A UK e-petition:
Public Hanging for those who propose public hanging: "The proposed punishments for some crimes are so horrific that the proper punishment for proposing this punishment is the death penalty..."
(
Thanks, Alex)
— Cory
By Cory Doctorow at 5:30 pm Thursday, Feb 9
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Avi sez, "Shu Sugamata has been making origami spaceships since 1977 and has amassed quite a body of gorgeous work."
ORIGAMI SPACESHIPS
(Thanks, Avi!)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:55 pm Thursday, Feb 9
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Michael Geist sez,
Tens of thousands of Canadians have spoken out against proposed copyright reform in recent days that could combine the US DMCA with SOPA to create restrictive digital lock rules along with targeting of legitimate websites and website blocking. Canadians recognize that the bill will have an impact on the legitimate activities of millions, creating barriers to creators, students, journalists, researchers, and the visually impaired. While the government is right when it says there has been wide consultation, the question is whether it has taken the public comments into account and conducted a full analysis of the implications of its current proposal. There is reason to believe that it has not.
When asked about enforcement concerns, Industry Minister Christian Paradis said "enforcing these rights in a given instance, however, is a private legal matter on which the government cannot speculate." This post does some speculating for the Minister, demonstrating how the law will chill freedom of expression and scientific research, jeopardize fair use, and impede competition and innovation.
Canadian Government Has Consulted on Copyright but Won't Consider How Its Law Will Be Enforced
By Cory Doctorow at 2:59 pm Thursday, Feb 9
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The Pirate Bay is making good on its long-announced plan of moving from hosting a torrent-tracker to hosting "magnet links" that allow BitTorrent file-sharing without a centralized tracker. This will vastly reduce the amount of data that TPB needs to store and serve, so much so that the entire TPB index will only be 90MB -- a file that you could fit onto an original ZIP cartridge.
The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that one of the advantages of the transition to a “magnet site” is that it requires relatively little bandwidth to host a proxy site. This is needed, because The Pirate Bay is currently blocked in several countries, and more are bound to follow in the months to come.
Without torrents, the Pirate Bay also becomes extremely portable which makes it possible for people to download a personal backup. As we said before, such a copy would easily fit on a thumb drive. Pirate Bay user “allisfine” was intrigued by this idea and decided to find out how small a copy of the torrents site would be.
“I did a complete snapshot of ALL the Pirate Bay torrents, in case somebody wants to close it or something similarly crazy,” he told TorrentFreak.
Download a Copy of The Pirate Bay, It’s Only 90 MB
By Cory Doctorow at 2:48 pm Thursday, Feb 9
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Tiffiniy from Fight for the Future sez,
Together, we beat SOPA in a huge victory for internet freedom. But this Saturday, internet freedom protests are breaking out in over 200 cities across Europe. Why?
Because the companies behind SOPA are using international trade agreements as a backdoor to pass SOPA-style laws
SOPA's supporters are pushing two agreements: ACTA and TPP1. ACTA would criminalize users, encourage internet providers to spy on you, and make it easier for media companies to sue sites out of existence and jail their founders. Sound familiar? That's right, ACTA is from the same playbook as SOPA, but global. Plus it didn't even have to pass through Congress2.
TPP goes even farther than ACTA, and the process has been even more secretive and corrupt. Last weekend (we wish this was a joke) trade negotiators partied with MPAA (pro-SOPA) lobbyists before secret negotiations in a Hollywood hotel, while public interest groups were barred from meeting in the same building.3
Trade agreements are a gaping loophole, a secretive backdoor track that--even though it creates new laws--is miles removed from democracy. Trade negotiators are unelected and unaccountable, so these agreements have been very hard for internet rights groups to stop.
But now the tide is turning. Fueled by the movement to stop SOPA, anti-ACTA protests are breaking out across the EU, which hasn't ratified ACTA. The protests are having an impact: leaders in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia have backtracked on ACTA.4 Now a massive round of street protests in over 200 cities is planned for this Saturday February 11th.
We're planning an online protest this Saturday to support the protests in the streets. Why? Because together we can drive millions of emails to key decision makers--and start tipping the scales like we did on SOPA.
Can you take part? Click here to get the code to run on your site!
We just built an ACTA & TPP contact tool, and it's not just a petition. It's code for your site that figures out the visitor's country and lets them email all their Members of European Parliament--the politicians who will be voting on ACTA in June--or the trade negotiators behind TPP. This direct contact between voters and their officials, driven by websites of all sizes, was instrumental in the fight against SOPA.
Kill ACTA
By Cory Doctorow at 1:55 pm Thursday, Feb 9
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Over 100 NGOs have asked the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization to postpone a summit in South Africa on the grounds that notice of the meeting was not published, the agenda has been set without any transparency, and the speakers all favor a single, narrow view on copyright and patents.
In a letter to the WIPO director general Francis Gurry, more than 100 international NGOs expressed their concern over co-organising the summit in partnership with US, France and Japan which are known for advocating TRIPS plus agendas in developing countries in the interests of their own industries and priorities. For instance these countries are proponents of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a plurilateral treaty that is widely criticized for its secret negotiating process and the detrimental impact on public interest issues such as access to medicines, freedom of expression over the internet and access to knowledge.
To make matters worse the Summit is being sponsored by the private sector in particular the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP), Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Company etc., that clearly have a strong stake in a pro-IP protection and enforcement agenda. The involvement of the private sector also raises issues of conflict of interests.
Besides, the NGOs said, the summit lacks a development and public interest dimension. The summit concept paper suggests a programme that undermines the spirit of Development Agenda. It is premised on the notion that heightened IP protection and enforcement will deliver development and protect public interest. This distorted approach has no historical or empirical basis and has been clearly rejected by the Development Agenda process. Important development issues such as the different levels of development, the importance of flexibilities (e.g. LDC transition periods, exceptions and limitations e.g. parallel importation, compulsory licensing,) in meeting developmental objectives, examining and addressing the impact of IP on critical public interests issues such as access to affordable medicines, and access to knowledge, appear to be disregarded.
Over 100 international NGOs ask WIPO to postpone forthcoming IP Summit in South Africa
By Cory Doctorow at 1:07 pm Thursday, Feb 9
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Michael sez, "The Open 3DP lab at UW has been doing some amazing things with 3D printing. More amazingly, they have prioritized sharing what they are learning with everyone else in order to make 3D printing better. A change to UW's intellectual property policy has essentially forced them to stop sharing what they are up to with everyone else. That strikes me as shortsighted and a real shame. The folks who run the lab say that the best thing to do is to email Provost Ana Mari Cauce at provost@uw.edu and tell her to let the lab share again."
The UW lab is the source of some of the most amazing and relevant 3D printing research in the field today. This is an absolute travesty.
Since approximately, October 17, 2011, we’ve been a little bit more guarded about what is going on in our lab and perhaps a little less helpful or open to some of you. We’re sorry. Our University has decided, with no faculty involvement to change our consulting/engagement forms...
This “minor” change in our consulting form has produced a claim of total University ownership of any and all intellectual property (IP) associated activity paid or unpaid (in which one should or might have gotten paid). Thus, if we help you, or offer advice (free consulting), we put you at risk of losing any and all of your IP in the transaction.
Sorry we’re not so Open lately
(Thanks, Michael!)
By Cory Doctorow at 12:51 pm Thursday, Feb 9
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Writing in PC Pro, Stewart Mitchell describes a partnership between GPS vendor TomTom and Fair Pay insurance, an auto insurer, to offer discounts to people whose GPS devices report low incidences of sudden stops and unsafe turns. I rather like this idea, the idea that your device could offer testimony on your behalf, but a lot depends on how it is implemented.
On the one hand, TomTom could generate trustworthy readings by completely locking its device so that users can't inspect or modify their operations, which would open up the possibility that your device was recording and transmitting information about your location and movements without your knowledge or permission. On the other hand, TomTom could produce a stats-gathering app whose workings were publicly disclosed, but which used a TPM-style module to verify that it hadn't been modified for the purposes of gathering and signing information that you can pass on to the insurer.
This would give TomTom owners the choice of booting their device into a known, publicly verifiable state that respected their privacy, but also produced statistics that third parties could trust. It would also give TomTom owners the choice of booting into alternative environments that did different things.
"We've dispensed with generalisations and said to our customers, if you believe you're a good driver, we'll believe you and we'll even give you the benefit up front," said Nigel Lombard of Fair Pay Insurance.
“If you think of your insurance as your car's MPG - the better you drive, the longer your fuel will last. Good drivers get more for their money and in that sense they will pay ultimately less."
Drivers on the scheme will be given a TomTom PRO 3100 as part of the package, and the device will include Active Driver Feedback and LIVE Services to warn drivers when they were cornering too sharply or braking too hard.
The TomTom will also have a LINK tracking unit fitted in their vehicles, allowing driver behaviour and habits to be monitored.
TomTom tech to set driver insurance premiums
(via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:43 am Thursday, Feb 9
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mitmproxy, "an SSL-capable man-in-the-middle proxy," is a useful little free software utility that can sniff the traffic between your computer or mobile device and its servers and determine what data the apps you're running are leaking to the mothership.
mitmproxy is an SSL-capable man-in-the-middle HTTP proxy. It provides a console interface that allows traffic flows to be inspected and edited on the fly.
mitmdump is the command-line version of mitmproxy, with the same functionality but without the frills. Think tcpdump for HTTP.
* Intercept and modify HTTP traffic on the fly
* Save HTTP conversations for later replay and analysis
* Replay both HTTP clients and servers
* Make scripted changes to HTTP traffic using Python
* SSL interception certs generated on the fly
mitmproxy
(via O'Reilly Radar)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:00 am Thursday, Feb 9
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Social Media Week's "Future Hipsters" video imagines today's young technophilic changesurfers as old farts in 2062, wearing out-of-date fashion and telling rambling stories about being embarrassed by videos of themselves passing out at dubstep gigs. It's a nice illustration of the parenting advice Bruce Sterling once gave me: "No matter how outre and bohemian you are, when your child is fifteen, you will epitomize contemptible bourgeois normacly to her."
Future Hipsters
(Thanks, Eli!)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:00 am Thursday, Feb 9
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In the latest Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, William Gibson talks in depth about his terrific new essay collection, Distrust That Particular Flavor, and explains how he feels about doomsaying by elderly futurists:
“Futurists get to a certain age and, as one does, they suddenly recognize their own mortality,” Gibson says in the Wired premier of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And they often decide that what’s going on is that everything is just totally screwed and shabby now, whereas when they were younger everything was better. It’s an ancient, somewhat universal human attitude, and often they give it full voice.”
Why William Gibson Distrusts Aging Futurists’ Nostalgia, MP3 link
By Cory Doctorow at 9:00 am Thursday, Feb 9
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Here's a perfectly delightful cover of I Wanna Be Like You from the Disney film "The Jungle Book," performed by a group of young people crowded into a bathroom. Good acoustics and fine choreography!
JUNGLEBOOOK - I Wanna Be Like You (cover)
(Thanks, Bethany!)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:19 am Thursday, Feb 9
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Here's footage of the police in Henderson, NV beating the crap out of Adam Greene, a man immobilized diabetic shock whom the police have mistaken for a drunk driver. The police point guns at him, pull him from the car, throw him to the ground, pile on him, and one officer, Sgt. Brett Seekatz begins to kick him over and over again, while someone screams "do not resist, motherfucker!" Eventually, they realize that he's not drunk and not resisting and call an ambulance.
Greene has received a $158,500 settlement from Henderson city council; his wife got a further $99,000, and the state of Nevada paid $35,000 for civil rights violations.
Police spokesmen won't say whether any of the officers have been disciplined.
Officials wouldn’t specify how or if Seekatz was disciplined over the incident, saying the information is a personnel matter and will not be released. He remains a member of the Henderson Police Department.
However, the department issued a statement noting changes since the incident.
“Henderson Police Chief Jutta Chambers ordered a closer look at the training Henderson officers receive,” the statement read. “The training on use of force techniques was subsequently modified.”
Police Beat Man in Diabetic Shock – and Nevada City Pays for It
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
The
Boston Phoenix's Carly Carioli points out that on the same weekend that the
New York Times carried a column from Bill Keller decrying piracy as a war on creative people, the
Times's op-ed page
pirated an article to which the Phoenix holds the copyright. And of course, the
Times is the same corporation that claimed that aggregating its RSS-feed headlines in a mobile app was piracy, and shut down an app called
Pulse.
(
Thanks, Light Bulb!)
— Cory
By Cory Doctorow at 6:19 am Thursday, Feb 9
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The sixteenth collected volume in Bill Willingham's long-running Fables series is Fables Super Team, and Willingham uses the volume to demonstrate his absolutely catholic approach to mythmaking and storytelling. The Fables, faced with an impossible fight, decide to plumb new mythologies to find ways of overcoming the odds, and hit on the idea of creating an archetypal, X-Men style Super Team. They hold tryouts, locate their miniature person, their giant, their vulpine berserker, and all the other necessary personas for completing the Silver Age formula. This is a lovely bit of inside-out storytelling, a sly way of calling our attention to the ways in which the earlier comics creators filed the serial numbers off the Old Stories for the raw materials to make their spandex-clad heroes. But it's more than a conceit -- because this is Willingham, who never lets it rest at a mere conceit -- and Super Team is actually a suspenseful and sometimes scary story about hopeless bravery and impossible choices. The literal Deus Ex Machina is a rather nice touch, too.
I wouldn't try to read this until you've read the other fifteen volumes in the series. But if you haven't read those, you should.
Fables Super Team
By Cory Doctorow at 4:05 am Thursday, Feb 9
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David Weinberger sez, "Stephen Fry explains that when a frustrated traveler tweets something about wanting to bomb an airport where there have been delays, the traveler isn't really announcing that he is about to bomb the airport. Social media, Fry explains, need to be understood as conversations. And then Fry kicked into the fund for the frustrated traveler's legal fees."
Fry really lays into the English judiciary here, and with some justification. They are notoriously aloof from the world of mortal humans. I keep hearing tales of an English judge in the 1980s had to ask a defense lawyer what a t-shirt was, and whether it was something you only wore at tea time, though I can't locate a reference on teh googles, but the prominence of this story (myth?) in English folklore says something about the national perception of the bench.
Unfortunately, the BBC video isn't embeddable because, well, public service, right?
Stephen Fry says British judges don't understand Twitter
(Image: Stephen Fry @ BorderKitchen, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from raaphorst's photostream)
By Cory Doctorow at 4:12 pm Wednesday, Feb 8
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Magpie Killjoy sez, "SteamPunk Magazine, the oldest-known journal of steampunk fiction and culture, has returned after a two-year hiatus. This 110-page issue covers everything from the fine art of urban exploration to how to sew a lacy cuff. There are articles discussing the girl gangs of New York City in the 19th century as well as our own Steampunk Emma Goldman's take on drunken history. We interview crafters, cellists, and producers of smut. Opinion pieces about steampunk and occupy. A serious-minded piece about airship pirates. As always, the magazine is produced under a Creative Commons license and is freely downloadable in addition to being available for purchase in print. We've also anthologized the first seven long-out-of-print issues, which had been featured here on BoingBoing, into a single, 450-page anthology."
SteamPunk Magazine #8
(Thanks, Magpie!)
By Cory Doctorow at 2:26 pm Wednesday, Feb 8
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Max Lupo's Thingiverse archive contains all the parts necessary to allow three people to slowly type one phrase over and over again on a typewriter, by operating a complex machine called "the convenient typer."
This is an apparatus designed to allow three people to conveniently type out a specific phrase: it is as it is
Each person must time their actions specifically, and operate their portion of the device with care.
This device was made to be a performance at a local art-event. Its operation is (of course) far from convenient, but it does type out the most true thing I have ever known.
The Convenient Typer
By Cory Doctorow at 2:22 pm Wednesday, Feb 8
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Combine glowstick gunk and diamond glitter in a sealed jar and shake -- voila, fairies!
It's a fake. But this one isn't. Same idea: glowstick gunk in jar (no glitter).Thanks to commenter BeckyLikesOwls for the tip!
(via Super Punch)
By Cory Doctorow at 2:19 pm Wednesday, Feb 8
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Robbo sez, "James Lillis, a designer with Black Milk Clothing, has come up with a freaky-awesome set of muscle leggings which allow you to celebrate the human anatomy without getting all Gray's Anatomy and actually flaying yourself. I think they are remarkably delicious."
In a kind of Hellraiser/Slim Goodbody way.
Muscles Leggings
(Thanks, Robbo!)
By Cory Doctorow at 2:17 pm Wednesday, Feb 8
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Michael Geist sez, "Barry Sookman, lawyer and registered lobbyist for the Canadian Recording Industry Association (now Music Canada), the Motion Pictures Association - Canada, and Canadian Publishers Council, has an op-ed in the National Post claiming that concerns that proposed amendments to Bill C-11 could result in SOPA-style rules in Canada are the stuff of wild claims and hysteria.
"The short response is that Sookman's column - along with his clients - downplay the dramatic impact of their proposed amendments. Their proposed amendments to C-11 would radically alter the bill by constraining consumer provisions, heaping greater liability risk on Internet companies, and introducing website blocking and Internet termination to Canada. Several of these provisions are very similar in approach to SOPA in the U.S. and the comparison is both apt and accurate. Moreover, the column leaves the false impression that Bill C-11's digital lock rules are standard when they are widely opposed by numerous stakeholders that Sookman would not dare to call anti-copyright. There is much more to take issue with in the column and I've done so in paragraph-by-paragraph format in the post."
"Bill C-11 Is No SOPA": My Response
(Thanks, Michael!)
By Cory Doctorow at 12:17 pm Wednesday, Feb 8
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Furious Pete, a body-builder, shows how with just a few hours' preparation he can look absolutely ripped or paunchy and out of shape. He starts by doing a brief, intense exercise and cosmetic regime and produces photos that make him look like he's rippling with muscle and completely devoid of body-fat. Then he eats a few "bloating" foods and drinks, waits a few hours, and shows how the result is to make him look like he's several kilos overweight and badly out of shape. The point is to demonstrate that "before and after" miracle weight-loss photos can be trivially staged without any underlying changes to physical fitness.
Shocking Before and After Transformation in 5 Hours - EXPOSED!
(via MeFi)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:11 am Wednesday, Feb 8
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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor did a guest appearance on Sesame Street. She sits down for coffee with Maria, but their chat is interrupted by a series of storybook characters who ask her to adjudicate their grievances. The judge is wise and equitable, and favors arbitration over formal legal remedies. A good approach.
Sesame Street: Sonia Sotomayor: "The Justice Hears a Case."
(via MeFi)
By Cory Doctorow at 9:59 am Wednesday, Feb 8
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The NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin quotes Barry Ritholtz's digging into how Facebook's IPO documents define "active" users and finds that many of them may never visit the site. Facebook counts you as "active" if your only involvement with the service is setting it up to republish your Twitter feed, or if you click "Like" buttons but never log in to the actual service. This should matter to investors, since Facebook earns no advertising revenue from those users, though it may earn some other income by reselling the private details of their browsing habits as gleaned from its tracking cookies.
In other words, every time you press the “Like” button on NFL.com, for example, you’re an “active user” of Facebook. Perhaps you share a Twitter message on your Facebook account? That would make you an active Facebook user, too. Have you ever shared music on Spotify with a friend? You’re an active Facebook user. If you’ve logged into Huffington Post using your Facebook account and left a comment on the site — and your comment was automatically shared on Facebook — you, too, are an “active user” even though you’ve never actually spent any time on facebook.com.
“Think of what this means in terms of monetizing their ‘daily users,’ ” Barry Ritholtz, the chief executive and director for equity research for Fusion IQ, wrote on his blog. “If they click a ‘like’ button but do not go to Facebook that day, they cannot be marketed to, they do not see any advertising, they cannot be sold any goods or services. All they did was take advantage of FB’s extensive infrastructure to tell their FB friends (who may or may not see what they did) that they liked something online. Period.”
Those Millions on Facebook? Some May Not Actually Visit
(via Memex 1.1)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:47 am Wednesday, Feb 8
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation has selected some of the best submissions from the Copyright Office's review of whether it should continue to be legal in the USA to "jailbreak" your devices in order to make them more suited to their needs. In this post, we hear from a deaf man who jailbreaks his phone so that he can use it as an assistive device at work; a military worker in Kuwait who jailbreaks his phone so he can quickly access the flashlight function to scare off dangerous wildlife near the base; and a nurse whose jailbroken device allows her to "track my performance, treatments used on patients, and the effects of those treatments, much faster with customizations that are not available on a device that is not jailbroken."
A note for Canadians: Bill C-11, Canada's proposed copyright law, has no similar exemption-setting process. That means that if MP James Moore succeeds in passing his legislation, it would be illegal to modify your property in the ways described here.
Kevin McLeod is a deaf man who uses his Android phone — a Samsung Epic 4G — to assist him with communication, record-keeping, and time management. Like many deaf people, he uses video relay service (VRS) software on his phone to “work on a level playing field with hearing peers and have productive and meaningful careers.” He had these comments for the Copyright Office:
I need a phone that can run VRS software through the day without having to recharge every other hour. The stock phone I received can't do that. I had to upgrade to a more powerful battery. Then I installed an alternative version of the Android operating system called CleanGB that removes most of the carrier-installed software. This freed up memory and battery resources I need to stay connected.
We need the ability to modify our devices because manufacturers and carriers can't possibly anticipate all the needs of their customers. We need flexibility to make the most of the terrific tools they build for us. I love the power and connectivity my phone gives me. I love that I can customize it to meet my unique needs.
Letters to the Copyright Office: Why I Jailbreak
(Image: Jailbreaking the iPhone - 06, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from yugen's photostream)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:39 am Wednesday, Feb 8
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Here's DIYHacksandHowTos's great Instructables for making duct tape roses. The method is simple and produces a really beautiful (and romantically geeky) end-product.
Realistic Duct Tape Rose
(via Craft)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:00 am Wednesday, Feb 8
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The Guardian's Jon Henley reviews Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, a popular science/self-help book by Roy F Baumeister, "eminent American social psychology professor" and NYT science writer John Tierney. It sounds like a practical guide combined with a literature review on the lines of such excellent books as Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness.
Henley describes the book as a good mix of science, practical advice, and clear writing, which is pretty much right up my street, as is the subject-matter: understanding why it's hard to get your brain to do what you want to do. "Willpower" is something of a catch-all term, but in general, it's the source of all my pleasures and many of my sorrows: it's the secret to regular writing and good health, but it's also the source of a fixity of purpose that sometimes blocks out other considerations.
Like a muscle, it can get tired if you overuse it. Exercising willpower, but also making decisions and choices and taking initiatives, all seem to draw on the same well of energy, Baumeister has established. In experiments, he found that straight after accomplishing a task that required them to restrain their impulses (saying no to chocolate biscuits, suppressing their emotions while watching a three-tissue weepy), students were far more likely to underperform at other willpower-related jobs such as squeezing a handgrip or solving a difficult puzzle.
"The immune system also dips into the same pot, which is big, but finite," says Baumeister, "and, we are pretty sure, so does women's premenstrual syndrome. Having a cold tends to reduce your self-control, and PMS does the same. We get cranky and irritable, but it's not that we have nastier impulses – it's that our usual restraints have become weakened."
So best avoid trying to do too many things involving mental effort at the same time, or if you're ill. As with a muscle, though, you can train your willpower. Even small, day-to-day acts of willpower such as maintaining good posture, speaking in complete sentences or using a computer mouse with the other hand, can pay off by reinforcing longer-term self-control in completely unrelated activities, Baumeister has found. People previously told to sit or stand up straight whenever they remembered later performed much better in lab willpower tests.
The final way in which willpower resembles a mental "muscle" is that when its strength is depleted, it can be revived with glucose. Getting a decent night's sleep and eating well – good, slow-burning fuel – is important in the exercise of willpower, but in times of dire need a quick shot of sugar can, according to Baumeister's lab tests, make all the difference.
Why willpower matters – and how to get it
By Cory Doctorow at 6:13 am Wednesday, Feb 8
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Antinous sez, "RIP Bill Hinzman, the actor who played the first zombie in Night of the Living Dead." Mr Hinzman died of cancer at the age of 75.
Hinzman was working on the movie as an assistant cameraman when Romero spotted him and knew he'd found his zombie muse. "We'd like to tell the story that it was a hard audition session," said Russ Steiner, who co-produced the film and played Johnny. "But Bill was there and old enough and thin enough and he had an old suit." Hinzman (whose name is spelled "Heinzman" in the credits of Living Dead) remained in Romero's orbit for years, working in a variety of functions on There's Always Vanilla, Hungry Wives, and The Crazies, as well as the equally chilling 1974 TV sports documentary O. J. Simpson: Juice On The Loose.
He’d largely drifted out of the business by the time Romero's post-Living Dead career really began in earnest with Martin and Dawn Of The Dead, but by the late 1980s, his cult status was secure, and he found himself lured back to appear in a number of low-budget horror pictures where his presence served as an instant in-joke. (For example: In 2006’s Shadow: Dead Riot—starring Night Of The Living Dead remake lead—Hinzman’s character is billed as "Romero the Zombie".)
R.I.P. Bill Hinzman, Night Of The Living Dead's original zombie
By Cory Doctorow at 2:21 am Wednesday, Feb 8
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An undercover police officer in Sussex, England, shadowed a suspicious character through the streets a small market town for 20 minutes, following directions passed to him by a CCTV operator who guided him towards the suspect. After 20 minutes, the CCTV operator realized that the "suspicious character" was the police officer himself.
The operator directed the officer, who was on foot patrol, as he followed the "suspect" on camera last month, telling his colleague on the ground that he was "hot on his heels".
The officer spent around 20 minutes giving chase before a sergeant came into the CCTV control room, recognised the “suspect” and laughed hysterically at the mistake...
"The CCTV operator soon had the suspect on camera and everywhere he saw the male the keen PC was on his heels – radioing in to say he was in the same street...”
He added: "Every time the man darted in to another side alleyway, the PC was turning immediately into the same alleyway, but every time the CCTV operator asked what he could see there was no trace."
CCTV police officer 'chased himself' after being mistaken for burglar
(via Neatorama)
By Cory Doctorow at 9:55 pm Tuesday, Feb 7
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Sky News has issued guidance to its reporters on their Twitter use. Under the new policy, Sky reporters are prohibited from retweeting from rival journalists and the public (though they are allowed to retweet each other). They are also not allowed to tweet about subjects that aren't their beat. Finally, they're prohibited from "personal" tweets in their professional accounts. The leaked memo describes the rubric for this as "ensur[ing] that our journalism is joined up across platforms, there is sufficient editorial control of stories reported by Sky News journalists and that the news desks remain the central hub for information going out on all our stories."
Sky News has cultivated a reputation for digital innovation and has used Twitter to break news on events including the Arab Spring uprising and England riots. Journalists at the broadcaster expressed shock and dismay at the new guidelines, which they claim are a retrograde step.
...[The memo] added that "on a number of occasions" those guidelines have been flouted "resulting in us running different information on Twitter other Sky platforms or the news desks learning from Twitter details that should have been first passed on to them".
Sky News clamps down on Twitter use
(via Memex 1.1)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:21 pm Tuesday, Feb 7
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A long-lost brand, and singularly odd one. Like discovering Spicy Cajun Visine Hot Sauce lurking in the product's history.
listerine cigarettes.....
By Cory Doctorow at 12:06 pm Tuesday, Feb 7
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Sculptor Mark Jenkins's "City" series is comprised of lifelike mannequins placed in public spaces in odd postures, often in seeming distress or danger, usually with a broadly humorous undertone. They're pretty funny stuff. Shown here: "Barcelona Trashgirl."
City
(via kikirikipics)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:05 am Tuesday, Feb 7
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Typewriter Boneyard does a sweet line of reading lamps made from drilled-out old books, fitted with replica Edison bulbs.
Hardback Book Lamps
(via Neatorama)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:02 am Tuesday, Feb 7
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Here's a neatly categorized and tantalizing list of medieval urban professions, including the criminal trades.
silk-snatcher - one who steals bonnets
stewsman - probably a brothel keeper - "since the words stew and stewholder both mean a bawd, I'm guessing that a stewsman would be a brothel-keeper as well. Whether bawdry counts as a criminal activity varies at different times and places."
thimblerigger - a professional sharper who runs a thimblerig (a game in which a pea is ostensibly hidden under a thimble and players guess which thimble it is under)
eggler - an egg-merchant
fool
Knifeman - one skilled with a knife; specifically, a soldier trained to disembowel horses
What did people do: in a Medieval City?
(via Kottke)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:56 am Tuesday, Feb 7
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation is petitioning the US Copyright Office for a DMCA exemption legalizing "jailbreaking" -- modifying the devices you own so that they can run software of your choosing. The Copyright Office holds hearings every three years on DMCA exemptions and these need to be renewed at each hearing.
To highlight the need for a jailbreaking exemption, EFF has made this video showing how Sony shipped its PlayStation 3 with the promise that users could run GNU/Linux on it, a promise that was taken up by many purchasers, including the USAF, who used a room full of PS3s running Linux to make a clustered supercomputer. But Sony changed its mind and revoked the feature after the fact and began to actively pursue legal penalties against researchers who attempted to restore it.
However, in April 2010, Sony’s mandatory firmware update -- version 3.21 -- removed the ability to install "Other OS" -- meaning no more Linux on your PlayStation. To add legal muscle to its firmware, Sony sued several security researchers for publishing information about security holes that would allow users to run Linux on their machines again. Claiming that the research violated the DMCA, Sony asked the court to impound all "circumvention devices" -- which it defines to include not only the defendants' computers, but also all "instructions," i.e., their research and findings.
This means you can set your PlayStation on fire, but you can’t run Linux on hardware you own. To illustrate how ludicrous this is, we made a video illustrating what an owner can do with a PlayStation -- and what Sony contends they can’t.
PlayStation 3 "Other OS" Saga Shows: Jailbreaking Is Not a Crime
By Cory Doctorow at 7:51 am Tuesday, Feb 7
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Carlos Miller, an accredited photojournalist covering the Occupy Miami eviction, was arrested by Miami-Dade police, who deleted several videos from his camera before they returned it to him. Miller recovered some of the deleted files and has posted them to YouTube. They support his version of the events of that night, in which he was subject to arbitrary arrest. The deletion of a journalist's arrest-video seems a move calculated to obscure guilt on the part of the police.
So now the next step is taking my camera to a professional recovery service with a forensics specialists who will not only retrieve the entire deleted footage without interruptions, but would also determine the exact time the footage was deleted
That will determined that the footage was deleted while I was in custody and the camera was in their possession, leaving them no defense for blatantly violating my Constitutional rights.
I also plan on obtaining the footage recorded by the Miami police officer as well as the footage recorded by the television news cameraman.
And, of course, I plan on filing an internal affairs complaint against Perez as well as a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice for deleting my footage.
Here Is The Recovered Video Police Deleted Of My Arrest
(via Ars Technica)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:00 am Tuesday, Feb 7
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Rench sez, "The previously BoingBoinged bluegrass hip-hop band Gangstagrass shares an exclusive premiere of their live video for 'Gunslinging Rambler featuring R-SON' - showing that this has gone way beyond a mash-up. Witness rapper, dj, and bluegrass band rocking the stage together at one of their face-melting shows in Brooklyn. We are offering the first peek at this to BoingBoing as a world premiere!"
I'm a great fan of this stuff. Gangstagrass performs exactly the kind of bluegrass music I favor and exactly the kind of hip-hop I favor, and seems to have discovered the alchemical secret of mixing the two perfectly.
Gangstagrass: Gunslinging Rambler featuring R-SON live at Southpaw
(Thanks, Rench!)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:17 am Tuesday, Feb 7
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I am a huge fan of Matt Ruff's novels, so when friends in the know started to spontaneously tell me about how fantastic the advance manuscript they'd just read for his next novel,
The Mirage, was, I just assumed, yeah, it'd be more great Matt Ruff.
But this isn't just more Matt Ruff. This is Matt Ruff with the awesome turned up to 11. To 12. To 100.
The Mirage is an alternate history novel set in a world where Arabia, the United Arab States, are the world's historic superpower. It's Arabia that intervenes in WWII (outraged over Nazi incursions into Muslim North Africa), and after the war, Arabia partitions Germany and establishes a Jewish homeland, Israel, with Berlin as its capital ("Israelis" enjoy a special "right of return" entitling them to visas to visit Jerusalem, of course).
Arabia prospers, though it is not without its internal strife. A notorious crime-boss called Saddam Hussein earns a fortune through narcotics (AKA whiskey) smuggling, abetted by a tabloid newspaper publisher called Tariq Aziz; a hawkish senator called Osama bin Laden commands a secretive private intelligence service called Al Qaeda; and a clownish governor called Moammar Qaddafi is a sort of Sarah Palin figure, running a private fiefdom. On the other hand, Qadaffi is very good to Internet startups, like the group-edited encyclopedia called "The Library of Alexandria" (excerpts from this are sprinkled through the book, written in perfect Wikipediese).
But Arabia is a good place to live. A great place. Until a fateful day: November 9, 2001. That's the day that Christian extremists from the troubled theocracy America hijack four airliners and crash two of them into Baghdad's Twin Towers, triggering a War on Terror that results in widescale incursions on civil liberties, an invasion and interminable occupation of America, and a Gulf War in the Gulf of Texas as the independent republic is threatened by its looming American neighbor.
For Crusaders -- the Christian extremists who go on attacking Arabia -- 11/9 is a wake-up call. The insurgency spreads around the Christian world. As Crusaders are taken into custody by Arabian Homeland Security, they tell a strange story. They are all experiencing a shared dream. A dream of a different world. A topsy-turvy world. A world where a great power called America rules, where Arabia is a collection of squabbling dictatorships, where the atrocities of 11/9 happened on 9/11, and triggered a very different War on Terror. What's more, some of these Crusaders bear startlingly realistic artifacts from this strange world -- copies of an imaginary, long-defunct newspaper called The New York Times, military service records, Iraqi money bearing the likeness of the clownish mafioso Saddam Hussein.
It would be easy enough to laugh off as just another nutty conspiracy theory, except that the Crusaders are very sure of themselves. So sure, in fact, that they believe that this world, the real world, is actually a mirage ("The Mirage"), sent by the Christian God to punish them for their impiety. They must destroy this world to be returned to reality, the reality of America.
So goes this extraordinary novel, which transcends a gimmicky exercise in Arabifying America and vice-versa and becomes a top-rate war novel, a thoughtful and sly commentary on the war on terror, and a scathing critique of religious partisanship, all at once. This is no doubt partly due to Matt Ruff's extraordinary wife, researcher Lisa Gold, the best researcher I know (she was Neal Stephenson's researcher on The Baroque Cycle and other books). But it's also due to Ruff's sure and steady hand, able to steer a course through a narrow strait with mere parody on one side and tedious exercise on the other, finding the sweet spot right in the middle and coming through with a head of steam that's unstoppable.
This is one of those books that you read while walking down the street and long after your bedtime, a book you stop strangers to tell about.
The Mirage
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 am Tuesday, Feb 7
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Here's a handsome Blue Screen of Death Valentine's heart. Kathrn Cramer calls it, "A stick-on icon for relationships with a blown motherboard: how to say its over on Valentine's Day."
Heart Sticker
(Thanks, Kathryn!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:34 pm Monday, Feb 6
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Here's some handy, infringealicious clip art for the discriminating Anon who wants to make a statement without paying a royalty: a Guy Fawkes mask, suitable for urban art, dress-up, and silkscreening.
Guy Fawkes Mask clip art
(Thanks, @crisnoble!)
