Tom Conradof Pandora tweets, "Help save @pandora_radio: call 202-225-3121 NOW, ask for your rep, & ask them to support H.R. 7084. Critical vote Saturday AM., so call now!"
After a yearlong negotiation, Pandora, artists and record companies are finally optimistic about reaching an agreement on royalties that would save Pandora and Internet radio. But just as we've gotten close, large traditional broadcast radio companies have launched a covert lobbying campaign to sabotage our progress.
Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they're repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you've changed email addresses or if you're not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.
But don't worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM companies -- unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and industry, sure to be here for a thousand years. So go on buying your Audible books, your iTunes DRM songs, your Zune media, your EA games... None of these companies will ever disappear, nor will the third-party DRM suppliers they use. They are as solid and permanent as Commodore, Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman Empire.
Boy, the entertainment industry sure makes a good case for ripping them off, huh? Buy your media and risk having it confiscated by a DRM-server shutdown. Take it for free and keep it forever.
From: Walmart Music Team
Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Subject: Important Information About Your Walmart.com Digital Music Purchases
To: xxxxxx@gmail.com
Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases
We hope you are enjoying the increased music quality/bitrate and the improved usability of Walmart's MP3 music downloads. We began offering MP3s in August 2007 and have offered only DRM (digital rights management) -free MP3s since February 2008. As the final stage of our transition to a full DRM-free MP3 download store, Walmart will be shutting down our digital rights management system that supports protected songs and albums purchased from our site.
If you have purchased protected WMA music files from our site prior to Feb 2008, we strongly recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer. This change does not impact songs or albums purchased after Feb 2008, as those are DRM-free.
Beginning October 9, we will no longer be able to assist with digital rights management issues for protected WMA files purchased from Walmart.com. If you do not back up your files before this date, you will no longer be able to transfer your songs to other computers or access your songs after changing or reinstalling your operating system or in the event of a system crash. Your music and video collections will still play on the originally authorized computer.
Thank you for using Walmart.com for music downloads. We are working hard to make our store better than ever and easier to use.
This small-bathroom sink hides in a drawer (presumably it uses a length of flexi-hose for its drains connection). It's a smart space-saving design and it has the additional advantage of making it easy to pour water directly on the floor for cleanup (provided that you've got a floor-drain, of course) -- something common in many countries.
Make a Small Bath Look Larger
(via Cribcandy)
DeviantArt's Spippo creates elaborate costumes for My Little Ponies based on major media franchises -- Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, Alien, and Star Wars, as well as many others!
~Spippo
(via Neatorama)
My friend Joe Hutsko contacted with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance. I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company's undertaking to create an iPhone-like device.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Yves Rossy jumped out of a plane over Calais, France today and flew his jet-propelled wing across the English Channel. After crossing the water, he released his parachute and floated safely to the ground. From the Associated Press:
Backed by a gentle breeze, Rossy crossed the Channel in 13 minutes, averaging 125 miles per hour. In a final flourish, he did a figure eight as he came over England, although the wind blew him away from his planned landing spot next to the lighthouse.
"It was perfect. Blue sky, sunny, no clouds, perfect conditions," the Swiss pilot said after touching down in an adjacent field. He said he wanted to show, "it is possible to fly, a little bit, like a bird."
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
My friends at Youth Radio have just produced another thought-provoking radio commentary in their fantastic "What's The New What" series. In this episode, Anthony Waters says that "gay fashion is the new straight fashion... in ghetto neighborhoods." From Anthony's commentary:
I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the white T look. I’m all about big shiny sunglasses, sparkling necklaces, tight legged jeans…and this cute shirt I spotted at one of my favorite stories: DD’s Discounts.
The straight boys who used to whisper about me on the bus haven’t discovered DD’s yet, but they are jacking my style. It all started when artists like Kanye West, Pherrell, and Cam’ron showed up on the TV screen, suited and booted in outfits I would have picked out in middle school. Now my uber-macho nephew, AR, is raiding my closet.
Copyright reform has not generated much attention during the current Canadian political campaign with every indication that the Conservatives will reintroduce the Canadian DMCA if re-elected. There are still several weeks left in the campaign, so there is still a chance to build on the recent emergence of a strong voice for fair copyright in Canada.
Following on the 2006 copyfight pledge, ask your MP or political party to take the 2008 copyright pledge:
Will you commit to a balanced approach to copyright reform that reflects the views of all Canadians by pledging:
1. To respect the rights of creators and consumers.
2. Not to support any copyright bill that undermines or weakens the Copyright Act’s users rights.
3. To fully consult with Canadians before introducing any copyright reform bill and to conduct inclusive, national hearings on any tabled bill.
There are at least three steps to help fight the reintroduction of a Canadian DMCA First, urge all political parties to sign on to the pledge. Second, raise the issue with your local candidates - attend a town hall meeting or debate, pose the question if a candidate knocks at your door, or send an email to all the candidates in your riding. Third, email your copyright question to question@electiondebate08.ca. There are still 18 days left in the campaign which provides plenty of time to ensure that fair copyright concerns are heard before election day.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Bonnie Erickson was the creator of such esteemed Muppets as Miss Piggy, Statler and Waldorf, and Zoot from the Electric Mayhem band. Erickson's work is featured in the traveling Smithsonian exhibition Jim Henson's Fantastic World, and Smithsonian magazine interviewed her for the new issue. From Smithsonian:
Let's say you get a contract to make a character. How does your creative process work?
Well let me take the Philly Phanatic as an example. The managers approached us to design a mascot who could encourage fans to bring their families to the games. So we had to design a character who was child-friendly, who was playful and a little irreverent but not too silly. We'd heard from the Phillies that their crowd had booed the Easter bunny, so it was a challenge to come up with something that was not going to talk down to their audience. We wanted a character who had a life and a story. A lot of our characters are still performing today. We created Youppi for the Montreal Expos, and when the team moved out of Montreal Youppi was left without a home. So he was taken in by the hockey team. In my mind I've always thought of these characters as having a life, so they're free agents in many ways. When they lose a team, they go out and try to find another job.
BBtv reader Brian Frank says, "I thought Boing Boing might enjoy this...see attached screenshots from Washington Mutual's website at various times over the past 24 hours... I call it, 'peek-a-boo! your bank is toast!' Top: before. Middle: after. Bottom: current."
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Researchers seeking natural "aphrodisiacs" as alternatives to Viagra think that the aptly-named horny goat weed may hold promise. According to University of Milan pharmacologist Mario Dell'Agil, a drug derived from the plant could potentially be as effective as Viagra without the same side effects as the little blue pill. From New Scientist:
Viagra's active compound, sildenafil, works by inhibiting an enzyme called phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5). Because PDE5 helps control blood flow to the penis, inhibiting PDE5 promotes male erection.
Dell'Agli and his colleagues tested the four plants in vitro to see how efficient they were at inhibiting PDE5. Just one – Epimedium brevicornum, also known as horny goat weed and Bishop's Hat – had an effect. This confirmed previous studies showing that icariin, a compound found inside the horny goat weed, is a PDE5 inhibitor.
In today's episode of Boing Boing tv, we float around in zero gravity. With me on this Zero-G weightless flight are Intel Chairman Craig Barrett; my friend Sean Bonner from metblogs; and a bunch of science teachers from grade schools and high schools throughout the United States who were on board to conduct microgravity experiments for the kids back home. As you watch, keep an eye out for the floating lego robot, a flying pig, and the barfing guy who is totally barfing for reals -- the rest of us did not, btw, I don't get sick in space.
What you see in this episode is what it feels like, guys, and it feels awesome.
Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with downloadable version of this video, and instructions on how to subscribe to the daily BBtv video podcast.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Police are investigating a German dentist for entering a patient's home and forcibly removing her bridge because he hadn't been paid for the work. Allegedly, the dentist, from the town of Neu-Ulm, was angry because the patient's insurance company hadn't come through with the £320 he was owed. From The Telegraph:
According to police, the dentist knocked on the door of the 35-year-old woman on Monday evening and without saying a word forced her into her living room and tied her hands...
"The dentist is being investigated for assault for the way he forced open her mouth, and theft for taking the bridges," said Christian Owsinski a police spokesman.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
I just watched this 2003 TED Talk video lecture by Wade Davis, the pioneering ethnobotanist and anthropologist who has lived with an amazing array of indigenous cultures around the world. Of course, Davis is best known for his studies of ritual use of psychedelics and also the zombification practices among Vodoun acolytes in Haiti. I've found Davis's work to be personally inspirational, provocative, and mind-expanding. This TED Talk, titled "Cultures At The Far Edge of the World" is no exception. In it, he tells an amazing story about an wonderfully resourceful Inuit elder. Davis retold the same story in a recent Discover magazine interview, but I highly recommend the TED video too because it features many his breathtaking photographs. From Discover:
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
The Pacific Ocean ate my iphone some weeks ago -- coincidentally, right around the time the sweet new 3G model came out. No, seriously. When I went to the Apple store to buy a new one, there were very long lines. It seems that either the ocean ate everyone's 1st-gen iPhone, or people were excited about the new model. The lines were made slower by the fact that you had to register the phone and take care of the AT&T contract stuff right there in the store. I am a big fan of the device, truly, but the lines were a real drag.
Good news, though -- this week Apple added a new feature to the retail website that allows you to start the setup process online then finish in the store. Expect shorter and quicker purchase lines, and even more people stumbling out of the stores like happy zombies as I did, gazing into the iPhone's glowing eye as they walk, playing Super Monkey Ball or looking for nearby hummus on Yelp. iPhone 3G: Apple.
Meanwhile, among the most interesting and intelligent stuff I've received this week are three new books by some guys who I'd immediately like to invite to join an imagined secret society with members like Joshua Glenn, Richard Nash, Emma Taylor, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness was labeled by Fortune magazine as "one of the smartest books of all time." But I wouldn't hold that against Taleb, who writes brilliantly on the way we attempt to impose logic or causality onto stuff that's coincidental or mere luck. It's more relevant and less unnecessarily provocative than Dawkins' God Delusion - and by avoiding religion (something I should have learned to do) manages to communicate more healing to its intended audience.
The Threat to Reason, by Dan Hind, is an entertaining and fast-paced book-length essay on the abuse of Enlightenment rhetoric and reasoning - by both ends of the political and social spectrum. Hind conducts an equally sharp deconstruction of the logic and language employed creationists/brights, right/left, globalists/environmentalists in an effort to liberate what worked about the Enlightenment from the way it has been worked over.
Elizabeth Royte's Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It is a balanced, nuanced, entertaining and vastly informative look at the crisis of water -- bottled and tap -- in the USA. Bottlemania asks the big questions about whether water ought to be privatized, takes a penetrating look at the fraught local politics that gives bottled water companies rights to extract a town's vital water and ship it elsewhere, and presents a compelling critique of the sustainability of letting the rich buy their way out of failures in public resources like water. She looks into the campaigns by water companies to "educate" restaurant servers about the fortunes in tips to be had by flattering their customers into buying bottled. The book also does a good job of discussing the amazing local water supplies that come out of the taps in many American cities, absolutely free.
At the same time, the book is not afraid to look at some of the serious problems facing municipal water supplies. The EPA have been negligent in setting and enforcing standards, little-understood bacterial films and hormones and pharmaceutical excretia present compelling health threats, as do arsenic and carcinogenic purification by-products. It's worse where cities don't own the land around their water-reservoirs, where agribusiness and other water users can add expensive- (or impossible-)to-remove toxins to the water.
Royte doesn't leave us with any easy answers, but she frames the debate we should be having about water, going into detail on the missing testing and enforcement regimes, the need to recycle more waste-water (water in New Orleans has already been filtered through 50% of the population in the USA!) and to internalize the environmental costs of private pumping aquifers.
Water wars have been with us for all of human history -- the word "rival" comes from a Latin word meaning "one who uses the same stream as another." But today's water wars have higher stakes than ever before: we're now fighting over a substantial fraction of all of Earth's freshwater. Bottlemania is a hell of a look into the future of that fight.
Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It
Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom, whose work we've featured many times on Boing Boing tv, reminds us that their annual "Arse Elektronika" conference is now under way. The name is a pun on the esteemed Ars Electronica festival; that one's venerable, this one's more venereal. Topics are sexually explicit in nature, but presented with internet-indigenous humor and wit. Arse Elektronika, "Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction," continues through Sunday in San Francisco. A very special congrats from BB to both Johannes and Evelyn, also of monochrom, who recently wed.
These men's khaki pants offer a safety feature for guys who bike. They're made by the same company, Cordarounds.com, that makes horizontal corduroy pants. Bike To Work Pants(thanks, Nathan Tyler)
I just got this email from John Langley, the guy who made the uber-reality show Cops. I see it as an acknowledgement of all of us who tend to read more into TV programs and their creators' intent than they might suggest on the surface.
Dear Mr. Rushkoff:
It was refreshing to recently read "Media Virus" and your take on "Cops," which I happen
to produce and for which I'm responsible as the guy who created it. I can't tell you how
tiresome it is to read traditional criticism and critiques of "Cops" as an expression of this
or that, usually far from the mark (or at least in terms of my intentions). As a kid of the '60s,
I was more likely to name the show "Pigs" than "Cops," so it was indeed rewarding to read that
you positioned the program more accurately in its existential realm of relativism. All I do is feebly
hack away at trying -- emphasis on trying -- to capture some version of "reality" that will
speak for itself, including the echolalia of the very media influence that filters it by the act of
recording it. (Viva Heisenberg!) Anyone with half a brain should recognize the social, political
and philosophic issues it sometimes reveals in the quotidian pursuit of law and order and the
meaning of street crime.
In any case, keep up the good work! And apologies for getting to you so late in the day. Your
book is no less valid for the delay.
Regards,
John Langley
Executive Producer - "Cops"
Not only does an email like that make my month, but restores my faith in the notion that absolutely mainstream programs might still be intended to have a rehabilitative or even noxious effect on the overculture. The fact that Langley made Cops in the spirit that Albert Maysles made Salesman means that we can cut through the clutter and expose mass audiences to virulent memes - even in the darkest of times.
There are three main relationships kids have to gaming, and they seem to correspond to three main relationships people have to culture.
A kid initially plays a game the way it was released. He (or she) gets as far as he can, and if he gets too stuck, his play is over. What then? He either practices, quits, or goes online to find the cheat codes.
Now he's playing beyond the frame of the original game. He's cheating. But since these codes were written by game designers and released, he's not really breaking anything but the rules of the inner game. He's simply choosing a new perspective from which to engage, beyond the original boundaries of play.
With infinite ammunition or impenetrable shields, he can make it through to the end of the game, which again means the end of play, or maybe an opportunity to go back and practice again as a player.
If he's really inspired by the game (or, conversely, incensed by it) he will go back online, find the modification tools (if the game company was smart enough to make this easy) and program his own version of the game. Now, instead of the game taking place in a dungeon, it can happen in a simulation of his high school, or instead of killing one another players can transform one another into angels.
Of course, in all likelihood he's not just creating the new level for himself to play. He finishes his version of the game and the posts it online, where he hopes other people will find it, play it, and love it.
For me, the development of a gamer from player to cheater to programmer mirrors our development as a society....
Liam sez, "DesignByHumans.com is a t-shirt design contest in the similar style of Threadless.com. They are in the midst of a $10k contest and this shirt won 3rd place. Not only is the design aesthetically stunning, it also is very poignant as it puts a 'face' to the idea of Big Brother."
PPP (perversion of paranoid populace)
(Thanks, Liam!)
Joe sez, "Neuros has a new technology to superimpose text from a dedicated chat room in real time on a TV set, allowing a sort of 'crowd narration' for events or shows. Neuros is inaugurating this technology with the upcoming presidential debate so that anyone can participate in real time fact checking, discussion etc along with the candidates. While anyone can participate in the discussion you'll need a Neuros OSD to see that discussion on your TV set superimposed over the debate."
Participate in the US Presidential Debate with Crowd Narration
(Thanks, Joe!)
Earlier this year, I married my British fiancee and switched my visa status from "Highly Skilled Migrant" to "Spouse." This wasn't optional: Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, had unilaterally (and on 24 hours' notice) changed the rules for Highly Skilled Migrants to require a university degree, sending hundreds of long-term, productive residents of the UK away (my immigration lawyers had a client who employed over 100 Britons, had fathered two British children, and was nonetheless forced to leave the country, leaving the 100 jobless). Smith took this decision over howls of protests from the House of Lords and Parliament, who repeatedly sued her to change the rule back, winning victory after victory, but Smith kept on appealing (at tax-payer expense) until the High Court finally ordered her to relent (too late for me, alas).
Now, it seems, I will become one of the first people in Britain to be forced to carry a mandatory biometric RFID card in a pilot programme being deployed first to foreign students and we spousal visa holders (government is looking to curtail spousal visas altogether, capping all visas at 20,000 per year, including spousal visas, denying Britons the right to bring their spouses into the country once the quota has been filled). The card will be eventually linked to all of the national databases -- credit, health, driving, spending. These are the same databases that the government has been repeatedly losing and haemmorhaging by the tens of million (literally).
My family fled the Soviet Union after the war. They were displaced people (my father was born in a refugee camp in Azerbaijan) who destroyed their papers to protect themselves from the draconian authorities who sought to limit their travel and migration. I used to think it was ironic that my family had gone from Europe to Canada and back to Europe again in a generation, but now I don't know how long the Doctorows will be staying in Europe -- or at least in the UK. The green and pleasant land has suspended habeas corpus, instituted street searches without particularlized suspicion, encourages its citizens to spy and snitch on each other, and now has issued mandatory universal papers that will track we dirty immigrants as we move around our adopted "home," as part of a xenophobic campaign to arouse fear and resentment against migrants.
Many of my British friends act as if I'm crazy when I say that we must defeat Labour in the next election. We're all good lefties, and a vote for the LibDems is considered tantamount to handing the country over to the Tories. But what could the Tories do that would trump what Labour has made of the country? The Labour Party has made a police state with a melting economy, a place where rampant xenophobia makes foreigners less and less welcome -- where we are made to hand over our biometrics and carry papers as we conduct our lawful business. The only mainstream party to speak out against this measure is the LibDems, and they will have my vote.
To my friends, I say this: your Labour Party has taken my biometrics and will force me to carry the papers my grandparents destroyed when they fled the Soviet Union. In living memory, my family has been chased from its home by governments whose policies and justification the Labour Party has aped. Your Labour Party has made me afraid in Britain, and has made me seriously reconsider my settlement here. I am the father of a British citizen and the husband of a British citizen. I pay my tax. I am a natural-born citizen of the Commonwealth. The Labour Party ought not to treat me -- nor any other migrant -- in a way that violates our fundamental liberties. The Labour Party is unmaking Britain, turning it into the surveillance society that Britain's foremost prophet of doom, George Orwell, warned against. Labour admits that we migrants are only the first step, and that every indignity that they visit upon us will be visited upon you, too. If you want to live and thrive in a free country, you must defend us too: we must all hang together, or we will surely hang separately.
"We all want to see our borders more secure, and human trafficking, organised immigration crime, illegal working and benefit fraud tackled. ID cards for foreign nationals, in locking people to one identity, will deliver in all these areas," she added.
The UK Border Agency will begin issuing the biometric cards to the two categories of foreign nationals who officials say are most at risk of abusing immigration rules - students and those on a marriage or civil partnership visa.
This small-bathroom sink hides in a drawer (presumably it uses a length of flexi-hose for its drains connection). It's a smart space-saving design and it has the additional advantage of making it easy to pour water directly on the floor for cleanup (provided that you've got a floor-drain, of course) -- something common in many countries.
My friend Joe Hutsko contacted with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance. I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company's undertaking to create an iPhone-like device.
I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the white T look. I’m all about big shiny sunglasses, sparkling necklaces, tight legged jeans…and this cute shirt I spotted at one of my favorite stories: DD’s Discounts.
Photographer Chris Van Wyk snapped this terrific photo of a Mary River Turtle rocking a mohawk. Or a bit of algae. I prefer to think it's the former.
Elizabeth Royte's 
