Love these "otaku" fuel-tank decals from Comiket, the world's largest comics convention, held recently in Tokyo. Link (via Growabrain)

Award-winning sf writer Karl Schroeder has just released his debut novel, Ventus under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs license, meaning that you can download it, share it and copy it as much as you like. Karl's one of my favorite writers in the field, and has been a pal of mine since I was a teenager -- he's always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else (he was the first person to use the word "fractal" in conversation with me). It's an indication of just how far ahead he is that this seven-year-old book still feels like it's on the cutting edge, with its object-oriented sapient planet, bizarre copyright wars, and assorted grace-notes. Link

See also:
Karl Schroeder's Ventus gets raves
Sun of Suns: novel of sky-pirates, awesome worldbuilding
Karl Schroeder: Colonize the Earth
Karl Schroeder, brilliant sf worldbuilder, interviewed
Karl Schroeder interviewed by John Scalzi
Karl Schroeder: Show me your Virga RPG maps!
Karl Schroeder's Permanence wins the Aurora Award!

Carl Malamud sez, "In an act of unintended irony, the U.S. Copyright Office sells the database of copyrights for $86,625. The Library of Congress even asserts that the database is copyrighted 'outside the United States', which would of course make it hard for somebody to put the database on an anonymous FTP server for anybody to get. And, why would we restrict access to a database that was specifically called out in the U.S. Constitution?

"In a letter to Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyright, librarians from universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Pennsylvania, and the Internet Archive all ask the Copyright Office to free this data."

The copyright catalog of monographs, documents, and serials is not a product, it is fuel that makes the copyright system work. Anybody should be able to download the entire database to their desktop, write a better search application, or use this public domain information to research copyright questions.

A price tag of $86,625 places this database beyond the reach of university libraries, small businesses that wish to provide a better copyright search service, and academics or citizens wishing to analyze the copyright registration process. Additionally, setting copyright restrictions on the copyright database, a "work of the United States Government," runs directly counter to the well-established principle that such works shall be in the public domain.

Link (Thanks, Carl!)

Al sez, "The Mozilla Foundation, which is the parent entity to the Mozilla Corporation, the maker of Firefox, is forming a new corporation to 'improve e-mail and internet communication', according to Mitchell Baker."

The goals for the new company are:

* Take care of Thunderbird users
* Move Thunderbird forward to provide better, deeper email solutions
* Create a better user experience for a range of Internet communications -- how does / should email work with IM, RSS, VoIP, SMS, site-specific email, etc?
* Spark the types of community involvement and innovation that we've seen around web "browsing" and Firefox.

Link

James sez, "Italian workers with IBM are protesting a $1,377 paycut, and they're organizing a September 25th protest in Second Life, where IBM has a large corporate campus and marketing site. (The company's UK division has been using SL as a '3D web' development platform for over a year.) Cory wrote about a virtual world union strike in his great Anda's Game, but that involved a 'gold harvesting' sweatshop in the developing world. As it turns out, the first virtual world union protest targets one of the biggest tech companies on the planet." Link

Joel on Boing Boing Gadgets spotted this kick-ass coffee-table with integrated hanging magazine folders. I know I blogged a bookcase version of this table at some point, but I can't find it. Link, Discuss on Boing Boing Gadgets

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is hosting another of its annual Web 2.0 "compliance" roundtables, a cheap one-day boot-camp for Web 2.0 startups looking to make sure that they end up on the right side of any lawsuits.

Does your interactive company have to contend with the maze of laws dealing with user privacy and publishing user content? Want to do the right thing by the online community that gives your business value, and still fulfill your legal obligations? Let us help. Our Mountain View Bootcamp will let front-line staff meet and question lawyers from the EFF and the top tech attorneys about the laws governing internet content, from the DMCA to ECPA to the CDA.

You can find out more information at our Bootcamp Page, or email to reserve your place. We have a sliding scale of $100-200 per person: space is limited, so sign up soon!

Link (via Oblomovka)

Leuke's clever little rubber lemon-squeezers look dead clever -- they keep lemons from squirting you in the eye, give you good leverage, and filter out seeds. Link (via Popgadget)

Marybeth Peters, the US Register of Copyrights, has come out in favor of the controversial 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, saying "it did what it was supposed to do." The DMCA makes it possible to sue companies that make music, video and ebook players that play back DRM file-formats without permission, giving Apple the right to sue Real for making its own music player to run on the iPod. This aspect of the DMCA is a form of "private law," allowing companies to attach any conditions they want to their offerings, and criminalizing competition that gives you a better deal.

The DMCA also makes it possible to censor the Internet by sending "takedown notices" to web-hosting companies alleging that some of their content infringes copyright. This system has been widely abused -- Diebold used it in an attempt to silence critics who'd published a whistleblower memo that showed that the company had supplied faulty voting machines in US elections; the Church of Scientology uses it to silence their critics; serial troll Michael Crook used it against websites that criticized him, and the Science Fiction Writers of America recently sent a notice that resulted in the removal of dozens of non-infringing works and works by authors whose copyright they don't represent, including my own novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and a list of good sf books for junior high students. Andrew Burt, the Science Fiction Writers of America VP who sent out the list, has since characterized it as containing only three errors because only three people complained -- but most people who receive DMCA takedown orders assume that they must be infringers and do not complain.

The DMCA has also been vital to the music industry lawsuits against 20,000 US music fans, and resulted in the US threatening and jailing researchers and scholars who wrote about information security.

Despite all this, there is no evidence that the DMCA has curbed Internet infringement -- indeed, all indications are that unauthorized music and movie downloading are on the increase and show no signs of slowing. Furthermore, the DMCA lawsuits against technology companies like MP3.com and Napster, and against tens of thousands of American music-fans, have not generated one cent of income for actual musicians, as all the windfalls generated by these suits go to line the pockets of the record labels (who are nevertheless in freefall and likely to crater within the next five to ten years).

So what, exactly, was the DMCA supposed to do? Give the entertainment companies enough rope to hang themselves? Terrorize American college students? Scare the American security industry offshore?

Of course, Peters (who doesn't own a computer!) is no copyright apologist -- in May, 2005, she spoke out against the "Betamax" principle, a bedrock of American copyright law that allows technologies to be legally manufactured if they have a legal use. She also said that copyright infringement funds terrorism, and that the US should clobber foreign countries that sought to have local copyright policies that promoted cultural diversity and development (to be fair, I did once get her to admit that copyright term extension was a bad idea.

"I'm a supporter; I think it did what it was supposed to do," Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters said of the 1998 law at an appearance at the Future of Music Policy Summit here. "No law is ever perfect, but I remain a supporter."

Link

Master archivist Rick Prelinger sez, "As has been rumored, the NY Times will shortly stop charging for its "Times Select" columns, which had been locked behind a pay firewall.

"But the Times has also upheld the principle of public access to the public domain, and is opening its archives from 1851-1922, all of which are in the public domain. Archives 1987-present, though copyrighted, will also be freely accessible.

"This is a surprising and welcome development, and it's smart -- there's nothing like free content to draw eyeballs by the millions.

"Take the time to look at a late 19th-early 20th century issue of the paper -- every day is filled with dozens of little stories, each a potential plot for a movie, novel, or game."

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

"What wasn't anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others," Ms. Schiller said.

The Times's site has about 13 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, far more than any other newspaper site. Ms. Schiller would not say how much increased Web traffic the paper expects by eliminating the charges, or how much additional ad revenue the move was expected to generate.

Link (Thanks, Rick!)

I've always loved the intensity of this scene from Don't Look Back where Bob Dylan tears into journalist Horace Judson who was interviewing the singer for Time magazine.
Link to YouTube

Previously on BB:
• Bob Dylan warns of Cylon invasion Link
• Dr Seuss/Bob Dylan mashup: Dylan Hears a Who Link
• Talk Like Bob Dylan day is May 24 Link
• Cate Blanchett stars as Bob Dylan in upcoming movie Link

Susan says: "While at the Austin City Limits music festival this past weekend, I came across a rather terrifying version of Spongebob. Even his frosted gum ball eyes are terrifying, reminiscent of a crawfish. Not two things I like to think of together, crawfish and popsicles! I was hoping you could find some joy in the disturbing frosty treat."

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Popsicle parody ad
• Turtle popsicle reflects pride in workmanship
• Bugs Bunny popsicle
• Tweety Bird popsicle doesn't look like Tweety Bird
• Ice cream patent wars in the 1930s
• Expertly produced Korean red bean ice cream fish
• Ice cream treat resembles heinous murderer
• An exquisite popsicle that puts all other ice cream bars to shame

Foozymandias says:

I couldnt get to my camera in time to record his entrance, but this guy basically comes running in with 4 or 5 cops in tow and says he has been running around trying to get in to ask a question and the cops are going to arrest him for it. They almost do it then but Sen. Kerry says he will answer it. He then answers a previous question someone else asked (I cut that part out because it isnt important to this video) then the guy asks his questions and when he is done all hell breaks lose.

To the cop haters: I have no doubt the cops were going exactly by the book, the problem isnt them, its the book! they were doing their job and looked just as confused as this kid (This isn't something that they deal with often).

As the kid writhes on the ground screaming for mercy, Kerry drones on in his school-principal-on-thorazine style. Link

Up for auction on eBay is an original copy of the charter and by-laws for Timothy Leary's League of Spiritual Discovery, founded in Millbrook, New York in 1966. With four days left in the auction, the current bid is $250. From the auction listing:

Here, Leary and his cohort outline the structure of a new religious association that identifies LSD, peyote and psilocybin as The Sacraments used to commune with, "evolutionary wisdoms preserved in cellular and molecular structures", and to facilitate the ritual, "to go out of the mind and to come to the senses". Five - 8 1/2" X 11" pages total, with the first four pages stapled top-left, page 5 having come loose about 20 years ago....

I've had this piece since the very early 70's when I bought it from a friend who had just purchased a number of things, here in Berkeley, from Timothy Leary's wife at the time, Rosemary Woodruff, who was raising money for Leary's legal defense fund and support as a fugitive.

Link

As work continues on a new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the bridge was closed over Labor Day weekend to replace a football field-sized section of the bridge's upper deck. The new 6,500 ton, rebar-and-concrete section, built over several months, was literally rolled into place with just a three inch gap on either side. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission created an amazing time-lapse video of the operation.
Link to video, Link to MTC's San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Update page (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Previously on BB:
• Inside the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Link
• Photos from the top of Bay Bridge Link

The recently-released ad campaign (left half of image) for Tom Ford's new fragrance for men is anything but ambiguous. But what's funniest about this is an oddly similar internet site (at right) hawking "Vulva" perfume with identical product placement.

The name, the ad copy (a "beguiling vaginal scent"), and the url, (smellmeand.com) all scream "hoax." Now that I've seen the Ford ad, though, sheesh, I'm not so sure.

Link to Adrants' blurb about the Ford campaign, and here's the other vajayjay ad (NSFW, contains nudity and stuff).

Bonus: Don't miss the super cheesy video on that "Vulva" site, and take a peek at the html keywords in the header if you want to learn a ton of dirty words in Italian, German, and other languages I can't recognize. I don't know what the hell "bacak arasi," "koku," "insankokusu," or "yarak" mean, but I have a feeling they'd make the pope blush. (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

Update: A number of BB readers wrote in to school us on these foreign terms tucked away in the headers on the "Vulva" website. Erin Yazgan says,

"Bacak arasi," "koku," "insankokusu," and "yarak" are all Turkish words/phrases, meaning "inner leg," "smell," "human smell," and "cock (or any other derogatory term for penis)".

Carlos Amejo, 33, of Caracas, Venezuela, was reportedly declared dead after a car wreck but woke up during an autopsy. (A Reuters report, summarizing an article from the Spanish-language El Universal, doesn't state why an autopsy had been ordered.) Amejo allegedly became alert when examiners started to stitch up an incision on his face. From Reuters:

"I woke up because the pain was unbearable," Camejo said...

His grieving wife turned up at the morgue to identify her husband's body only to find him moved into a corridor -- and alive.

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

The evolution of Honeycomb Super Sugar Crisp cereal's Sugar Bear, from kissable little mascot to insufferable rat-pack prick. Link (Via Journalista)

In the early 1900s, municipal worker Eugene de Salignac took a slew of incredible photos of Manhattan as the city was reborn as a modern metropolis. Yet de Salignac's name (although not his photos) had been forgotten by history until New York City Municipal Archives senior photographer Michael Lorenzini put on a detective's hat to identify the mystery man behind the images. Now, an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York and a book, New York Rises: Photographs by Eugene de Salignac, is celebrating these marvelous photos of urban construction and infrastructure. Seen here, De Salignac's 1914 photo of Brooklyn Bridge painters.

From Smithsonian:

It just kind of hit me: this is one guy; this is a great photographer," Lorenzini says. But who was he?

It took many months and uncounted hours of trolling through archives storerooms, the Social Security index, Census reports and city records on births, deaths and employment to find the answer: the photographer was Eugene de Salignac, a municipal worker who took 20,000 photographs of modern Manhattan in the making. "It felt like a real discovery," Lorenzini says...

De Salignac's time as a city worker coincided with New York's transformation from a horse-and-buggy town into a modern-day metropolis, and his photographs of towering bridges, soaring buildings, trains, buses and boats chart the progress. "In this remarkable repository of his work, we really see the city becoming itself," says Thomas Mellins, curator of special exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York. "During this period, New York became a paradigm for 20th-century urbanism, and that has to do with monumentality, transportation systems, working out glitches, skyscrapers, with technology—all of the things that emerge in these photos."

Link to Smithsonian article, Link to buy New York Rises: Photographs by Eugene de Salignac

One of the more interesting items at the Gareth Pugh runway show during London fashion week. Link. Those red-eyed rats would go great with a $52,000 patchwork LV bag! (thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Update: Here's video.

This fellow attempted to board a plane with an IED ("improvised electronic device") and was turned away by the TSA.

Yesterday I flew out of Rapid City, SD as part of some work I'm doing. I was in the security line when I heard my name paged. This crack security staff was digging through my bag. They were concerned because I brought a microcontroller programmer. Actually, it wasn't just the programmer, it was the 1 ohm resistor I had spliced in series with the power lead to measure current, and the 10 second RC filter I had placed across that to give my DMM a better chance of reading the average current.

"Sir, this is an improvised electronic device. You will never be allowed to fly with this."

I responded to many questions with information about my occupation, circuit theory up to and including Ohm's law, and a discussion of the market for bicycle power meters. But they still would not let me fly with the programmer. I had to leave it behind.

I was finally able to fly out ten hours later, with a brand-new-in-the-box MSP430 programmer. Apparently, it's not "improvised" if it comes in a printed box.

Link (Via Makezine)

Philo Northrup, Harrod Blank, and their co-conspirators bring their eleventh annual ArtCar Fest to the Bay Area starting September 27 with a caravan from the Amoeba Records in San Francisco to the shop's Berkeley location. Festivities continue through the weekend with visits to schools, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History and the "How Berkeley Can You Be? Festival and Parade" on Sunday. Dozens of tricked-out rides will be on hand, including Bob Castaneda and Joy Davis's Radio Flyer (image right) and Richard Carter and John Schroeter's Sashimi Tabernacle Choir (image left), featuring 250 hacked "Billy Bass" singing fish and lobsters. Link

And for those who are in the Austin area, Northrup and Blank are showcasing a selection of artcars at the upcoming DIY extravaganza Maker Faire Austin, taking place at the Travis Country Fairgrounds on October 20-21. Link

essay by Jasmina Tešanović
photos by Bruce Sterling
Korea: South, not North

When I checked in for my flight to Seoul at the Belgrade aerodrome, the desk clerk was bewildered. She had heard of Korea, she had even heard of Seoul. But: oh my god, she exclaimed, I do mix them up so, the north and south.

When I finally landed in Korea -- no visa required -- they had never heard of Serbia. I had to trigger that magic word "Yugoslavia," so that the Korean computer blinked in nostalgic approval and allowed me into the country.

The wild demilitarized zone between the two Koreas is a major tourist attraction: so I was told. Not for me it isn't, I said: I've seen too many of those borders, from Berlin, to Serbia, to the rest of the world.

Nate Tyler is founder of Lights Out San Francisco, and here, he explains what's behind the project:

Our goal is to get everyone in the city to turn off their lights from 8-9 PM on Saturday October 20th, to save energy. We started just a few months ago and the momentum behind this movement is growing beyond our expectations.

Today we announced the Golden Gate Bridge will turn lights off on the main towers, Alcatraz Island, City Hall and a bunch of local businesses are also turning off (non-essential) lights that night. And, we plan to hand out more than 110 thousand free compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) to help save energy and build awareness for the event. It's amazing how the small things we do can make a huge difference. If everyone installs one CFL and turns lights out for one hour we think we'll save more than 15 percent of an average Saturday night energy usage. Not to mention the ongoing energy savings for each efficient bulb that gets installed.

We're not stopping in San Francisco. Stay tuned, we're launching a national event on March 29th in 15 cities across the nation.

Image: a poster for the SF event, designed by Nick Rubenstein. Link to larger size.

A man was jailed in New Hampshire for wanting to use tokens to pay a toll.

New Hampshire dropped its token system two years ago when it installed the Fast Pass system used in most Northeast states. The state gave drivers until Dec. 31, 2005, to use their 25-cent tokens.

In March of 2006, Jensen was driving to his cottage in Ossipee when he tried to pay the 50-cent fare at the Spaulding Turnpike's Rochester toll plaza using two tokens, as he had been doing for years.

The toll booth worker refused to take them and a state trooper at the plaza gave Jensen a citation.

‘‘(The trooper) said, ‘Just give him the 50 cents.’ I said, ‘I did, I gave him two tokens,’’’ Jensen recalled while sitting on the steps outside his Messina Woods Drive home.

The way he sees it, the tokens represented a contract between the state and himself, and he’s angry that the state has turned his pre-paid tokens into what he calls worthless souvenirs.

To rub salt in his wound, Jensen says New Hampshire lost his request for trial and, assuming he ignored the citation, issued a bench warrant for his arrest. When he was involved in a minor car accident this summer, he was arrested.

Link (Thanks, Ghurty!)

A man jogging through a San Antonio, Texas suburb was attacked by an owl. It apparently flew into his head three times and badly scratched him up. From WOAI.com:

"I was walking right along here, and it hit me in the back of the head, and I thought I hit a tree limb," John (Patterson) said.

He looked around, and there was no tree limb.

Then, it hit John a second time. He said he thought it was a prank, or that something was after him.

Link (via Fortean Times)

Kenadie Jourdin-Bromley weighed 2 lbs, 8 ounces when she was born in February 2003. She was not expected to live more than a day, but she has survived.

She continued to defy doctors expectations and at the age of 8 months, Kenadie was finally diagnosed with primordial dwarfism, a genetic condition that is believed to affect only about 100 people in the world. She isn't expected to grow past about 30 inches or weigh more than 8 pounds.

Her special needs expenses are substantial. If you wish, you can help through a Paypal donation. Link (Via Neatorama)

Frankie says:

Vocaloid is a software developed by Yamaha that enables users to synthesize authentic-sounding singing by just typing in lyrics and melody.

In the last two weeks Vocaloid 2 Atsune Miku stormed the Japanese otaku and video gamers undeground and many users posted their own music mashups created with Vocaloid 2 on Nico Nico (Japanese equivalent of YouTube).

Nico Nico promotion made this software an unprecedented sales hit among Japanese application software sales (it's on top spot of Amazon Japan sales ranking too). It's really impressive how powerful this $100 software is!

Link

Iraq's Interior Ministry has banned Blackwater mercenary group. This is the organization "founded by ultra-right-wing Christian conservatives and hires Pinochet-era Chilean war-criminals, ex-law-enforcement types, and former military." (Aee Cory's post about Blackwater here.) According to Wikipedia, "at least 90% of its revenue comes from government contracts, two-thirds of which are no-bid contracts."

Iraq's Interior Ministry has revoked the license of Blackwater USA, an American security firm whose contractors are blamed for a Sunday gunbattle in Baghdad that left eight civilians dead. The U.S. State Department said it plans to investigate what it calls a "terrible incident."

In addition to the fatalities, 14 people were wounded, most of them civilians, an Iraqi official said.

Link (Thanks, Justin!)

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Blackwater: superbly researched indictment of America's hired killers
• Katrina: Authorities bar Red Cross from NOLA; Blackwater gets carte blanche

Yesterday, Point Pleasant, West Virginia hosted its annual Mothman Festival, a celebration recognizing a strange bird-like cryptid whose reported sightings in the 1960s were linked by some to a string of weird events and a tragic bridge collapse. Last time I was in New York City, I spotted this amazing Mothman vinyl toy in the display case at Kid Robot. Released last year, the limited edition Mothman was designed by David Horvath, co-creator of the wildly popular Ugly Doll toys. Link to Vinyl Pulse's Mothman toy review from 2006

And for a glimpse of this year's Mothman Festival, the Charleston Daily Mail has a small photo gallery of the festivities. Link

Previously on BB:
• Loren Coleman's Mothman Festival round-up Link
• Mothman Festival 2005 Link

Radar commissioned me to write them a science fiction story about "the day Google became evil." I wrote them a little short-short called "Scroogled," about the perfect axis of evil: the DHS and Google, working hand in hand. As part of the contract negotiation, I got Radar to agree to release the story under a remix-friendly Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, so you're free to make movies, slideshows, songs, art, or new texts from this one.

Greg landed at San Francisco International Airport at 8 p.m., but by the time he'd made it to the front of the customs line, it was after midnight. He'd emerged from first class, brown as a nut, unshaven, and loose-limbed after a month on the beach in Cabo (scuba diving three days a week, seducing French college girls the rest of the time). When he'd left the city a month before, he'd been a stoop-shouldered, potbellied wreck. Now he was a bronze god, drawing admiring glances from the stews at the front of the cabin.

Four hours later in the customs line, he'd slid from god back to man. His slight buzz had worn off, sweat ran down the crack of his ass, and his shoulders and neck were so tense his upper back felt like a tennis racket. The batteries on his iPod had long since died, leaving him with nothing to do except eavesdrop on the middle-age couple ahead of him.

"The marvels of modern technology," said the woman, shrugging at a nearby sign: Immigration--Powered by Google.

Link

Roaming Tomcat Rag Blues Gal Series Painting by Amy Crehore is now available as a limited edition (50), signed giclee print.

It's an 8 1/2" square image on 10"x10" on Hahnemuhle acid-free photorag 308 gsm paper produced on the finest printer using superior ultrachrome inks.

It's $90.00, which includes shipping. Link

Terry Zwigoff will rewrite and direct "The $40,000 Man" with Dan Clowes, with whom he collaborated on "Ghost World," according to an item in the Hollywood Reporter: Link. The tale centers on a famous American astronaut who is badly injured in a car wreck, and is then rebuilt by the government to be a "bionic man" -- but on a skimpy budget of $40,000, he's one cheap cyborg. (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

You can now follow Boing Boing headlines via Twitter if you are so inclined: Link .

Do keep in mind that there are generally around 20-40ish posts on any given day at BB, so that means 20-40ish tweets from us a day will show up in your "following" thread. Yes, we're update sluts.

Tech notes: I set this up in a jiff with Twitterfeed, an excellent and free service created and hosted by a fellow named Mario, who maintains a blog here.

(Special thanks to Evan Williams and Biz Stone from Twitter, and to Ivan Kanevski from Federated Media for turning me on to twitterfeed)