Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

Friday, June 23, 2006

Japanese video giant meteor collision

Here's a happy computer video of what might happen if a big meteor hits earth. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 04:30:55 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Writing for Wired, circa 1998, by Paul Di Filippo

I just stumbled across this amazing piece by Paul Di Filippo on the trials and tribulations of writing an article for Wired in 1998. It's scary and funny. And I owe Paul a long-overdue apology for dragging him into the ordeal in the first place. Sorry, Paul! Link to PDF file| Link to the Wired article

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:43:29 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Tiki Room is 43 today

In honor of the 43d anniversary of Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room -- my favorite animatronic show in the universe -- How has linked to a bunch of Tiki Room media files online, including the song from the Tokyo Disneyland Tiki Room, and photos and postcards of the Tiki Room. The Tiki Room features many wisecracking, singing birds, flowers and totem poles, who perform classical music, the Hawai'ian War Chant, and Let's All Sing Like the Birdies sing, while making toxic, grampa-grade jokes. Link (Thanks, How!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 01:10:19 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Spanish Copyleft Foundation to launch

Escribano sez, "In October, 2006 the 'Fundación Copyleft' will start its activities in Spain:"

The Copyleft Foundation is created in order to defend and stimulate artistic, cultural and scientific production under copyleft licenses.
We believe that copyleft licenses are those which allow creators a greater control over their arts, investigations and projects and a more reasonable economic compensation for their work, as well as allowing the final users a better access to and enjoyment of products under this type of non-restrictive licenses.
For that purpose the Copyleft Foundation will carry out specific projects aimed towards the development and awareness of activities under these copyleft permits in the areas of the arts, culture and science, coordinating and accelerating the synergies that come from individuals, private companies and civil services.
The Copyleft Foundation, which initiates its course this coming month of October year 2006, issues a formal invitation to participate to all those interested in copyleft and who form a part of the chain of assessment of the arts, culture an science as well as individuals and associative companies.

Link (Thanks, Escribano!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:17:01 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Jesus band-aids

Jesus band-aids -- for all your sacred boo-boos. Link (Thanks, Chad!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:14:51 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Wide-scale graft in China and creampuff anime chipsurfers

Bruce Sterling writes,

Jinging and Chacha are Chinese Internet cops. These fetching Sino-anime cartoons were recently placed on servers in Shenzhen so as to establish an atmosphere of deterrence among Chinese websurfers tempted to get up to mischief on the global Internet.
These two digitized chip-surfing cream-puffs may have a job of work on their hands -- not with China's online dissidents, but with its globally-minded bankers. It would seem that about 4,000 Chinese bankers have filled their pockets with fifty billion dollars of embezzled Chinese money and absconded overseas. Who wants to bet they booked those trips by Internet? (...)
The name 'ChaCha' probably isn't that funny when you're down at the Shenzhen station house with the rubber hoses.

Link to Bruce's post, and Link to IHT article, "Global hunt highlights scale of graft in China." BoingBoing's Mark Frauenfelder posted earlier about JingJing and Chacha, right here: Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:02:49 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Darwin's tortoise dead at 176

Charles Darwin's tortoise, Harriet, has died at the Australia Zoo near Brisbane. Darwin brought Harriet (then called Harry: Darwin was quite a naturalist, but an undistinguished tortoise-sexer as these things go) from the Galapagos Islands in 1835. I had the pleasure of meeting Harriet last spring. She was awesomely photogenic, and her keeper told us that she'd roamed free in the Brisbane botanical gardens, giving kids tortoise-back rides, until the botanists got tired of her eating the rare plants. At 176, she was thought to be the world's oldest living tortoise. Link (Thanks, WY!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:52:59 AM permalink | blogs' comments

HOWTO share a WiFi connection

I'm at the international Creative Commons iSummit in Rio this weekend, and Wikipedia France's Jean-Baptiste Soufron and I pooled our efforts to share the limited WiFi with the whole room this morning, using a retractable Ethernet cable and two laptops. Jean-Baptiste created a short video explaining the technique, and has already posted it. Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:52:54 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Nerdy t-shirt: "broken image"

Nice. $15 at jinx.com. Link. (Thanks, Giorgio)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:41:13 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Swiss Army Knife sofa converts to many configs

This sofa is inspired by Swiss Army Knives; its many sections swing around 360 degrees, creating many different configurations depending on whether you're having a quiet evening with the console or throwing a party. Link (Thanks, Anita)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:39:00 AM permalink | blogs' comments

CSI South Park: distributed audio forensics to decrypt Cartman

BoingBoing reader Zac says,

John Walker is recruiting all-comers to help decipher the distorted wailings of the musical finale of the 1999 South Park movie. As he puts it, regardless of what lab trickery you might see on "grotesque fascist forensic-porn wallow CSI", in the real world "audio is rather more messy and the associative comprehension of human meatware still blows away digital signal processing". So boot up your meatware and help figure out what the hell Cartman is saying. If you submit a suggested hearing for one of the words (or anything else to his website), he uses a kind-of-cool "sentience test" CAPTCHA based not on distorted letters but a simple linear equation you must solve for x.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:37:32 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Woohoo, Futurama will return to Comedy Central!

BoingBoing reader Chris Wells was among many who wrote in to say...

As if Futurama fans haven't been through enough with Billy West's announcing this and later retracting it a few months ago -- it has been confirmed that Futurama really will be returning with new episodes on Comedy Central. All of the original voice actors signed new deals recently, and here's to hoping the writers join in on the fun.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:35:33 AM permalink | blogs' comments

This is your brain on IEDs: anti-carbombing PSA for Iraq

A Hollywood-budget, American-made television public service announcement to discourage suicide bombings in Iraq is currently in production. The 60-second spot will air on Iraqi TV this summer:

There was an air of paranoia on the set last month even though the press were initially invited down to cover the 3-day shoot. Reporters and cameramen were banished to the perimeters of the scene and were kept in check by several crew members. They were also asked not to speak to the actors, extras or any of the Lebanese production team. Despite all the secrecy surrounding the project, NEWSWEEK has learned that the high-tech PSA will cost over $1 million to make and may even air in other Middle Eastern countries. This pricey and unorthodox attempt to subdue the violence is backed by a group of mystery donors. "I call them an independent, non-governmental group of scholars, non political people," says Plotkin. "Some may live in Iraq, some may live abroad. For a variety of different reasons—from safety concerns to wanting the focus to remain on the issue itself, they decided to remain anonymous."

Link. Image: David Frucht/Newsweek. (thanks, John Kinsella)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:30:27 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Template for news stories on US government data gathering

Daniel Solove says, " NSA warrantless wiretaps. NSA collection of phone records. CIA gathering of financial records. The stories are endless. To help out reporters, I thought I'd just write a quick and easy template to make reporting a little bit easier." Excerpt:

Under a top secret program initiated by the Bush Administration after the Sept. 11 attacks, the [name of agency (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.)] have been gathering a vast database of [type of records] involving United States citizens.
"This program is a vital tool in the fight against terrorism," [Bush Administration official] said. "Without it, we would dangerously unsafe, and the terrorists would have probably killed you and every other American citizen." The Bush Administration stated that the revelation of this program has severely compromised national security.

"This program is a threat to privacy and civil liberties," [name of privacy advocate] said. But [name of spokesperson for Bush Administration] said: "This is a very limited program. It only contains detailed records about every American citizen. That's all. It does not compromise civil liberties. We have a series of procedures in place to protect liberty."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:27:05 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Is that a handgun in your pocket, or... no, really.

"Toters" is a line of blue jeans designed for "conceal carry" use -- hiding your personal protection weapon. "The naturally soft cotton denim fabric will not wear through from carrying a handgun, knife, or other solid steel object." They're designed by Blackie Collins, a fellow who also produces non-metallic knives that can evade metal detectors. Video clips on the website show Toters in action. Behind each front pocket lies a seekrit inner compartment camouflaged by a dark Cordura lining. Alas, it seems they only offer men's sizes -- what, no low-rise misses petites? Link (Thanks, Paul)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:20:44 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Indian auto maker giant Tata to launch $2,000 car

Make way for the hundred dollar laptop of automobiles:

Tata Group Chief Ratan Tata told shareholders that the launch of the car would create a new paradigm in low-cost personal transport, carve out a new market segment and reach a broader base of the pyramid.
"The styling and designing of the car have been completed and prototypes are being tested in the plant. It will be a rear engine, 4-5 seat, four-door car with about a 30 horsepower engine," Tata said in the company's annual report for 2005-06.

The car will be launched in early 2008 and we believe it will be extremely attractive to the Indian consumer, particularly younger families, at a price level of about Rs one lakh, Tata said.

Link, via indianraj blog. One lakh rupees is 100,000 rupees, which is about $2100 in US dollars. (Thanks, Razib Ahmed)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:04:37 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Web Zen: Flyer zen

rave flyer price guide

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:57:20 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Al Qaedaism, communism, and 1949 MGM water ballet musicals

Snip from an essay by Arnaud de Borchgrave:

Communism had Karl Marx. Al Qaedaism has Sayed Qtub. Who's he, most people would ask. The ideology that nurtured modern Islamic extremism, and spawned every violent movement from Hezbollah to al Qaeda, was born in 1952 when Qtub, an Egyptian writer, returned from studying American literature at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colo.
The tipping point from detached observer to extremist ideologue took place at a church dance in Greeley when, as Qtub recalled in "The America I Saw," the pastor dimmed the lights and put on the come-hither number "Baby, It's Cold Outside," a hit tune from the MGM movie "Neptune's Daughter" -- a guy, girl and bathing suit lemon -- with Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban.

"The room," Qtub wrote "became a confusion of feet and legs; arms twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together," That was the scene that turned him off American culture in particular and Western culture in general -- and onto Islamic fundamentalism. "American girls," Qtub said, "know perfectly well the seductive power of their bodies... that it resides in their face, expressive eyes and hungry lips. They know that seduction resides in firm round breasts and hungry lips, full buttocks and well shaped legs -- and they show all this without trying to conceal it."

Link (Thanks, Bill Fletcher)

Reader comment: Rick Burgess says,

The Power of Nightmares (3hrs and available on google video I think) by Adam Curtis does an excellent job of telling this story; that while the American experience turned Qtub towards extreme devoutness it was being tortured by Egyptian jailers (with CIA involvement) that made him violent. It's an important point -it wasn't sexy dances that made him favour violence it was being subjected to violence that did it. And de Borchgrave comparing communism to a terrorist group doesn't inspire confidence... as does anything in the Washington Times which is Rev. Moon's mouthpiece.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:41:35 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Clowns sabotage Minuteman III nuclear missile

Defensetech blog reports that a retired Catholic priest and two vets broke in to a military nuclear weapons facility and banged a Minuteman III missile silo cover with hammers, in an attempt to disable the weapon. Oh yeah, they were dressed in clown suits while they did it.

The trio -- members of the Luck, Wisconsin group Nukewatch -- said the break-in was part of "a call for national repentance" for the Hiroshima and Nagaski A-bombings in 1945.
The activists used bolt-cutters to get into the E-9 Minuteman II facility, located just northwest of the White Shield, North Dakota. "Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access to the warhead and they hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300 kiloton nuclear warhead," the group said in a statement. "The activists painted 'It's a sin to build a nuclear weapon' on the face of the 110-ton hardened silo cover and the peace activists poured their blood on the missile lid."

This was all done while wearing face paint, dunce caps, misfitting overalls, and bright yellow wigs.

Link. When they were finished, the three clowns piled into a teeny-weeny car with a talking seal in the trunk, and the bearded lady drove them all off into the sunset. What I love about this country is that these men were not shot on sight.

Reader comment: Cris in Addison Texas says,

One of my uncles was a "Turn Key" with the USAF for a number of years. That means he was one of the guys tasked with sitting a half mile underground in a secure capsule, in case the order to launch ever came. He gave my family a tour of the launch facilities and a silo back in 1985 ( and yes, it was very much like the begining of WARGAMES). The Launch Silos are scattered ALL OVER the midwest with just a chain link fence it would appear to protect the site. However, they do have a Perimeter Intrusion "electronic fence" around each one. If someone crosses that perimeter, it sets off an alarm and one or more 2 man Emergency Response Teams will scramble and get to the site within a 5 minute window (at the time these were normally a modified SUV with a roof turret mounted M-60)... this is why protesters were able to plant their graffiti. There are simply to many launch silos scattered over far to wide an area to station gaurds at each location 24/7.
Additionally... other than maybe making a mess (and a biohazard technically if they left their own blood behind)...short of several pounds of a really powerfull explosive, or a shape charge...there is ZERO chance they could have damaged the silo with a couple of hammers. Those lids are blast hardened, reenforced and a few feet thick. I suppose the Air Force may need to purchase some more chain and a new padlock though.

Mike Benedetti says,

I've been surprised that so many people commenting on blogs (including the guy you quoted at BoingBoing) don't get that hammering on a missile silo is meant to be purely a symbolic act.
These guys are part of the Plowshares movement, who "hammer swords into plowshares" (an image from the book of Isaiah) to "witness" against warmaking. Plowshares people are mostly religious and mostly Catholic. (I have several good friends who've done jail time as a part of "Plowshares actions.") They've been doing this stuff for like 25 years now.

There's a high-profile case dragging on in Ireland right now involving some "Ploughshares" (as they spell it there) activists: Link. Anyway, great to see some hard-core pacifists mentioned on BoingBoing.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:22:27 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Media scholar Henry Jenkins starts blogging

MIT prof Henry Jenkins is pretty much the sharpest person I've ever met when it comes to the cultural implications of fandom, fannish activity, fan fiction, and participatory culture (a phrase he coined). He's started a blog, and just from the first handful of entries I know I'm going to be finding gems there every day.

First, the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon has been building momentum for well over a year now. In the old days, the public would never have known about a film this far out of the gate. They might have learned about it when the previews hit the theatre -- a phenomenon which itself is occurring earlier and earlier in the production cycle -- or even given the fairly low-brow aspirations of this particular title -- when the film actually hit the theatre. In the old days, this would have been an exploitation movie of the kind that Roger Corman used to crank out in the 1950s and 1960s and destined to play on the second bill at the local drive-in. The goal would be to use a easily exploitable concept, a vivid poster and advertising campaign to generate heat quickly: then get into town and out again before anyone knew what hit them.
But, these days, grassroots intermediaries such as Ain't It Cool News are feeding the public's interest for inside information, starting to generate buzz almost from the moment rights are purchased or stars cast for a forthcoming production. Much as day traders have used the online world to become much more aware of every tick and twitch of the Fortune 500, the movie fans are ever attentive to anything which might impact a film's performance at the box office.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:32:49 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Video mashup of Country Bears and American History X

This youtube mashes up the trailers for the crummy Disney ridespolitation flick The Country Bear Jamboree and sterling commentary of US race relations, "American History X." Putting the narration for Country Bears over a short film about a young boy's induction into neo-Naziism isn't exactly funny ha-ha, but it's pretty definitely funny-weird. Link (Thanks, Cian!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:30:12 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Domestic surveillance in US: not just phone data, banking too

Snip from NYT story by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen:

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.
The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas or into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 05:25:26 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Cryopreservation may not damage cells

University of Helsinki chemist Anatoli Bogdan reports that cells, tissues, and perhaps the body, could be cryopreserved without suffering damage from ice crystals. Most people are familiar with cryopreservation as a method that could someday enable dead people to be reanimated when cures are available for whatever killed them. (Note: Cryonics organization Alcor says their technique doesn't cause the formation of ice crystals anyway.) Bogdan reports the results of his study in the scientific publication American Chemical Society (ACS) Journal of Physical Chemistry B. From the ACS News Service:

In medicine, cryopreservation involves preserving organs and tissues for transplantation or other uses. Only certain kinds of cells and tissues, including sperm and embryos, currently can be frozen and successfully rewarmed. A major problem hindering wider use of cryopreservation is formation of ice crystals, which damage cell structures...

"It may seem fantastic, but the fact that in aqueous solution, [the] water component can be slowly supercooled to the glassy state and warmed back without the crystallization implies that, in principle, if the suitable cryoprotectant is created, cells in plants and living matter could withstand a large supercooling and survive," Bogdan explained.

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:48:23 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Biometric payment at convenience stores

Coast to Coast Family Convenience store in St. Petersburg, Florida now accepts payment via fingerprint scan. The technology is provided by San Francisco start-up Pay By Touch. From the St. Petersburg Times:

"People either love it or think it's a sign of the coming apocalypse,'' said Amer Hawatmeh, owner of the new convenience store at 110 E Bearss Ave. who signed up a few hundred customers for Pay By Touch. "But to me, it's the wave of the future...''

Pay By Touch now has tests under way with several convenience stores, gas stations and supermarket chains around the United States, including Harris Teeter in the Carolinas, Farm Fresh in Virginia and Jewel Osco in Chicago.

"Finger scanning is new, so we want to get people used to it by building acceptance at high-frequency, high-traffic retail locations such as gas stations and grocery stores,'' said Leslie Connelly, spokeswoman for Pay By Touch. "We're also going into places where people who don't have a banking relationship cash paychecks.''

Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:18:37 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Backdorm Boys

Over at the Institute For The Future's Virtual China blog, my colleagues Nydia Chen and Lyn Jeffery introduce us to the famous Asian pop stars the "Backdorm Boys" (后舍男生). They apparently graduated this week from the Guangzhou Arts Academy sculpture program and these life-sized statues of themselves were their final projects.
Link

posted by David Pescovitz at 04:08:06 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Iranian president Ahmadinejad's hairstyling tips for men

From Greg Gutfeld's illustration and sick-wit blog, The Daily Gut:

"HOW TO GET MAHMOUD'S MANE. Curling Iron: For a longer hold I will diligently apply the hairspray BEFORE curling hair. That and the blood of martyrs will maintain a strong hold throughout the day."

Link. Gutfeld is also responsible for The Adventures of Keira Knightley's Jaw, the Big God Blog, and Al Zarqawi's Mom's Blog. (Thanks, Andrew Breitbart)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 04:00:50 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Underwear perverts' influence on couture lauded in NYT

Snip from a NYT article by Guy Trebay on the growing influence of fetish culture on popular fashion. For many adult connoiseurs of kink, superheroes in distress -- "underwear perverts," as Warren Ellis dubbed them -- were the beginning:

Cartoon Superman never amounted to more than that for most people. But for a select group, early encounters with the Man of Steel wearing a molded bodysuit, knee boots and a shiny cape helped set the course of an erotic life. "Batman and Robin and Superman were all really exciting," said John Weis, the chairman of the Folsom Street East street fair, an annual event that kicked off Gay Pride Week in New York on Sunday. "Batman was always tied up or in some peril, and I thought that was really great."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 03:53:12 PM permalink | blogs' comments

NAS: Earth hottest it's been in 400 years, humans responsible

Snip from introduction to a National Academy of Sciences report issued today:

There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers, and other "proxies" to say with confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years, according to a new National Research Council report. There is less confidence in reconstructions of surface temperatures from 1600 back to A.D. 900, and very little confidence in findings on average temperatures before then.

Link to news release, full text of report ("recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia... human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming"), and briefing notes. Here's a related AP report summarizing the findings:

Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century. This is shown in boreholes, retreating glaciers and other evidence found in nature, said Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M; University who chaired the academy's panel. The report was requested in November by the chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-New York, to address naysayers who question whether global warming is a major threat.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 01:59:45 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Head On ointment commercial better than science fiction

This TV commercial for an ointment called Head On reminds me of a commercial that a character in a near-future science fiction movie (like They Live) would be watching. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 01:04:30 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Table saw that stops when it touches skin

I posted something about the SawStop table saw on Boing Boing a couple of years ago. It has a mechanism that makes the saw blade stop rotating an instant after it comes into contact with human flesh (watch the amazing video of it in action here). Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools has a review of the SawStop from a happy user (who has not had to test out the safety feature yet.)

(A hot dog proxy for a finger gets only a nick when pushed into a turning saw blade) As for the safety features, I've haven't put the brake to the test. Like the air bag in your car, the Sawstop system includes an extensive startup and continuous self test while idle and running. And like your air bag it's very costly to "test." You get only one emergency stop per blade and brake. Besides $70 for a new brake, it's another $50-100 for a new blade. It's pretty high tech. The brake is a special aluminum block and electronic assembly with a fusible (i.e. burnable) wire holding the spring loaded brake block assembly in position. When the electronics "fires" after detecting contact with human flesh, the fusible wire is burned through by a high electric current "pulse". When the wire burns through, the spring loaded aluminum block is shoved into the spinning blade. The blade cuts deeply into the block, and the block absorbs the considerable momentum energy of the blade, arbor, belt and motor. The result is that the blade and block get hot enough near the teeth of the blade to unsolder or weaken the teeth on the blade. In short the blade is ruined 50% of the time according to one web site I found that had tested the unit. Once the emergency brake has been fired you need to replace the whole brake assembly (like the air bag), which includes the brake, spring, retaining fusible wire, firing electronics including capacitor, and brake frame assembly. Replacement only takes a couple of minutes. Despite the cost, it is still better than paying for a new finger. Two friends have lost 2.5 fingers collectively from table saws. And both were experienced woodworkers.

Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:40:47 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Report: Skype's China client installs censorware on users' PCs

Internet censorship tech-expert Nart Villeneuve reports that Skype's Chinese client (distributed by China-based provider TOM Online) installs censorware on the user's computer without telling. An important point: the international version of Skype available at Skype.com does not include the censorware. Nart says:

Skype's partner in China, Tom Online, has implemented filtering of Skype's text chat for Chinese users. Skype is not being transparent about the filtering fucntionality that has been introduced. Here is my initial attempt at trying to figure out Tom-Skype's filtering. Tom-Skype can be downloaded from skype.tom.com and I installed in in Chinese and English. I also installed the 2.5 beta version, all appeared to function the same. The tests [that follow in this blog-post] are from Tom-Skype 2.0 installed in English. The first thing I noticed is that Tom-Skype is bundled with an executable called ContentFilter.exe. It is an application developed by Tom Online called Tom Word Review. It is digitally signed by Skype.

Link to Nart's report, with screenshots.

Rebecca McKinnon examined the app, too, and wrote:

The bottom line is: TOM-Skype doesn't censor much at all, but it is set up to censor whatever TOM Online employees plug into their "keyfile," at any time. And users (unless they have attained Nart's level of geekdom) have no way of knowing what is going on and why.
Let's hope that TOM Online and Skype do the right thing, which is: 1) Inform users that censorware is being downloaded onto their computers along with the Skype-branded chat client, and inform users exactly which Chinese law requires that this must happen. 2) Do not add any political or religious words to the "keyfile" unless forced to do so by written court order. 3) Make a list of those words added to the "keyfile" available to users so that they can be informed that any messages containing those words will not be received.

Link to the full text of her post.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:38:15 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Collapsible bike trailer has "comfortable" bunk for camper

Joseph Dorocke built this trailer in the 1930s, when he was a "25-year-old Chicago youth." Wouldn't it be fun if millions of people used these today? Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 12:17:37 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Thief and the Cobbler: lost animated film recreated by fans

BB pal "the Moth" says,

My friend Garrett Gilchrist recently completed a painstaking recreation of the original cut of Richard Williams' animated masterpiece, "The Thief And The Cobbler." Williams was the three-time Academy-Award-winning animation director for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and "Thief" was his pet project -- over 20 years in the making! It was pulled from his control by the completion bond company in the early 90s. They subsequently released a bastard version, replete with added shmaltzy songs & musical numbers. So Gilchrist took it upon himself to put together a version based on Williams' storyreel -- and it's fantastic!

Link to "The Thief and The Cobbler," available as a series of 17 video installments via YouTube. From the description:

This is not intended for profit, just a fan-made research project and tribute to this classic film. The film was worked on for 26 years, with a team of master animators like Ken Harris and Art Babbit. This film inspired Disney's Aladdin. Ruined versions of it were released as Arabian Knight and The Princess and the Cobbler. For more info, visit originaltrilogy.com (forum 11), orangecow.org, ffrevolution.com, and thiefandthecobbler.com.

Reader comment: Deric says,

The thief and the Cobbler link to you tube is a series of several low quality clips; the entire picture at DVD quality seems bittorrentable here: Link

Bruce Heerssen says,

This had me really excited; especially to learn of high quality bittorrent downloads. Unfortunately, the website hosting the tracker (Demonoid.com) only allows registered users to download their torrents and registration is currently closed. Perhaps a kind reader could step up the plate here and offer a tracker on their own site.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 12:13:01 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Lightning strikes motorcyclist

A motorcyclist in Colorado was struck by lightning while he was riding on the freeway from Denver to Boulder. He died, but, according to the Associated Press, it's not known if the cause of death was the lightning, the resulting collision with the center divider, or, ummm "something else." Link (Thanks, Mark Pescovitz!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:56:08 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Flaming Tuba guy David Silverman on NBC Tonight Show 6/23

David Silverman, longtime Simpsons director and director of the forthcoming Simpsons Movie, is more recently better known as The Flaming Tuba Guy.

He crafted a sousamaphone that spurts fire while he plays (video link), as detailed in this BoingBoing post.

An NBC Tonight Show producer thought this sounded neat, and as a result, David will be appearing on the Tonight Show this Friday, June 23, "Tubatron" and all. Go smoke 'em, David!

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:47:41 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Cory on fan-made radio podcasts: "What deep linking means."

My co-editor Cory Doctorow weighs in on the debate surrounding This American Life's decision to tell fans that they may not publish podcast code pointing to archived audio files hosted on TAL's website. Previous BB posts: one, two, three, and here Cory responds to arguments posed by "Radio Open Source" producer Brendan Greeley. Both TAL and ROS are distributed by Public Radio International (PRI). Cory says:

Brendan, I was disappointed to see your letter to Xeni in which you argued that deep-linking should be prohibited. The question of whether a copyright holder has the right to control who gets to publish the location of his files is a simple one to answer: he should not.
If you believe that a copyright holder has to the right to decide who is allowed to tell you where his publicly available files live, you're saying that all the other user rights in copyright -- parody, samplying, criticism, etc -- are necessarily at the rightholder's sufferance. These rights can't be exercised without the fundamental freedom to repeat the true fact about the location of this file or that.

You -- and everyone else who borrows liberally from the blogosphere, myself included -- are a tremendous beneficiary of the principle that has prevailed since the first web-page went live: no one can control inbound linking by legal means. This is in the RFC for the Web. It's in the RFC for the RSS.

I don't buy for one second the argument that because this challenges your ability to turn your radio program into something else, the entire web should change directions and adopt a new norm: "You may only include a hyperlink if the person who controls that file isn't worried about his business-model."

There are LOTS of people who could have new business-models if fundamental internet freedoms, like the freedom to link to any URL that will serve back a page, were abolished or rewritten. A competitor to Google that hired a million phone-monkeys to make sure that they had *permission* to link to everything in the search-engine's database could come into existence with a radically reduced index and then get the law to get rid of the superior resource we have in Google.

I respect your desire to move to "other platforms" but if the platform you're headed for is the Web, you need to actually formulate a coherent plan that doesn't start by removing the Web's most fundamental premise: that anyone can link to anything.

The plan you seem to have formulated, one where I can't include a URL from your server without your permission, is NOT a Web-platform business-model. It's a business model that throws out the Web in favor of an AOL-style network.

No one but TAL (or you) is making any files available if I publish an RSS feed with your deep links in them. Describing hte location where a file lives is not making them available -- not in the legal sense, or the technical sense, or the commonsense sense.

I hope you'll reconsider this idea and look beyond the immediate interest of wanting to be able to maximize your show's gain and to the health of the Internet and the open source ethos whence you have taken your inspiration.

And further to this:

If someone decided to grab our publicly available, CC-licensed mp3 files and re-distribute them in a different way than we'd planned (say, filtering out everything but shows about Iraq) I can imagine we'd have a problem with it.

First of all, you have gravely misunderstood what CC licenses permit. You have granted permission for someone to do *exactly* this by using a CC license. Second of all, what if someone were to compile a printed index listing the URLs of all the shows that don't talk about Iraq? Do you seriously mean to say that you think that publishing such an index is wrong? All an RSS feed is is a collection of URLs. References.

Update: Brendan Greeley's reply after the jump.

More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:36:39 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Report: Bird flu coverup in 2003 China SARS case?

A man in China who died of pneumonia in 2003 and was said to be a SARS victim may in fact have died from human bird flu, two years before the Chinese government reported any cases of the disease on the mainland:

The case of the death in Beijing raises the possibility that others attributed to SARS may have actually been caused by the deadly H5N1 flu. But in a confusing development, at least one of the researchers asked Wednesday that the letter reporting the case be withdrawn from publication in The New England Journal of Medicine. Editors of the medical journal said they were trying to find out why.
The letter was available to journalists before its withdrawal, and it describes the case of a 24-year-old man who died of pneumonia and respiratory distress in November 2003. "Because the clinical manifestations were consistent with those of the severe acute respiratory syndrome and occurred when sporadic cases of SARS were described in southern China, serum and lung tissue from the patient, as well as fluid aspirated from his chest, were examined for SARS coronavirus," the researchers wrote. "All tests were negative for SARS."

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:02:44 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Bill Barminski exhibit at Glu in Los Angeles viewable online

The wonderful artist Bill Barminksi (who currently has a show at Glu, 7424 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, Ca. 90036) has put his drawings up for viewing on his website. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:58:03 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Public radio and DIY podcasts: a PRI producer weighs in.

In previous posts here on BB (one, two, three), some readers argued that deep linking is a fundamental right on the 'net, and syndicated public radio shows like "This American Life" should just let fans roll their own podcast code if they like. Others, like reader Brendan Greeley, disagree:

I'm a producer for Open Source, another public radio show distributed by PRI. I'm not in any way speaking for PRI or TAL, though PRI has been great in their support of our use of CC licenses, and TAL is of course the greatest radio progam ever made ever.
I think, though, that by creating your own podcast of TAL content you're assuming that TAL can ONLY ever be a radio show, that is, it can only ever make audio files and distribute them. But a media company is much more than the files of content it makes. The shape of our RSS feed is a part of our content and brand just as much as the mp3 enclosures it delivers. If someone decided to grab our publicly available, CC-licensed mp3 files and re-distribute them in a different way than we'd planned (say, filtering out everything but shows about Iraq) I can imagine we'd have a problem with it.

It would limit, for example, our ability to accompany the mp3 enclosures with our own descriptive text. It would limit our ability to insert other content -- extras from interviews, a separate file of a promo for a new podcast we're launching -- into our RSS feed. Consumer platforms change by the month; there are ways we haven't thought of to use an RSS feed to shape our content, but we sure want to hold on to the ability to make those decisions when they come to us.

The second you take those mp3 files, wrap them in your own packaging and make them available to others in the way most convenient to you, you've reduced a radio program to a provider of one-hour weekly audio files. Maybe that's all TAL wants to be -- certainly every week it provides extraordinary one-hour audio files -- but shouldn't TAL get to make that decision?

Also, guys, public radio operates on painfully thin margins, and TAL is a very expensive show to produce. Ira Glass is not a big-media fat cat. Help us out here.

Reader comment: Chris Spurgeon says,

I have great respect for both "This American Life" and "Open Source", but I have a bit of an issue with one of Brendan Greeley's comments. He says, "If someone decided to grab our publicly available, CC-licensed mp3 files and re-distribute them in a different way than we'd planned (say, filtering out everything but shows about Iraq) I can imagine we'd have a problem with it."
But wait a minute. Right on the "Open Source" home page, it says that the content is licensed by a Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0" license. That license (details here) allows derivative works, such as (I assume) an Iraq-only set of Open Source mp3 files. It seems like there's a disconnect there between the actions they'd "have a problem with" and the actions they've allowed.

Robert "kebernet" Cooper says,

I would like to echo Mr. Spurgeon's appreciation for Open Source -- I think it is one of the best hours on radio -- but Mr. Greeley obviously has no understanding of what a network is.
The first rule of network programming is "never trust the client". You can never assume that any client is going to use your network services properly, the way you expect or even the way you want. This leads us to Jon Postel's famous axiom, "In general, an implementation must be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior." To assume that (a) anyone will consume your website the way you designed it, rather than on, say Lynx, a voice browser, or using a Greasemonkey script, is preposterous. To assume that (b) anyone will even look at your RSS feed or see what is there besides the enclosures, is preposterous. I listen to Open Source on my iPod shuffle, synced with amaroK. I never even KNEW there was anything of interest in the feed besides the audio. To assume that (c) people won't deep link your content, filter your content, rate, organize or categorize your content is preposterous.

Moreover, not only is it preposterous to make these assumptions, to somehow pretend that these inherent network behaviors diminish the value of your content really shows a complete lack of understanding about what makes the web truly great.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:57:28 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Hoodie with screen attachment for computer obsessives

Joe Malia, a second year student at the Royal College of Art in London created this hoodie for "computer obsessives." Using one of these would be infinitely cooler than merely deploying one of those polarized sheets of plastic that stop people from reading your laptop screen over your shoulder. Bonus: renders your screen legible in direct sunlight (if you're willing to be seen in this outfit in broad daylight, that is). Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Update: Here's a similar item from 1973 -- thanks, Chad!

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:26:23 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Create a new random identity by hitting reload

The Random Identity Generator creates a new plausible person every time you reload the page. They'll also sell you bulk random identities at $1 per 2,000.

Tim C. Whipple
324 Hillcrest Avenue
Southfield, MI 48075
Email Address: Tim.C.Whipple@pookmail.com

Phone: 734-687-8295
Mother's maiden name: Beer
Birthday: February 2, 1943
MasterCard: 5165 6364 9855 9856
Expires: 4/2007

Link (via Schneier)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:11:26 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Life among the homeless bloggers

Wired News covers the homeless blogger scene, talking to homeless people around the USA who use scrounged laptops and other computers, open WiFi networks, and library connections to get online, start businesses, express themselves -- even panhandle via PayPal.

Happy Ivy doesn't have a bathroom or a kitchen in the bus he calls home. He does, however, have a video-editing station.
Living in a squalid, Woodstock-style bus parked in a Fillmore, California, orange grove, the 53-year-old homeless man charges a power generator from a utility shed and uses Wi-Fi from a nearby access point. From this humble camp, he's managed to run a 'round-the-clock internet television studio, organize grassroots political efforts, record a full-length album and write his autobiography, all while subsisting on oranges and avocados...
Nearly all homeless people have e-mail addresses, according to Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "More have e-mail than have post office boxes," Stoops said. "The internet has been a big boon to the homeless."
Helping the homeless get e-mail addresses has been a priority for years at shelters across the country. And in an age when most every public library in the nation offers internet access, the net has proven a perfect communication tool for those without a firm real-world address.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 04:17:50 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Disney, 1939: No woman animators allowed

In 1939, the Disney Animation Studios sent this form letter to animator Lillian Friedman, who'd worked for five years at Fleischer studios, turning down her job application, noting, "Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school." Link (Thanks, Amid!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:42:42 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Royal Society to try open access science publishing

The UK Royal Society, the oldest "learned society" in the world, will try publishing some of its journals under open access licensing. That means that instead of being offered as expensive subscriptions -- that can only be paid by a few first-world, monied research institutions -- the journals will be released for free on the net, and scientist-contributors will pay submission fees to cover the cost of peer-review. This model has proven effective with other journals, particularly the all open-access journal Public Library of Science, which is now the most widely-cited journal in several of the fields it covers.

Last November, the Royal Society published a paper decrying open access publishing, arguing that no one should do open access because it would undermine the Society's market for its journals. This prompted an outraged response from the Society's members, who sent an open letter to the organization affirming that the Society's mission is the furtherance of science, not the collection of subscription fees.

The open access movement has been helped by recent developments, including the decision by the Wellcome Trust, one of the world's biggest research granting bodies, that all articles produced through work it has funded will have to be published on an open access basis from October.
Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, said he was delighted the society was making work freely available to all. "Maximum distribution of research findings is essential to maximise their impact," Mr Walport said.
Earlier this year a report by the European Commission called for research paid for by member states to be made freely available.

Link

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:39:57 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Handheld device converts text to speech for blind people

Inventor Ray Kurzweil has shipped a £2,625 handheld device for blind people that you aim at any text and it reads aloud. I saw a demo of this at the Singularity Summit in Stanford last month and it really worked -- mindblowingly well. The audience loved the demo -- Kurzweil aimed it at a copy of his book on the podium and let it read aloud.

The K-NFB gives the user an initial "situation report", describing what it can see. The user then makes a decision about whether to take a picture.
After a few seconds to process the image, the contents of the document are read aloud.
A set of earbuds come as standard, but the sound could also be routed through a Bluetooth headset or a set of speakers.
Sight & Sound says it will help with the ad-hoc reading of documents such as bills and receipts, instructions on food packaging or medication or emergency evacuation notices in hotels.

Link (via Futurismic)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:28:49 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Coffee-cups with stamps on their bases

These coffee cups have stamps built into their bases; instead of leaving cup-rings, you can leave beautiful, tessellated Arts and Crafts-style floral patterns behind. A great idea! Link (via Gizmodo)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:24:18 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Library bookcases tumbled like dominos

We've all seen cartoons in which rows of library shelves are tumbled like dominos, but in librarian Klara Kim's Flickr photostream, there are actual pictures of the aftermath. There is certainly an element of hilarity to them -- albeit uncomfortable -- but the comments on the photo betray the tragedy: "Most [books] are intact, but some were caught in between shelves and got ripped apart. I would have taken photos of that as well, but there were only so many moments I could stand around taking pictures before I felt like a morbid jerk that wasn't helping anybody." Link (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:21:05 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Snow White 1937 dept store display found in amusement park

A 1937 animated department store window display of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has shown up a t a kitschy amusement park in the Adirondacks, Magic Forest Park. The display is animated by motorized wooden cogs, and has been lovingly rebuilt numerous times as it wore through the decades.

Once at Magic Forest Park, said Gillette, the displays were originally stored in a barn with other attractions over the winter. When the attractions were removed from the barn and put into place for use over the summer, the display cases were moved into a circle in the barn for viewing by visitors. They were moved around into and out of storage each year. The annual movement, in addition to the exposure to extremes of heat and cold, contributed to some deterioration of the displays. Of the original 10 cases, one that depicts the queen disguised as an old hag offering the poisoned apple to Snow White, was actually destroyed by all of the movement.

Link (Thanks, Kirby!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:16:46 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Checking out Amazon grocery beta: will you save?

Amazon.com quietly launched a beta online grocery service a few weeks ago, with 10,000 items reportedly stocked and extensive gourmet, organic, low-carb, veg/vegan, and low-sugar offerings. "Household savings tips" columnist Stephanie Nelson wrote this analysis of pros and cons:

Amazon sells standard size boxes of Kellogg's cereals 17.6 oz. in a four pack, at an average price of $3.68 per box. That same variety and size of cereal is currently selling for $2.50 per box at my store this week. I'm not sure buying four boxes at that price offers enough convenience to offset the higher "bulk" price!
However, any strategic shopper knows how to figure out the rules of a store to take a strategic approach to getting lower prices. Although Amazon does not accept traditional grocery coupons, they do have regular promotions. For example, their site is currently promoting a special promotion for Kraft and Planters products. If you buy $39 or more of selected Kraft or Planters products, you get $15 taken off your order immediately as an instant rebate with a coupon code provided by the site.

In that case, I could buy a 12-count case of Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese dinner 14 oz. boxes for $28.80 and a 15-count case of Balance nutrition bars for $11.54. I would qualify for free shipping and there would be no sales tax. After the $15 instant rebate was deducted, I would be paying $1.51 per box for the Kraft dinner and 48 cents for each nutrition bar, which are pretty good prices for those items. Therefore, if you are a shopper who likes the convenience of online shopping, and has the storage space to keep an inventory of your purchases, you may be able to find some grocery bargains on typical items from Amazon.com. Even so, I wouldn't order those items because I could probably find them at lower prices with coupons at my stores when they were on sale, without having to buy them in bulk quantities.

Link to column. There must be clever ways to hack the pricing structure, and get the most out of it. Grocery shopping in real stores is one of my least favorite chores in life, so I'll be trying this out for sure. I am lazy, and will gladly pay a premium for any service that allows me to spend more quality time sitting on my ass. I cried when Kozmo.com and Urbanfetch.com died.

Reader comment: Nathan Becker says,

Just a humorous note on that. A co-worker and I found it very amusing that they list out "Product Features" for the food...take for example Bananas: "Great in Cereal."

Glenn Fleishman says,

A few comments on Amazon's grocery offerings. First, their prices on organic products are pretty good--comparable to my local very large food coop, Puget Consumers Coop (PCC) on their regular days. (PCC offers two days a month with 5% off and a monthly 10%-one-shopping-trip coupon.) For people who live in places that don't stock organic products, this is probably a godsend because they can get competitive big city prices without driving 50 to 500 miles.
Second, Amazon includes groceries (the ones I checked) in Amazon Prime. My wife and I pay $79 a year total (not per person) to get two-day free shipping on most Amazon-stocked products. We order just enough from Amazon and have just a few last-minute needs that the $79 offsets the shipping we ordinarily paid them and then we order other things more cheaply because of it (versus paying shipping or waiting weeks at Amazon or other stores).

Third, our toddler goes through a fairly small number of diapers these days, but as he gets bigger, they get more expensive. At our local department store, we were paying over 50 cents a diaper for size 5's in the brand we prefer, and we have a heck of a time buying them in stock. Diapers seem to often be out of stock in particular sizes. So Amazon is offering Pampers Cruisers size 5's for about 30 cents each in a nice sized box before tax (we pay about 9% in WA state).

This resulted in the indignity of a poor UPS driver dropping off a box of 124 diapers sent second-day air at *no additional expense to us* this morning. Ha! What is this -- 1999?

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:32:51 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Report: US/Canada border privacy laws often broken

Canada and the United States have shared policies about the exchange of personal data by immigration and customs officers at the border, but Canada's privacy commissioner says those rules are routinely ignored:

Although the Canada-U.S. agreements require that the exchanges of information be done in writing, except in emergencies, it appears to be common practice for Canadian customs officers to respond to verbal requests, reading out information in border services agency databases to their U.S. counterparts.
"It seems to be quite often honoured in the breach, from what we understand from our interviews," [Privacy Commissioner Jennifer] Stoddart told The Globe and Mail. "There's a lot of informal exchange of personal information." That means the border services agency does not know what information is being shared or how often, and cannot verify information is not being handed out improperly, or illegally.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 09:09:32 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Interview with "UFO Hacker" Gary McKinnon: why'd he do it?

Snip from Nigel Watson's Wired News interview with so-called "UFO hacker" Gary McKinnon, who faces 70 years in prison and a $2 million fine if convicted:

Gary McKinnon: A NASA photographic expert said that there was a Building 8 at Johnson Space Center where they regularly airbrushed out images of UFOs from the high-resolution satellite imaging. I logged on to NASA and was able to access this department. They had huge, high-resolution images stored in their picture files. They had filtered and unfiltered, or processed and unprocessed, files.

My dialup 56K connection was very slow trying to download one of these picture files. As this was happening, I had remote control of their desktop, and by adjusting it to 4-bit color and low screen resolution, I was able to briefly see one of these pictures. It was a silvery, cigar-shaped object with geodesic spheres on either side. There were no visible seams or riveting. There was no reference to the size of the object and the picture was taken presumably by a satellite looking down on it. The object didn't look manmade or anything like what we have created. Because I was using a Java application, I could only get a screenshot of the picture -- it did not go into my temporary internet files. At my crowning moment, someone at NASA discovered what I was doing and I was disconnected.

I also got access to Excel spreadsheets. One was titled "Non-Terrestrial Officers." It contained names and ranks of U.S. Air Force personnel who are not registered anywhere else. It also contained information about ship-to-ship transfers, but I've never seen the names of these ships noted anywhere else.

WN: Could this have been some sort of military strategy game or outline of hypothetical situations?

McKinnon: The military want to have military dominance of space. What I found could be a game -- it's hard to know for certain.

Link. Previous BB posts on McKinnon's case: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 08:15:53 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Mexican presidential election spam and la ley del Godwin

Supporters of Mexico's two presidential candidates are slogging it out for votes online with attack-spam campaigns. The guy on the left will steal your house, and the guy on the right? Tastes like Hitler! Snip from Reuters item:

As the top candidates spend millions of dollars on negative ads, their backers are launching stealth attacks on their behalf from the unregulated anonymity of cyberspace, making outrageous claims in mass mailings, chat rooms and blogs. Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and conservative ruling party contender Felipe Calderon are running neck-and-neck ahead of a July 2 election in a campaign marked by smear tactics.
But those attacks pale in comparison to e-mails claiming the leftist would ban religious meetings, or limit foreign travel, or that Calderon would seek to emulate Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 rule in Chile. Among the more polite missives: "Adolf Hitler's rhetorical discourse is identical to that of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador."

Link. They should talk to this guy about this.

Reader comment: "Monterrey" of the Monterrey, Mexico-based blog ochocuartos says,

The mexican presidential election campaigns have been the worst ever. The top two parties have started a war of lies that has made that a lot of mexicans don't trust any candidate. It's like a shit-throwing war. Yes, the other candidate will end up covered up in shit. But so will every other candidate. Take a look at this youtube video: Link. Even if you don't know spanish, you will quickly get that comparing any candidate to Stalin, Pinochet and Hitler is, probably, a little bit too much. Even for Mexico. And we get to hear that kind of "dirty war" propaganda, as it is called here in Mexico, everyday. Makes you sick to your stomach. It's the ugly side of democracy.

Reader C. says,

This site has most of the smear emails that followers of the mexican leftist party PRD and his candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, are distributing. I haven't been able to find a repository of smear emails against the conservative party PAN and their candidate, Felipe Calderon, although I have received several of them.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:59:45 PM permalink | blogs' comments

To do in NYC this weekend: Andrew Brandou's art

BoingBoing reader McGreggor says,

Andrew Brandou, a former illustrator for The Simpsons, Spongebob, Rugrats, and Duckman, has a brand new show at Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC. The show opens this Saturday, June 24, but pics of his hauntingly beautiful work are already up. Andrew is known for his Howdy Parnder and After Audubon styles, and his new show is a modern and hallucinogenic take on the Manson Family murders. Both disturbing and hauntingly beautiful, the pieces combine elements of Japanese kemono and hakue, Golden Books characters, and Andrew's own unique take on death.

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:45:21 PM permalink | blogs' comments

This American Life / podcaster flap: former intern rebuts.

Following up on previous posts (one, two) on the blogtroversy surrounding podcast availability of PRI's much-beloved "This American Life" radio program, BB reader Chris Ladd says:

I'm a big fan of BoingBoing, and a big fan of TAL. In fact, I used to work there. I was their intern.
Now, being a BoingBoing reader and generally techy kind of guy, I hate DRM and extortionist content practices and all the rest of it. And, in fact, when I moved to Chicago last summer to work for the show, I spent much of the 20 hour drive listening to TAL episodes I AudioHijacked off of my real player.
That being said, while lame, the way TAL deals with its downloads isn't greedy, and it's not their fault. Don't forget that they are primarily a radio show, one that is broadcast nationwide. As an additional service, they let you stream the show from their website for absolutely free. Which is nice, right? So why can't you take it with you?
You have to understand that This American Life is produced differently than just about any other show on the radio. They get big names on there. They pay well. They score the whole show with great music. All of these things make it difficult to give away programs for free. Because all the different people who contribute to each show are entitled to a part of the CD sales, its in their contracts. As I understand it, there's some difference between streamed recordings and downloaded recordings that makes the lawyers go crazy. (Cory?) Also, there's some royalty thing with all the music used in the show.
Could contracts be changed to make this work differently? Maybe. But it would probably take a lot of time, and there's not a lot of people over there. Don't be fooled by that polished sound -- when I was there, there were eleven of us, and that includes me, a guy that runs the books, and a guy who makes CDs. Everybody's pretty busy making radio shows.
In any case, Ira's not trying to cheat you. He is, in fact, a very nice guy. Like, for instance, if he were going out to get lunch, he'd ask you if you wanted anything, and then he'd bring it back, and he wouldn't make you pay for it. And, say, if you were going out to get lunch, and you asked him if he wanted anything, he'd tell you and give you money to go get it, and sometimes he'd let you borrow his car. He's a nice guy.
So my advice to BoingBoingers is not to worry about it. Stop complaining, and hack things the old fashioned way. It's not difficult to just hijack it, or listen at your desk.
p.s. I don't know if people know about TAL's move to TV and New York, but here's a link to a story I wrote about it for New York Magazine: Link.

Reader comment: BB reader Declan says,

I've been reading the TAL thread and thought this article I wrote last year might be interesting. I exercise fair use and use my Radio Shark to capture radio shows, then transform them into something I can hear on the iPod and is accessible as a podcast. Link.

More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:28:32 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Movie theaters suck balls, says bedraggled, besearched patron

BoingBoing reader Brian Walsh went to an AMC theater in San Francisco last night with a friend to see "The Devil Wears Prada," and had a rotten time. Turns out the Devil doesn't wear Prada, he wears an AMC security guard's uniform. The movie, the overpriced popcorn, the smooshy seats -- all great, Brian says, but the "being treated like a criminal" part, complete with repeated metal detector scans? Eh, not so much. Here's a snip from his blog recap, tagged with keyphrases like "MOVIE THEATERS SUCK BALLS," which should give you an idea of how he feels. Brian and date are metal-detectored before entering the theater, then after they sit down he gets up for popcorn...

As I head back into the theater, I am subjected to the tests again. Metal detector. Phone. Etc. This time I wasn't as cool with it.
I stopped to let the guard know that: It is a shame that the business model of the movie studios is inflexible and out of date. Hence, their inability to adjust to a world where content is readily available on multiple devices and from multiple sources has led to the theaters losing the one advantage that they have over my living room: the experience.(...)

During the movie, the wonderful experiences persisted. As enjoyed the excellent acting, wonderful story and beautiful women on the screen, I was distracted by movement on my left and right. There were devils in ~~Prada~~ security uniforms paroling the theater staring at us. I have called the theater to check this out, but my assumption is that they were looking for anyone using a recording device. At least they were consistent in degrading the experience.

Link.

Reader comment: Phuc says,

I believe its important to state that Brian Walsh went to see a preview screening, as the movie has a national release date of June 30th. As such, I see no problem with security doing what they did, although during the actual film, they could have been a little more lowkey. If Mr. Walsh were to revisit the theatre and watch a film that has already been released, I am sure that he would find the experience less obtrusive and much more enjoyable.

Reader comment: Amanda says,

At least he wasn't shot randomly, for no reason.

More...

posted by Xeni Jardin at 07:13:00 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival at Rocketboom

Rocketboom has an excellent report from the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival, featuring cartoonists from the New Yorker and Alexa Kitchen, an 8-year-old cartoonist prodigy, shown here. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:57:04 PM permalink | blogs' comments

The Show with ze frank

I'm addicted to ze frank's daily video podcast called the show. It's mainly just ze's face talking for 3 minutes, but his manic, rapid-fire delivery and the way he edits the videos, uses different voices to argue, convince, tease, and scold himself is enthralling. Today, ze talks about a useless form letter he received from Delta after his flight was canceled and he asked for a refund. Pure vlogcast gold. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 03:39:50 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Kozyndan prints in QTVR: "Amorous Nudibranchs."

LA-based duo Kozyndan are two of my favorite artists, but it's hard to do their large-scale, intricate illustrations justice on the blog. Details are inevitably smushed. Good news, though: Dan (half of Kozyndan) says they've just whipped up a QTVR that allows you to pan through their latest panoramic piece online, and dig all the fine print.

"The Amorous Nudibranchs Paint the Town Red (and Orange and Yellow and Green and Blue and Violet)..." debuts this weekend at the Giant Robot NY gallery, and you can eyeball it here: QTVR link. One of their older panoramics is also viewable in QTVR format here: QTVR link. "Flat" versions are here.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:24:36 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Invisible Plan toy release and party in Hollywood, Thursday night

StrangeCo is throwing a party to celebrate the release of a new line of wickedly cool looking toys designed by San Francisco artist MARS-1. The series is called Invisible Plan, and the party will be held at Munky King (7308 Melrose Ave. LA, CA 90046). Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 02:06:00 PM permalink | blogs' comments

AT&T; retrofits privacy policy: your data is not yours.

Beginning Friday, AT&T; customers can enjoy the benefits of an upgraded privacy policy that leaves the telecom giant free to share even more personal data with the government. Snip from SF Chron article by David Lazarus:

The new policy says that AT&T; -- not customers -- owns customers' confidential info and can use it "to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process." The policy also indicates that AT&T; will track the viewing habits of customers of its new video service -- something that cable and satellite providers are prohibited from doing.
Moreover, AT&T; (formerly known as SBC) is requiring customers to agree to its updated privacy policy as a condition for service -- a new move that legal experts say will reduce customers' recourse for any future data sharing with government authorities or others.

The company's policy overhaul follows recent reports that AT&T; was one of several leading telecom providers that allowed the National Security Agency warrantless access to its voice and data networks as part of the Bush administration's war on terror.

Link. Here's background on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's ongoing lawsuit against AT&T;, over these same issues: Link.

posted by Xeni Jardin at 02:03:04 PM permalink | blogs' comments