and Colmes" -- the image Crook is complaining about is a screengrab from his appearance on that show. I explained Crook's latest bogus DMCA hijinks to the Fox producer, who laughed, asked why Crook was claiming rights to an image that Fox produced, then said Fox had no problem with BoingBoing or anyone else posting the thumbnail image online.

Reader comment: Brian Cain says, "If only there was a way to combine a photo of Michael Crook and an online fake boarding pass generator...now there would be a combination!"

UPDATE 3, 2PM PT: Scott Beale of Laughing Squid says,

Crook just sent us DMCA #4, this time it references the YouTube video from his appearance on “Hannity and Colmes”: Link to video, Link to phony takedown notice (MS Word). YouTube has already removed the video based on the bogus DMCA he sent. No wonder he keeps doing this. Mirror of video here: Link.

In a nice ironic twist, it seems that one of the victims of the original Craigslist Sex con got his picture temporarily removed from Jason Fortuny's website using a DMCA takedown notice. Fortuny says he filed a counter notice, which wasn't responded to, and now the image is back up. Link.

This bit of The Crook's DMCA notice caught my eye:

"[...]I am the copyright owner, in that the image, though belonging to another source is of me, thereby giving me certain copyright rights[...]"

He's basically saying that although Fox owns the copyright to the actual image, he owns the copyright to his face.

Feel that? It's as though millions of photojournalists suddenly began laughing hysterically at once...

Michael Crook has a partner in crime here -- the DMCA itself. YouTube took down the video in part because it's run by clever but gutless schmucks, but also in part because the DMCA makes obeying the take down demands the only sensible business decision, regardless of how illegitamate the demand is. In a sense, it deputizes private citizens without bothering to check and see whether those citizens are worthy of the honor, it puts the face and force of government behind any crank with internet access.

I came across this additional case of Michael Crook possibly abusing the DMCA. According to this post Michael Crook sent a takedown notice to this person's host demanding removal of quotes that "violated his copyright". The original post has been altered, of course (oops, see below), but it seems that this would have certainly also fallen under fair use as criticism. The quotes in question relate to his "Forsake The Troops" controversy.

Actually, as I write this I seem to have found the original post after all: Link.

But check the archive.org links to his old site, they've been blocked: 1, 2.

I strongly agree that the DMCA is wack and maybe a douchebag abusing the shit out of it is the spark that's needed to burn it down. Thanks BB!

More after the jump.

When a stretched rubber band is released at one end, a front of stress-free elastic material propagates towards the clamped end. When this front rebounds it results in a compression front that propagates backwards. This triggers an elastic instability referred to as dynamic buckling.

Normal buckling occurs when a solid rod is compressed by a load above a critical threshold. The material can no longer support the load and maintain its structure, and so the rod bends.

Dynamic buckling is the version of this instability which occurs when the compressive load is applied suddenly – when a rod is smashed into along its axis, for example. It creates a well-defined compression wave that zings along the rod.

The woman was carrying a bag with her containing her will when she died and had already organized details of her funeral including the music she wanted played, (the newspaper De Telegraaf reported).

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.

"Things are getting bad... and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there," he told a conference in Athens.

"We have to decide if the persecuting of bloggers reaches a point that it's unacceptable to do business there."

"We try to define those levels and the trends are not good there at the moment. It's a moving target."

Woah -- that's pretty wild right there. It's nice to see Microsoft flexing its muscle for a cause I can get behind for a change!

Link (via /.)

Update: Tom sez, "It seems like the Pacman pie graph was an idea just waiting to happen - it also shows up in this series of graphs I created last year." These are fantastic.

“There’s no law that says I can’t wear my sunglasses in the airport. ma’am”

“Yes, there is. It’s a rule.”

“It’s not a rule.”

“It is. I can’t let you pass.”

“Yes, you can.”

She took my boarding pass and used her yellow hi-liter to turn the line into an X. An X of shame and potential threat. She called to the top-of-the-stairs officer, “Threat alert!”

With the release of its Intel notebooks, Apple became the only manufacturer of Trusted Platform Module systems that didn't disclose the details of its implementation, something that lots of users (myself included) found alarming. It was this that precipitated my decision to move from Mac OS X to Ubuntu on a ThinkPad.

Now, Singh reports that Apple has dropped the TPM from its motherboard designs, with the new MacPros. Singh had created a free software driver for the TPM under OS X that allowed users to exploit its privacy features.

This is good news for Mac owners, on balance. Of course, the best outcome would be for Apple to leave in the TPM, but to also publicly promise to eschew all anti-user features in its drivers, so that Singh's users could continue to enjoy privacy benefits without concern over the potential dangers of the TPM. Link (via Hack the Planet0

Wrapping paper with lyrics from House Of Pain, The Sugar Hill Gang, NWA and Vanilla Ice: "rapping paper." link (thanks, Si Hill)

When you buy a card, you don't get any wind-generated electricity delivered to your home however. In fact, all you get is a card that doubles as a refrigerator magnet. Actually, you don't even get any credits, it's just a word they use to give you a sense of getting something from your money. The money you spend goes towards helping Renewable Choice Energy buy and sell electricity.

The cards are not even an investment, because you won't get any material value in return. It's all going to help another company get rich. Most companies seek investors to secure capital. But in this case, RCE is asking people for free money under the context of doing your part to help the environment.

I love some of the insanely great things that people are doing with rapid prototyping technology. Here, members of the Swedish design group FRONT use motion capture tech to record the free-handed strokes of their furniture drawing and then a rapid prototyping machine fabs the pieces they've drawn in liquid plastic. It's something like this which reminds me I'm actually living in the 21st century.

Huong has a new project -- a pop-up, inflatable studio, and she wants to share the space with another New York-based artist. Here's her description of the project. If you are interested you can schedule time on her calendar.

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

Pop-Up Studio

Share a studio with me!

Hi! My name is Huong, and I live in New York in a tiny apartment barely big enough to live in, far too small to make art. So... I'm creating an 8'x8'x8' inflatable studio that suits two, and I am looking for a public, indoor space in which to inflate it, and someone else to come work in it with me.

I can travel to any of the 5 boroughs, and we can work in the studio together for up to 3 days in a row. If the space allows, we can even keep the studio up, and you can work in it into the night!

That's where you come in -- it's free, I just need your help finding good locations where we are welcome. Somewhere not too cold and with electricity is best.

Got a place in mind? Take a look at this calendar and let me know when and where I should pop-up next. My email is huong at huongngo dot com!

Wonder how long before (a) clips from this episode shows up on YouTube, and (b) Comedy Central's lawyers force YouTube to take it down.

BB pal Wayne Correia is watching it now on the East Coast feed, and says, "it's awesome."

UPDATE: Here's some video on YouTube, while it lasts: Link. (Thanks, Franklin)

bbum says,

Tonight's South Park also featured a bit of a Battlestar Galactica themed audio moment in a scene with the Dawkins derived character questioning the belief system of one of SP's recurring characters (suitably vague to avoid plot spoilers). BTW: If you haven't checked it out, Bear McCreary's weblog provides brilliant insight into the complex musical compositions that back BSG. No surprise that the soundtrack is such an integral part of the show.

Michael Lewis has come out with another sports book that's not limited to sports fans. This one is about football, The Blind Side and it's quite different than Moneyball, which covered baseball. While there is a underlying story of how football has changed to place more value on the left-tackle position, the real story is about Michael Oher, an exceptionally large black teenager who is essentially homeless and friendless in a west Memphis ghetto and how he becomes one of the most recruited college athletes. Michael finds his way to a Christian school in the suburbs and eventually into the home of a rich, Republican evangelical white family who raise him as one of their own. It's a sport-oriented family; the father is a former basketball star and the wife a cheerleader, both from Ole Miss. When they give him his own room in their house, and buy a bed for him, Michael at age 16 says it's the first time he's had his own bed. Michael's size alone is enough to impress college football scouts but he has real deficits, emotionally and intellectually, that this family helps him overcome. There are questions about whether the family's motives are tied to Michael's athletic future, with the idea of delivering him to their alma mater. However, what really seems to matter is that their love and care for him is something he's never experienced before, and as a result of that, he has a future whether it's football or not.

How many kids who start out like Michael and grow up without a future? How much human potential is lost because a child has not received the care of a good family and the support of a decent educational system? It makes you wonder how many kids there are living on our society's blind side, perhaps none of them as exceptional as Michael in sports, but each could make a valuable contribution in their own way. If they just had a way out, they'd take it and run with it.

John Adams says, "This is a reimplementation of [Christopher Soghoian's] Northwest Airlines Boarding Pass Generator in javascript. It can now be run in a browser without a web server. (Only tested in firefox)." Link.

PREVIOUSLY:
* NPR "Xeni Tech": update on FBI raids fake boarding pass website
* Ceci n'est pas un fake boarding pass (10-29-06)
* Congressman on Boarding Pass Generator guy: Uh... oops? (10-29-06)
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)
* FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers (10-28-06)
* Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI (10-27-06)
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested (10-27-06)
* Website generates fake boarding passes (10-26-06)
* Slate's Andy Bowers on airline security loopholes (02-07-05)

EFF has just filed suit against Craigslist copycat scammer Michael Crook for filing bogus DMCA claims. More here: Link.

Social griefing a la Jason Fortuny and Michael Crook may have finally been taken too far.

(...) In September, we published an article about Crook when he mimicked Jason Fortuny by trolling CraigsList and sex-baiting guys into giving him private information which he then revealed on his site (now offline), craigslist-perverts.org. He apparently did not like what we had to say. In a brash and hypocritical (though not at all surprising) move, Crook filed a bullshit DMCA take-down notice with our then-ISP, knowing that the “safe harbor” provision would compel the ISP to take immediate action, even before proof of copyright ownership was examined.

I was personally given an ultimatum to remove the material cited in the notice (a TV screen capture of Crook’s appearance on Fox News Channel), or have my account canceled. Needless to say, Crook did not own the rights to the image, and even if he did, there’s a little thing called “fair use” in the context of critical commentary.

Appalled that he was able to so easily, and without any onus of proof, jeopardize my standing with my ISP, I immediately set about moving the site to local San Francisco ISP Laughing Squid, owned by my old pal, Scott Beale — his services are more expensive, but I knew Scott would understand and respect free speech at least to the point of asking me for details before threatening to pull the plug on my site.

Image courtesy diis.net: The aptly-named Crook, appearing on the Fox network news talk show Hannity and Colmes. He is also known for having created websites such as forsakethetroops.info, opposethetroops.com, and forsakethepolice.info (all of which appear to have been sold). These projects led to much controversy, and did not generate him many new friends among cops, soldiers, or veterans.

This image which is the subject of Crook's phony DMCA claims appears on a number of other websites, including one hosted at aol.com: Link, origin blog: Link. It's also on this Canada-hosted website: Link to image, at redtory blog. There's another copy here, via latestfunny.com.

In all fairness, it's not the most flattering frame from the video, and I can't say I blame the guy for wanting to bully people into removing it from public view.

The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have created a new computer system that uses software from a popular Internet encyclopedia site to gather input on sensitive topics from analysts across the spy community, part of an effort to fix problems that plagued prewar estimates on Iraq.

The new system, called "Intellipedia" because it is built on open-source software from the Wikipedia Web site, was launched earlier this year. It is already being used to assemble intelligence reports on Nigeria and other subjects, according to U.S. intelligence officials who discussed the initiative in detail for the first time Tuesday.

Reader comment: Frank F. says,

Technically speaking, the correct title would be CIA, feds using _MediaWiki_ for intelligence reports. MediaWiki is the software that powers Wikipedia (and hundreds of other wikis); Wikipedia is just one installation. Since the story is on the feds using the MediaWiki software, and not actual Wikipedia articles, it's somewhat misleading to say they're using Wikipedia.

The Miami Herald is reporting numerous problems (they call it "a handful of glitches") with voting machines which are registering votes for Democrats as votes for the Republican. The story cites several examples. In one the voter requested help from a poll worker, but even then it took three tries to get the machine to record the vote properly.

The Broward Supervisor of Elections spokesperson said "it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly."

When a voter at the Hollywood satellite courthouse complained, she was told they'd had previous problems with the same machine. Poll workers "did some work" on the machine after she finished voting, but no report was made and the machine was not removed, according to the same Supervisor of Elections spokesperson.

Reader comment: Kyle says,

Texas is having a similar problem: Link.

On Monday, I posted an open letter to Stephen Colbert about Viacom asking YouTube to pull down his videos and other Viacom shows on the video-sharing site. I noted that Colbert has been very savvy in his use of the web and this move didn't jibe with the way he treated his fans. His fans have since flooded my blog and other fan blogs protesting the Viacom move, and the company has pulled back somewhat and allowed clips on YouTube while negotiating an ad deal with the company.

Key passage:

"We in the Colbert Nation are sickened by the recent news that heavy-handed trial lawyers at Viacom, representing Comedy Central, have asked YouTube to force its users to remove video clips from "The Colbert Report," "The Daily Show," and "South Park." While those lawyers have legal standing to do this, it goes against the spirit of Internet sharing and viral promotion — two phenomena that have helped make your show so popular in the first place. It just doesn't sound like you, Stephen, baby."

See also this post from Mark, "Your Guide to Wikis."

Today, Creative Commons and Revver launched a brand new fundraising model: CC is the first nonprofit organization to raise money through online video sharing. We've uploaded several of our short videos to Revver. Revver attaches a short ad at the end of each video in its network; when a viewer clicks on the ad, Revver splits the resulting ad revenue with the video's creator.

Revver is generously giving Creative Commons 100% of the money our videos make through the end of our fundraising campaign on December 31, 2006.

As part of this launch, we're premiering our latest video -- Wanna Work Together? -- designed by Ryan Junell and featuring new music by Lesser. The video pays tribute to the people around the world using CC licenses and CC-licensed content to build a better, more vibrant creative culture.

Also in conjunction with this launch, we published a new interview with Steven Starr, the founder and CEO of Revver. In it, he talks about Revver's origins, its future, and his views on the current state of user-generated video.

Update: Stephen sez, "Reminds me of a t-shirt design I worked up a few months ago before I thought about it and realized I didn't have the cash to produce them properly."

After almost 10 years in office this meddling government thinks the NHS is out of date. Well I have news for Pat Hewitt - It's you and your government who's out of date. To reduce A&E services to a few Hospitals would be a disaster. We all know that the first 'Golden' hour is critical to some accident patients survival. Are we now to travel a great many miles to get 'urgent' treatment? To get a first class NHS you need first class staff. Stop threating them with their jobs - angry **** angry.

See also Make's homebrew belt-buckle roundup

The FCC ruled against the Massachusetts Port Authority, or Massport, which ordered airlines in 2005 to unplug their wireless and wireline high-speed Internet services in their lounges and instead use the airport's fee-based system.

"Today's decision ensures that the Wi-Fi bands remain free and open to travelers, who can make productive use of their time while waiting to catch their next flight in an airport," FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said in a statement.

Update: Glenn sez, "It's a simple measure of the control freakery at Massport - home to the airport with the laxest pre-9/11 security even in that laughable pre-9/11 period - that they have spent the time, money, and effort on this issue, when they were clearly wrong. The FCC didn't merely accept Continental's petition, but they humiliated Massport over and over again by explaining in great length exactly how wrong they were."

Neal Stephenson will be on hand to help us make sense of global developments, as will Dr. Jane McGonigal, Cory Doctorow, and Julian Dibbell. They will be joined by an extraordinary slate of speakers including Funmi Iyanda (Nigeria), Sue Yang (Shanghai), Judge Unggi Yoon (Korea), Frank Yu (Beijing), Joey Alarilla (Philippines), and danah boyd (Berkeley). These are remarkable voices that deserve to be heard. We’ve put together a conference program that will make it possible for them to do this (http://www.nyls.edu/stateofplay).

State of Play IV: Building the Global Metaverse will also feature two workshops. The first is devoted to virtual tax law -- a topic that has captured the attention of legislators throughout the world. The second workshop, sponsored by The Escapist, explores global games journalism and virtual worlds reporting.

Reader comment:

Kim says: The next obvious step is for somebody to create a tiny FSM [Flying Spaghetti Monster] stamp that can be applied over the word "God" on paper currency. It would look something like this.

The Principia Discordia, written by Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill, was released into the public domain when it was first published by the authors in 1965.

This year, Ronin Press released a new edition of the Principia Discordia, changing the title to Discordia: Hail the Goddess of Chaos and Confusion, altering some of the text, and slapping a copyright on the work. This has angered many of Discordia's popes.

"Unfortunately for us followers of Discordia they have seen fit to alter the original text, use shoddy, low quality graphics stolen from the Internet and have completely mangled the original layout of our most sacred text...This re-titled version of Principia Discordia is 140 x 165mm and comes in at 192 pages. The reason for the huge page count compared with the original, is that the editor has split up the original layout and spread sections over numerous pages. They have also changed some of the original text to subtly alter it's meaning and there are numerous just-wrongs throughout; far too many to list here." - Pope Anonymous Sausages XXIII

I have not bought this book, since I don't need another version of the text. However, I am readily giving it five stars, for it has thrown upon modern discordians even more Chaos and Confusion than they deserve.

Investigators believe an explosive device caused a six-by-seven-foot window to shatter, although they only found remnants of what that they think broke the window, Capt. Jose Guerrero said. "Whatever it was, it disintegrated,'' he said.

He uses old mortar shells, which stand about one metre high, to make his coffee machines.

He cuts off the pointed ends, seals them and puts holes into the aluminium cylinder. The cylinder channels the water, coffee and milk.

He told me he got the idea nine years ago when he was doing maintenance work.

"I saw some shells being sold for a different purpose and I studied them.

"They were used for washing clothes or crushing things. After studying them I came up with the idea of using them as a cylinder for a coffee machine."

Update: Charlie sends in this: "An ad for the World's First Digital Watch, which is rather non-digital."

[Yang Xiaoqun]: I don't think we should be using different standards to judge China. In China, we don't have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that's a different problem. I know that some colleagues listen to the BBC in their offices from the Webcast. And I've heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it's blocked. I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all.

Nick Gowing, BBC anchor and session moderator: Would you like to elaborate on that?

[Yang Xiaoqun]: How can I elaborate on it if we don't have any restrictions?

Some people say that there are journalists in China that have been arrested. We have hundreds of journalists in China, and some of them have legal problems. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression.

Reader comment: Dave says,

The Chinese official not named in the CNET article is Yang Xiaoqun. He is "First Secretary, Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva" according to ICANN wiki.

I live in Shanghai. I have never been able to access a BBC website in the 11 months I've been here. Until last month, wikipedia was completely blocked. One day in October/ late September it was suddenly available. I'm waiting for it to be nixed again. Blogspot was also momentarily freed up at the same time, but I noticed blogspot is blocked again -- even with mild censorware workarounds like the .nyud.net:8090 suggestions from Boingboing that used to work in the past. Technorati is and always has been similarly inaccessible. The official speaking at the conference should clearly be given a job in the Bush administration should things not work out for him in China. Ceci n'est pas un pipe, indeed.

Steve Silberman has an article in the November issue of Wired Magazine on the challenges faced by director Darren Aronofsky ("Pi," "Requiem for a Dream") in creating "The Fountain," his latest science fiction feature which opens in the US on November 22. Steve tells BoingBoing,

One of Aronofsky's primary ambitions was to create outer-space environments without using CGI, and he succeeded brilliantly with the help of a microphotographer in England named Peter Parks who lives in a 400-year-old cowshed and created luminous, Blake-like visions of exploding nebulae for "The Fountain" using curry powder, baby oil, shrimp larvae, and other wacky substances, magnifying them with a device called the microzoom optical bench that employs both Victorian prisms and state-of-the-art digital cameras. (The Parks stuff is near the end of my article).

* Link to Battlestar Galactica-themed greenhorncomic.com funny.

* The Mac-o-Lantern: Link.

* Scare the bejeezus out of people, and dress up as the Patriot Act: Link.

* This pumpkin carves itself: Link

* HOWTO cook a realistic, bloody brain: Link. No advice for HOWTO eat it.

* Marshmallow mummy and monster cupcakes: Link

* Suicide Girls comix-themed Halloween photoset (for adults only): Link

* For one day, today, this child has transformed into a fearsome samurai: Link.

* Zombie Clown Haikus:

Split them wide open
Entrails look like sausages
Go get the ShopVac

* Stop sending me links to goatse jackolanterns. Stop. All of you. Because I won't post them, I say, not one single link. No. So played out.

(Thanks, Sean Kennedy, Steve, Scott Fuller, Damon, Jesse Thorn, Alec Muffett, Matthew Harris, Helen @ SuicideGirls)

Previous Omakase linkdumps:
- Omakase linkdump: Trick or 1337
- Dem belly full
- I wanna tear you apart
- Sexy taco, space gun, deli flesh.
- Arabic smokes, Norway bimbo, Danish BB ringtone
- Post-holiday bluesnixer roundup

The move comes amid pressure from major studios and record labels against popular online sites like MySpace and YouTube, which they accuse of infringing the copyrights of their artists' music and videos.

MySpace, one of the most popular sites on the internet, licensed technology from privately-held Gracenote allowing it to review music recordings uploaded by community members to their profiles.

The technology compares those filed with Gracenote's database of copyrighted material and can block uploads without proper rights. Terms of the licensing agreement were not disclosed.

Reader comment: Aaron Newton says,

So, what if you're the owner of the copyrighted work? I built/launched Download.com Music which is host to thousands of mp3s from indie and labels alike. When we spot a file that looks like a pirated file, we contact the uploader and seek credentials, but we can't always spot everything. The DMCA protects us in the event that a user uploads something illegally (not that I'm stumping for that terrible piece of legislation). If Myspace blocked every upload based on the gracenote db, how would all the bands that happen to be in there upload their own music? It's moves like this, which aren't necessary due to the way the DMCA works, that makes sites like this less socially relevant. MySpace is a haven for bands because it gives them these tools and doesn't make them really work hard to get their stuff online.

Relatedly, there's got to be an irony that the gracenote db was contributed to by all the people who used it before it was walled off. I bet you an RIAA lawyer could come up with a way to sue them for using that metadata commercially, if they wanted to.

I recently came out of the studio having recorded 4 original songs that were entirely written by me and a friend. I created a new page (www.myspace.com/tinystar) to showcase our work and after downloading our songs one of the main pieces (Festival Of The Seagoat) I recieved a "copyright infringement" notice next to the song on the edit page and consequently all the songs on my page are frozen. Frustrating to say the least! I've emailed support numerous times with no response....I cannot fathom how Gracenote technology can at all be accurate, as evidenced by this caper, and in the meantime I'm stuck with a frozen page and a piece of software telling me that my hardfought creative output is not mine after all! Thanks for reading and in advance for any help!

Wonkette reports that blogger Mike Stark (of dailykos.com) was physically attacked by people presumed to be staffers for Sen. George Allen (R-VA) during a campaign rally today, after the blogger asked Allen, "why did you spit on your first wife." Link, includes video. Stark has written a letter about the incident, and why he asked that question, here. (Thanks, Craig)

Reader comment: Unholy Moses sez

Mike Stark may crosspost at DailyKos, but he is better known for running the Web site "Calling All Wingnuts" (callingallwingnuts.com), where he chronicles his attempts to call into right-wing radio shows and take the host(s) to task. Oh, and he'll be filing a lawsuit, per his letter to the Richmond Times Dispatch: Link.

Reader comment: Chris Town says,

As a Type 1 diabetic, I can assure you, a lack of insulin will not send you into a comatose.

Type 1 diabetes is a condition where your body no longer produces insulin, and it has to be injected several times a day. An overdose of insulin, which can happen if you don't get food to match the insulin you intake, or you don't balance food intake with exercise with insulin intake, can send you into a "coma" called hypoglycemia. Having experienced my fair share of these throughout my life, I can also assure you, 2 weeks in hospital would never be required. A day at most for older people, a few hours for people in the 20s like me.

Not taking insulin will not send you into a coma, you'll just be very uncomfortable as your blood sugar rises and rises, which will cause minor organ damage, but will not send you into a coma. Type 1 Diabetics denied insulin will live for months and months, but will eventually go blind, experience kidney and other organ failure and die a long and painful death.

Here's the wikipedia links for type 1 diabetes and hypoglycemia.

There's plenty of misconceptions about insulin-dependant diabetes around, so keeping people informed could save lives. After all, if I'm experiencing hypoglycemia the very last thing I need is for someone to give me insulin.

I'm writing in regards to your reader's comment on Type I diabetes. As a medical student I know that a lack of access to insulin for a long enough time can send a type I diabetic into a coma.

Chris is right in that too much insulin will cause hypoglycemia. What he doesn't mention is that without insulin the diabetic's body thinks that there isn't any glucose in the blood even when there is an excess. Without insulin the body can't take the glucose into the cells and since glucose is necessary for cells to generate energy the body attempts to correct the perceived lack of glucose. At a certain point the body enters starvation mode and starts to generate ketone bodies which can led to a life threatening condition known as diabetic ketoacidosis or DKA. DKA can led to coma, hospitalization and, if it persists long enough, death.

It worries me that a diabetic would be so misinformed about the consequences of type I diabetic without access to insulin and the DKA that can result.

Here are the wikipedia and eMedicine links for DKA.

I can see what reader Chris Town is saying about this not being a hypoglycemic episode, and that if you were hypoglycemic you wouldn't need a couple week stay at the Hotel Hospital. I'm sure what they meant was he went into Diabetic Ketoacidosis, otherwise known as DKA ( Link), a scary situation if a type I diabetic doesn't get any insulin.

As a physician, I can't count the number of times people have forgotten or otherwise been denied insulin and required an ICU stay for a week or two. Just to clear some things up.

p.s. - boingboing makes life worth living on call

It was a dark and stormy night, when agents pounded on the door of Christopher Soghoian's apartment and shouted, "boo!"

OK, it's not a Halloween story at all. But for today's edition of the NPR News program "Day to Day," I spoke with host Alex Chadwick about the recent online controversy surrounding the "The Northwest Airlines Boarding Pass Generator" (cache link) website, and the late-night federal raid that followed. For the segment, I spoke with:

* the office of Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), who called for Soghoian to be apprehended, and the website killed -- then changed his mind
* Bruce Schneier, author of "Beyond Fear" and computer security researcher who first wrote about the airline security flaw in 2003
* Avi Rubin, author of "Brave New Ballot" and Johns Hopkins professor for whom Soghoian briefly served as teaching assistant
* FBI Special Agent Wendy Osborne, who explains where the investigation is now, and whether charges will be filed.

PREVIOUSLY:
* Ceci n'est pas un fake boarding pass (10-29-06)
* Congressman on Boarding Pass Generator guy: Uh... oops? (10-29-06)
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)
* FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers (10-28-06)
* Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI (10-27-06)
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested (10-27-06)
* Website generates fake boarding passes (10-26-06)
* Slate's Andy Bowers on airline security loopholes (02-07-05)

ELSEWHERE TODAY: There's a good roundup of the latest on this story at Wired News here.

Reader comment: Anonymous flyer says,

Just an addendum to your "boarding pass" story as it relates to terrible airline security in the US. I've been telling this story to people since getting back to Australia from the USA. When I was travelling in the US in September, I experienced first hand how bad the system is.

I had one of the boarding passes with an "SSSS" on it, and unbeknownst to me, on my way through the x-ray section, the screeners flat out didn't even read my boarding pass - so I walked right through after being x-rayed.

At the time I didn't know anything about what the SSSS was but naturally, I later was told I could not board the plane, and a screener had to come down to the boarding gate and give me a "thorough" search (right in front of all the other passengers). He was a supervisor, extremely apologetic, very professional and polite, and I complied with all his instructions. Nonetheless, it was pretty confronting to be frisked in full 'vitruvian man' position in front of hundreds of nervous looking passengers.

The thing that stunned me at the time, was that earlier, before I went through the x-ray part while waiting in line with other passengers, we could see through the glass to the actual x-ray screens. Myself and one other passenger watched in horror as what was quite clearly a gun went right past her face on the screen and she didn't even flinch.

At the last second she kind of broke her trance and 'rewound' the screen and after a long hard look, pressed a big red button - presumably the offending item was examined and found to be a lighter or something, but to this day I remember the terrified glances all the people in the queue were giving eachother. The funny thing is as soon as I saw her I remember thinking "She must be about 16, and on minimum wage" - then literally seconds later I saw her nearly miss a gun.

On the whole the entire experience was most decidely NOT "secure" or "safe". It was a relief to get back on an international flight on my way home.

Oh by the way... This was on September 5th, in LAX flying out to Austin TX on American Airlines flight 1182.

Australian readers will know this happened a little while ago, but your recent post about boarding passes reminded me of a prank pulled off by Australian political satire "The Chaser War on Everything". They took advantage of discount airline Virgin Blue's Online ticket purchse and self check-in service which amazingly fails to check for ID at any point before boarding the plane. The prank ended when the Chaser crew elected to not turn up to the final boarding call forcing airline staff to make announcements asking for "Mr Al Kyder" and "Mr Terry Wrist" to immeadiately make thier way to the departure lounge.

(yes, the title is making fun of "war on terrorism" and this excellent show tends to focus on ridiculous attempts at making us all safer).

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Reddit, which has four full-time employees, will move from Boston to Wired Digital's headquarters in San Francisco. It will operate under the Wired Digital umbrella along with Wired News, the daily technology news publication.

(...) "We're thrilled to become a home for this young company that has grown to more than 1 million unique users a month by building such an open and democratic community for the social filtering of news," said Kourosh Karimkhany, general manager of Wired Digital. "Our goal will be to build Reddit as an independent company by collaborating with Wired through the integration of its core technology, and by offering partnerships to allow others to do the same."

Reader comment: Frank Hicinbothem says,

I saw your entry on BoingBoing about Wired acquiring Reddit. While I'm happy for them and all, it's not all good. As of the news this morning, they've seen fit to pull the plug on their most excellent NSFW aggregator: nsfw.reddit.com. That's a bummer, because it was a nice, low key aggregator for adult topics, in a world where such things are hard to find. Oh well, c'est la vie.

The store will contain everything Fantagraphics has in print (as well as Eros Comix), and will also house our soon-to-be-legendary DAMAGED ROOM, featuring heavily discounted and often out-of-print books unavailable anywhere else.

The space also has room for art exhibitions, which we'll have more news about very soon.

Be sure to check out FLOG!: The Fantagraphics Blog for more information, including pictures. And then stay tuned for a lot of great shows and events to come in 2007. In other words, start making your Seattle vacation plans NOW, and if you have friends in Seattle that might be interested, please pass on the news. Here's the 911: FANTAGRAPHIC BOOKS 1201 South Vale Street Seattle, WA 98108 Mon. - Sat 11:30 - 8 Sun 11:30 - 5 206-658-0110

When I look at this illustration by John Falter, I'm reminded of the stripped-down environments Charles Schultz used to draw his Peanuts characters into during the early years of his strip: the shoebox houses, inconsequential trees and indoor/outdoor carpet lawns, devoid of landscaping, that represented 50's suburbia. Here Falter presents us with a more fully realized version of Charlie Brown's world.

John Falter(1910-1982) has never been one of the illustrators of the 50's that I really get worked up about. But here he has captured a quality of typical childhood experience that is so astute and understated that it is spectacular in its mundanity.

And that would be a shame, because then fewer people would be able to read "Lights and Shadows of New York Life, or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City," by James D. McCabe, Jr.

Fortunately, books published in 1872 are in the public domain, so you can download this fantastic book about life in New York in the late 19th century for free from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.net.

This is the world of Scorsese's Gangs of New York, one of my favorite movies. The table of contents include intriguing chapters, such as:

IMPOSTORS, STREET MUSICIANS, MINOR AMUSEMENTS, BOARDING-HOUSE LIFE, THE CHEAP LODGING HOUSES, PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS, THE THIEVES, THE PICKPOCKETS, FEMALE THIEVES, THE RIVER THIEVES, THE FENCES, THE ROUGHS, THE PAWNBROKERS, THE SOCIAL EVIL, THE LOST SISTERHOOD, THE STREET WALKERS, CHILD MURDER, BLACK-MAILING, FEMALE SHARPERS, FORTUNE TELLERS AND CLAIRVOYANTS, THE BUMMERS, TENEMENT HOUSE LIFE, DRUNKENNESS, WHAT IT COSTS TO LIVE IN NEW YORK, GAMBLING, FARO BANKS, LOTTERIES, THE "HEATHEN CHINEE," STREET CHILDREN, SWINDLERS, THE POOR OF NEW YORK, THE DESERVING POOR, THE BEGGARS, QUACK DOCTORS, WORKING WOMEN, STREET VENDERS

From the section on Street Children:

In spite of the labors of the Missions and the Reformatory Institutions, there are ten thousand children living on the streets of New York, gaining their bread by blacking boots, by selling newspapers, watches, pins, etc., and by stealing. Some are thrust into the streets by dissolute parents, some are orphans, some are voluntary outcasts, and others drift here from the surrounding country. Wherever they may come from, or however they may get here, they are here, and they are nearly all leading a vagrant life which will ripen into crime or pauperism.

The newsboys constitute an important division of this army of homeless children. You see them everywhere, in all parts of the city, but they are most numerous in and about Printing House Square, near the offices of the great dailies. They rend the air and deafen you with their shrill cries. They surround you on the sidewalk, and almost force you to buy their papers. They climb up the steps of the stage, thrust their grim little faces into the windows, and bring nervous passengers to their feet with their shrill yells; or, scrambling into a street car, at the risk of being kicked into the street by a brutal conductor, they will offer you their papers in such an earnest, appealing way, that, nine times out of ten, you buy from sheer pity for the child.

Apparently, electro magnetic radiation is now a real cause of skin ageing, or so say Clarins. But before you cower away into a technology-free cave, rest assured that lo and behold, Clarins will be releasing an anti-electro magnetic radiation mist to protect you. It'll be available in January at a cost of €39, but I think this is one risk I'm happy to live with.

The truth may set you free, but you might not be as carefree and happy. It will eat away at you — what hurts you does not necessarily make you stronger.

I would maintain that a healthy (i.e. substantial) amount of denial is therefore genetically heritable, that it allows us to blithely go on (despite reading Beckett) and to ignore the basic sadness and desperation of life. We can live in an illusion — in fact we are genetically predisposed to do so. These illusions can be small — I am just as good at catching game as Bob, my rival, for example — or they can be very large — that death is not the end and that I will be rewarded for my faith and Bob, the apostate, will rot in Hell.

Either way, they allow me to go on, to persevere in the face of unlikely odds or limited chance of success. We have evolved to be less rational that one might think, and to be slightly more delusional and even stupid.

Amarok continues to blast ahead with release 1.4.4. We're thrilled to be able to take our long association with Magnatune to new heights with the addition of an integrated DRM-free music store with full-length mp3 previews. Magnatune's "we are not evil" attitude guarantees that you can purchase awesome tunes and the artist receives half of the purchase price.

With 1.4.4 comes basic support for the Rio Karma. Many bug fixes and additions for the other media device plugins have also been made. Now Amarok is truly your "one-stop-media-device" shop, supporting nearly all the major media device's on the market.

Amarok 1.4.4 may very well be our closest to being bug free release ever! Over 100 bugs have been closed for this release, thanks in no small part to the tireless effort of our development team. Martin Aumueller and Alexandre Oliveira in particular have been on a bug squashing craze for this release, and first-time contributor, Ovidiu Gheorghioiu, has submitted a large bundle of patches and fixes to improve Amarok's efficiency and response.

On another note, we still need artists! If YOU are interested in creating artwork for the Amarok project, please mail amarok@kde.org with your proposal, or for more information about what is required.

I received an email from eMusic today saying that, after November 21, all new subscriptions will cost the same, BUT GIVE YOU LESS.

The Basic plan is currently 40 tracks per month, but will soon drop to 30. Similarly, the Plus and Premium plans are dropping from 65 and 90 to 50 and 75 downloads per month respectively.

By default, the plans of existing subscribers (i.e., me) will not change. Furthermore, if I act quickly, and upgrade my subscription RIGHT NOW, I'll be able to "lock in at the lowest price per download available" (!)

The email does not explain why they're reducing the value of new subscriptions, and I'm unable to find any mention of these inpending changes on the eMusic website.

To be honest, the whole thing is filling me with a growing sense of injustice. Logic (along with my limited understanding of economies-of-scale type stuff) would suggest that as eMusic gets bigger they'd be able to offer BETTER (not worse) deals. But this does not seem to be happening.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said seven New Zealand prison officers would be dispatched to establish a new prison, Her Majesty's Prison Pitcairn, on the remote South Pacific island. Britain will pay the bill, expected to total about £500,000 ($1.2 million) a year.

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said on Monday the six men had lost their appeal to the Privy Council, which rejected their argument that English law had not been promulgated on the island and it was not under British sovereignty.

See also:
Half the men on small island charged with rape
Pitcairn rapists convicted but not jailed

Hola. I'm C. jejuni.
I am a curved Gram Negative rod.

You can find me in lots of domestic animals.
I am part of the normal bacterial flora of poultry and cattle.
I get into people through dirty drinking water or undercooked meat, especialy chicken.
I cause food poisoning, with a self limiting bloody diarrhoea, abdominal cramps and fever.

Others make wills, but don't think to take into account what happens to our literary estate as a separate thing from the disposition of their second-best beds, which means unqualified or uninterested relatives can find themselves in control of everything the author's written. Some of us are just cheap.

All this bothered me, and still bothers me.

Shortly after Mike Ford's death, I spoke to Les Klinger about it. Les is a lawyer, and a very good one, and also an author. I met him through Michael Dirda, and the Baker Street Irregulars (here's Les's Sherlockian webpage).

Les immediately saw my point, understood my crusade and went off and made a document for authors. Especially the lazy sort of authors, or just the ones who haven't quite got around to seeing a lawyer, or who figure that one day it'll all sort itself out, or even the ones to whom it has never occurred that they need to think about this stuff.

The Scoop on Poop is a traveling exhibition based on the popular book by Dr. Wayne Lynch. The exhibition leads visitors on an investigation of what poop is and how animals and humans use it. The Scoop on Poop treats the subject with a tactful blend of good science and fun.

The Scoop on Poop features large colorful graphic panels, three-dimensional models, and fun interactive components. Visitors are invited to listen in on an animal’s digestive system, learn the language of poop in countries around the world, examine fecal samples in a veterinarian’s lab, compete in dung beetle races, track wild animals by clues left in scat, see how long it takes an elephant to poop their body weight, improve their #2 IQ in stool school, and meet a dinosaur dung detective.

A last minute change has been introduced into the new bill and it's so arcane that legal experts differ strongly on what the effect will be. But with the bill fast-tracking through Parliament, it's likely that this mystery clause will be passed unless the brakes are put on the process. EFF has information on the changes and how Australians can get involved:

While the new version’s TPM ban is broader, the Bill does contain two carve-outs: First, there’s no legal protection for region-coding access control technologies on video games and DVDs. That is likely to avoid some of the potentially anti-competitive impacts of geographic market segmentation via TPMs – a practice that involves no copyright right. The carve-out is presumably designed to preserve the 2005 Australian High Court ruling in the Sony v. Stevens PlayStation modchip case, but unfortunately, does so in the narrowest possible way. Second, there’s an attempt to exclude misuses of TPM provisions on embodied computer programs like the printer cartridge and garage door opener cases invoking the DMCA.

How bad is the last minute change in language? Even Australia's top legal minds are unsure of the precise impact. Unless the bill is delayed there will be no opportunity to assess that before the highly complex bill is pushed to a speedy vote.

But that’s not the only problem with the bill. It also creates new criminal penalties for copyright infringement. It introduces new summary and strict liability offences and criminal penalties for non-commercial infringement. These rules would apply to children as young as 14, and could make everyday Australians criminals for uploading lip-synched videos to YouTube and other commonplace activities.

Update: David Cake of Electronic Frontiers Australia sez, "Yes, the government is trying to push through this bill disgracefully fast - the senate committee has been allotted only 4 hours of public hearings for a 213 page bill, including major changes to the bill that have been introduced between public drafts and the introduction of legislation. Electronic Frontiers Australia has been able to lodge a submission to the senate committee objecting to these changes, but the time frame before the bill is due to be voted on is very short, and reversing these changes will be difficult."

This is a movie I made a long time ago. It's the same as the Haunted mansion ride at Disneyland. I made the sets out of construction paper and paper bags. I redid the audio because my high little kid voice doing the Ghost Host just sounded stupid.

The image for today is the Ministry of Transportation. Shot in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, the photography brings out the conflict between a symbol of progress and its current state of decay.

By Antwerp-based photographer Geert Joiris.

Count me among those who were heavily influenced by the Catalogs. I have a complete set in a storage locker in Toronto. I used to pore through them for hours on rainy days, marvelling at the flowering of the mission of "access to tools and ideas." And when a friend slipped me the "Is the Body Obsolete?" issue of the Whole Earth Review in the 80s, I knew I'd found something special, a publication about something that I had always hoped was out there, but had never found. Even now, I have a WELL account! Link (Thanks, Rick!)

The holy grail of Apple DRM for me is opening up the audiobooks. These files cost a fortune, can't be easily burned and re-ripped (and some even come flagged as "non-burnable" -- showing that there are crippleware modes in iTunes that aren't widely known). Cracking them through the analog hole using Audio Hijack is time-consuming (I spent six weeks this year running two PowerBooks 24/7 to convert all my iTunes audiobooks to MP3s using this method). Link (Thanks, Matthias!)

# Clauses 4(a) & (b) (both licenses) - language has been introduced to clarify that the anti-TPM restriction does not apply to private copying, only when a work is being shared.

# Clause 4(a) (both licenses) - the ShareAlike condition has been clarified to confirm that the other jurisdiction licenses under which an SA-licensed work can be relicensed must be of the same license version or later (consistent with relicensing under the same jurisdiction/generic license).

# Clause 4(e) (new generic) - this clause has been substantially revised since the first draft was circulated on the list. The revisions reflect the ongoing work of the CC Working Group that has been set up to look at the issue of CC licenses and collecting societies and represents the agreed on policy for CC licenses going forward as regards the collection of collecting society royalties by CC licensors. It is designed to take into account the different systems that exist in different countries and will be reflected in the jurisdiction licenses that version to 3.0.

Fenced in by jungle, Fordlandia was transformed into a modern suburb with rows of snug bungalows fed by power lines running to a diesel generator. The main street was paved and its residents collected well water from spigots in front of their homes—except for the U.S. staff and white-collar Brazilians, who had running water in their homes. The North Americans splashed in their outdoor swimming pool and the Brazilians escaped the sun by sliding into another pool designated for their use. “Villa Brasileira,” as one area of the town was known, boasted tailors, shops, restaurants and shoemakers to serve the local workers. The sweet smell of bread wafted from a bakery; the butcher shop offered beef, pork and chicken at subsidized prices. On paper, it sounded like a dream...

“I’m a worker, not a waiter!” a Fordlandia employee reportedly yelled in the food line one day, sparking the plantation’s most notorious riot. Workers armed with machetes joined the protest against the self-serve mid-western cuisine in a country where food traditionally was served at the table. The seringueiros demolished the cafeteria as North American officials scrambled to the dock, jumped into boats and waited in the middle of the river for Brazilian troops to quell the melee...

“A workman’s mess hall was set up but native workers did not like the wholesome Detroit-style cooking and complained bitterly of indigestion. North American fare in the jungle no more pleases the customers than a quick change to Amazon fare would please you or me,” Wilson wrote in a Harpers magazine article titled “Mr. Ford in the Jungle.” Furthermore, the natives did not choose to square dance on the village green or to sing the quaint folk songs of Merrie England or to treasure Longfellow.”

SoL sez, "Here's a Damn Interesting article about Ford's doomed Brazilian experiment with pictures."

1984 by George Orwell:

Caitlyn from Atlanta, GA, wrote: "1984 is the worst book I have ever read. I would advise anyone who is thinking about reading this book to reconcider! George Orwell is not a bad writer, however, this book he does not do evry well on, as some of his others. Prehaps he was getting old and lost his touch. Animal Farm was okay, but 1984 was horrible. It took him forever, it seemed like, to get into the accual book. If someone were to take out all of the useless part of 1984, it would be half as long. Why would he wirte so much about nothing? I havent ever meet someone who could wirte such a boring book about the goverment. I have meet many people who have loved this book, but i dispised it. I am not at all intrested in the goverment. This may be part of the reason that I didnt like it. I would advise you not to read this book."

Update: Aaron sends in an earlier cut at this from Defective Yeti.

Update 2: Cody sez, "There's also the hilarious Amazon World blog, which sadly stopped updating in June of 2004."

A PHP script processes the line definitions to create list of stations on the line, calculates coordinates of the control points for bezier curves, and then outputs the graphic as an SVG file. The SVG files are then fine tuned in an SVG editor (text placement, mostly) and rendered as PNGs.

I filed a radio report today for the NPR News program "Day to Day" on news that Pentagon officials are cracking down on "mil-bloggers," military men and women who write blogs about their wartime experiences. The Pentagon is concerned about operational security. The increased scrutiny has quieted some blogs, while driving many to look for ways to follow the new rules.

Link to archived audio.

See also this related story I filed for Wired News: "Under Fire, Soldiers Kill Blogs" (BB post, WN link).

IMAGE: The author of milblog "Midnight Casket" is 25-year old Alabama native Jeff Barnett, shown here. He is a mechanical engineer with the US Marines most recently deployed in Fallujah, Iraq. Jeff is also a huge gamer, and particularly into XBOX360 and Halo. Check out this cool gaming forum he hosts: Link.

More on the milblog story in this Defensetech.org post Link (editor Noah Shachtman has been covering the story for weeks, and first pointed me to it).

My NPR News colleague Steve Proffitt reads an incredibly moving personal account from one soldier's blog in a segment which also aired in today's edition of "Day to Day": Link.

UPDATE: Some of the "milblogs" mentioned in the Wired News item and NPR report are organizing a fund drive to buy voice-operated laptops for Iraq war veterans and other servicemen/women recovering from amputations or injuries to arm or hands. They load these notebooks up with copies of Dragon Naturally Speaking (which I have not used, but heard great things about from reporters who swear by it for transcribing interviews). Snip:

Operating laptops by speaking into a microphone [allows them to] send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the 'Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field without having to press a key or move a mouse. The experience of CPT Charles "Chuck" Ziegenfuss, a partner in the project who suffered severe hand wounds while serving in Iraq, illustrates how important this voice-controlled software can be to a wounded servicemember's recovery.

Of course, it's not that easy -- the phone companies don't want you to ditch dino-phone service, so you need a good HOWTO before you embark on your dry-loop odyssey. The Eat Our Brains group-blog has a great post on how to game the system:

It took me almost an hour to reach a live Verizon rep who could talk to me about it. They make it as hard as possible to change over. They charge an extra $5 a month for your DSL connection if you don't have a land-line. You have to put your DSL service on a credit card, rather than pay for it on a phone bill. Tragically, they haven't figured out how to bill you for DSL, I suppose. You have to turn off both services, then start up your DSL service anew, with a two-week gap in between.

Here's how to game their system:

First, since it's technically a new DSL service if you do this, you qualify for promotions and rebates as a new customer. Dell, for instance, offers a $100 rebate if you order Verizon DSL through them. (Similar rebates with other DSL providers, incidentally, and you don't have to buy a computer to get the deal.)

Since MAKE, CRAFT and BoingBoing are linking to cool DIY costumes spotted at Halloween parties this year, I figured you would all get a kick out of the costumes spotted at the annual ILM-Lucasfilm-LucasArts Halloween Party this weekend. Plenty of cardboard robots and stormtroopers, but the lifesize (as in GIGANTIC) Trojan Rabbit complete with a gaggle of Monty Python Holy Grail knights won for best costume of the night… with Marie Antoinette (all her clothes and wig were handmade) and the gigantic digital camera that took real photos and the Wack-A-Mole with walking mallet, also came in as the night's winners.

Based on comics master Scott McCloud's recommendation (below), I bought a Cintiq. It does something I've always wanted to do since I first saw a computer. This thing is a pen-based tablet that doubles as a monitor. In other words you draw directly on the tablet, just like a paper-based drawing, but digitally. In fact the surface of the Cintq monitor/tablet feels like paper under a pen. Synchrony of image with your movements is almost exact, and the micro difference doesn't seem to matter. The result is weirdly like ink, or paint, but with all the control and magic of Photoshop. Of course, as a monitor, it will display whatever's on your computer, whether it's animation software or a spreadsheet. (You could hook it up to a $500 Mac Mini and have a fabulous digital art studio.) It's slowly being adopted by film animators and other high-end graphic professionals. A Cintq is expensive ($2,500), big, thick and bulky (it is too fat to sit on your lap like other tablets, but it can lay flat on a desk), but if you are producing digital images for a living, it speeds up your productivity and eases your hurt. It's fun to use.

Just wanted to give you an update about the post titles Photos of a girl pretending to eat her cat.

Her name is Nakagawa Shoko. She's a Japanese "Talent" who is regularly on TV on variety shows and advertising. I caught a link to those pictures last week and then ended up seeing her on TV just this weekend. Talent's are women (and sometimes men) who don't have any particular skill or talent, but are on TV because they are attractive. During the video segments on variety shows you see their reactions in an inset screen.

She's famous as a prolific blogger in Japan. She updates about 5 or 6 times daily, mostly from her phone I think, with pictures of her face with stuff written on her forehead and also with pictures of cats (hers and maybe other people's, I'm not really sure). You can check her blog out here:

Reader comment:

Kyle says:

There's an interesting video on YouTube (in Japanese) about Otaku culture, where Shoko Nakagawa discusses the reclamation of the word "otaku" ("nerd") by the nerdy crowd, similar to the way "geek" and "nerd" have been in the US (what with iPods, rich computer guys, Lord of the Rings, and nerdcore rap).

YouTube video 1 | YouTube video 2

One thing the otaku have done is change the way they write "otaku" -- the new form uses an older character for the first syllable of "otaku" which is no longer in common use. The goal is to create a new word with different connotations.

Seth dismissed Nakagawa as talentless, but she's sort of a cultural icon for nerds in Japan -- she hangs out on 2ch, a very, very famous Japanese BBS, and, from seeing her interviews, she's extremely knowledgeable about old animation and comics. The fact that she's not ugly is a reason she's become famous -- a geek with good looks.

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement)

Just outside Harajuku station today I saw the craziest/funniest/most dumbfounding thing I've seen in Japan to date. The machine containing this man was fully mobile and powerful enough to get up and down the curbs with ease, not to mention immaculately put together. He rolled right past me in front of the station toward the park, accross the bridge of freaks and over to the crosswalk bridge stairs. Then he waited patiently for a break in traffic and took off down the street away from the crowds. He never once cracked a smile, stopped only when the crowd was too thick to let him by, and seemed at best to not notice all the people staring and trying to talk to him, at worst slightly annoyed that everyone was looking at him and blocking his way (Cripes! You act as thought you've never seen Buzz Lightyear Tetrapodal robot out for a Sunday roll before!).

I'd like to know if anyone knows anything about this...thing...if you've sighted it yourself, or if its been in the news at all (this has foreign media written all over it, a.k.a., stereotype reinforcement)

Update:

Here are a couple of other photos of the same robot, with a different passenger.

It's an undergrad course offered as a COMM499 class, but it's open to any student on campus. I'll be podcasting it if I can figure out a good recording setup, too. The main class assignment is to work through Wikipedia entries on subjects we cover in the class, in groups, identifying weak areas in the Wikipedia sections and improving them, then defending those improvements in the message-boards for the Wikipedia entries.

The class runs Tuesday afternoons from 3:30-6:20PM. Lots of USC undergrads asked me about attending the grad seminar I'm teaching this semester -- here's your chance. Roll up, roll up!

Every garden has a snake: computers aren't just tools for empowering their owners. They're also tools for stripping users of agency, for controlling us individually and en masse.

It starts with "Digital Rights Management" -- the anti-copying measures that computers employ to frustrate their owners desires. These technologies literally attack their owners, treating them as menaces to be thwarted through force majeure, deceit, and cunning. Incredibly, DRM gets special protection under the law, a blanket prohibition on breaking DRM or helping others to do so, even if you have the right to access the work the DRM is walling off.

But DRM's just the tip of the iceberg. Every digital act includes an act of copying, and that means that copyright governs every relationship in the digital realm. Take a conversation to email and it's not just culture, it's copyright -- every volley is bound by the rules set out to govern the interactions between large publishing entities.

Playing a song for a buddy with your stereo is lawful. Stream that song to your buddy's PC and you could be facing expulsion and criminal prosecution.

Every interaction on the Web is now larded over with "agreements" -- terms of service, acceptable use policies, licenses -- that no one reads or negotiates. These non-negotiable terms strip you of your rights the minute you click your mouse. Transactions that would be a traditional purchase in meatspace are complex "license agreements" in cyberspace. As mere licensors, we are as feudal serfs to a lord -- ownership is conferred only on those who are lucky enough to be setting the terms. Our real property interests are secondary to their "intellectual property" claims.

When the computer, the network, publishing platforms, and property can all be magicked away with the Intellectual Property wand, we're all of us pwned, 0wnz0red, punkd. Our tools are turned against us, the law is tipped away from our favor.

Small Print's collecting the worst of 'em -- like, when you install Flash Player, you agree to let Adobe audit your PC at any time, and the scam artist who makes you promise you're not from the FTC as a condition of looking at his site. But this one takes the cake: edible paper with a EULA printed on it -- by eating it, you "agree":

Product: A chef in a Chicago restaurant recently perfected a line of edible paper. Customers receive an image of cotton candy printed on a sheet of paper that tastes like cotton candy. Customers who order the treat receive it with the following printed under it: Confidential Property of and © H. Cantu. Patent Pending. No further use or disclosure is permitted without prior approval of H. Cantu.

As seen in: November Food and Wine

Lowpoints: If the treat dissolves on your tongue, does that mean it’s a saliva-wrap license? You eat it, therefore you agree to its terms?

Highpoints: I’m sure the paper is delicious.

See also Small Print Project: collecting the "agreements" shoved down your throat

Update: Steve sez, "Any idea if any friendly lawyer-types have considered putting together a 'counter-EULA'? Ideally, it would be simple form letter that you can mail back to a company that you've recently done business with, that would read "By opening this envelope, you agree to release [name] from the EULA bundled with [product]", and go on from there with the proper legalese. After all, if they believe that opening a product box signals acceptance of a contract, then it's no different the other way around."

His free talk runs from 7-9 PM at the USC Annenberg School on the main campus in room 207. We'll have the podcast up a day or two later. Link

Note: THERE IS NO SPEAKER ON OCT 31. Jamie Love was previously erroneously listed as speaking on Hallowe'en, but he won't be here.