There is, however, a simple solution: Change the format, or at least reimagine it. When it so-called arc shows, we need something between a mini-series and an open-ended run. We need the TV equivalent of a novella: the limited-run show. Series driven by a central mystery (Twin Peaks, The X-Files) peter out precisely because they have indefinite life spans. The writers are forced to serve up red herrings until the shows choke on their own plot twists. (Whereas 24 works because it’s more cliff-hanger than puzzle—though Jack Bauer is surely the unluckiest man alive.)

IM IN UR ALREADY-OLD MEME / BEATIN IT 2 DEATH:

Link, see also this post from earlier this week (thanks, Lenore!).

Reader comment: stAllio! says,

Here is my contribution to the "in ur X Ying ur Zs" meme... this one seemed so obvious i was surprised nobody else had done it yet: Link. i also did this one, which i don't think is quite as funny: Link.

Here are a lot more cats verbing nouns (peepee in the pants funny by midway thru): Link.

Clint Dunham says,

More harbl cats. I dunno why but the mountain bike forum I frequent has one of the best threads about this. Lots of images collected here: Link.

I think the page at shackspace is derivative of this one: Link.

Anonymous harbl strokr says,

The cat posts (Link) are something that comes up every Caturday... umm, saturday on 4chan.org 's random forum 4chan.org/b/ (if there is a site less safe for work than this one i wanna see it.) Having seen these memes travel round the board for well over a year (since i first foundit desu) I assumed that they originated here... is this true. /b/ is pretty much a board of memes (and porn, and raids and abuse and sometimes... love). To the point i say... it would be interesting to find where these memes came from, for the same reasons as The Game tracking site.

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

(1) MP3 LINK.
Excerpt: "Can you confirm the large, cataclysmic flames and smoke as being an art project?"

(2) MP3 LINK.
Excerpt: "We are not here to keep people from being stupid. Once they are stupid, we will pick up the pieces."

Next time someone asks you to explain Burning Man, roll your eyes, keep your mouth shut, and click these links.

Image: (by me, in 2003). Dirty naked hippies being hosed off next to a giant Spanish Galleon. Hey, guess where I took this photo.

See also this NYT story: Link to "Burning Man Spreads Its Flame" (Thanks, Wayne Correia)

Speaking of SomaFM, their annual holiday music streams are now live! The 128k MP3 stream is here. The 56k MP3 stream is here. And for you modem users, the 24k MP3 stream is here. Also, the recent song playing info is here.

Reader comment: Fingertips says,

Great plug for the excellent SomaFM, but why not mention the support page where you can donate to keep their excellent stations on the air? They even give you a cool T-Shirt if you donate $50 or more!

Laura Browder, author of a new book called "Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America," has just published a flash-based website with lots of historical information and images. Required reading for anyone who believes that the phenomenon of women gun-owners in this country is a new one. Snip from the book intro:

The gun-toting woman holds enormous symbolic significance in American culture. For over two centuries, women who pick up guns have interrupted the popular association of guns and masculinity, spurring debates about women's capabilities for violence as well as their capacity for full citizenship. In Her Best Shot, Laura Browder examines the relationship between women and guns and the ways in which the figure of the armed woman has served as a lightning rod for cultural issues from the American Revolution to the present.

Reader comment: Chris Jeffries-Dowling says,

I just read your post about women and guns and was reminded of a gun I once saw in my father in law's pawn shop called "The Ladies Home Companion". It was a .410, pistol with a 12 round drum and is often referred to as a "mini street sweeper" . From what I can remember of the manual, this was supposed to be a one handed weapon but I'll be damned if I couldn't hold the thing up unloaded for more than a few seconds. I did some searching and managed to find this picture: Link. And this auction: Link. But alas, no scans of the owners manual, which was stylized to resemble the 19th century magazine of the same name. Perhaps some other intrepid BB reader will have better luck.

This is not The Hague, this is Amsterdam. This is not a juvenile emigrants' prison but a designer hotel, one of the most extravagant in Europe. Every sleeping room is different. The public space is amazing: a Kakfaesque designer labyrinth.

The Lloyd Hotel is quite literally a redesigned prison. It once held teenage boys, foreigners, under a notoriously harsh regime. My room resembles the prison cell that my indicted ex president Milosevic had in The Hague's war crimes tribunal. It features thick bare walls, a shower barely exposed right in the middle of the room, and a toilet as a hermetic cabin. The room's fourth wall is open glass, exposed to the world, or, rather, the opened spaces and uncurtained windows of Dutch tower blocks.

From McSweeneys' "Jokes Made by Robots, for Robots," by J. Alex Boyd:

What's a robot's favorite cereal?
Rob-os.
(Note: Rob-os are made of the tears of human children.)

Little Susie tosses a clock out the window. A robot inquires, "Why did you do that?" She replies, "I wanted to see time fly!" The robot says, "Ah ... A perfect subject for elimination," and shoots her with a laser beam through the face.

Why did the robot order a milkshake?
To blend in with the general human population, making it easier to infiltrate society and—in time—conquer it.

IMAGE: by Dan Coulter. "The band "Robot Attack" only recorded one live song because after the first song, "You're All Going To Die", they fullfilled their promise. Fortunately, they uploaded an mp3 of the song so that you can hear it." Download it here: Link, more pix here.

Speaking of robot jokes, Q: How many robots does it take to play the bagpipes? A: One! HahahahAHAHAHAH! Link to "McBlare," the bagpipe-playing Robot, created by robotics researchers at Carnegie Mellon University including Ben Brown, Garth Zeglin, and Roger Dannenberg. (Thanks, Andy Yang)

Reader comment: Bill Simmon says,

Regarding your robot post today, see also this album of music made by robots for robots: Link. From the web page:

"The album I have produced is a collection of songs gathered from the robot communities of North America. Few were aware of these remnants of our future; those who were had only questions: did they hate us, envy us, disdain us? Did they see the toaster as an appliance or as a brother? Had they inherited our lust for destruction, or did they seethe with the righteous anger of the oppressed?"

Captured! By Robots is a "band" where this guy has built robots to play the instruments, and well, I'll just paste some of what they have to say on the site:

"Let me (DRMBOT 0110) tell you. JBOT played in a couple of ska bands, Skankin' Pickle and the Blue Meanies for years and was very unlikable. Everybody got sick of him (I don't blame them). JBOT thought that if he made a band of robots to play with everything would be okay. HE WAS WRONG! He built GTRBOT666 and myself and the idiotic Ape Which Hath No Name. After he built us, I decided that he was the antibot and must be punished. We installed a Biocerebral Chip in his CPU and now force him to humiliate himself in front of his peers. " Link.

Check out Chris Taylor’s musical love letter to future robot captors “Robots Are Great” (MP3 Link) from our 2006 Science Music Compilation. TWIS Loves BB.

Can't forget Flight of the Conchords - Humans are Dead!! Link.

If you'd rather stay away from all the middle class robot music and want to hear what a working class,ghetto robot might have on its boom box, then check out 8 bit (Link), a Highland Park based team of Robots in exile from their own planet. Their normal site is down, most likely due to human error. You can check this MP3 link for a fine example of robo-rap.

We're doing the last day of a mini-ArtBots show tomorrow (Sunday) in NYC: Link. We've got a couple musical bots (Misericordiam and Ill-Tempered Clangier) as well as six other strange/fun ones!

CHRIS the Robot is the hottest Robot comedian out there! Link.

Link to YouTube clip of industrial assembly line robots being harassed by the products they make. The various products launch into such robo-insults as "is it really true that your mommy is a blender?" and the robots retort with threats to tighten the appliance's fan belt.

I can't believe no one's suggested THE KILLER ROBOTS!! They are very large, intimidating robots who have a rock group AND star in fumettis from Abnormal Fun Comics. Personally, I like the one in the Laser Tag helmet.

Also, don't miss out on Optimus Rhyme for all your Transformers-themed nerdcore rap. They're straight off the streets of Cybertron, yo.

* Borzou Daragahi / Los Angeles Times
I know how religious the people in Iraq are, how traditional they are with regard to gender relations and stuff like that. I would see certain stuff and I would just cringe and want to say [to U.S. soldiers], “You guys are really, really making a bad name for yourself here by storming into this guy’s house with your shoes on. This guy’s done nothing and yet you’re going to make an enemy out of him because he’s gonna talk about you guys for the rest of his life, and that day when they came storming into my house with their shoes on — nobody walks into my house with their shoes on!”

* Elizabeth Palmer / CBS
I've been struck by how essentially humane a lot of the soliders are, with a very strong sense of right and wrong, which I think comes with growing up in America. And how ill-equipped they were to apply that to a situation like Iraq, without enough historical or geographical or cultural knowledge to actually — unless they were under the command of a very gifted officer, and there are some who are extremely well-equipped, but a lot of them are not — to apply that sort of fairness to Iraqi society. I feel that a huge majority of them are good men trapped in an impossible situation and have not really understood where they are historically, as well as culturally and physically. I think they’re hostages of a terrible situation as well; it’s given me enormous sympathy for them, and certainly a new appreciation for how ill-prepared they were for the mission, at least in the early days.

* Nir Rosen / Freelance Writer
The daily things the Iraqis endure — and those that I experienced just because I looked Iraqi and then because I was a male, and a so-called “male of fighting age.” My [new Iraqi] friends would ask me, “Why do Americans say ‘fuck’ so much, what’s this word ‘fuck?’” I heard that a few times. “Why do Americans spit so much?” They didn’t know about chewing dip — the tobacco thing. So they see Americans spitting all the time; they’re going into a house on a raid, and in order to stay awake they chew dip and they’re spitting constantly, spitting all over people’s yards, things like that. Having to deal with the barbed wire everywhere, the tanks and Humvees blocking traffic in your roads, pointing their guns at you, firing into the air, shouting at you. It was constant humiliation and constant fear, because they control your life. They have these huge guns and you can’t even communicate with them adequately.

One of our readers was concerned about Renewable Choice Energy's Wind Power cards, which are sold in Whole Foods Market and have proved to be controversial, at least in some parts of the blogosphere. Mark Frauenfelder at bOING bOING posted that the cards are "useless.... 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." However I think Mark misunderstands the concept of offsetting, which is what the cards are about.

If we take climate change seriously (and we should), we need to start to figure out how to reduce our overall energy use, get as much of the energy we use as possible through renewables, and remedy the remainder of our energy use in other ways.

We should all buy green energy. But sometimes, even if a utility has sources of green power, that source may be limited. Consider my local utility, Austin Energy. Even though their Green Choice program is considered one of the best green power programs in the USA, it can only handle a limited number of subscribers.

So what do you do if you can't connect directly to a provider of green power? One thing you can do is pay someone else to use renewable energy.

Like "Iron Chef" for graphic designers. The Cut&Paste Los Angeles design tournament takes place this evening in Echo Park, at the retro and restored Jensen's Recreation Center. $10, starts at 7, festivities continue through 2AM. Live Ninjatunes DJ Blockhead, and judges including

Buff Monster - Famed Street Artist and Designer
Emit - Famed Graffiti Artist of the DF Crew; Co-Founder of The Firm Graphics
Eric Nakamura - Co-Publisher of Giant Robot Magazine
Andy Mueller , The Quiet Life
Roger Gastman - Editor-in-Chief, Swindle Magazine

I saw a pre-screening here in Austin last night for a movie called "The Freedom Writers," based on a novel and true story about a teacher (Erin Gruwell, played by Hilary Swank). She inspired urban school kids in Long Beach, CA to succeed in school by introducing them to writings of Anne Frank and Zlata Filopvic, and by encouraging them to keep journals. The book is comprised of the student's real, bone-chilling journal accounts of violence and negative life. It is extremely inspiring given today's decrepit public educational system here in the US.

After the movie, the real Erin Gruwell and a student came out and met each of us in the audience. I asked her to sign my copy of her book and dedicate it to BoingBoing because i see a parallel between what you guys do and what she did to inspire people. I really hope you can publish this (or these pics) on boingboing and get the nation to feel the power of this story. It is a truly amazing work for our times. The movie will be released in January, 2007. Thank you and keep up the good fight.

Wow, you won't believe what happened today. First of all, I was nearly late for work because my new roommate is worried about the electrical and he pulled out all the plugs last night, even my alarm clock! His name is Tony, and I think he is either weird or crazy, or maybe both! He keeps saying that the Company uses the plugs to listen to our minds! He unplugged all the electricals and put tape over them in the middle of the night. When I woke up this morning, my room was totally black! I had my flashlight from work on the chair near my bed, and I used that to find the living room. Tony was sitting in his shorts on the sofa, in the dark, watching the plug behind the TV. Hey, I said, you watch the television, not the plug, and then he said some bad words and told me that he didn't want me plugging in _anything_. He is skinny like Jimmy got when he had the AIDS, but he is not sick, he is hyperkinetic, like Manny was when he went to the special school. That is why he is management and I still work on a truck. If I have to be skinny and crazy to be management, I'll take the truck all day long!

I hear the cholocate ration is going up to 10 grammes next week.

So the LEO grabbed my bag and he, myself, the TSA "boss," and a TSA agent went behind a curtain. They dug through my stuff and took the rubber band ball away for further screening. They came back with the rubber band ball and told the "TSA boss" that it was positive for flammable residue and that it had something metal at the core. He started up at me accusing me of wrongdoing and saying things about it being a "precursor" or a "trigger." I told him to "quit running at the mouth" and that it was "nothing of the sort." I explained that it had been in the trunk of my car for a long time and probably picked up a bit of oil or gas or something from that. I also told him that there was nothing at the core and that it was 100% rubber bands...

The cop then switched tactics and asked, "are you smuggling drugs?" I told him that was "outrageous" and produced my SIDA badge and my airline ID. I asked him if his question was serious. He started asking why I didn't have any checked luggage to which I replied, "Dude, I load bags all day. I know better than to check them." He again accused me of "smuggling something."

Mr. Maes said the Halifax-based university has been using RefWorks for two years now, but strengthened privacy legislation in Nova Scotia coupled with the Patriot Act drove Dalhousie, as well as other Atlantic institutions, to move to the Ontario server this academic year.

Universities still have access to RefWorks, but now the personal information of professors and students is stored in Ontario. The U of T server, managed on behalf of the Ontario Council of University Libraries, was created four years ago to give the province's institutions more control over how research information is managed.

Williamson's granddaughter, Betty Williamson, says her grandfather would often say --quote --"I have lived a wonderful life and I will die with no regrets."

In the CNC world, proliferation becomes a matter of design, software, and materials, rather than finished systems. What happens when North Korea or Iran starts selling missiles as digital files rather than on ships which can be intercepted? When private designers and companies create designs which anyone can produce? Two words: Watch out.

Description: Suicide Letter Wizard for Microsoft Word helps you to create a suicide letter according to your preferences.

Use professional design. Choose from a variety of styles. Make your letter look great.

They said doctors would get much better results than patients, who may not be as capable of accurately describing their symptoms or evaluating which search results were most reliable. The doctors concluded that: "In difficult diagnostic cases, it is often useful. Web-based search engines such as Google are becoming the latest tools in clinical medicine, and doctors in training need to become proficient in their use."

1. Phonology
1.1 Consonants

Consonants include plosives p, t, c and b, d, g and fricatives f, þ, s and h.

Laterals l ja r are very common as are nasals m and n of which n becomes velar before a velar consonant.

All consonants can be word-final.

Allowed consonant clusters at the beginning of a word are pr, tr, cr, dr and gr. Word-final and middle clusters (includeing the afore mentioned) are ld, lt, lþ, rd, rt, rþ, nd, nt, nþ, cs, nc ja ng.

1.2 Vowels

A, e, i, o ja u are vowels. A and e are the most common of them.

All the vowels except e may be word-final.

Allowed vowel clusters: ai, ei, oi, ui, au, ou, ia, ie and io.

1.3 Stress

Stress is initial but some speakers stress the penultimate.

"Basically, if they are going to act like children and commit a childish act, then we'll make a childish atmosphere," he said. "And its a calming thing; Teddy bears are soothing. So we made it like a day care, and that's kind of like what it is, a day care for adults who can't control their behavior in public...."

Researchers have documented the ability of certain colors to evoke emotional and physical responses.

"It's certainly viable," said Mike Carlie, a professor of criminology at Missouri State University. "There have been positive findings that show that certain colors stimulate and excite, and other colors, I guess you would say 'soothe the soul.'"

One shade of pink, called Baker-Miller Pink, has been nicknamed "drunk-tank pink" because of its use to calm violent prisoners.

"If the children were equally disposed toward the lucky and the unlucky, you would expect equivalent opinions of individuals affected by both positive and negative random events," (Harvard grad student Kristina) Olson notes. "The discrepancy in opinions of the beneficiaries of good luck versus the victims of bad luck indicates that children prefer fortunate individuals over unfortunate individuals..."

"Our experiments show the difficulties that confront youngsters as they make judgments of those touched by luck or misfortune," Olson says. "Young children express stronger liking for the beneficiaries of good luck compared to the victims of bad luck and generalize this preference to those who share membership in a group. Because the disadvantaged are more likely to experience negative events beyond their control - such as the tendency for the poor to be most impacted by natural disasters - this innocuous preference for the privileged may eventually grow more harmful, further increasing negativity toward the disadvantaged. Such preferences may, in turn, help explain the persistence of social inequality."

Before the panel moved into private session, Heather Norton, counsel for the GMC, said: “It was made clear to Dr Pratt by Mrs K that she had concerns about the size of her stomach and about bleeding and pain she had experienced.

“Dr Pratt’s response was effectively to tell Mrs K that she had black magic powers in order to alleviate the problem. She told her that she should take holy water and that she should see some priests. She gave her crosses and stones that she said would protect her.

“She told her that her mother was a witch and that she and her husband were planning to kill her. Mrs K was left very shaken and intimidated.”

Dr Pratt was said to have then turned to a clinic nurse who was present and bragged about her special powers.

The adaptation works surprisingly well. The Report is notoriously easy-to-read and gripping, more thriller than bureaucratic tome, and its most important conclusions are well suited to being depicted in sequential art. I agree with many of the Commission's recommendations (though I think they're totally, fatally backwards on no-fly lists and the like) but it was hard to appreciate all the nuances of what worked, and what failed, on 9/11. Reading this fast, gripping adaptation really made it all come to life. Link

Meanwhile, on NeoFiles, Sirius and Diehl have an illuminating and interesting conversation with Fred Turner, author of "From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism." Link

# A quite amazing feat of micro engineering, this sleek pen is actually a telescopic aluminium rod that extends out from the case to a full 4'/1.2m

# The attendant miniaturised reel is fully functional, with line brake/clutch and switchable ratchet so you can use if left- or right-handed

Germany
# In German business dealings, scooting your chair closer to the host is considered an insult. [65]

# Flashing the American "OK" gesture is considered inappropriate because in Germany that gesture refers to the anus... [66]

United States of America
# It is customary to say, "I'm sorry." if you cause a person pain and/or suffering, unless this is done as an act of aggression or war.

Copperfield, 50, and two female assistants were walking from the Kravis Center to their tour bus when they were approached by the teens April 23. The assistants handed over money and a cellphone, but the illusionist turned his pockets inside out to reveal nothing, although he was carrying his passport, wallet and cell phone.

"He said in depositions that he had things on him, but it wasn't difficult to make it seem like there was nothing there," prosecutor Sherri Collins said.

The president's choice for new defense secretary believes in "cyberterrorism." From this 2004 AP article:

Cyberterrorism could be the most devastating weapon of mass destruction yet and could cripple the U.S. economy, former CIA Director Robert Gates said at a terrorism conference Saturday.

We interrupt this block quote to say: please!, let that be hyperbole by the AP, and not an accurate reflection of what's in our next defense secretary's head. Continuing ...

Gates, who became Texas A&M University's president in 2002 about a decade after he left the CIA, cited as an example the "love bug" virus that overwhelmed computer systems around the world in 2000.

"When a teenage hacker in the Philippines overnight can wreak $10 billion in damage to the U.S. economy by implanting a virus, imagine what a sophisticated, well-funded effort to attack the computer base of our economy could accomplish," said Gates, addressing the two-day conference at Rice University.

Reader comment: Nelson Cunnington says,

All it takes is one determined Cyberman (or Cyberwoman). But he shouldn't worry, they always attack the UK first.

Lingerie maker Triumph has regularly designed bras aimed at drawing attention to social issues and to raise its own profile. Last year it unveiled a bra that can be heated in a microwave so as to help save on indoor heating costs.

The "Bra Rangers" -- named in a nod to the television characters that morph into superheroes -- come with matching underwear whose pocket has the inscribed message, "No more plastic bags!"

The bra-turned-bag is made of polyester fiber created through recycling. The bra straps can be tied onto the bag as ribbons.

1. Instead of license fees covering music, they’ll cover audio hardware — with no music involved.

2. Instead of license fees being paid to the musicians, they’ll be paid to the record label. One (large, corporate) label.

3. Instead of a fair, standard license fee, that license fee will be negotiated independently by individual labels. Arbitrarily.

4. Hardware manufacturers, who theoretically ought to profit off a product they design, manufacture, market, and distribute, will now have to share those profits with a separate company that wasn’t involved in the hardware at all.

I just got back from a week in Hawaii. While I was there I got a telephone call from the producer of the CBS Nighttime News with Katie Couric. Boy, was I excited. I had her call Shirley Orlando, my partner, back in California. It seems that CBS does this thing where you vote about what topic you want to see developed, and they want Ukes for Troops to be one of the shows.

So, on Friday, November 10, 2006 please watch the CBS news with Katie Couric and when they provide you with a list of 3 topics that you would want to see developed, please vote for 'Ukes for Troops'. If we win, then they will come out to Shirley's store, Island Bazaar, in Huntington Beach, on Tuesday, November 14th, and tape the story. Please let me know if you need more information. Please pass this on to everyone you know -- Anita Coyoli-Cullen, Co-founder of Ukes for Troops

(Click images for enlargements)

Link

So Lou Reed gets on stage with two accompanying musicians, flanked by large video screens zoomed in directly on his weathered face. He begins playing a song to the buttoned down and sitting down Web 2.0 crowd. Meanwhile there’s an audible drone of people talking in the back of the large room.

Between songs Lou looks pissed, but I think that’s normal. He tells the crowd, “You can keep on talking, I’ve only got 20 minutes. Or I can turn up the music. I can turn it up so loud it will hurt. Do you want me to turn it up? Do you want me to make it hurt?” (rough paraphrase). How awkward.

He’s met with some faint cheering/clapping to turn it up, so over the mike to his sound guy, he growls, “Frank turn it up!” Frank probably thought he was joking. Lou repeats himself once or twice: “Frank, turn it up, Frank turn up the sound!”

More than 1,000 Earth pictures were returned from V-2s between 1946 and 1950, from altitudes as high as 100 miles. The photos, showing huge expanses of the American southwest, appeared in newspapers and were scrutinized by scientists from the U.S. Weather Bureau. In his (1950) National Geographic article, (Clyde) Holliday, (who developed the camera that captured the images), offered a few predictions as to where it all might lead: "Results of these tests now are pointing to a time when cameras may be mounted on guided missiles for scouting enemy territory in war, mapping inaccessible regions of the earth in peacetime, and even photographing cloud formations, storm fronts, and overcast areas over an entire continent in a few hours." Going out on a limb, he speculated that "the entire land area of the globe might be mapped in this way."

I’m not much of a fan of nature programs, and regrettably, Animals Behaving Worse did not erect my flagging interest. In fact, I only made it through two of the program’s segments (crazy squirrels steal yellow ribbons! mischievous foxes steal newspapers!) before slinking back to reruns of The Office on BBC America.

...

I suspect that if I’d stayed tuned, I would have learned how human encroachment into wildlife areas has led to a modern race of super-angry grizzlies, ants that breathe battery acid, and cunning labradoodles who quietly switch the decaf pot at your local Denny’s — as well as, of course, those increasingly evolved, boat-entering stingrays that we read about so often in today’s headlines. Fascinating, all.

* Golf Bag Carrier Attachment secures your golf bag to the Segway x2 Golf and allows for easy dismount and club access while playing. Removes easily for storage and transport

* Scorecard Holder keeps your scorecard, golf balls, and tees readily accessible

The screen consists of concrete with embedded optical fibres, arranged as pixels, capable of transmitting natural as well as artificial light. The light-admission points are on the back of the screen where the fibres are positioned. The light, or the picture, will then be displayed in pixels on the front. The light source can be a projector emitting either pictures or film footage. In principle, the screen is capable of acting as a window since – owing to the combination of the screen concept's light-absorption and optical cables – it has a capacity for transmitting natural light.

Robert M. Gates has his own chapter in the official Iran-Contra affair court documents by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh. This is by far the best description of his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair I've read: Link.

And this is a New York Times editorial from 1991 on Robert Gates: Link to "The Once and Future C.I.A."

As much as Gates’ links to Iran-Contra might taint his background, I think it’s the best change we could ask for at the moment with George Bush in power. Have your read the Slate article on Gates yet? Link. Rumsfeld was so bad in so many ways. Gates as a replacement will lead to more sensible decisions regarding our nation’s defense and Iraq.

While Gates might be very competent, when you learn more about the Contras (Wikipedia page: Link) you have to wonder about the ethics of anyone involved with Iran-Contra. Anyone who is concerned about the disregard Rumsfeld has shown for justice and human rights in Iraq can probably expect more of the same from Gates, though maybe as a more competent leader he'll be more careful that only our proxies in the Middle East do the torturing on our behalf.

I'm not exactly sure about the Iran-Contra affair, but I am a student a Texas A&M University, and he's done an amazing job for the few years that we've had him as President of the University. He will be missed, but if his work here is any sign, I certainly think he will do a great job in his new position.

A couple of days ago, I pointed to a patent filed by the Flickr folks for the concept of interestingness. I should have poked around a bit more because there's a related patent filed by the Flickr and Josh Schachter of del.icio.us concerning "media object metadata association and ranking". I'm not a big fan of software patents, but even so, I can't see the new, useful, nonobvious invention here. I also find it odd that these patents reference exactly zero prior inventions on which they are based...compare with Larry Page's patent for PageRank.

Over the years, Boston artist Rosamond Purcell has photographed goliath beetles and translucent bats culled from the backrooms of natural history museums; a collection of teeth pulled by Peter the Great; moles flayed by naturalist Willem Cornelis van Heurn; and scores of worn and weathered objects, like the termite-eaten book and fish skeleton at right.

Purcell is fixed, in other words, on the state of decay. This bent is evident in her exceptional new volume, Bookworm, which recasts mangled texts as works of art. If Purcell seems always to look backward, she is also strikingly tuned to present-day obsessions—especially our fascination with repurposing. Aggregating curiosities and favorites, both our own and others', is a prominent feature of sites like del.icio.us, MySpace, and YouTube. The effect is part curation and part spectacle.

Reader comment: Rodney Gardner says,

The official transcript at whitehouse.gov (Link) doesn’t have the “Dell” in it. “And it's tough in a time of war when people see carnage on their television screens.” I think you could make the argument that it was sort of a stutter, like he started to say “television”, but said it with a “d”, stopped himself, then started over. But I don’t think the video shows that at all.

In the wake of the Democratic win in the House of Representatives, some chairs will be rearranged. Democratic representatives will take over as chairmen of the House Committees. Of the committees most relevant to copyright in the digital age is the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee which is currently chaired by Republican Lamar Smith of Texas. The ranking Democrat (and soon to be chairman) is the Honorable Howard Berman of California.

Mr. Berman, according to the National Journal, can be expected to support restrictive copyright and intellectual property laws. Representing the Los Angeles / Hollywood area, Berman will "protect his nearby Hollywood interests by cracking down on piracy and protecting against copyright infringement of TV, music and movie productions." In the past, he has supported legislation allowing copyright owners to "file blocking, redirections, spoofs and decoys" to fight piracy.

Reader comment: Mike Masnick from Techdirt says

Just wanted to add that it's not yet clear that the head of the IP subcommittee will be Howard Berman. Some expect him to pass on that role to focus on different opportunities, in which case it will go to Rick Boucher, who is well known as being very much in favor of consumer rights and reforming the DMCA.

I wrote about it here: Link. William Patry has a great post here (on which I based my post): Link.

As long as we're forecasting on political issues BB covers, it's worth pointing out that the next chair of the also-pertinent Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet is likely Rep. Ed Markey (MA-07).

Rep. Markey is the ranking member on the E&C subcommittee right now, and has been a staunch advocate of network neutrality. (Of course, he was also the one who called for Chris Soghoian's head for the boarding pass generator...but to his credit, he did own up to his misjudgment two days later, and asked authorities to take Soghoian's intent as a researcher into account.)

All in all, the change in leadership (from the neutricidal Rep. Fred Upton) is a positive sign for fans of the internet as we know it.

Further to your post about future congressional leadership on internet issues, I just put this blog post up (I used to work on Capitol Hill): "Election’s Impact on Info/Law." Link.

# Comatose people to be ground up and fed to poor
# Quarterly mandatory abortion lottery
# Jane Fonda to be appointed Secretary of Appeasement
# Outlaw all firearms: previous owners assigned to anger management therapy
# Ban Christmas: replace with Celebrate our Monkey Ancestors Day

They're not kidding about the gun stuff, either. As a law-abiding, safety-respecting, soy-cappucino-drinking handgun owner, I wonder what (historically anti-gun) Pelosi's leadership might mean on Second Amendment issues. More restrictions for citizens who obey gun laws, and more bans? Gun laws don't stop law-ignoring criminals from arming themselves. (Thanks, Sean)

Speaking of firearms, look! Flavored shotgun shells! Link. Shoot "Cajun, Lemon Pepper, Garlic, Teriyaki, or Honey Mustard" ammo into that tofurkey's ass. "Watch as your bird is seasoned on impact!" (via jwalk, thanks Rocky Mullin)

Reader comment: woof In FoG says,

Just imagine, Ernest Hemingway's last thought could have been, "Mmm, Spicy!"

Link (thx Adam Selvidge).

This image is a fresh variant of the old and much-loved "I'M IN UR [noun] [verb]ING UR [noun]" internet meme explained here: Link. My favorite is the cat-in-fridge one: Link. Or maybe the parrot one: Link. I'm an easy target: nearly every time i see a new one of these, it makes me laugh uncontrollably.

Reader comment: Click to enlarge images. John Daniel says,

Here's my contribution: Link.

And though it may be too soon to call decisively... Link. Cheers, and thanks for all the fine reportage!

I made this one a few days ago when I first heard of the Army/etc Times calling for Rumsfeld's resignation: Link.

Link.

Created by BoingBoing reader Brian Topping. Previously: Rumsfeld to resign. Who is Bob Gates? Link, and more.

By the way, the Tribeca Grand is a great hotel. Our room (an "iStudio" room) had WiFi, a large screen Macintosh, and an iPod loaded with music. It also had two speakers that pumped out white noise, which did a great job of killing the sound that came from the bar below.

Next Tuesday, November 14, I'm presenting a rare chance to hear technology legends Mitch Kapor, John Gilmore and John Perry Barlow speak at a free event at the University of Southern California.

All three helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but that's just for starters.

Mitch Kapor: Architecture is politics
Mitch Kapor also founded Lotus and created the ground-breaking spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3. He pioneered the "peering" that has become the norm for Internet service providers, and has gone on to lead social investing movements, as well as chairing the Open Source Applications Foundation and being a key player in the Mozilla Foundation.

John Gilmore: The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it
John Gilmore was employee number five at Sun Microsystems and was key to the development of Solaris and the SPARC chip. He went on to cofound the USENET alt. hierarchy, The Little Garden, an early regional ISP, and Cygnus Support, the first big free software business (now Red Hat). He continues to initiate and/or fund ground-breaking free software projects like GNU Radio, BitTorrent, Gnash and FreeS/WAN. He's an activist for individual rights, including challenging secret laws and identification demands, starting the Identity Project, funding and strategizing to end prohibition of drugs, liberating and aiding the victims of Guantanamo, and supporting other freedom-oriented charities.

John Perry Barlow: We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
John Perry Barlow has had several careers -- beginning as a Republican cattle-rancher who wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead. In the early days of the public Internet, Barlow became famous as a kind of poet-laureate of the Internet, penning such influential documents as the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. Barlow continues to serve as a powerful spokesman for online liberty.

It's exceedingly rare to have all three of these EFF founders on the same bill. In my five years of association with EFF, I've never been in the same room as all three, though I've come to know each of them well. These three activist/entrepreneur/artists were absolutely vital to the shape of the Internet as we know it today -- they are living legends. Any one of them is worth seeing, but I can hardly contain my excitement at the thought of hearing all three together.

Space is limited, and Gilmore and Mitch have to leave right after the talk, so there won't be any extended events with all three. Arrive early to stake out your place! I'll post audio and possibly video after the event.

Where: University of Southern California main campus, Annenberg School of Communications, Room 207 (Los Angeles)
When: Tuesday, November 14, 7PM-9PM.

Link

(Mitch Kapor photo via Smagdali's Flickr stream; John Gilmore photo by Carl Cheney; John Perry Barlow photo by Bart Nagel)

Next Barbara Lattanzi gave an amazing presentation. She traced back to early, early 20th Century film and showed how, at the beginning, there was a fork, the road not taken. This road gave audiences a hilarious degree of agency. We watched shorts from I think 1920's where audiences would sing back and follow songs, almost karaoke-like, before a feature. It's a radical thought: one would have happened in film became an active, agent experience where the audiences was mobilized?

She gave numerous examples in her work where she's breaking down the passivity model using idiomorphic software. My favorite was her work on the Zapruder-Kennedy assassination reworking and examples of her C-SPAN Karaoke, my favorite being the Alberto Gonzalez karaoke. I can't recommend enough that people check out her website and follow her work.

WIPO is the UN agency that creates copyright treaties -- it has the same relationship to bad copyright law that Mordor has to evil. The Broadcast Treaty is a sleazy attempt to create new rights for broadcasters and webcasters that trump the rights of the public and of actual creators. It's been a flashpoint for activist groups, who have started to show up in force, questioning the treaty's legitimacy.

The Development Agenda is the plan to reform WIPO as a real humanitarian UN agency, something it promised to do when it was chartered. The idea is to force every WIPO treaty to justify itself in terms of international development for poor countries, instead of just creating windfall profits for multinational copyright companies. It's a global scandal that developed nations are planning to sabotage it.

On the proposed broadcasting treaty, the report said that several members, as well as others not in the room, "will be making sure the diplomatic conference does not go ahead smoothly this week." In the end, it was agreed to schedule the diplomatic conference, or high-level treaty negotiation, for late 2007, after more meetings and another General Assembly.

Update: Former CIA head Robert Gates will succeed him.

And LOL and behold, Comedy Central's blog broke the news last night: Link to their pre-emptive scoop (via Gawker). Suck it, non-fake-news sites!

The Credo of the Lock Picker: You may only pick locks that you own, or those to which you've been given explicit permission to pick by the rightful owner.

Locksport is an honest, ethical, and legitimate hobby. Unfortunately, the whole world hasn't figured that out yet (though we're working on it!). Because the lay person has a tendency to perceive what we do as somehow nefarious, it is extra important that we commit to following a strict code of ethics. For this reason, the above credo is non-negotiable in the locksport community. Lock picking should never, ever be used to illegal or even questionable purposes. Please do not misuse this information. We assume no responsibility for your actions, and in no way condone immoral activity. Help keep locksport fun for all by following strictly the one rule.

London is a computer geek with a passion for economics, a subject that most techies (and non-techies for that matter) have only a rudimentary grasp over. London takes the economist's language and illuminates it with his whimsical examples in ways that make the reason that some copyrights and patents are good -- but lots more are bad -- clear.

London is a budding science fiction writer who was one of my students at this year's Viable Paradise workshop on Martha's Vineyard; he aspires to create books professionally, and it is with this in mind that he approaches his subject. How can we give creators a fair shake without undermining the public interest?

Bounty Hunters is a clever exercise in explaining the copyfight. I suspect it will resonate strongly with some readers who haven't encountered or understood the subject. Link

A novel that is part literary mystery, part historical detective story, built around an obsessive search for the true author of Shakespeare's works.

Stanley Quandary is a professor of English and a very ordinary man. But then he starts to have the strangest, most realistic dreams, dreams that seem to solve one of the greatest mysteries of all time, to expose a conspiracy of silence that is over 400 years old. They even suggest a way to win back his estranged wife. Of course, he might be going insane... .

I soon realized...steampunk was the way to go.

> Thus was born the Telecalculograph.

Not including the original PC, this project cost about $70 total. It took around two months of spare time, and was done with basic hand tools. The only power tools used were a drill and a Dremel.

Be sure to watch the video of the furnace in action here. *Note: The color of the "fire" is a little off in the video, in real life it is a more homogenous orange.

It may be common for US committee chairs to take money from the companies they are supposed to oversee, but this is not the way it's done in Canada. The US copyright cartel has managed to export more than their cartoons and magazines and pop-stars to Canada -- they've also exported their corruption.

Yesterday, NDP Heritage critic Charlie Angus called attention to the fundraiser, noting that it promised to provide access to both Oda and guest speaker Industry Minister Maxime Bernier. He summed it up as "the broadcast review happens in two weeks. The cash grab happens next week. Why is the minister using her office to trade political access for political contributions?"

Oda responded by arguing that she was following the law ("I have observed every rule existing right now"). Hours later, she did an about face and cancelled the fundraiser. This should have been obvious - the Minister of Canadian Heritage simply cannot have a fundraiser hosted on her behalf by her friends in the broadcast industry.

Windows DRM: You may not use this system to remove DRM protection from Microsoft-provided media. "Removing DRM" is defined as stripping out protection, reverse-engineering code, using third-party circumvention software, installing non-DRM versions of DRM media, refusing to purchase our media in the first place, or reading Boing Boing.

Future Licenses: By using Windows Vista, you agree to not only this license, but to any future revisions to this license. You also agree to any future licenses for other products from Microsoft, whether or not you actually purchase them, and to any revisions to those licenses, including terms that require you to agree to other licenses, and revisions to those licenses. You agree that if you attempt to not agree to these licenses, then you automatically agree to yet another license, and it's a lot harsher than this license, so just watch yourself.

Steve Jobs Is a Bozo: You don't have to agree to this. We just felt it needed to be said.

Electronic voting machines count about 87% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day. And if the voting process is not secure, neither is America's democracy. (...) HACKING DEMOCRACY exposes gaping holes in the security of America's electronic voting system.

The entire 90 minute documentary feature is available online for free via Google Video: Link. (Thanks Cheebs and others)

Reader comment: My friend John Parres says,

On CNN Jeffrey Toobin just reported that almost all of Virginia's voting machines are electronic and do not have paper trails! This means the recount will only be of each machine's totals printed out at the end of the day. There is no way to audit each vote as you could with, say, optically scanned ballots. So, unless numbers got transposed or a few "missing" machine receipts magically appear, it's over and the Dems will have a majority in both the Senate and the House.

A quite note concerning America's problem with voting fraud and/or incompetence when depending on "voting machines" for a result. In Australia we have an ingeniously simple voting system: a piece of paper and a pencil. The voter is given a ballot paper with the candidates' names, she goes into a little cardboard booth (of sorts), where there is a stubby little pencil. The voter votes, and puts the paper in a big box. When the polls close, the votes are counted and scrutinised -- by hand -- by thousands of people around the country. If there is a dispute in a closely-fought electorate, those votes are counted again. <> Simple, but almost 100% clean and effective. No power blackouts, no loose wires, no glitches. Maybe you guys should try it some time.

On Saturday the Sun-Times ran a small item about a man who had set himself on fire during rush hour Friday morning near the Ohio Street exit on the Kennedy. His identity had not been determined at the time, but members of the local jazz and improvised music community now say they are certain it was Malachi Ritscher, a longtime supporter of the scene.

Reader comment: Anonymous says,

He had a myspace page: Link; And even wrote his own obituary: Link. Another article about his death: Link.

There is also this "Mission Statement"/suicide note.

Thanks for posting Malachi's story on Boing Boing. I thought you might be interested in this local TV news coverage, including a chopper flyover of the scene. Link.

PARTY, SHOW AND SPECTACLE: Due to the "illegal" nature of Pranks, key speakers from the Billboard Liberation Front, etc, may be in disguise! Ex-hacker Marc Powell, Babalou and Karen Marcelo from SRL, Cacophony Society's Chris Radcliffe, and Prankster-Godfather MAL SHARPE will show their real faces (we think). Rare and inspiring pranks video clips will be narrated live, and questions from the audience will be taken. Cyclecide will bring a demo-cycle. Event is still being planned; other guests/events TBA.

Videos will include Mal Sharpe's new prank DVD release (excerpt), a special Billboard Liberation Front clip, Jihad Jerry and the Evildoers' "Army Girls Gone Wild," Reverend Al's "Art of Bleeding Safety Film," and excerpts from Ron English's "Popaganda," the wild & crazy "Yes Men" Film, the Cyclecide film, and Scott Beale's "You'd Better Watch Out" documenting the Cacophony Society's wild "Santarchy" escapade in Portland. (For the past ten years, groups of folks dressed up as Santa Claus have invaded department stores, hotel parties and other events, causing ideological havoc and consumer confusion--anarchic fun! Over the years, the Santas have spread to major cities over the planet.)

Far more than a video show, the Nov. 11 evening will encompass a Mad Celebration, Reunion, party, Panel, and Q&A's with local Bay Area artists who appear in RE/Search's newest book, PRANKS 2. All interested in RE/Search's 30 year history, pranks, and cultural subversion in general are urged to attend and meet-and-greet featured pranksters both before and after the show. Hard-to-find RE/Search Publications will be available for sale, and can be autographed, as well as other pranks-related videos, CDs and books.

Snip from announcement: "This happens prior to any overall motion of the head following impact with the windshield and is a new concept to consider for doctors interested in traumatic brain injury (TBI)."

More infoz here: Link.

Trippy simulated car crash brainsmash videos: one, two (MPEG).

- Montana
- Indiana
- Ohio
- New Jersey
- Colorado

Reader comment: Joe says,

To clarify: to the best of my knowledge the problems in Colorado were not problems with the voting machines themselves. (Though as others have pointed out, there's no way te be sure there weren't problems with them also.)

Denver and Adams County both use an electronic system to verify a voter's identity and determine which ballot they should get. (This system is not state wide, as reported in the link; it's county by county.) This has the advantage of eliminating poll books--meaning a voter can go to any polling location and vote for all their local issues. But when the systems go down under the strain, as they did yesterday, no one can vote anywhere in the county. It wasn't an issue with the actual voting machines, however.

Jefferson County, where I was working on the Congressional campaign, had some machines that weren't properly set up the start of the day, but I believe that was resolved. While we did have some long lines towards the end of the day in some precincts, that seems to have more to do with how the voting machines were distributed than with using them.

There were also rumors of problems in Douglas County, but I haven't heard yet what caused them, or even if there actually were any.

The show was held by Rocketplane Kistler — a US company that plans to begin offering space tours in two years — and a group of Japanese fashion designers, as part of the Hyper Space Couture Design Contest. Winners of the contest, which is organized by Tokyo-based fashion designer Eri Matsui with the support of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and many others, will help design the clothes for use on Rocketplane’s space tourism flights set to begin in 2008.

The 11 garments appearing in the show were selected from over 880 designs submitted by college students. The clothes incorporate a variety of features designed for zero gravity, such as ruffles that expand under weightless conditions or small air-jet propulsion systems in the sleeves to help you change direction while floating.

The New York Times ran a story this week about New York City's plan to permit people to change the gender on their birth certificates even if they haven’t had sex reassignment surgery. The move comes after much advocacy by transgender groups who believe that gender has to do with much more than anatomy. For many transgendered people, in fact, anatomy is itself a mixed bag. This new move allows individuals to decide for themselves whether they are male or female.

Reader replies:

Matt Baum advises,

No, it's not evil; but you can only email her once, and only from a computer which she has authorized. You are not permitted to email her from any address other than the one from which you initially established conversation. Also, at any point, she may decide to switch to a different communications platform, and may discontinue support for previous means of contact.

I think my response has to be; get her number, dude; you can always get the email later (...) but a voice chat is a lot more interesting for both of you.

What I really mean is that, in any discussion of architecture, there are these inevitable holes through which you might glimpse something else, something supposedly outside the bounds of architecture entirely: gravity, say, because you’re calculating stress-loads, or plate tectonics as you design a building in an earthquake zone – Tokyo, Los Angeles, Istanbul. For that matter, you have to decide where to put the windows, and so the movement of the sun comes into play – and, thus, you’re talking about astronomy, and terrestrial rotation, solstices, the equinox, constellations. Soon you’ve got the climate, and topography, and even forestry and botany and global trade and labour law – etc. etc. Global economics. The list expands and expands until ‘everything in the fucking universe has something to do with architecture’. Good moods, bad moods; enclosure, frustration, claustrophobia, imprisonment. Freedom. The price of steel. Natural history. Military bases, oil derricks, mining camps. It’s all architectural.

Image by Josh Hallett , who tells BoingBoing, "I took the photo before the polls opened, hence the 0 (zero) count on the display. I served as a precinct clerk in Florida and we had no issues with our equipment." (via 27Bstroke6)

Much information pouring out on the topic from many sources, in many precincts. I'll try to update this post as much as possible with pointers our readers send in.

Here are a few: BB reader Glyn says,

In New Jersey, a problem cropped up when the name of Democratic Senator Robert Menendez was automatically highlighted on some machines. That caused some two dozen voters to complain that the only way to de-select it was to press it again, which Republican Party officials said led to some people inadvertently voting for Menendez. Officials notified state authorities about the issue, suspecting a serious computer malfunction or an attempt to manipulate the vote. Link.

In the Maryland area one of the voting area received their voting machines minus the power cords so voters are only able to vote on the battery power which is limited. Link.

Poll workers in Pittsburgh and parts of surrounding Allegheny County had trouble starting electronic machines today. Problems with printers and malfunctioning computers also cropped up, preventing at least some people from voting at 13 polling sites.

But no similar cluster of problems was reported elsewhere in Pennsylvania, so Barry Kaufmann, executive director of Common Cause/Pennsylvania, a voting rights group, said, “It sounds like there’s either not adequate training going on, or, in the worst-case scenario, a bad batch of computers.”

Columbus, Ohio's voting machines were so bad, they managed also to take down the county's phone system under the crush of calls that resulted.

Denver has wait times of up to two hours to vote, thanks to machines that are down and new voter identification rules.

Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt couldn't get her ballot read by the optical scanner, while in the infamous Cuyahoga County, the AP reports that at least one voter says he was purged from the voting rolls, despite voting in the primaries.

MSNBC has the best roundup so far, but this is a story happening in every precinct in the country so it's hard to know exactly what's happening.

Dave "eecue" Bullock tells BoingBoing,

APEX Electronics is an amazing salvage yard in Sun Valley, and Dorkbot SoCal members took a trip there this weekend. I wrote about it and took a bunch of HDR photographs of the lucious piles of hot sexy scuttled scientific equipment. It reminds me of a similar place called The Black Hole, where I worked in high school.

Reader comment: cavalaxis says,

APEX is truly a wonderland of junque. But there's always a catch, isn't there? Be aware that there are (typically large) items in their inventory that are only for rent, not for sale. This is especially vexing because these items are not marked as "For Rental Only" and indeed, the saleability of certain items seems to vary from sales clerk to sales clerk. i.e. If they think you love it too much, they'll only let you rent it. I always ask for a sales price with the expectation of hearing "Sorry, that's not for sale. But you can rent it..." The vagaries of living in LA, I suppose.

Reader comment: Peter Rothman says,

I read the Flickr patent this morning and FWIW I don't think Flickr should be able to get a broad patent on "interestingness". There's a very large number of papers in the image processing and collaborative filtering areas that all define various notions of relevance, interestingness, salience, or novelty. A specific innovative technique might be patentable, but not the general idea of computing how interesting an image or media object is to a person or set of people.

These papers are not obscure, there are many of them, and they are well known to experts in the respective fields. I'd be happy to provide a lengthy prior art file to the patent librarian if they can't find it themselves. I am aware of papers that date back more than a decade in this area. I suspect that the Flickr folks are well aware of this actually and are just trying to get the broadest patent they can get.

FYI I am the chief scientist of a company applying image processing and facial recognition software in the field of bank fraud prevention. My views do not necessarily represent those of my employer however. Previously I was the CTO of Live365.com and the Director of Research and Development at MetaTools, two companies you might have heard of at least.

Article summary, translated by Marcelo:

The Brazilian Congress will vote this Thursday, November 8th, on a bill that forces every user and provider under its jurisdiction to identify every transaction.

Should it pass, every time a Brazilian user sends an email, talks in a chat or comments in a blog, he will be tracked either by the provider, either by a government agency.

Data like name, adress, telephone number and CPF, which is like the american Social Security Number, will be stored for at least three years.

Senator Eduardo Azeredo says the proposal aims at discouraging hackers and libel and stopping cybercrime. Reaction from the online community and Internet Providers against the bill has been strong. Some argue the identification threatens the right to privacy, while others criticize the costs of such data storage.

The Brazilian Association of Internet Providers foresees a migration of these enterprises to other countries, where such laws do not apply, causing offices to close down and the sacking of hundreds of workers.

Reader comment: Anonymous says,

First of all, the title "Brazil's congress wants to track Internet users" is inaccurate: only a few people in congress want this. Just like in the U.S., the fact that a bill is proposed doesn't mean it's widely supported. Second, it should be noted the President already declared to be against this bill a couple of days ago. And of course, as someone else said, there's still a long way for this to get approved. I personally don't think there is any chance that it will happen. Plus there's always the Supreme Court, in case it is found this bill is unconstitutional.

According to the link (it's in Portuguese, sorry), the Congress decided, yesterday night, to suspend the voting of the project. As a lawyer in Brazil, I think it's important to clear some points about it:

(1) the voting that was supposed to happen today was not a final one. If the bill passed, it would pass just through a Senate's comission, and then it should still be voted by all the Senate; (

2) if the bill were approved by the Senate, it should still be voted by the brazilian equivalent of the House of Representatives;

(3) if they finally approved it, it goes to the president, that can still choose to sign it or not.

So there is still a long path for the bill to take, before it becomes official. Not that this makes the issue less important, but at least people should know that we have yet plenty of time to discuss it here in Brazil.

Here's a link for the government's decision to postpone the appreciation of the bill which permitted the tracking of brazilian Internet users. The reason was a queue of other proposals. By force of law, these had to be voted before the one regarding cybercrime. The bill will be voted in two weeks - so, I guess we're still not safe.

Here's an amusing comic (in Portuguese, with broken Google translation) explaining how posting on the Internet would work once the recently proposed legislation to make identification mandatory got effective.

The new Internet

How to post a comment on Senator's Eduardo Azeredo (PSDB-MG) new brazilian Internet

1. Go to a stationery store, and buy the Standard Form for Internet Content Upload [store sign reads "stationery store"]

2. Fill the form in triplicate, stating your name, address, RG, CPF, the site to which you want to upload the content and the comment that you want posted online. Don't forget to sign it.

3. Go to a public notary and have your signature notarized, plus notarized copies of your RG, CPF, and birth certificate. [building's sign reads "notary"]

4. Go to the new Internet government control agency. [arrow reads "single line"]

5. Ask a friendly civil servant to stamp your form. He'll ask for your RG, CFG, voter's registration, working permit, criminal background check, driver's license, a proof of address, military discharge papers, plus some other document that you forgot to bring and that nothing can be done without.

6. Return the next day with that document. Don't pay much attention to the fact that they don't ask for it this time.

7. Go to the post office and mail the stamped form through registered mail, to the site's owner.

8. After two weeks, visit the site and check if your highly intelectual and original post has been accepted. [post reads "http://nerds.gutter.org / Micro$oft sux! / Lula (Brazil's president) is a drunk!]

9. Celebrate your Internet now free of orkut [social networking site] predators! [sign reads "Public Federal Department"]

It is no surprise that someone is planning a documentary about the Abu Ghraib scandal; there will probably be a few. Already there is Robert Greenwald's latest, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, which deals with one aspect of the prisoner abuse, and the PBS series Frontline has included the incident in its recent episode titled "The Lost Year in Iraq". However, there's a good chance that no others are or will be as good as the one Errol Morris is set to make. The project was announced Sunday by Diane Weyermann of Participant Productions (An Inconvenient Truth) during the American Film Market.

For today's edition of the NPR News program Day to Day, I filed a report about new "emotion detection" software that could help companies detect when their call center torture victims phone customers are shrieking in agony not happy.

Israel-based tech firm NICE Systems has developed software that records calls and "listens" for emotional signals that the call is going badly. Using algorithms, the system evaluates volume, pitch change, and trigger words like -- oh, say...

"Cancel the account. Cancel the account. Cancel the account. CANCEL THE ACCOUNT. CANCEL THE ACCOUNT. CANCEL THE ACCOUNT. FOR GOD'S SAKE JUST CANCEL THE FUCKING ACCOUNT." (about that)

Link to archived audio (3:35, in Real or Windows Media). Link to NPR "Xeni Tech" segment archives.

Image: Link to full-size. Screengrab from the NICE Systems "Perform" application. (thanks, Scott Alexander!)

Reader comment: Anonymous says,

I worked at a research company a few years ago that an Isreal-based firm was trying to get to test out their voice-based lie detector for use in criminal justice, so I got a first hand view of it. The examples used were interviews with famous criminals (OJ, Martha Stewart, etc) and the results (percentages of a list of a huge amount of emotions, among them fear, hunger, joy, sexual appetite, etc, all from one voice!) were so vague and quick changing that they could be interpreted to mean anything. It would have been a sad day if a device like that was used for law enforcement. The traditional lie detector is many times over more reliable but even that can barely be relied upon.

So just so you know, since this looks like the same software I saw but with a friendlier skin (literally - same layout with happy graphics instead of serious police-enforcement graphics), nobody has found any correlation between everyones voice and a particular emotion. Although one person might do something consistantly with his/her voice with a particular emotion there hasn't been found ANY rule that could work for a handful of people let alone all of humanity. They will make some money off this since it seems like it could totally be possible, but really it's nothing.

"The customs officer stopped me to let me know that if I was leaving the country through Birmingham then he was going to have to arrest me because I had a gun on my jumper. I know it isn’t best to argue with these sort of people but I had to question whether he had confused a pink fabric gun shape stuck on a jumper to that of a real gun. His answer – Some people wore t-shirts which had photo’s of guns in holsters or positioned to look as though they were guns sticking out of trousers (as it happened I had one of these in my bag. I wonder if I could have been done for concealing a t-shirt?

"But for me that argument didn’t stand well as I wasn’t wearing a life like looking image of a gun. When I posed this to him he changed his tune a bit and explained that the reason he wanted to arrest me was due to the fact that wearing the fabric shape of a gun on my jumper was offensive."

Man of La Muncha says,

2600: The Hacker Quarterly is asking hacker voters to inspect their voting machines for something "the average person might miss." While a group of hackers has an interest in circumventing security, they also will share their findings and provide a valuable resource in keeping elections transparent.

'As part of our continuing look at the technology behind voting machines, we'd like to ask each of you who goes to the polls to spend an extra minute or two behind the curtain to thoroughly check out the machine you're using. We'll be accepting calls Wednesday evening on "Off The Hook" at +1 212 209 2900 between 7 and 8 pm ET for you to give us your observations. We'd like you to look for such things as the exact model of the machine you're using, anything that looks odd or out of place, confusing or misleading directions or buttons, unused areas, potential ways of resetting the machine, and so on. In other words, we would like the hacker perspective on the voting machine you encounter.'

Image: BoingBoing reader David says,

Here is a picture from inside a voting booth in New Haven, CT. I know we're supposed to be voting against the Republicans if we want to help the rebels storm the death star, but I don't really like my Democrats that much, either. After all, they're all politicians. Plus, they wouldn't let me register as a member of the Freak Power party, thus evaporating my faith in the system. So, this is my protest. It isn't loud, it isn't obscene, but it's about all I have to say.

Per Scott Adams (Link), here's an example of how you too can subtly protest suspect electronic vote machines with correction fluid and a Sharpie marker: Image Link.

Reader comment: Christopher K. Davis says,

Wham! had a song called "Freedom" on the album "Make It Big" (1984): Link. The video for that song was filmed during their visit to China. George Michael, formerly of Wham!, also had a song called "Freedom" on his album "Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1" (1990). This is often called "Freedom 90" to distinguish it from Wham's. The video for that song featured supermodel lip-syncing and the demolition of the jukebox that had appeared in one of his earlier videos (and the immolation of both his guitar and his leather jacket). The song used for this video is, in fact, "Freedom 90": Link.

Dog sex at noon taxes God.
Eva, can I stab bats in a cave?
Flesh! Saw I Mimi wash self!
Is Don Adams mad? (A nod.) Si!
Kay, a red nude, peeped under a yak.
Mr. Owl ate my metal worm.

Merlin just uploaded episode 6, which is about interruptions, and why you shouldn't consider all interruptions to be a bad thing. Link

According to The World of Kane the director, Albert Lamorisse, also invented the board game Risk. Link

Over on the Make blog, we have a podcast of a visit to the Lucky Ju Ju Pinball Arcadium in Alameda, California.

Order Make Vol 8 on Amazon

Reader comment:

Michael says: I love the Jack Skellington cameo towards the end of the video, here's a screen cap.

If you would like to buy a painting, please contact the gallery owner, Kirsten Anderson at (206) 374-8977 or by email.

Roq La Rue 2312 2nd Ave Seattle WA 98121

(Click on image for enlargement)

"Stumpdance"
Acrylic on canvas
20" x 16"
SOLD
See all my paintings at the Roq La Rue online gallery.

Roq La Rue is very pleased to present a show of work by artists who are influenced by retro animation and design, yet put their own unique spin on it, creating vibrant, playful work.

Mark Frauenfelder unveils a new series of effervescent paintings done in a storybook style mixed with a dash of children’s manga and secret arcane symbolism. Known mainly for his writing and the founding of his uber-popular blog (and former zine) Boing Boing as well as being the editor of Make magazine, Mark is also an accomplished illustrator. This is his first gallery exhibit.

Wednesday Kirwan creates gouache paintings that evoke fairytale themes. For this exhibit she has created a series of paintings depicting mermaid type creatures, as alluringly sweet and strangely eerie as her subject matter has been described to be.

Lynne Nailor and partner Chris Reccardi both come from the animation industry. Lynne designing for “Ren and Stimpy”, “Samurai Jack”,” and “Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!”. Her paintings usually features angular yet voluptuous pin up style gals done in a Barbarella meets Beatnik aesthetic.

Chris Reccardi also hails from “Ren and Stimpy” (as a storyboard artist, animator, writer, director, and composer and performer of the show’s opening theme music!) as apprenticing under such legends as Ralph Bakshi and John Kricfalusi. He also worked on “Powerpuff Girls”, “Samurai Jack”, and Rob Zombie’s upcoming “Haunted World of El Superbeasto.” His work is similar to Lynne’s, mixing a jazzy mod look with retro sci fi style.

Both Lynne and Chris have been working on co-producing and directing their original pilot for Nickelodeon, “The Modifyers”, due for completion in January 2007, but were ready to drop some fantastic paintings off for their Roq la Rue exhibit.

Johnny Yanok mixes current pop culture?with a 60’s Little Golden Book type style. His paintings usually are narrative and humorous and feature an array of characters in each piece.

This is evidently part of a larger series of classic monster movie tie-ins called "Universal Studios Monsters." At a recent sf convention, I found a number of writers intrigued by the idea of having a romp in a classic monster movie, and it's clear that di Filippo was more than up to the task.

Creature From the Black Lagoon won't win any prizes for advancing the state of literary sf, but it is undoubtedly a Paul di Filippo novel, which means that it is funny, deeply weird, and action-packed. Di Filippo's story starts on a Rhode Island university campus in 2015, where a young biologist finds himself working with the department's mad old tenured prof -- who turns out to have been the junior scientist on the ground during the vivisection of the original Creature From the Black Lagoon, discovered in the 1950s.

In the tradition of the great sf adventure story, our biologist just happens to have a boyhood chum who has just built the world's first functional time machine (out of an nth-generation iPod, no less!) and the rest is basically inevitable -- the title, after all, is "Time's Black Lagoon."

Di Filippo manages to cram every great tradition of the science fiction adventure novel into this one, giving it the feel of one of his baroque masterpieces, like Ribofunk. It may not have the heft of classic di Filippo, but it surely has the style.

If you're looking for a fun little paperback to take you away from your life for a couple hours, you need look no further. Link

Update: Bbum sez, "Creature from the Black Lagoon is also considered to be one of the best early 1990s pinball machines ever made. Beautiful machine. Totally captured that campy '50s/'60s horror flick feel, including a swamp monster hologram below the playfield that glowed green and moved."

The report calls the losses cited by software and music industry lobbyists "self-serving hyperbole," "epistemologically unreliable," and "absurd." The Institute of Criminology promises to tone down the language in the final report. You can feel the outrage of some poor economist who found herself going down the rabbit-hole as she analyzed the phony-baloney numbers these giant corporations use to argue for new laws to line their pockets.

Many copyright holders claimed links between piracy and organised crime, but AIC researcher had found nothing to support that view.

"Either there is no evidence of any links between piracy and organised crime or it is simply beyond the capacity of rights holders to identify these links," he wrote, adding that he was concerned about the way piracy figures were being used.

"It is inappropriate for courts and policy makers to accept at face value currently unsubstantiated statistics.

"Either these statistics must be withdrawn or the purveyors of these statistics must supply valid and transparent substantiation."

* Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
* Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
* Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
* About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
* About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
* There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
* The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
* Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times. Link

(Disclosure: I am a proud member of the Technorati advisory board)

Hear about vote-counting and democracy in the latest EFF podcast, "Error: Vote Note Counted at Line 50." Link

The escapement is a conventional in-line Swiss lever type, but with all parts made from plastic, excepting the impulse pin. This is synthetic ruby, and is the one-and-only jewel the movement contains. The balance is provided with shock protection. Tissot designed a special shock protection device for this watch. It is similar to the Incabloc system, but the balance pivot runs in a 1-piece molded bushing. This is centered in a conical metal carrier by a 3 armed spring, visible on the top of the bearing.

Fred is one of the world's leading authorities on copyright and digital freedom, a passionate advocate for both fans' and artists' rights, and for open innovation. He has fought battles in court, Congress, and the FCC over issues ranging from the Broadcast Flag to the Grokster case to the fight over Diebold voting machines to the DMCA. He's been involved in every important, precedent-settling, Earth-shattering battle over copyright in the past five years.

Fred is also a wonderful speaker. His talk is presented as part of my Fulbright Lecture Series at the Annenberg School at USC. All are welcome. It's not often that Fred gives public talks in LA, so this is a rare opportunity. Looking forward to seeing you there!

When: November 7, 2006, 7PM-9PM
Where: University of Southern California, Annenberg School, Room 207, Los Angeles

Link

* Can you photograph or video your vote inside the polling station– either a paper ballot or electronic screen?
* Can you photograph or video yourself voting inside the polling station?
* Can you photograph or video others voting or the working of the polling station from within it?
* Can you photograph or video the polling station from outside it?
* Can you photograph or video people leaving the voting station?
* Can you ask people questions leaving the polling station and can you video or blog their answers?

Episode #6 of the Boing Boing Boing podcast is ready for downloading. Our guest for this edition is author Steven Johnson, whose new book "The Ghost Map" my blog-mate Pesco describes as:

An account of an 1854 cholera outbreak on London's Broad Street [and] a magnificent combination of science thriller, cultural history, and celebration of cartography as a powerful tool to help us understand the dynamics of urban life.

LISTEN:
Podcast Feed, Subscribe via iTunes, Direct MP3 Link (64K), other MP3 file download options from archive.org: Link, or listen at Odeo: Link.

Browse previous BB posts about Steven Johnson: Link.

* Steven Johnson's new book The Ghost Map
* Steven Johnson launches outside.in
* Steven Johnson's fave books about plagues

The space people that have negative qualities about them are coming from farther space systems, although I do not wish to imply that all space craft from farther systems is evil. Many of the craft from farther systems are very good and are also trying to help Earth; however, it is only those certain evil systems that we should consider when I say those from a farther system than our own. It is these negative beings who are here for the purpose of actually taking people from Earth to indoctrinate them with their ideas, so they in turn will cause confusion and disturbances upon the planet.

Lately, I've been scraping the bottom of the barrel for material. I've resorted to recycling stories to tell my three-year-old and challenging my nine-year-old to solve the "three houses, three utilities" problem. (She's going to be mad when she finds out it can't be done.)

I found Be the Coolest Dad on the Block just in time. Subtitled "All of the Tricks, Games, Puzzles and Jokes You Need to Impress Your Kids (and keep them entertained for years to come!)," this book is filled with stuff that has delighted my kids. The authors manage to cram an awful lot of great ideas into 186-pages. There are things to make, like bows and arrow, fire-starting kits, garbage bag kites, and instructions for making animated movies with Lego bricks. There are games to play on in cars and on plane rides and answers to questions like "Why is the sky blue?" and "Why is the sea salty?" I like the list of "misconceptions" the authors encourage you to share with your kids ("There's a parallel universe on the other side of mirrors where people exactly like us do exactly the same things.")

The first thing we did was make a duck call out of a drinking straw. We then modified it by poking holes in the straw so we could vary the pitch. My nine-year-old loves the "quick-fire puzzles" (Example: A man buys several loaves of bread at $1 a loaf and sells them at 25 cents a loaf. He does it again and again. Entirely as a result of this, he becomes a millionaire. How? ). I make her guess for a few minutes before giving her the answer (I'm not going to give you the answer, either).

I hope they come out with a follow-up book soon. Link

"We're not going to buy YouTube," Moonves said, referring to the wildly popular video-sharing website that Google Inc. agreed to acquire last month for $1.65 billion. "But it's not a bad idea to buy the next YouTube."

Today, CBS is expected to announce that it has hired a 35-year-old investment banker, Quincy Smith, to find the "next YouTube." "I appreciate the pressure," Smith said with a chuckle during an interview. The company named him president of its newly created CBS Interactive division. The move demonstrates that CBS, which is sitting on a stockpile of $3 billion in cash, is eager to make acquisitions to better position itself in digital media.

#6 features 94 artists and is 100% ad free! (in order of appearance):
Derek Ballard, Aye Jay, Michael Sieben, royalremarkableTM, Maya Hayuk, Michelle Blade, A Purdy, Brad Askew, hellovon, Matthew Peinado, Mansi Shah, Clayton Rochemont, Alexis Mackenzie, Hello Brute, NoPattern, Katy Horan, Maria Forde, Heiko, Jim Koch, Kelsey Brookes, Jason Wasserman, Reynaldo Vasquez, Chrissie Abbott, Blair Kelly, Abe Lincoln Jr. vs Outbreak, Aaron Winters, Peskimo, Steven Harrington, Robin Cameron, James Braithwaite, Ytje Veenstra, Ryan Riss, Mike Deye, Biff Baxter, James Hill, Irana Douer, Jens Andersson, Damien Correll, Andrea Campbell, Product HK, Howie Tsui, Kristy Milliken, Jaimie Reed, Matt Curry vs. eThos, Jonathan A. Murphy, Andy Rementer, Salvatore Schiciano, SteakMtn, Tiny Industries, Jason Brunson, Devious, Arran Ridley, Jennifer Garcia, Johannes Ekholm, Anke Weckmann, DopePope, M.J. Holland, saru.org, Scott Barry, Toby Neilan, Warren Heise, David Trumpf, Junichi Tsuneoka, Tomson Jenker, Ryan Santos, Matthew Robinson, Darin Bendall, Christopher Sleboda, Adam Garcia, Jeremyville, Josh Hassin, Jason Polan, Hiro Kurata, LaChienne, Zach Johnsen, Matthew Robinson, Ric Stultz, Gliese vs. Matthew Barnes, Colin Henderson, Will Ainley, Kim Scafuro, Prate™ Computer Channel, Randy Laybourne, Office Supplies Inc., Superblast, Niall McClelland, Matthew Chapman, Martin Vallin, UPSO, Myron Macklin & Mike Giant.

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Although dolphins and whales with odd-shaped protrusions near their tails have been caught in the past, researchers think this is the first one found with well-developed, symmetrical fins, (Taiji Whaling Museum director) Katsuki Hayashi said...

Fossil remains indicate that dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share a common ancestors with the hippopotamus and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and lost their hind limbs.

Whales and dolphin fetuses show signs of hind protrusions but they disappear before birth.

I first read Levy in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, a book that served me as both edification and inspiration, something that continued with new classics like Crypto. Levy's special gift is the ability to simultaneously find the fine lines of the story that are visible in the minor details of, say, Steve Jobs's maunderings about Bob Dylan, and the wide brushstrokes of the social changes unfolding for the entire music industry as the result of the iTunes Music Store and the iPod.

The Perfect Thing is arranged as a series of stand-alone essays ("Shuffle," "Personality," "Cool," etc) and these chapters are shuffled into a different order in several different simultaneous editions of the book, so that each read creates new, serendipitous connections between the different facets of Levy's story. This worked surprisingly well (in my edition, anyway -- it's possible that some of the arrangements are less coherent).

The pieces are chock full of expertly selected, expertly told anecdotes, such as the L-train "iPod wars" in New York, where subway riders challenge one another to coolness battles that consist of facing off your iPod's current track against another rider's, to see who has the better taste. These are used as jumping off points for astute observations about the iPod and what it's doing to the world -- Levy's inside story of how the music industry was lured into getting locked into Apple's proprietary file-formats is gripping and quite enlightening.

The book isn't perfect -- neither is the iPod, of course. There was very little analysis of the way that the iPod is affecting the DRM wars in the US and abroad, and Levy is a little too sanguine about what it means for online music sales to be so thoroughly dominated by a single retailer, no matter how many images of Einstein and Gandhi show up in its advertising.

But Levy is onto something here. The impact of "shuffling," of carrying your collection in your pocket, of putting digital music in the hands of info-civilians who never would have put up with the crummy design and arcane interfaces of the early competitors -- these are big stories that will play out for decades yet, and Levy's book does the best job I've yet seen of categorizing and taking the measure of these great shifts. Link

"Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" one student asks a recruiter.

"No, we're bringing people back," he replies.

"We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," another recruiter says.

The company says systems may have become overloaded after a high-voltage transmission line was shut down over a river to let a ship pass.

Resulting power outages affected as many as ten million people in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Belgium and Spain.

How big is the underground economy? The General Accounting Office and the Internal Revenue Service produce estimates every few years that differ widely, but one government study calculated that $500 billion in income fails to be reported each year. Another estimate, based on consumer behavior, suggests that 4 out of 5 Americans turn to the unregulated world for goods and serviceswhich would raise the $500 billion figure appreciably.

But the underground economy is more than just a set of cash transactions. Cash, as it turns out, isn't necessarily the preferred medium of exchange: on Chicago's South Side, barter is just as common. I interviewed the owner of an auto body shop who threw out his cash register because customers were paying their bills in kind. They offered him cellphones, microwaves, furniture, and IOUs. He, in turn, started selling these goods from the back of the store, and now auto repair constitutes only a fraction of his income.

A secret US wargame called "Desert Crossing" produced during the Clinton era showed that an invasion and post-war presence in Iraq would require around 400,000 troops -- about three times the number of troops stationed there now. Even with those resources, according to simulation output, the mission could result in chaos. Snip:

70 military, diplomatic and intelligence participants concluded the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs. The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by George Washington University's National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library.

"The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops," said Thomas Blanton, the archive's director. "But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground."

There are about 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, down from a peak in January of about 160,000. A week after the invasion, in March 2003, the Pentagon said there were 250,000 U.S. ground force troops inside Iraq, along with 40,000 coalition force troops.

Link to "Post-Saddam Iraq: The War Game," released November 4, 2006 at George Washington University's National Security online document archives.

In related news, Saddam Hussein was today sentenced to death: reg-free Link to NYT article.

Human rights groups have questioned the CIA's methods for questioning suspects, especially following the passage of a bill last month that authorized the use of harsh but undefined interrogation tactics.

In recently filed court documents, the Justice Department said those methods, along with the locations of the CIA's network of prisons, are among the nation's most sensitive secrets. Prisoners who spent time in those prisons should not be allowed to disclose that information, even to a lawyer, the government said.