Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.

Carnivorous plants have always held a special place in my heart. Watching a Venus Flytrap catch its dinner still fascinates me. Recently another type of plant that is just as strange and wonderful as the carnivores has caught my attention; Corpse Flowers.

You might imagine that smelling the world's largest flower would be a lovely experience. You would be very, very wrong.

The Rafflesia arnoldii, a rare and endangered plant known as the "giant panda of the plant world" bears the world's largest flower. A parasitic plant the Rafflesia lives most of its life within the roots of another plant. Eventually a blossom breaks through the root, grows up to three feet wide, and smells almost exactly like a dead body.

Known as a corpse flower or Carrion flower the Rafflesia releases a scent that smells like a rotting corpse, and the flowers petals bear a similar coloration to that of rotten meat. And while the flower smells terrible to humans, it smells like dinner to the carrion beetles and flesh flies which swarm all over the corpse flowers helping them to pollinate.

While the Rafflesia gets big, it has nothing on another corpse flower, the Amorphophallus titanum.

Translated from the greek Amorphophallus titanum means "giant misshapen penis," and while the Rafflesia has the world's largest flower, the titan lays claim to the largest unbranched cluster of flowers in the world. At full size the titan can reach 9 and a half feet tall and 10 feet in circumference. The titan also generates a great deal of heat, the tip reaching approximately human body temperature, which helps strengthen the illusion of rotting meat that attracts the meat eating insects. It, like the Rafflesia, smells terrible.

Link to the extraordinary flora category in the Atlas which is in desperate need of more plant wonders, a list of titans in cultivation, and to an online carnivorous plant museum. (Apparently some of my other boingboingers have a love of corpse flowers as well, previous boingboing mentions here, here, and here)

gollum123 sends in this piece from a political blog in the NY Times. Here is the text of the bill in question (PDF). "House Democrats on Friday answered President Obama's call for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system by putting forward [an] 852-page draft bill that would require all Americans to obtain health insurance, force employers to provide benefits or help pay for them, and create a new public insurance program to compete with private insurers — a move that Republicans will bitterly oppose. ... But the chairmen said they still did not know how much the plan would cost, even as they pledged to pay for it by cutting Medicare spending and imposing new, unspecified taxes. The three chairmen described their bill as a starting point in a weeks-long legislative endeavor that they said would dominate Congress for the summer and ultimately involve the full panorama of stakeholders in the health care industry, which accounts for about one-sixth of the nation's economy. ... House Republicans, who have had no involvement in the development of the health legislation so far, quickly denounced the Democrats' proposal as a thinly disguised plan for an eventual government takeover of the health care system. ... The House Democrats' plan is one of three distinct efforts underway on Capitol Hill to draft the health overhaul legislation. In the Senate, both the Finance Committee and the health committee have separate bills in the works, and in recent days those efforts seem to have stumbled."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Randy Sarafan writes:

This is a simple to build device that converts your own human voice into a superior robot voice. It also includes a number of sweet features like an audio-in jack so that you can plug in all of your favorite instruments, microphones and music players, a vibrato mode and awesome pitch shifting buttons. It can be shifted two whole octaves in either direction. This provides for endless hours of fun (at the expense of everyone around you).

I can't wait to hear the new tunes Randy's going to make with all of his recent fun audio projects.

More:

• How-To: Mini-Theremin kit mods
  
• How-To: Simple sequencer
  
• How-To: Stereo microphone
  
• How-To: 5-channel sound mixing board
  
• Old data switch to new audio switch
  

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!

kidlauncher from connors934 on Vimeo.

Kidlaunching is a variation on the slip and slide model of backyard/park fun. What we did this day was lay out a hundred feet or so of plastic sheet on the grass, tied a gigantic elastic band to a tree and poured water from a park fountain over the plastic to reduce friction. Once the kid is on a pool toy or other suitable vehicle, hold by the ankles, pull, count and...RELEASE!

This was an activity at Camp Kaleidoscope a few years ago.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Hugh Pickens was one of several readers to let us know that, according to a NY Times story, the 89-year-old Ray Bradbury hates the Internet. But he loves libraries, and is helping raise $280,000 to keep libraries in Ventura County open. "Among Mr. Bradbury's passions, none burn quite as hot as his lifelong enthusiasm for halls of books. ... 'Libraries raised me,' Mr. Bradbury said. 'I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.' ... The Internet? Don't get him started. 'The Internet is a big distraction,' Mr. Bradbury barked... 'Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,' he said, voice rising. 'They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? "To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet." It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

rhathar writes in with news that Oracle is killing off the products of Virtual Iron, a month after purchasing the company. Reports say that all but 10 to 15 staff were let go. The Reg article speculates that Oracle bought VI for its technology and considers its customers and partners expendable. When the Sun purchase finalizes, Oracle will be in possession of three separate virtualization technologies all based on Xen. "In a letter to Virtual Iron's sales partners, Oracle says it 'will suspend development of existing Virtual Iron products and will suspend delivery of orders to new customers.' One partner said, 'So basically, anyone that built their hosting infrastructure on VI... is now totally in the s–.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "What if automakers measured gas mileage by rolling their cars downhill with their engines idling? They might, Newsweek's Daniel Lyons suggests, if they took inspiration from the MobileMark 2007 notebook battery-life benchmark test, the creation of a consortium called BAPCo, whose members are — surprise — computer makers and other tech companies. Laptops score big numbers, Lyons explains, because they're tested with screens dimmed to 20%-30% of full brightness, Wi-Fi turned off, and the main processor chip running at 7.5% of capacity. Professional reviewers see company-generated battery-life claims as a joke. 'The rule of thumb is that in real-world use you get about 50 percent of rated battery life,' says a Gizmodo associate editor. Leading the call for reform is the not-necessarily-altruistic AMD, who gripes that MM07 was created in Intel's labs and rigged so Intel chips would outscore AMD chips, which draw more power when idle."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Ryden's Tree Show Postcard Microportfolio is a delightful set of 15 souvenir postcards. Published by the good people at Last Gasp, the images are from Ryden's 2007 Los Angeles exhibition. At just $10 from Amazon, the Tree Show Postcard Microportfolio is a terrific and inexpensive objet d'art. I might put the postcards in little frames and make a nice wall collage.
Mark Ryden's Tree Show Postcard Set

destinyland writes "Falling costs and garage tinkering are creating a grass roots movement of amateur biologists whose research is more transparent than that of academia. They are building lab equipment using common household items and even synthesizing new organisms, and their transparency also allows the social pressure which creates more ethical research. DIY Bio.org fosters lab co-ops for large equipment and provokes important discussions. (Would it be ethical to release a homegrown symbiote that cures scurvy in hundreds of thousands of people?) This movement could someday lead to bottom-up remedies for disease, fuel-generating microbes, or even a social-networked disease-tracking epidemiology. 'In much the same way that homebrew computer science built the world we live in today, garage biology can affect the future we make for ourselves,' argues h+ magazine, which featured the article in their summer issue."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "A Dartmouth professor's analysis of MediaSentry problems helped win a New Hampshire woman's RIAA music-download lawsuit. 'Since all of Plaintiffs' claims are based on the assumption that MediaSentry's software and computer configuration are trustworthy and free of errors, and this log clearly represents a failure of the MediaSentry software to perform the operation it claims to describe, the reliability and validity of the MediaSentry method should be questioned,' wrote professor Sergey Bratus in his report, dated May 30. 'In my opinion, these materials leave critical aspects of MediaSentry's evidence collection process undocumented. In my opinion, they express unwarranted assumptions regarding both software and network technologies involved, and attempt to create an illusion of evidence-supported certainty where it does not exist.'" The full report (PDF) is available online. It's worth noting that this victory was not the outcome of a court ruling; rather, a settlement was reached that did not require the defendant, Mavis Roy, to pay anything to the RIAA.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blogger Drew Mackie has posted a lengthy analysis of the etymology of dozens of names from popular video game characters. It examines the real-life and mythological roots of names from Final Fantasy, Zelda, Mario Bros., Street Fighter, and many other prominent franchises, complete with citations where appropriate. Quoting: "It's speculated that Street Fighter's Russian wrestler Zangief takes his name from a real-life Russian wrestler, Victor Zangiev. More interesting to me is that the working name for this character was Vodka Gobalsky. This is notable for two reasons — for one, that this name is amazing [and] deserves to enter into the public consciousness and, for another, that it bears a striking resemblance to the name of a Russian boxer in Nintendo's Punch-Out!! series, Vodka Drunkenski. I'm sure this says something about Japanese perception of Russian people. The latter Vodka, by the way, goes by the name Soda Popinski in US translations of the game, presumably because Nintendo of America didn't allow references to booze."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's great that the MSM has adopted blogging tools to cover the Tehran protests, which seem to be ending, perhaps tragically.

I'm watching Andrew Sullivan, the NY Times, the Guardian and Huffington. All are doing a fantastic job.

However, for next time -- can I suggest that they create an RSS feed for each flow where each mini-post is its own <item>. That way we could easily follow multiple flows without having to refresh all those pages.

Scripting News started as a link blog, so you'll find plenty of prior art looking at its archive. Here's a folder that contains the RSS archive for 2003. (View source, today's browsers totally mangle the display of XML, in the name of progress. Oy.)

An anonymous reader writes "Google and Amazon are 'a danger to everyone involved in the creative industries' because they act as the intermediary between creators and audiences, says Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow. He warns that the corporate giants will 'only fear competition from other established giants ... companies whose character as gatekeepers of video distribution and discovery won't be substantially different.' The solution, he says, is to use copyrights to lower the cost of entering the market. 'For so long as copyright holders think like short-timers, seeking a quick buck instead of a healthy competitive marketplace, they're doomed to work for their gatekeepers,' he says."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Photo from Casper Electronics

These Barbie Karaoke machines turn up at the dump every so often. A few weeks ago I dropped one off at Noise Night along with a few boxes of other seemingly bendable electrojunk. Maybe Barbie will cross your path at a yard sale, curbside picking or flea market. Apparently, they go for real money on Ebay.

Jimmie said that there was a good amount of information available on hacking Barbie's soundbox. Casper Electronics has some experience at the craft and shows the results of bending a variety of talking toys.

If I were to form some sort of experimental noise army, this piece would be standard issue. It's portable, versatile, and loud.

It has four different functions.

1. adjustable speed tape player
2. simple, amplified mixer
3. lo-fi echo processor
4. odd/pulsing/morphing/bleeping sound generator

All of these functions can be used together to achieve a variety of different sounds and effects.

More about circuit bending on the Casper Electronics site. If you are near Troy New York, you might check out the opening of their space, Casper Land.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Pixar flew an employee with a DVD of the animated feature film "Up" (which is only in theaters right now) to the home of a terminally ill child for a private viewing. The girl passed away soon after fulfilling this last wish.

Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing - a movie. From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film. After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.

Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up' (thanks Virgilio Corrado)

eldavojohn writes "Groklaw brings us news of Microsoft holding the smoking gun in regards to the death of Linux on netbooks. You see, the question of Linux on netbooks in Taiwan was put forth to the Taiwan Trade Authority director, who replied, 'In our association we operate as a consortium, like the open source consortium. They want to promote open source and Linux. But if you begin from the PC you are afraid of Microsoft. They try to go to the smart phone or PDA to start again.' It's simple; fear will keep them in line. PJ points out, 'So next time you hear Microsoft bragging that people prefer their software to Linux on netbooks, you'll know better. If they really believed that, they'd let the market speak, on a level playing field. If I say my horse is faster than yours, and you says yours is faster, and we let our horses race around the track, that establishes the point. But if you shoot my horse, that leaves questions in the air. Is your horse really faster? If so, why shoot my horse?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

evw writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago (subscription required, alternative coverage is available based on the WSJ's report). He is on track to return to work at the end of June. 'William Hawkins, a doctor specializing in pancreatic and gastrointestinal surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., said that the type of slow-growing pancreatic tumor Mr. Jobs had will commonly metastasize in another organ during a patient's lifetime, and that the organ is usually the liver. ... Having the procedure done in Tennessee makes sense because its list of patients waiting for transplants is shorter than in many other states.' There are no residency requirements for transplants."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mcmoodle writes "Bozeman, Montana has decided that they don't want applicant personal information after all, citing a worldwide backlash on the issue: '"Effective at noon today the city of Bozeman permanently ceased the practice of requesting that candidates selected for positions under a provisional job offer to provide their usernames or passwords for candidates' internet sites," said Chris Kukulski, Bozeman City Manager. ... Kukulski says after a 90 minute staff meeting held earlier today, officials decided asking applicants to provide their passwords to sites such as Facebook or MySpace, "exceeded that which is acceptable to our community." Kukulski apologized for the negative impact the issue has generated from news organizations and blogs around the world.' I didn't have any doubt this would be immediately squashed. Now I'm just curious as to how many personal accounts they actually went through!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Photo from Society of Robots]

Dale Herzog and I were talking the other night about the treasure trove of techno goodies that can be found in the average dumpscore printer. He sent along a few resources including this one about using steppers and the Basic Stamp:

If you are staring at a pile of stepper motors in a surplus shop, or have pulled one out of used equipment, here's how you can determine what you have.

First, check for the number of wires coming out. If 5 or 6 or 8, that's good because you have a unipolar stepper. If 4, that's bad because you have a bipolar stepper and should put it back. If 2, you have a regular DC motor. Confirm you have a stepper motor by turning the shaft. You should feel the little detents indicating each step.

Next, read the label on the side. If you are lucky, it will have the voltage and step size printed, or will be in a bin with the voltage marked. Look for 12V steppers. If you have a 5V stepper, and it is large, the currents will probably be too large for easy control. Small 5V steppers are OK. If you have no way of telling the voltage, it is probably best to look for another stepper.

What are you doing with steppers? How are you controlling them?

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

bryxal writes "The Liberal Party of Canada, currently leading in most polls, has announced yesterday that it supports Net Neutrality, saying, 'Internet management should be neutral and not be permitted for anti-competitive behaviour, nor should it target certain websites, users, providers or legitimate software applications. We must protect the openness and freedom of the internet, and maintain competition to spur innovation, improve service levels and reduce costs to users.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I like this simple perch attached to a street sign by Ken Mori. When not in use, it rotates to vertical, to advertise it's proposed use. Via Urban Prankster.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Culture jamming | Digg this!

(Download / YouTube) Boing Boing Video today peeks inside the electrified world of Omega Recoil, a group of engineers and "makers" who craft giant Tesla Coils, and stage humorous and thrilling performances with those large electrical devices. What's a Tesla Coil? From the Tesla Society website:

[It] is one of Nikola Tesla's most famous inventions -- essentially a high-frequency air-core transformer. It takes the output from a 120vAC to several kilovolt transformer & driver circuit and steps it up to an extremely high voltage. Voltages can get to be well above 1,000,000 volts and are discharged in the form of electrical arcs. Tesla himself got arcs up to 100,000,000 volts (...) [They] are unique in the fact that they create extremely powerful electrical fields. Large coils have been known to wirelessly light up florescent lights up to 50 feet away, and because of the fact that it is an electric field that goes directly into the light and doesn't use the electrodes, even burned-out florescent lights will glow.

For viewers in San Francisco -- Omega Recoil members will be giving a talk at the 7th anniversary Dorkbot event, which features other cool "maker mutants" we've featured on Boing Boing Video before, like Jon Sarriugarte and the Boiler Bar folks. Organizer Karen Marcelo says,

...and to think this all started because i was bored seven years ago and decided to call Douglas and start the SF one in Marc Powell's garage! Pesco was a speaker at the first one! We had Brian Normanly talk about how to 'liberate' electricity from PG&E. I dont think anyone has the guts to do that now! :) Here's that first event from 2002.

More on Jon Sarriugarte's blog.

---

Sponsor shout-out: This week's Boing Boing Video episodes are brought to you in part by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "will influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."

incognito84 writes "The development team responsible for the creation of the freeware game America's Army 3 has been canned, days after the launch of the highly flawed game, which was distributed mostly via Steam. 'The anonymous America's Army 3 developers in touch with Kotaku unsurprisingly didn't sound too pleased with the current situation, venting that "a lot of good people [worked] insanely long hours on this game that was butchered by outside sources.' The game's launch was plagued by massive server authentication issues which inhibited most players from playing it even two days afterward. One of the developers made a post on the official forums saying they were 'effectively stabbed in the back,' and that much of the funding was filtered to the bureaucracy. A patch has been released to address some of the game's issues."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been interesting to see the aftermath of the Jammie Thomas $1.92 million ruling, as it appears that even the RIAA is recognizing that such an insanely large award gives them something of a black-eye and has the possibility of creating a bit of a backlash. However, apparently they forgot to send out that message to all of their usual attack dogs. In an AP article discussing the ruling and the $1.92 million number with a variety of different people, the RIAA tried to distance itself from the number, specifically stating, "That was not our number, that was what 12 regular folks rendered." Uh, yeah, except that the RIAA has long used the statutory numbers in their arguments about the "risks" of file sharing.

Tom Sydnor, from the Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF), a loud and proud supporter of stronger copyright at every turn (and who is well funded by the RIAA labels), apparently missed the memo on playing down the number. He told the reporter that it was a perfectly reasonable number.

"Legally acquiring a license to give copies of a song to potentially millions of Kazaa users might well have cost $80,000 per song,"

Except... that's not even close to accurate. The record labels presented no proof that she gave the song to millions of users, and seem to totally ignore the fact that these songs were available from tons of other sources (either legally or illegally) for prices between nothing and $1. To claim that the record labels would literally consider an option to license a single user putting a song into a shared folder at $80,000 is simply ridiculous.

But, of course, it shows the mentality of those paid for by the RIAA. These are the same people who accuse Larry Lessig of being a communist by taking a few statements totally out of context, and then accuse universities of supporting terrorism by not violating students' privacy and handing over their details to the RIAA.

So, if the RIAA is really serious about playing down the size of the jury award, it might want to rein in Sydnor before he says much more. If you're looking for someone to get out a message by appearing as a caricature of the evil record labels, I don't think you could find any organization better than PFF. But, that's probably not what the RIAA needs right now, unless it really wants to give the folks on the fence even more reason to leap over to the side who recognizes just how much the labels have twisted, stretched and abused copyright law over the years, totally at odds with its constitutional prescription of promoting the progress of science. Defending a $1.92 million award to the record labels for 24 songs in a shared folder, with no evidence that a single one was actually shared, is not promoting the progress. It's promoting massive greed and regulatory capture at the expense of society.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

While some folks like to mock the business model examples we talk about by saying that the future is just in selling looooooooooooooooooottss of t-shirts, the truth is that while the models involve a bunch of different things, we shouldn't mock the idea of using t-shirts as part of some models. It appears that Mos Def recognizes that. As a bunch of you have sent in, his latest album is being sold via t-shirt. That is, you can buy a t-shirt that will include the album artwork on the front, track listing on the back... and a code for a digital download. And even more impressive, he's convinced Soundscan to count sales of the t-shirt as album sales. Another cool experiment.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

JoshMST writes "For years AMD and NVIDIA were like peas and carrots, and their SNAP partnership proved to be quite successful for both companies. Things changed dramatically when AMD bought up ATI, and now it seems like NVIDIA is pulling the plug on SLI support for the AMD platform. While the chipset division at AMD may be a bitter rival to NVIDIA, the CPU guys there have had a long and prosperous relationship with the Green Machine. While declining chipset margins on the AMD side was attributed to AMD's lackluster processor offerings for the past several years, the Phenom II chips have reawakened interest in the platform and they have found a place in enthusiasts' hearts again. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, they are seemingly missing out on a significant revenue stream by not offering new chipsets to go with these processors. They have also curtailed SLI adoption on the AMD platform as well, which couldn't be happening at a worse time."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The iPhone 3G S launched this morning (w00t!). Did BBG wake up at 4:45 a.m. and head to Apple's flagship store in San Francisco to: a) shoot video, b) purchase said gadget, c) make fun of fanboys, d) spend 2 hours dealing with AT&T, or e) all of the above* ?

• Video of an overeager fanboy charging the pearly gates and getting denied!

• Our first impressions of the iPhone 3G S [verdict: click here to find out]

• Will the new iPhone sell well? The line, frenzy at the SF Apple Store early this a.m. wasn't quite as large as previous launches.

• Would you pay $55 to tether your iPhone, or any handset for that matter?

• Should the 13" Mac Laptop be a "Pro"?

• Timbaland is getting sued for chiptune plagiarism (uh oh).

• An attractive, USB-powered laptop fan.

• We ran a contest for a set of magnetic BuckyBalls. Contest is over (bummer), but feel free to share your favorite Buckminster Fuller quote, or check some reader favorites, in the comments.

• Video of a homemade electric car that looks like a 1950s alien space ship.

• Looking for a Nintendo Entertainment System that's fit for a pimp?

• Popcorn Hour is launching a set-top box that supports Blu-ray... oh, and every video format.

• Why play Wii Bowling with a remote shaped like a stick of butter, when you can use a faux-bowling ball?

*The answer is d)

Earlier this week, Google agreed to delete unblurred images in its Street View database. If you don't know, Google Street View involves cars driving around photographing everything, so they can be placed on Google Maps. It's quite useful. However, some folks (and politicians) have been up in arms about the supposed privacy violation of photographing people walking in public (no, I don't get it, either). To deal with this, Google has been blurring faces of people. However, it usually keeps the unblurred versions in a database for future use (and for better training of its blurring mechanism).

However, just as the company agreed to delete the unblurred photos in its German database, over in the UK, such photos may be useful in helping to solve a mugging. The victim of the mugging (amazingly) noticed that one of the Street View photos was taken right before the mugging happened. It involved two guys who stole his bike, and the photo shows the two guys walking right behind the kid. He alerted the police, who got the unblurred image from Google and were able to track down the accused muggers. Of course, it's not clear if they'll actually be convicted or if there's really enough evidence. In the meantime, though, if you're thinking of mugging someone, maybe take a look around to see if there's a Google car driving along side you first.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

We've noted in the past that the Great Firewall of China basically works via a threat model. Basically, the government tells ISPs that if they fail to block "undesirable" content, then they'll get in trouble. Then, they may get notes about what type of content is "undesirable" but for the most part it's left up to them to figure it out, but if any "bad stuff" gets through, they know they can get in trouble, so they tend to overblock. Earlier this year, China warned various search engines that they too needed to comply with such rules, and that it was upset that people could find "bad stuff" via those search engines.

Apparently Google didn't pay enough attention, because the Chinese gov't has "disabled" parts of Google in China because (they claim) people can still access pornographic content (and other "undesirable" content, one imagines). However, what's interesting is the assumption that links on Google represent content Google has control over. As one of our readers, Ben, points out, it appears that the Chinese gov't regularly implies that Google "owns" the content that it links to:

The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center, had criticized the search engine for its erotic content and threatened punishment from the government. The group had said that Google had already been warned twice, in January and April, about its content.

And there you have the problem. The content isn't Google's and it makes no sense to claim that it is or to punish Google's spiders for finding and indexing it.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

On Tuesday, we discussed news that four US Senators would be looking into the exclusivity deals between carriers and cell phone makers. Apparently, they didn't like what they heard. Reader Ian Lamont writes with an update: "The Federal Communications Commission is planning on launching an investigation into exclusive handset deals between mobile carriers and handset makers. In a speech on Thursday, acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps said the agency 'should determine whether some of these arrangements adversely restrict consumer choice or harm the development of innovative devices, and it should take appropriate action if it finds harm.' It's not hard to imagine who might be targeted — at a separate Senate Committee on Commerce hearing on Thursday, much of the discussion centered on AT&T's exclusive deal to carry the iPhone. AT&T claimed 'consumers benefit from exclusive deals in three ways: innovation, lower cost and more choice,' but carriers and senators from states with large rural populations disagreed, saying that their customers had no choice when it came to the iPhone — it's not available because AT&Ts network doesn't reach these areas. One panelist also brought up the Carterfone precedent (PDF), which concerned an 'electrical acoustic coupling device' that a man named Tom Carter developed in the 1950s to let field workers make phone calls using a radio transceiver connected to AT&T's phone network. AT&T, which was then a monopoly, claimed no foreign devices could be connected to its network, but lost when it challenged the Carterfone in court. The result spurred innovation such as the fax machine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've done some more work on the CSS-in-Rivers project.

I'm sticking with the plan. I'm going to have a new tool that makes it really easy to configure the CSS in realtime, without having to change any code, so people can play with a real aggregator and hack up its appearance.

You can see the result in the public page, which is updated every 10 minutes.

http://scripting.com/misc/riverExample.html

I expect to release the tool before the end of the weekend, Murphy-willing.

PS: Yes I know it's ugly! By design. To make you want to change it.