By Xeni Jardin at 9:59 pm Monday, Feb 26
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This tattoo is 900 petabytes of awesome.
If you missed the story of how MC Router dissed Wired Magazine in a nerdcore revenge track some months ago, go read up here, then listen to the result: "UnWired."
Lest ye suffer under the misbelief that that the 21-year-old, Texas-based Ms. Router is a personage to be taken lightly, I present unto you a snip:
Nerdcore article got published in Wired.
That asshole Roger Thomasson should get fucking fired.
What the hell's going on with this shitty magazine?
You want this motherfucking knife in your fucking spleen?
Here's an MP3 Link for the song. Here's her MySpace: Link. And here's a recent profile in a Texas newspaper: Link.
For the record, the folks at Wired took the song with much good humor. No nerdcore revenge rap reply issued from Chris Anderson, last I checked.
Previously on BB:
Nerdcore shows in Vegas, January 8-9
Reader comment:
Mr. Fingers says,
You posted about MC Router's new tattoo today, which also happens to be the release date of the new Rhyme Torrents compilation of nerdcore tracks! Link. Router's not on it, but still, thought it was worth mentioning.
Adam says,
Maybe this will earn me a knife in the spleen, but I have to point out
the futility in trying to level up when your exp gauge is only 1/3
full. Attempting to do that will simply spill your skill points
everywhere, and then the tears will start flowing faster than the
blood of your enemies. And no one wants that.
By Cory Doctorow at 9:08 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Jason Adams attended my lecture on privacy (
From Myspace to Homeland Security: Privacy and the Totalitarian Urge) last week at Duke University and recorded it for his podcast. He's just posted it -- thanks, Jason!
Link,
Direct MP3 Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:48 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Snoopstick is a $60 USB device that looks like a thumb drive. When you stick it into a Windows machine, it installs hidden software. Then you can stick the Snoopstick into another Windows machine and monitor the activity on the first machine.
Link (Thanks, Angelina!)
By Mark Frauenfelder at 7:36 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Police in Alaska confiscated the laptop belonging to a 21-year-old man who was sitting in his car outside a public library that has free WiFi. They said his "activity constituted theft of services."
The police officer confiscated Tanner's laptop in order to inspect what he may have been downloading, Remaley said. Remaley on Friday said he hasn't looked inside the computer yet; he's putting together a search warrant application.
Link (Thanks, Aaron!)
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Vancouver cops hate WiFi
• Florida man arrested for "stealing" unencrypted WiFi signal
• Rogue cop invents anti-WiFi laws, shakes down man-of-cloth
• Rogue Nantucket WiFi cop embroiders the truth (some more)
• Hi-tech cop: cantennas are illegal to possess
By Cory Doctorow at 5:38 pm Monday, Feb 26
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SF giant Larry Niven and SF up-and-comer Tim Pratt are speaking together this weekend at FICTION SCIENCE, a fascinating USC conference on science fiction. The event's free and there's a ton of amazing stuff on the bill.
We live in a science fictional world. Every day another futuristic projection made in the past turns into the reality of the present. Science fiction and science fact have become all but indistinguishable. "Special effects" are no longer particularly special, and fictional worlds, hoaxes and alternate histories are sometimes more real than reality itself. Science fiction turns its readers into early adopters; it helps prepare us for the future however it unfolds. Science uses this imaginative resource to think beyond its paradigm boundaries. TransFormations 3: Fiction Science examines how science and science fiction mutually inform one another and shape not only our sense of the future but also our understanding of the present.
Link
By Xeni Jardin at 4:16 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Above, "Mother and Daughter," from the "Yushu to Serba Road" series by Brooklyn-based photographer Raul Gutierrez. I could look at his work all day. He has traveled extensively in Amdo, Kham, and other rural areas of Tibet, and the candid glimpses of traditional life he's brought back are just stunning. Subscribe to an RSS feed of his photos here, looks like he's represented by this gallery if you'd like to buy prints.
Previously on BoingBoing:
NPR "Hacking the Himalayas": The Gaddi People of Dharamsala
NPR "Hacking the Himalayas": Wireless Network for 'Little Lhasa'
NPR "Hacking the Himalayas": Connecting Tibet's Exile Community Via the Web
NPR "Hacking the Himalayas": Leaving "Lhasa Vegas"
By Xeni Jardin at 3:51 pm Monday, Feb 26
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A 60-foot snow portrait of Super Mario. Link (Thanks, Patrick)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:38 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Eric Flint, the copyfighting progenitor of the Baen Free Library, has a sterling editorial up on why DRM drives piracy, instead of preventing it.
Yes, it's irritating to authors to see their work posted up on the internet without their permission, especially when the deed is accompanied by a virtual raspberry from a super-annuated juvenile delinquent bragging about it. But the fact remains that the material damage done to authors by such activity is so minimal that it can barely be distinguished from zero–if there's any material damage at all, which I doubt...
Pirates rob bullion ships, they don't rob grain ships. Electronic copyright infringement is something that can only become an "economic epidemic" under certain conditions. Any one of the following:
1) The product they want–electronic texts–are hard to find, and thus valuable.
2) The products they want are high-priced, so there's a fair amount of money to be saved by stealing them.
3) The legal products come with so many added-on nuisances that the illegal version is better to begin with.
Those are the three conditions that will create widespread electronic copyright infringement, especially in combination. Why? Because they're the same three general conditions that create all large-scale smuggling enterprises.
And . . .
Guess what? It's precisely those three conditions that DRM creates in the first place. So far from being an impediment to so-called "online piracy," it's DRM itself that keeps fueling it and driving it forward.
Link
(
via Pwned)
See also:
Copy-prevention hurts ebook sales, ebooks don't hurt real-book sales
Update: Chris points out the other items in the series, as linked from Teleread:
- A Matter of Principle
- Copyright: What Are the Proper Terms for the Debate?
- Copyright: How Long Should It Be?
- What is Fair Use
- Lies, and More Lies
- There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
By Cory Doctorow at 3:30 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Australian crafting zine Handmade has a great HOWTO for creating your own cocktail umbrellas. I can't imagine a swankier party-accessory.
Link
(
via Craft)
By Xeni Jardin at 3:22 pm Monday, Feb 26
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My God, I love the internet.
Threetails says,
This represents several months of work. I have taken Georges Méliès' 1902 classic film "A Trip to the Moon" (Une Voyage dans la Lune), the first science fiction film ever produced, and dubbed on an original soundtrack! If I get a good enough reception I might make tracks from this piece available... Sorry I couldn't make the audio quality a little better for YouTube.
The music is inspired by a number of artists from the early days of electronica, including Kraftwerk, Vangelis, and even Rick Wakeman. So yeah... I took a 104 year old film and made it into a music video for my own experiments in electronic music.
Video Link part 1,
Video Link part 2 via
Bruce Sterling's blog.
There's also a copy of the original film at archive.org with a more conventional soundtrack. The filmmaker's family resigned copyright in 1961.
Here's the Wikipedia entry on George Méliès, here's the entry on "Trip to the Moon."
Reader comment: Joe Francis says,
The Visual effects society has adapted that great Melies image of the rocket in the moon's eye for their awards trophy: Link. I think it's really clever - and not just because I'm a member.
Dan Novy, Technical Supervisor at Flash Film Works, says:
And here's what a "Vessie" looks like in the wild. :-)
ekrem serdar says,
Even though the Melies film is wonderful, the "first" sci-fi film was made by the Lumiere brothers themselves. Named Charcuterie Mecanique, it's a 50 second short about a machine: you put the pig in one side, and the sausage, ham, etc. comes out the other! As such a machine still doesn't exist, it could righteously qualify as the first sci-fi film. :) I posted the google video on my blog a few weeks back: Link. Cheers! (source: Baydur, Memet. Cinema Writings. Iletisim Yayinlari, Istanbul, 2004.)
Lex10 says,
Noel Fielding as the moon from the Mighty Boosh - strangely Melies-like. Link.
By Cory Doctorow at 1:47 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Carl sez,
The U.S. Congress provides webcasts for many of their hearings. In all cases, the hearings are streaming only, in many cases they are "live only" (no archive of the stream). In some cases, the committees even put a "copyright, all rights reserved" notice on the hearings!
This is really dumb. So, I've started ripping all congressional streams starting with the house and posting them in a nonproprietary format for download, tagging, review, and annotation at Google Video and another copy at the Internet Archive (just to prove this is a nondenominational issue :).
This is a Tom Sawyer hack, a la "painting this fence is *loads* of fun!" I intend to prove to the Congressional webmasters that it is so much fun doing their web sites for them that they'll want to do it themselves so that I go away. Until then, look for "Carl Malamud on behalf of the U.S. Congress" for official news.
Link
By David Pescovitz at 1:39 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Architect-turned-photographer Kazuhiko Kawahara (AKA Palla), from Osaka, Japan, takes simple architectural photographs and then digitally mirrors, rotates, cuts, pastes, darkens, lightens, and combines them into stunning new images. From a PingMag interview with Palla:
By making it symmetrical I confront the natural with the mechanical, the artificial. Architecture in itself is made entirely by people to be used and controlled by people. It is artificial. However, when people come and gather, it becomes like a city, a living organism and the situation transforms into something more natural. My works contain both those artificial and natural components. I’m attracted by the dynamism of the change from a simple form to a complicated organism.
Link to Pallalink site,
Link to PingMag interview
(via Neatorama)
By Xeni Jardin at 1:32 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Images above and below: screengrab from "GAME OVER," a short film by PES, in which classic videogames are recreated in cupcakes, sprinkles, fossils, pizzas, and toy froggies.
animator vs animation
pes
low morale
psst pass it on
avery ant
what happened to baz?
into pieces
it's jerry time
animated sluggo
fko
airport
adieu
Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!).
By Mark Frauenfelder at 1:08 pm Monday, Feb 26
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The 4th volume of
Hi-Fructose, a magazine of contemporary art, is out and it's a winner. It has interviews and profiles of Ray Caeser (featured on the cover), Gary Taxali, Fawn Gehweiller, Ragnar, and others in the pop surrealism pantheon. The name of this magazine is perfect. It's like
Juxtapoz, with more sugar and less grime.
Subscribe to Hi-Fructose
By Xeni Jardin at 1:04 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Snip from a profile of fashion designer Thierry Mugler, king of '90s robocouture, from this weekend's New York Times:
“[...] I relate to space because it helps me realize that nothing is as important as you first think. There’s always something bigger.”
While it’s tempting to dismiss him as the Shirley MacLaine of fashion, Mugler moonwalks it like he talks it and has steadfastly adhered to his fantastical aesthetic since the early 1970s. Now, seven years after the crash of his label, the rest of the fashion world has landed on Planet Mugler.
Mugler’s PVC-clad intergalactic dominatrixes, who first invaded the runways in the mid-’80s, re-entered the fashion stratosphere at the spring shows. There they were at Balenciaga, where robo-babe metallic leggings brought to mind Mugler’s cyber-couture from the early ’90s; at Dolce & Gabbana, where dresses that appeared to have been made from space junk bore a striking similarity to Mugler’s signature hardware; and at Alexander McQueen, where frothy chiffon confections fit for a prom on Saturn were clones of Mugler’s jellyfish gowns at his farewell couture show in 2000.
Link to story with video feature. Image: At left, Iman in a Mugler design from 1991. At right, Balenciaga (near left) and D&G (far right) models wearing Mugleresque work from the spring shows. (
thanks, Susannah Breslin and Christina Noren!)
By David Pescovitz at 12:42 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Bryan Berg makes fantastic card architecture. Formally trained as a designer and architect, Berg holds several Guinness World Records for houses of cards. He landed his first one at 17 when he built a 14 foot, 6 inch tall tower. His most recent record-holding tower is more than 25 feet tall. Berg wrote a book, Stacking the Deck, to teach his techniques. From the book's description:
In Stacking the Deck, Bryan Berg reveals the secret to successful cardstacking with his simple four-card-cell structure and expanded grid techniques. Using illustrations and step-by-step instructions, he guides readers on to more elaborateóand incredibly strongócreations. He covers a wide range of architectural styles, from classic to whimsical, and various types of structures, including pyramids, shrines, stadiums, churches, an oil derrick, and even the Empire State Building. Since first setting the height record in 1992, Bryan's built awe-inspiring card models of a Japanese shrine, the Iowa State Capitol building, Ebbets Field, and his latest tower, which is more than twenty-five feet tall! The book includes photographs of some of these amazing pieces, illustrating just how appealing and enduring a "house of cards" can be. Stacking the Deck will inspire everyone from youngsters experimenting with their first deck of cards to adults, who can create their very own skyscrapers.
Link to Bryan Berg's site,
Link to buy Stacking The Deck
By Xeni Jardin at 12:18 pm Monday, Feb 26
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A music video exploring human fascination with online images of cats in things they're not supposed to be in. Link to "Cat me if You Can," by "Canada's premiere folk/funk/meth-rock/R&B fusion group Agile Like This." Found here on milkfat, the site of internet funnyfarmer Michael Mouris, who produced this video. (worksafe warning: Contains a brief flash of cartoon cat anthropomorphic nudity)
Previously on BB:
Supremely excellent cat-playing-piano video
Cat with 26 toes
Cat with a EULA
Cat piano
Massive cache of kittah pix (aka LOLcats, cat macros)
HOWTO make a noble fruit helmet for your cat
Adorable cyclops kitten
By Xeni Jardin at 12:14 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Link to the artist's website, here's a direct link to the larger jpeg. You can buy a print of this and many other lovely images (like this one, wow) right here. (Thanks, Jason Schultz)
Reader comment: Allygal says,
Hi, I love your blog, and am a very long time reader! I just wanted to comment and suggest an artist, related to your post about the artist Jeffery Scott. There is an amazing artist who I believe to be one of the innovators to this type of digital photography. His name is Symon Chow: Link. And has been doing this form of work for many years. He seems to be quite reclusive and modest. And deserves way more attension that he has gotten. You can see his work with the link provided and a lot of reviews (from other bloggers) of his work can be found by googling his name. Thanks again for wasting all my time at the office ;)
Wow, beautiful stuff (some of it NSFW). Here's one of
Symon Chow's images below.
By Mark Frauenfelder at 12:06 pm Monday, Feb 26
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Faith, the world's second most famous bipedal dog (behind Snoopy), was temporarily lost at Orlando Airport last Wednesday. American Airlines accidentally put Faith (who was born without front legs) on the wrong flight, but she was later reunited with her grateful owner.
Link
By Mark Frauenfelder at 11:58 am Monday, Feb 26
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Conservapedia, a wiki encyclopedia that aims to eliminate the left-wing bias in Wikipedia, is a gold-mine of unintentional hilarity. The entry on the cactus is especially rib-ticking.
The secularist view of the Cactaceae is that they are roughly two million years old, and that they have evolved exclusively in the new world. This view fails to explain, however, how it is that the Opuntia genus is native to the island of Opus, near Greece. Cacti are known for their high content of alkaloids, and have often been used in the sacramental rights of the Native Americans. Because of this, the early Catholic missionaries in the west thought the plants to be the work of Satan, and this is perhaps a preferable view to that of materialistic evolution since it is difficult to imagine how something like mescaline could have evolved by natural selection. Besides that, the psychoactive content of many cacti have inspired the writings of such ungodly men as Aldous Huxley and Albert Hoffman.
Several species of cactus are now endangered in the west due to "poaching" by collectors and invasive species. But, since Genesis suggests that man has been given dominion over all of the earth, the environmentalist concerns on this note are entirely inappropriate. It may also be that environmentalists, in addition to flauting the Word of God, are merely concerned about the effects that declining cactus populations will have on their supply of mescaline.
You can't make this stuff up, folks. You have to let others do it for you.
Link
(Thanks, Kevin!)
Reader comment:
Scott says:
"You can't make this stuff up, folks. You have to let others do it for
you."
Or, perhaps you can. A comment on the blog you linked to notes:
"Righteous Bubba said...
Although there are lots of funny original entries there, you should know
that everybody and their mother has been vandalizing the Conservapedia for a
little while now.
The joke entries tend to use better English than the true ones.
Geoff Holtby said...
It's definitely been vandalized all to hell. But most of the vandalism is of
a subtle Colbertian sort. Outright vandalism just gets removed, so a lot of
people have been adding hilarious pseudo-Conservative entries. There was a
thread on the Something Awful forums about doing exactly this."
By Cory Doctorow at 10:07 am Monday, Feb 26
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EMI -- having previously floated the idea of releasing its music as DRM-free MP3s -- has dropped the other shoe: it won't consider the move unless it gets some money. Lots and lots of money. So much that no one will say how much.
Which is funny, since removing DRM can only help sell music. After all, no one buys music for the DRM. People who buy DRM songs -- instead of nicking the same music on P2P -- do so because they don't mind the DRM, or because they don't know about the DRM, or because they are willing to hold their nose. Presumably, there are people who are aren't willing to hold their noses (I'm one of them) who'd buy if the DRM was gone.
Online music giants Apple and Microsoft, along with smaller players including RealNetworks and Yahoo! Music, sought to indulge EMI's demands by waving leafy-green dollar bills at the company, but it wasn't what EMI asked for, and the company subsequently put the talks on hold. Warner's renewed interest in EMI is likely another contributing factor to EMI's own cold feet: Warner's leadership is devoted to DRM, making the DRM-free discussions all the more circumspect.
While it has become a truism in tech enthusiast circles that 'no DRM equals more sales,' EMI and other record companies are pleased enough with the status quo that they expect any "risk" to be shouldered by retailers. If a "non-DRM tax" of sorts were applied to music, online retailers would have no choice but to increase the cost of downloadable music.
Link
(
via Gizmodo)
By David Pescovitz at 9:27 am Monday, Feb 26
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You may recognize this 1997 FANUC S420iW industrial robot from such famous YouTube videos as "
Robot Ride." The owner is now selling it on eBay. Starting bid is $9,999 with a Buy It Now price of $24,969.
From the auction listing:
This robot has a capacity rating of 346 pounds and was at one time used in a Nissan Motor Plant. It is NOT intended to be a "RIDE" and I do not reccomend doing so. Fanuc also does NOT support the use of this machine as a "JOY RIDE". Using this robot in such a manner can be hazardous to your health!!! I have no further use for this unit and I am looking to sell. With the money from this sale I will be in the market for an ArcMate 100i with PowerWave 455 welding machine...
The SEAT, and 5-point CROW racing harness are also NOT available in this auction...
This is NOT a JOKE, this is a serious auction for a serious piece of industrial equipment. This is NOT a TOY or a "RIDE", although it is apparent that it can support the weight of average humans.
Link (via MAKE: Blog)
By David Pescovitz at 9:06 am Monday, Feb 26
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The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense ran a secret study on psychic powers and remote viewing in 2002, according to a report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The test subjects were asked to identify objects and individuals on pictures sealed in envelopes.
From The Scotsman:
Surprisingly 28 per cent of those tested managed a close guess at the contents of the envelopes, which included pictures of a knife, Mother Teresa and an "Asian individual".
But most subjects, who were holed up in a secret location for the study, were hopelessly off the mark in their guesses. One even fell asleep while he tried to focus on the envelope's content...
Nick Pope, who ran the MoD UFO research programme and worked at the ministry for 21 years, said: "It can only be speculation, but you don't employ that kind of time and effort to find money down the back of the sofa.
"You go to this trouble for high-value assets. We must be talking about bin Laden and weapons of mass destruction."
The MoD last night refused to discuss the possible applications of such a technique, but said that the study had concluded there was "little value" in using "remote viewing" in the defence of the nation.
Link
Previously on BB:
• The Men Who Stare At Goats
Link
• Air Force report on Teleportation Physics
Link
By David Pescovitz at 8:48 am Monday, Feb 26
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Around 150 women hopped a bus to the Spanish mountain village of Hoyocasero on Saturday to possibly make a love connection with the lonely rural men in the town, about 100 km from Madrid. The villagers posted the party invite online as a slightly modernized version of an event apparently known as "
una caravana de mujeres" (a caravan of women) that has taken place in other overwhelmingly male villages over the last two decades. From Reuters:
"Meeting someone this way, it's more rustic and authentic ... it's easier to get to know someone face to face," said 32-year-old farmer Cesar del Rio, whose family has lived in Hoyocasero for centuries...
"It's not really necessary to (meet people) this way any more. The thing is, it's more fun," said Laura Martin, 27, who was hoping for "a laugh, friendship, maybe something more."
"It seems to me that there are lot of older men who are interested but we younger women want our freedom and, here in the village, the men want to come straight down to business," she said, surrounded by a group of giggling girl friends.
Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)
By David Pescovitz at 8:37 am Monday, Feb 26
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Artist Simon Morris outfitted a skateboard with various sensors that convert acceleration, turns, and vibration into data that's wirelessly transmitted to a laptop. The computer than translates that data into sound, generating an "acoustical map" of the city being thrashed. From the description of the project, titled Musique Concrete:
Tricks and movements generate real-time sounds allowing the skateboarder to composes his/her soundtrack of the city. Furthermore, combining tricks and movements result in unique and often unexpected musical compositions. Used in conjunction with ramps, obstacles, ledges and other architectural elements that make up the skateboarder’s universe, Musique Concrete provides the listener with a sonic imprint of the urban environment.
Link (Thanks, Dave Gill!)
UPDATE: Scott Underwood says, "This is quite like a project by South African artist Cobi van Toder called Skatesonic. It was shown at the ZeroOne San Jose ISEA2006 Symposium. Van Toder was was an artist-in-residence last year at
IDEO, and we developed the electronics and board with her."
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 8:32 am Monday, Feb 26
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OpenCongress.org is a new site that Web 2.0's the US government, bringing much-needed transparency and accountability to the closed book that is the US Congress. It is the first project of the new Pariticpatory Politics Foundation (founded by the same young geniuses who gave us the
Participatory Culture Foundation and its stunning
Democracy Internet TV player). Co-creator David Moore describes it thus:
One of the problems we were aiming to address is that there is a lack of comprehensive, usable web resources for people and groups writing about bills and issues in Congress. The Library of Congress website, Thomas, doesn't do nearly enough to make Congressional information accessible -- meaning that political bloggers didn't have anywhere helpful to link when discussing Congress, that there wasn't a way for their readers to get the "big picture" behind an issue. The lack of public knowledge about what's really happening in Congress breeds apathy about political change in general.
OpenCongress helps close the information gap between political insiders and the public by bringing together official government information from Thomas (by way of GovTrack.us), news articles from Google News, blog posts from Technorati, campaign contribution data from OpenSecrets.org, and more -- to give you the real story behind what's happening in Congress.
Link
By David Pescovitz at 8:25 am Monday, Feb 26
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BB pal Vann Hall writes:
Beginning Thursday, March 1, the ZBS Foundation has decided to release the second Jack Flanders tale, "Moon Over Morocco," as a free podcast. "MOM" was written by ZBS chief Meatball Fulton; its environmental and location sounds were recorded by Fulton in Morocco, and [hipster cred alert] backing music was recorded by Paul Bowles.
I don't know if you're familiar with ZBS's radio dramas, but they are always interesting (if occasionally annoying) romps through spacetime, with a healthy dose of mysticism and Eastern philosophy tossed in. In the mid- to late-70s, I'd catch the occasional episode from a ZBS program airing on NPR; I remember especially well the time my father fell asleep driving* while listening to "Moon Over Morocco" and started talking back to the radio. ("Falling asleep" while driving is actually a family trait I occasionally share; it doesn't seem to effect our ability to drive all that much, but every so often I'll wake up and have no idea where I am.) It wasn't until the 1982 rebroadcast of "The Fourth Tower of Inverness" (1972), though, the first of the Jack Flanders mysteries, that I was able to listen to an entire storyline. (And when I needed a handle for CompuServe's IRC-like CB chat service the following year, the name of Inverness's resident mad scientist, Dr. Marlin Mazoola, immediately came to mind.)
Over the years, ZBS has become expert at aural VR -- their "Dr. Fritz" series made use of a Kunstkopf to allow authentic 3D recording -- but even their earliest productions manage to suck your brain out your earholes and carry it off for a good, hard run through the park.
"MOM" is usually heard as it was broadcast on NPR, in ten 1-hour episodes, but it was conceived as fifty 12-minute episodes aired weekdays over a ten-week period. The podcast returns to the original 12-minute format, with a new episode released daily for seven weeks.
Link to ZBS podcasts,
Link to Moon Over Morocco
By Cory Doctorow at 8:13 am Monday, Feb 26
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Mark sez, "Now there's a EULA when you check out of Home Depot. In order to check out with the cashier, I had to sign an credit card receipt saying I had been given the opportunity to read 'customer agreement #156326.' Of course, the agreement was nowhere in sight."
Sounds like that slip is ripe for a Reasonable Agreement sticker.
Link
(Thanks, Mark!)
Update: Abelard sez, " As a former employee of HD, I bear them no great love, but the slip Mark
was
asked to sign is spit out when you do a transaction that involves the
'Special Services' desk - i.e. either a special order, a delivery or a
will call.
"In all three cases the customer agreement is assigned a unique number (in
his
case, #156326) and is printed on letter-sized paper with the particulars
of the order (items, colors, delivery date, etc.). This sheet also has
disclaimers, such as 'We deliver curbside only, we won't go into your
house' and 'Yes, I truly do want a fire-engine-red bidet and I know I
can't return it.'
"We used to get the customer to sign off on the 8.5 X 11 and we would keep a
copy, but someone decided it would be easier or more efficient to do this
at the checkout.
"If he didn't get a copy of the customer agreement, then his salesperson did
a
bad job (I sure hope he knows what he just paid for, too!)."
By Cory Doctorow at 6:46 am Monday, Feb 26
• Comments • Share
Here's a list of default router passwords -- ever reset a router to factory defaults and then realize that you don't know what the password is?
Link
(
via Schneier)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:32 am Monday, Feb 26
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This weekend, I read Paul Pope and Jose Villarubia's astounding "Batman Year 100" collection
(another great find from the recommended table at LA's
Secret Headquarters comic shop).
Batman Year 100 is set in 2039, 100 years after the 1939 debut of The Bat-Man. America has become a Soviet-like military society, where corrupt Department of Homeland Security officials reign supreme in a land of suspended habeas corpus and universal surveillance.
Batman is now a mere urban legend in Gotham City, but he is still alive and well, living in the cracks of totalitarian America. When he witnesses a Fed shock-trooper's murder, he becomes the target of a violent, determined investigation from the DHS brass, who are determined to destroy "the last mask" and perfect their vision of an America where they are the only authority.
Batman Year 100 is the most exciting and fresh re-imagining of the Batman stories since the original Frank Miller Dark Knight comics. The artwork is broody, abstract, haunting; the writing screams along at 100 mph. This Batman is the most complex, conflicted, and darkest Batman yet.
As a bonus, there's a great short alternate-universe Batman story stuck at the end, where Batman is imagined as the alter-ego of a Nazi-fighting Jew in 1939 Germany.
Link
By Cory Doctorow at 6:22 am Monday, Feb 26
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Matthew Gale's prizewinning design for a jacket for people who sleep on public transit is exactly what I need. The jacket has a high, rigid collar that can be raised to keep your head upright while you snooze, like a cervical collar for spinal injuries. I spend a lot of time trying to sleep in airport lounges, planes, etc, and something like this would be a godsend. I'd buy it in a second.
Link
(
via Gizmodo)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:18 am Monday, Feb 26
• Comments • Share
John W Cornell got tired of laboriously fetching his own beers from the fridge, so he built a fridge that would catapault beers through the air and into his
headhands.
Have you ever gotten up off the couch to get a beer for the umpteenth time and thought, "What if instead of ME going to get the BEER, the BEER came to ME???" Well, that was how I first conceived of the beer launching fridge. About 3 months and several hundred dollars later I have a fully automated, remote controlled, catapulting, man-pit approved, beer launching mini-fridge. It holds 10 beers in its magazine with 14 more in reserve to store a full case. It is controlled by a keyless entry system. Pressing unlock will start the catapult rotating and when it is aiming at your target, pressing unlock again will stop it. Then the lock button can be pressed to launch a beer in the selected direction.
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via Gizmodo)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:14 am Monday, Feb 26
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The Ontario Lottery Commission has yanked a Konami video slot machine after it was discovered that the no-armed bandit was displaying a brief "jackpot" message at subliminal speeds on every spin.
The games flash winning jackpot symbols at players for a fifth of a second, long enough for the brain to detect even if the players are not aware of the message, some psychologists told CBC News.
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Thanks, Kathryn!)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:11 am Monday, Feb 26
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The new Creative Commons 3.0 licenses have shipped! The new licenses seem mostly concerned with housekeeping issues between international versions and clarifying some liability issues. One thing I'm very glad of is that the CC licenses still say that people who redistribute CC-licensed work can't infect it with DRM.
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via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:07 am Monday, Feb 26
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A ruptured sewer caused a 300'-deep pit to open in the middle of a crowded Guatemala City neighborhood, swallowing a dozen homes, killing an undetermined number of people, and causing the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people.
Officials blamed recent rains and an underground sewage flow from a ruptured main for the tragedy. The pit emitted foul odors, loud noises and tremors, shaking the surrounding ground. A rush of water could be heard from its depths, and authorities feared it could widen or other sinkholes could open up.
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via JWZ)
This tattoo is 900 petabytes of awesome. 
