The Drug Policy Alliance produced this funny fake TV commercial for a prescription called Incarcerex, meant for politicians who are fearful of losing their election. Link (Thanks, Mike!)

Steve Jobs hosted a companywide town hall meeting for Apple employees earlier today, all about iPhone. Word is: Full-time Apple employees who've been there a year or more will receive one of the devices, free. This adds up to a total retail value of more than $12 million. izmodo: Link. Engadget's posts: one, two..

UPDATE: OK, I just received some corrected details on the Apple internal iPhone giveaway:

All full time U.S. employees receive a free iPhone. All part time U.S. employees who've been at the company for more than a year get a free phone. Everyone gets the 8GB model, and presumably this includes Apple retail store employees, too. The number of $12M quoted by Engadget is wrong, because that references worldwide employee stats. This is for US employees only at this time.

Apple will limit day-of-release purchases to two iPhones per person, max: Link.

How many mobile phone consumers will switch from their current carriers to AT&T because of iPhone? Link, and here's a "HOWTO dump your carrier" guide.

What about international markets? Snip from the relevant Apple press release:

iPhone will be available in (...) Europe in late 2007, and Asia in 2008.

Here are the 13 AT&T Store iPhone Objection-Response scripts: Link.

Apple published the AT&T rate plans earlier this week, here: Link.

One of the more commonly voiced skeptical points, pre-launch -- how usable can this thing be as a txting device without a conventional, opposable-thumbs-friendly keyboard? Apple posted what amounts to a response yesterday: Link to "iPhone Keyboard" video.

Macintouch has a good features FAQ here: Link. SFGate published a pretty comprehensive FAQ here: Link.

Reviews from people who have spent time with the iPhone: Pogue (NYT), Mossberg (WSJ), Levy (Newsweek), Ed Baig (USA Today). I found this clever scorecard helpful: Link.

This PC World article lists 11 bummer factors: Link.

On the Apple website, official word that accessories and products certified as iPhone-compliant will carry a "Works with iPhone" logo: Link. More on the accessories market here, and a critical take here.

iPhone and security: A big deal. Not a big deal. Big deal or not a big deal?

Some people are taking Brian (Gizmodo) Lam's "Jesusphone" thing too seriously: Link versus Link.

Here's a Google Maps mashup that combines the Maps API with locations of AT&T and Apple stores, as well as listings on Craigslist and eBay. Link for more info on how to use it. (Thanks, Mike)

(Xeni): I'll be joining CNN International anchor Kristie LuStout at 5:40pm PT/840PM ET today (Thu., June 28) to talk about the you-know-what for a few minutes.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Apple uses big-handed model to "shrink" iPhone

Dude in line for iPhone to raise money for AIDS drugs in Africa

Further ponderance of the iPhone's size

Eric Mueller video blogs from the NYC iPhone line

Nintendo Sixty Fouuuuuur versus iPhooooone (video)

Reader comment: Tom Stevens says,

Link to a news article in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

Apple's new iPhone is NOT available for sale in Vermont due to the fact that AT&T is the sole wireless provider for the phone and AT&T is not offered in the state.

Small Dog Electronics in Waitsfield is a Vermont Apple product dealer, and CEO Don Mayer said this week he is disappointed the iPhone will not be available here.

"I think it's very unfortunate that Apple has chosen to limit distribution of the iPhone," he said. "They've frozen out Vermont as the only state in the union without service. I understand why — that they will have their hands full with what they already have, but it leaves us and people in many other rural areas out in the cold."

Other areas affected in this area include parts of New Hampshire and Maine...

M. Pamela Bumsted in Alaska says,

Vermont isn't the only one in the cold. Alaska is also part of the USA and it is out of the running. I believe there is a huge penalty. Link to news article.

BoingBoing reader Stephen Lindholm says,

Good news for T-Mobile customers. In a class action brought against T-Mobile, this past week, the plaintiffs have successfully argued that T-Mobile cannot prevent its customers from filing a class action against it. The plaintiffs are suing over non-prorated early termination fees and the selling of SIM-locked handsets.

T-Mobile, as many other cell phone companies do these days, had written into its contract with customers that any disputes between T-Mobile and the customers had to be resolved by arbitration. Requiring customers to go to arbitration means that customers cannot sue, and more importantly it means that customers cannot file class actions. The result, if the contractual terms requiring arbitration were valid, would be that the most abusive cell phone company practices could not be limited by customers bringing lawsuits.

However, in the suit Gatton et al. v. T-Mobile USA, Inc., the plaintiffs convinced the trial court that the contractual provision requiring arbitration was unconscionable and therefore not enforceable. On June 22, 2007, the California appeals court affirmed the trial court's ruling. The class action is going forward.

Presumably, this means that customers of other cell phone companies will be able to sue their own cell phone companies as well. The particular grievances against T-Mobile in this class action are the imposition of non-prorated early termination fees and the selling of SIM-locked handsets. Both of these are common to other cellular carriers, although it's not clear from the appellate opinion whether T-Mobile is doing something extra-shady with the SIM-locking. (The appellate opinion states, "T-Mobile requires equipment vendors to alter the handsets they sell to T-Mobile by locking them with SIM locks and setting the SIM unlock code based on a secret algorithm provided by T-Mobile.") So if this suit is ultimately successful in California, it may not take long before non-prorated early termination fees and SIM-locked handsets die a long-awaited death.

PDF Link.

My book, Rule the Web: How To Do Anything and Everything on the Internet -- Better, Faster, Easier, just cracked Amazon's top 100 best seller list, and it's #2 in the "Computers and Internet" category. Thanks so much to everyone who bought a copy. I appreciate it! Link

Kellogg's Cereal Straws are straws lined with powdered sugar-cereal dust that kids can drink milk through. It makes the milk taste like the sludge left at the bottom of a cereal bowl. We feed kids gross things, but this reaches new levels of grotitude.

Upon perforating one of the two packages, the perfume of fake fruit and powdered milk permeated the air and tempted the taste buds (try to say that without sounding like Daffy Duck, I dare you). There’s something about unabashedly artificial flavoring that’s both charming and nostalgic…sexual, even. Alright, maybe not sexual, but something pleasant nonetheless. The straws were thinner than what the box indicated, looking more like real straws than giant-sized novelty pens. They are lined in the middle with that sickly sweet powdered milk that seems to be popping up in granola and cereal bars everywhere. Someone needs to tell these guys that it does NOT replace milk and that we can all tell it’s just sweetened coffee creamer. Fortunately, the flavor of that is masked by the Froot Loop shell.

Link (via The Consumerist)

Earlier this week, a bunch of posts popped up on sites including Slashdot and Wired Compiler about Privatunes, a free application that purports to anonymize DRM-free files you buy on iTunes.

Why would anyone need such an app? Well, because there's been much controversy in recent weeks over allegations that Apple may be tracking personal information in the headers of these DRM-free files, in order to limit sharing (previous BB post here).

Today there's word that Privatunes may not be what it's cracked up to be. Here's a snip from the EFF blog:

Unfortunately, the Privatunes coders didn't read our last post about iTunes tracking data. Aside from the name and email address, there are other fields that Apple, or a litigant that subpoenas Apple, could use to identify the purchasers of iTunes Plus files, even if they've been run through Privatunes 0.9.

In addition to the sign and chtb fields, there are several other places where iTunes Plus copies of the same song vary by three or four bytes (they can be readily observed with a program like vbindiff on *nix). It should be assumed that a file is identifying unless all of these fields have been overwritten.

Lastly, Privatunes 0.9 just overwrites the name and email address using spaces (0x20). This means that the length of these two fields can still be seen after the file has been modified. For full anonymization, these lengths should be made unreadable.

Link. (thanks, Cory!)

hglucky says:

Eric Mueller is a graphic designer who quickly got in line as soon as he heard there was one forming for the debut of the iPhone at the Apple store in Manhattan. He started out at #5, then #6. Now after coming and going a few times, he's got his wife Ramona Ponce at #19, and he's now (maybe) still #20.

Link

John says:

This is actually a tiny, random clip taken from The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). Whether it's the botched editing job between "oooo-owwww", the palpable sense of self-satisfaction Reed exhibits after he's contained the chaos of bubbly eruption or the final announcement that the disaster has been averted - and "Champagne OK!"

Interesting that someone would go to the trouble of registering "champagneok.com" to post this silly but of fluff. Don't miss the "The Richard D James (inspired) Glitch-Core Remix" on the same page. Link

Jason says: Just did a phone interview with someone I'm sure you're familiar with, Douglas Rushkoff. We chatted about cult phenom The Secret, his next book Corporatized: The Myth of Self Interest and the influence of Muppet master Jim Henson’s trippy short film "The Cube." Link

First, we heard from the Bay-haters.

Now, we hear from BoingBoing readers and pals like Joel Johnson, who declares himself "totally gay for Transformers":

"You come out and your parents get all freaked out and tell you that it’s just a confusing time for you but you know, deep down, or not even that deep down it could be right at the surface, that you have to have some man inside of you. Doesn’t matter if you’re ashamed or feeling guilty; you just can’t deny that ache."

Susie told me later I was so excited that she thought perhaps I was coming out right there in the restaurant, something I am pretty sure she lives in legitimate fear of every time we go out to eat. Our neighbors set down their spoons.

"That’s how I feel about robots fighting. I know it’s juvenile. I know it’s going to be an awful movie. I just can’t help it.

I’m gay for robots fighting. And I want those robots to fight inside of me."

Link.

And Bonnie says,

I saw a preview screening of "Transformers" at work last night, with the ILM folks who actually worked on the effects, and I have to say it actually was kinda rad. The visual effects and sound design were mindblowing.

Even the usual Michael Bay-isms of supermodel women as mechanics and enginerds, people outrunning EVERYTHING, slo-mo action of helicopters in the sunsets and and doofus secret government officials seemed to work just fine with the movie's subject matter. It added to the movie's popcorn fun mentality.

Shia's acting was endearing and believable, and almost John Cusack like. And as expected Jon Voight and John Turturro brought their own acting chops to the table. All in all, I loved the over-the-top action, the humor, the inside jokes, the special effects, the chilling sound elements and even the camp.

Hardcore fans need to loosen up. After all, Bay did get voice actor Peter Cullen to return to his role as Optimus Prime. In this film, there really is more than meets the eye.

Link.

Previously on BB:

Breaking: Transformers movie "kind of sucks"

Lea sez, "I've put my first graphic novel, Texas Steampunk I: Cathedral Child (originally published by Image Comics in 1998), online under a Creative Commons license. My other goal was also to reach readers in countries other than the US. These readers been unable to read CC because of publishers' reluctance to publish any manga but 'real' (from Japan) manga, and prohibitve postage costs."

This is a fun, breezy, Tex-Japan mashup that's quite charming! Link (Thanks, Lea!)

Other Steampunk stuff on Boing Boing

Facebook has implemented fixes that should prevent this from happening again, but -- tech journalist Thomas Crampton experienced an unfortunate side effect of that Facebook personal profile bug I blogged about here yesterday. Thomas says:

A misguided attempt to increase our privacy backfired horribly a few days ago, just weeks ahead of our wedding.

My fiancee and I unchecked the personal relationship box in Facebook to make our personal lives a little more private.

Unwittingly, however, that action sent out a message to our entire social network and newsfeed saying we were no longer engaged. (Complete with a forlorn broken heart.)

Within minutes, condolence notes started coming in from around the world, sending us into even high state of crisis than just a wedding.

Link. In other news, looks like some of Thomas' friends need to learn how to STFU on Twitter.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Boarding pass hacker finds privacy flaws in Facebook

Update: Christopher Soghoian, whose recent security research on Facebook I blogged here, writes:

You just blogged: "Facebook has implemented fixes that should prevent this from happening again, but -- tech journalist Thomas Crampton experienced an unfortunate side effect of that Facebook personal profile bug I blogged about here yesterday. Thomas says:"

This is not correct. The Facebook attack I exposed dealt specifically with random strangers being able to play go-fish with private elements in your profile. Facebook fixed this with some haste, such that private profiles of strangers will no longer show up in a search on any sensitive fields.

Crampton's problem stems from the Facebook mini-feeds feature. You covered that train-wreck of a privacy problem last year (Link).

The common theme here is that Facebook has very very fine grained privacy controls - which most users clearly do not know how to use. Crampton could have quite easily modified his privacy settings to stop his friends from seeing changes in his relationship status - but he didn't know to do this.

The cynic in me wonders how we can expect regular users to know the finer details of privacy control customization when a tech journalist can't figure it out.

This "feature rich" Java-based light-switch is on display at Sun. The complexity of the switch makes it into a vivid example of the tension between engineering exuberance and civilian-friendly ease-of-use. Link (via Global Nerdy)

Update: Sun's Simon Phipps sez, "In fact, this is an off-the-shelf electrical part that is installed in many other USA places."

Slashdot is conducting a public interview with a company engaged in the shadowy practice of brokering real-money exchanges for virtual objects from games. Last week they solicited questions from their readers; today they posted the answer. This subject just keeps getting weirder and more interesting -- I think my story Anda's Game needs a sequel.

Sparter does not buy or sell game items and we don't have an in-game presence. As a result, we cannot know for sure how our sellers behave in the game. But if you believe as we do that the truly damaging behavior is exhibited by the spammers, bot farmers, hackers and dupers, then the more we migrate the market to a true gamer-to-gamer exchange, the harder it is for those folks to profit from their actions.

We designed Sparter to give the gamer every opportunity to compete with the professional seller. They play for love of the game, don't have any overhead, marketing costs or customer service operations. The gamer will always be able to undercut the B2C. There will always be sellers of different sizes, but gamers are selling on Sparter and taking business away from the B2Cs like IGE and peons4hire (some of whom not only spam in-game but, we suspect, are the primary currency outlet for the dupers, hackers and bot farmers). In fact, our typical seller undercuts IGE by 30-40% and is making enough to pay for his WoW subscription.

Link

Check out this all-metal self-contained diving suit from the August 1938 ish of Mechanix Illustrated. Love those manipulator claws! Still, a max depth of 1,200 feet is nothing to be sneezed at. Try that in a shortie! Link

NPR reports on "explosives camp" in Missouri, where kids are taught to be explosives experts:

"Some people like baseball, others like math – I just like to set off bombs," he said. "I figure here, learning how to do it properly is better than messing around with it at home, right?" Meadows is one of 20 teenage campers enrolled in a weeklong explosion camp in the Missouri Ozarks. At the camp, high school students from as far away as Egypt and Hawaii shoot dynamite, TNT and plastic explosives. The camp's leader, Paul Worsey, a professor at the University of Missouri, Rolla, uses the camp as a way to attract new recruits into the unglamorous field of mine engineering. He recruits students to help carry on the industry, which is facing a serious personnel shortage...

During his week at camp, Niels Zussblatt, a teen from St. Louis, helped blast a rock from deep in a mine, obliterated a watermelon, cut steel beams and set off a "wall of fire."

Link (via Make Blog)

BoingBoing reader Jay was one of many old-school Transformers fans who wrote in to share the breaking news that Michael Bay's bloated epic is lovely, but kind of sucks:

I went to a media screening of Transformers last night, and I'll give it a full set of 10 shiny, golden stars for the most brilliant design and amazing effects I think I've ever seen. Now I'll quickly take them all back because the script, direction and editing were perhaps the worst I've ever endured. Seriously, how many poignant love stories, wrong-side-of-the-tracks childhoods, comic relief black men and all-American-world-savers can you jam into one giant alien robot movie? I'll proudly be wearing this awesome t-shirt when I hunt down Michael Bay and stab him in the face-eye.

Link.

See also on BB:

Breaking: Transformers movie "actually kind of rad"

Daniel says:

A video of security cam footage of a guy stealing my bike wheels set to a song I wrote about what an asshole this guy is.

Link

Step-by-step photos of the construction of an appealing woodland home made with found and natural materials and very few tools.

Main tools used: chainsaw, hammer and 1 inch chisel, little else really. Oh and by the way I am not abuilder or carpenter, my experience is only having a go at one similar house 2yrs before and a bit of mucking around inbetween. This kind of building is accessible to anyone. My main relevant skills were being able bodied, having self belief and perseverence and a mate or two to give a lift now and again.

Link (Thanks, James!)

Charles Shopsin says,

The Make blog had a cool post today about a computer made of K'Nex parts and I remembered that I had read about a really cool computer made of Tinker Toys built by Danny Hillis. I knew I had read about it in his excellent computer primer "The Pattern On the Stone" so I went to Amazon to try finding the page with their "Search Inside the Book" feature.

Well, I found the page but it wasn't what I expected. Instead of seeing a straight scan of the page it looked like someone had cut out all of the words and pasted them back on the page in the same order. It looked just like a ransom note. The picture that was supposed to be on the page was nowhere to be found.

At the top of the page was a note that said "Some images in this book are not displayed". Then I realized that this was Amazon's way around showing pictures they didn't have copyright for. They literally cut out all the text and then paste it back on a blank page. How ridiculous! Link to Make post, and Link to Amazon Reader for this book (you have to search for "tinker," then click on page 17. There doesn't seem to be a way to link to a specific page).

Reader comment: Richard George says,

This could be a feature of OCR software at Amazon - in order to make the text searchable and keep the original fonts some systems identify each word, storing the original glyphs to display on screen with the machine recognised text put an index - perhaps the background colour was wrong on that document?

Here's an update to Cory's earlier post about the Real ID Act vote -- snip from News.com item by Declan McCullagh:

The U.S. Senate took a preliminary step on Wednesday toward reining in the controversial Real ID Act, which is scheduled to become America's first federal identification card in a few years.

During Wednesday's floor debate over a massive immigration bill, Real ID foes managed to preserve an amendment to prohibit the forthcoming identification card from being used for mandatory employment verification, signaling that the political winds have shifted from when the law was overwhelmingly enacted two years ago.

The anti-Real ID amendment is backed by two Montana Democrats, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, who say the digital ID cards represent an unreasonable government intrusion into Americans' private lives. In April, Montana became one of the states that has voted to reject Real ID.

"This was a real victory for Montana and the American people," Tester said, after the Senate vote to kill their amendment failed to muster a majority. The unsuccessful vote to table it was 45-52.

Link (Thanks, Rick Forno!)

Previously:

One day left to fight the US national ID card - ACT NOW!

Reader comment: Jennifer Emick says,

Didn't know if you guys had caught that the NH governor banned real ID yesterday? That brings it to five states actively protesting. Link.

Shaun Kelly says,

Even better than Jen says – the total number of states opting out is not five, but seven! From Realnightmare.org:

June 13, 2007 -- Today Gov. Mark Sanford signed a bill that states simply, "The State shall not participate in the implementation of the federal REAL ID Act." South Carolina becomes the sixth state to pass a statutory ban on Real ID implementation, following Montana, Washington, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Maine.

(and now New Hampshire!)

Sam Garfield says,

The newspapers aren't doing their research. Many more states have banned Real ID by legislation, resolution, or at least unofficial stance. Utah, for example, has opposed the Real ID act through a resolution passed earlier this year. The language of the resolution is actually a really entertaining read (as far as resolutions go) and pretty much covers all the bases on Real ID-suckage. It really makes you proud to be an American.

The Wikipedia page sheds further light on the status of many states. When I made the count a few weeks ago, the number of states was in the twenties. They're not necessarily opposed because of moral reasons or anything like that - it's usually just a case of the Government asking states to implement a really (really) expensive program without giving them funding for it.

If you are already familiar with the videos from Hillary Clinton's campaign asking supporters to pick a campaign theme song (Video Link), then ridiculing them for submitting mostly shitty songs (Video Link), you will find this new video hilarious (Video Link).

It was created by the Ask a Ninja guys, with Candace Brown. Secret appreciation tip: does that dramatic reveal in the beginning remind you of someone? (Thanks, Kent Nichols!)

Seriously, what is the deal with the whole "pick my song" thing lately? Everyone's on this. It's like walking into one of those restaurants where you cook your own food at the table. I want restaurants that cook my food for me, and I want presidents and news anchors who pick their own damn songs.

Stef sez, "My friend Pouneh and the Flaming Lotus Girls, an all-girl fire art collective, created the Serpent Mother for last year's Burning Man festival - she's a 168ft, 10 ton, steel and fire, kinectic sculpture. More than that, the 41 flamethrowers and the hydraulics at each show are all controlled by the audience, making a truly participatory sculpture. This year, the girls are planning to take the sculpture to the Robodock festival in Amsterdam on 18th September, and they're fundraising to make it possible. Donations welcome!" Link, Flickr set (Thanks, Stef!)

The Beastie Boys have a Flickr feed where they post pics from the road as they tour with their new album, The Mix-Up, a funky all-instumental disc. Link (Thanks, Jamais!)

Robert Kaye is founder of the MusicBrainz project, a free and open database of music metadata that uses "audio fingerprints" to figure out what song you're listening to, then add metadata like artist, title, album, related artist, reviews, etc.

He says, "Setting aside BBC's iPlayer DRM shenanigans for a second, I'm pleased to announce something that the BBC is doing right! The BBC has just licensed the MusicBrainz live data feed and has fortified its music pages with MusicBrainz provided information. What is even more significant is that the /music teams at the BBC will be participating in editing/adding to the MusicBrainz data. This gives MusicBrainz access to the BBC's deep music knowledge that many others around the world simply can't match. For more information, check out the press release and this more detailed MusicBrainz blog post."

I'm proud to serve on the board of directors for the charitable non-profit that oversees MusicBrainz, the MetaBrainz Foundation.

Link (Thanks, Rob!)

Update: The BBC's Tom Scott sez, "Bit more information on the work we've done with Rob on integrating MusicBrainz into the the BBC music site. I'm proud of this (so sorry for the self promotion) but in addition to the musicbrainz integration we've also released the related album reviews under CC and microformatted. Plus some related projects."