Susannah Breslin is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. She is a freelance journalist who blogs at Reverse Cowgirl and is at work on a novel set in the adult movie industry.

Squash the $treet is a game for your iPhone that enables you to express your violent dislike of all those smarmy bankers that Americans like to blame for the economic collapse.

Financial Crisis? Let your rage rain down on the crooks and swindlers who caused it.

Watch the shady bankers, creepy fraudsters and corrupt CEOs flee their gilded offices, sprinting for the nearest escape vehicle. Squash and flick the snarky scoundrels up and down the streets and sidewalks in the festering heart of the city where all the thievery and greed began.

Recoup your losses with the monetary awards you receive from successfully squashing the white-collared criminals who stole your retirement savings. Fund your unending vengeful rampage with precious metal bonuses hoarded from certain embezzlers who just couldn't grab enough.

Be a responsible steward: avoid bankruptcy or your bubble will burst.

Special features include: "Special powerups that boost your squash rate and resentment streak," "Bloody spatter effects," and "Panicked voice-acting and screams by actual bankers." Sounds like fun!

Squash the $treet (Thanks, RW!)

(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)

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More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com

plover recommends a detailed account by Brian Krebs in the Washington Post's Security Fix column of a complex hack and con job resulting in the theft of $415,000 from Bullitt County, Kentucky. "The crooks were aided by more than two dozen co-conspirators in the United States, as well as a strain of malicious software capable of defeating online security measures put in place by many banks. ...the trouble began on June 22, when someone started making unauthorized wire transfers of $10,000 or less from the county's payroll to accounts belonging to at least 25 individuals around the country... [T]he criminals stole the money using a custom variant of a keystroke logging Trojan known as 'Zeus' (a.k.a. 'Zbot') that included two new features. The first is that stolen credentials are sent immediately via instant message to the attackers. But the second, more interesting feature of this malware... is that it creates a direct connection between the infected Microsoft Windows system and the attackers, allowing the bad guys to log in to the victim's bank account using the victim's own Internet connection."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Susannah Breslin is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. She is a freelance journalist who blogs at Reverse Cowgirl and is at work on a novel set in the adult movie industry.

One of my favorite fashion blogs is Jak & Jill, which showcases the work of photographer Tommy Ton. The image you see here comes fresh off the Givenchy runway in Paris, where Fashion Week is getting underway. Is this a burqa? What do you call this kind of face jewelry? I don't know, but I love it. (Image credit: Tommy Ton)

We've been hearing all sorts of stories recently about how aggregators and blog sites are apparently "parasites" on "real" newspaper reporting. For example, the CEO of News Limited (a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.) just went on a nice little rant against bloggers, claiming that blogs are "barely discernible from massive ignorance." In fact, the idea that blogs are somehow "parasitic" to "real journalism" has been around for years.

Because of this, we're suddenly seeing a revival of the nearly dormant concept of a "hot news" protection, that would forbid other publications from "profiting" from a news source that has a hot scoop. We're seeing proposals to ban even paraphrasing the news from a source that breaks it or making profits from a story broken by someone else.

So, surely, a mainstream newspaper would never "parasite" a story from a blog without giving credit, right? We've already joked that newspapers (by their own definition) are simply parasites of the people who actually make the news they cover, but newspapers have a long history of getting their stories from other publications and rarely given credit.

To be clear: beyond common courtesy, I don't think there's anything wrong with this, and I'm calling out the following example not because I think the LA Times did something wrong. I just find it amusing that at a time when so many insist that it's the ugly mass of "bloggers" who "parasite" stories from the professional reporters, that we see the opposite. Last week, I believe I was the first publication to write about Yahoo, Microsoft and RealNetworks getting sued by MCS Music over failure to license composition rights on a bunch of songs those companies offered via their music services. That story was sent to me by Eric Goldman -- who I believe sent it to some others as well. A few other online only publications wrote about the story and credited my post, which was nice.

And then, the LA Times wrote about it, calling it an important lawsuit. Now, there are many different places where the LA Times and its reporter Jon Healey could have found that story. Others may have sent it to Healey. He may have been watching the legal filings himself. Eric Goldman (who sent it to me) could have sent it to him as well. But... what's interesting is that in describing the case, Healey links to the version of the filing that I, personally, uploaded to document hosting site Scribd for the purpose of including it in the Techdirt post. That suggests, pretty strongly (and I'm willing to find out otherwise) that Healey found out about the lawsuit on Techdirt (I know that Healey has read the site in the past, though that doesn't mean he still reads it).

Now -- again, since this will be misinterpreted -- I have no problem whatsoever if Healey did find out about it on Techdirt and if he then wrote about it and decided not to link to Techdirt as credit for where he found it. I'm not complaining about it. It's a neighborly thing to do, but certainly not a big deal in the long run. I just found the fact that this appears to be what happened rather amusing, given the claims of so many that it's the blogs who "parasite" the pros, when it appears that the opposite happens sometimes too. If some of these proposals that are floating around ever got anywhere, I could argue that the LA Times was unfairly profiting off of my "scoop." That would, of course, be ridiculous, but that's the sort of world we'll live in if those who are trying to jump on the "hot news" bandwagon get their way.

And that is the important point. News is news. Facts are facts. No one owns either. A lawsuit is just a lawsuit and if anyone wants to write about it however they want to write about it, they should be able to do so. To claim that whoever wrote about it first somehow gets to "own" the story or reserve all the "profits" from it -- whether it's by a newspaper, a new media publication or some individual -- is simply pointless.

And, the newspaper folks who are pushing for such rules might want to remember that it's just as likely to come back and bite them if such laws were passed.

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An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Cosmos Magazine, to wit: "The US government unveiled final rules for embryonic stem cell research, laying out ground rules for 'ethically responsible, scientifically worthy' studies eligible for federal funds. The new rules, which go into effect today, follow President Barack Obama's March 9 executive order lifting a ban on embryonic stem cell research, an order that went into effect under his predecessor, George W. Bush. ... The US National Institutes of Health's (NIH) guidelines are slightly less restrictive than those outlined in a draft document released in April in that they allow the use of existing stem cell lines, in addition to new ones derived from IVF procedures. ... The NIH received some 49,000 comments from patient advocacy groups, scientists, medical groups, and other interested parties before issuing the guidelines."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So here's a question? Which is more unethical? Making an unauthorized copy of a piece of software or music for personal use... or outright lying in a commercial? I'm pondering this as a bunch of folks have sent in variations on the news that the SIIA is (bizarrely) resurrecting its old discredited "Don't Copy That Floppy" educational campaign: The original campaign is widely seen as a total joke that did nothing to slow down the pace of copying, and it simply showed how out of touch the Software Publishers Association was with the market. The campaign did nothing to cut down on copying, but it did an amazing job informing the market how easy it was to copy software. It also was in the middle of the software industry's long and fruitless struggle with DRM, which was later mostly abandoned as a failure that did more harm than good for legitimate consumers.

So it's difficult to fathom who could possibly think it's a good idea to bring back the campaign... but that appears to be what's happening. Still, the "chorus" of the song claims that copying is a crime. I would argue that this is false advertising. Copying may be a crime, but the scenarios shown in the film don't appear to involve criminal activity, but civil torts. For it to be criminal copyright infringement it needs to involve being done "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain." So the ad is falsely promoting the idea that personal copying is a criminal matter -- in fact it falsely suggests that simply downloading software or music will put you in jail.

So which is more ethical? Getting a personal copy of a song you wanted to hear? Or flat out lying about the criminality of that action to the widespread public?

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By way of the MAKE Flickr pool comes this wonderful build of a fireworks controller fittingly house inside of an ammo box. No text with the photo set, but the pictures pretty much tell the story of the build.

Firework Controller

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Ponca City, We Love You writes "Two years ago computer security expert Bill Anderson read about scientific research on how the human eye moves as it reads and processes text and images. 'This obscure characteristic... suddenly struck me as (a solution to) a security problem,' says Anderson. With the help of a couple of software developers, Anderson developed a software program called Chameleon that tracks a viewer's gaze patterns and only allows an authorized user to read text on the screen, while everyone else sees gibberish. Chameleon uses gaze-tracking software and camera equipment to track an authorized reader's eyes to show only that one person the correct text. After a 15-second calibration period in which the software learns the viewer's gaze patterns, anyone looking over that user's shoulder sees dummy text that randomly and constantly changes. To tap the broader consumer market, Anderson built a more consumer-friendly version called PrivateEye, which can work with a simple Webcam to blur a user's monitor when he or she turns away. It also detects other faces in the background, and a small video screen pops up to alert the user that someone is looking at the screen. 'There have been inventions in the space of gaze-tracking. There have been inventions in the space of security,' says Anderson. 'But nobody has put the two ideas together, as far as we know.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

je ne sais quoi writes "Net Applications normally releases its statistics for browser and operating system usage share on the first of every month. This month, however, the data has not shown up — only a cryptic message stating they are reviewing the data for inexplicable statistical variations and that it will be available soon. Larry Dignan at ZDNet has a blog post that might explain what is happening: Statcounter has released some data that shows a precipitous drop in IE browser use in North America, to the benefit of Firerox, Safari, and Chrome. At the end of May, StatCounter shows IE usage share (vor versions 6, 7, and 8 combined) at around 64%; at the beginning of June it is now about 56% — an astounding 8% drop in one month. We should keep in mind the difficulties in estimating browser usage share: this could very well be a change in how browsers report themselves, or some other statistical anomaly. So it will probably be healthy to remain skeptical until trend this is confirmed by other organizations. Have any of you seen drops in IE usage share for Web-sites you administer?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Susannah Breslin is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. She is a freelance journalist who blogs at Reverse Cowgirl and is at work on a novel set in the adult movie industry.

The Independent did one of those things where they ask someone famous a bunch of questions, and this time they asked Ron Jeremy. The Hedgehog. The San Fernando Valley's Hirsute Thespian of Our Times.

There's a lot of pressure to perform when you're the best-known [porn] actor in the world; my biggest fear is that I'll be in a scene and I'll suck, and people will say, "Just look at that flaccid noodle." I'm getting older and it feels more of a strain, but I'm still enjoying doing the scenes.

Credo: Ron Jeremy, porn star, 56 (Image credit: Robert Yager)

Now here's some cool news: Holly Black and Ellen Kushner have sold another volume of stories in the venerable and beloved Bordertown series. This was a series of linked stories and novels about a world in which the Kingdom of the Fairy returns to Earth, connected by a mystical gateway, and about the goings-on in the Bordertown that sits in between the world of humans and the world of magic, a town where technology and sorcery only work intermittently and runaways, rejects, nutcases and heroes gather. It had an incredibly powerful impact on me as a young reader, sparking a lifelong love-affair with contemporary fantasy.

I've been invited to write a story, and I leapt at the chance. Other writers committed or "expressing interest" include Charles De Lint, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Neil Gaiman and Kelly Link. I don't have the faintest idea what I'm going to write, except that it will probably revolve around a group house or squat.

BORDERTOWN LIVES!!!

(Image ganked from "The Journal of Mythic Arts")

Last month, we wrote about McDonald's attempt to get dismissed from a lawsuit involving a McDonald's employee who is accused of uploading naked photos found on a phone that was left at the fast food joint. Apparently, the company hasn't been dismissed from the lawsuit, but Michael Scott points out that the court has said that McDonald's can sue the employee in question over the matter for any damages. The court appears to have said that because a McDonald's employee promised to safeguard the phone, it became the company's responsibility -- but the fact that the employee was then negligent allows McDonald's to separately sue the employee for any damages.

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Filmmaker Dianna Dilworth emailed me last week with a link to her documentary about hardcore Michael Jackson fans like the fellow above: We are the Children.

"It's a look at the lives of the fans during the trail a few years back," she says -- specifically, trufans out showing support for their idol during the pop star's 2004-05 trial on child molestation charges.

As folks who follow me on Twitter already know, I find the cable news MJ-death-marathon spectacle to be a sad reminder of the state of -- well, the pathetic state of American cable news. I mean, what was that? Nine days of wall to wall "Michael Jackson: STILL DEAD"?

But thoughtful works like Dilworth's film, works that examine the lives of the "happy mutants" who are utterly devoted to this pop culture figure, I find fascinating. Do yourself a favor today: turn off the TV, stream this instead.

You can view Diana's film online for free at SnagFilms, a new ad supported film content site (Flash embed).

Or, you can buy a DVD here.

Susannah Breslin is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. She is a freelance journalist who blogs at Reverse Cowgirl and is at work on a novel set in the adult movie industry.

Yes, you would. Of course you would!

Just because you didn't make it to today's moving tribute to everyone's favoritest King of Pop, it doesn't mean you can't comfort yourself by living as close as, well, you can to his star on the Walk of Fame. Sure, it's a sad consolation prize, but it's something ... Isn't it?

Thanks to Craigslist, you can rent a one-bedroom MJ "memorial," uh, suite for dollars a day: "$90 / 1br - Michael Jackson memorial - 1 bedroom apt in Hollywood."

"Walk to Michael's Star on Hollywood Blvd. just a few blocks away," the landlord touts. I say go for it.

Jonathan sez,

I'm Jonathan and one of the bloggers for the Israeli Blogger Coalition against the biometric database. Our government is currently pushing, with heavy pressure from certain corporations, to establish a national mandatory biometric database. Today, I went with Eran Vered, a fellow blogger and video producer to video the hearing about the biometric database in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset).

After around half an hour of filming, the staff from the Immigration Authority (coming to lobby the database) noted that Eran can film them as well and passed a note (shown on video). A few minutes afterwards, Eran was "Excused" out of the hearing, where former minister of Interior, Meir Sheetrit, who is the champion for the database, suddenly screamed for no apparent reason.

While Eran did have a special permission to film in the Knesset (as you cannot enter it with any camera without that permission) it seems quite strange.

Sheetrit's anger towards Eran was unexplainable, as he is eager to pass this bill into law without any public debate. The bill itself allows confidential regulation and confidential procedures for use of the database and that are not subjected to any public review.

I'd be more than glad if you can help us promote our struggle against this bill.

?"? ???? ???-??? ???? ???? ??????? ??? ???? ??? ?????? (Thanks, Jonathan!)

Brady Forrest says:

Ignite is coming to LA! As always speakers will get 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. We're going to be holding the geek event at Cinespace in Hollywood on 7/21. Submit a talk now.

This will be the first Ignite in Los Angeles; it is co-hosted by LA Geek Dinner. Doors are open at 6:30 for Geek Dinner. The Ignite talks will run from 8:00-9:30. Please RSVP to the Geek Dinner list on Upcoming.

If you're working on an interesting project, have an unusual skill, or just some interest that would be fun to share with everyone, please submit a proposal to: http://bit.ly/IgniteLA

Ignite LA is being organized by Brady Forrest, Matt Forrest, Dan Gould, and Heathervescent. It is a free event. If you're not familiar with Ignite check out some videos on the Ignite Show.

Image Courtesy of Anitakhart

Guestblogger Marina Gorbis is executive director at Institute for the Future.

My mother knew well the value of social capital, although she probably never heard the term. In the Soviet Union where she lived and where I grew up one couldn't survive without it. She traded social capital on a daily basis. It meant that despite being a widow with very little money, despite not having a high position or a membership in the "privileged" class (the Communist Party), she was able to provide a relatively good life for her family. We never worried about having enough food, my sister and I always wore fashionable (by Soviet standards, at least) clothes, took music and dance classes, went to good schools, spent summers by the seashore, went to the symphony, and otherwise took advantage of a lifestyle that seemed much beyond our means. How was my mother able to provide all these things? She certainly couldn't afford them on her pitiful wages as a physician in a government-run clinic in Odessa, Ukraine. Social capital--networks of relationships with friends and acquaintances -- is what accounted for her ability to provide for a relatively comfortable, albeit not luxurious, lifestyle.

While there was no meat to be found in any store in the city, my mother got it regularly (along with other provisions) through the director of a supermarket, who was also a husband of a close colleague. I got into music school in exchange for my mother treating the director of the school. We could get Western medicines because my mother was friendly with the head of a large local pharmacy. Our apartment was always filled with people who my mother was counseling, diagnosing, treating, and prescribing medicines for. No money was ever exchanged. Ever mindful of Stalin's purges and his fabricated case against Jewish doctors' alleged conspiracy to poison Soviet leadership, she was too afraid to have an underground private medical practice or take money for her services. "With my luck, I would be the first to be caught," she always said. The people who could be regularly found in our home or whose homes she visited dispensing medical services were her substitutes for money. They and many other "connections" she built over a lifetime were her doors to resources -- from tangible commodities such as food, medicines, and clothes, to information, services, and emotional support.

Our story was not unique. All around us, amid empty stores, low salaries, dismal productivity numbers, and fraying infrastructure, people seemed to live normal "middle class" lives. An economist would have a hard time explaining how this was possible by looking at economic statistics or by walking around the stores and markets in Russia in the 1960's and 70's. Visitors to the Soviet Union, in fact, were always amazed at the gap between what they saw in state stores--shelves empty or filled with things no one wanted--and what they saw in people's homes--nice furnishings and tables filled with food.

What bridged the gap was the informal economy, an economy driven by social rather than financial capital. This economy was deeply rooted in the myriad relationships people like my mother used to acquire goods, services, information, education, and many other things. They did not do this consciously--no one was teaching them how to grow their network or increase their following the way many social marketers are eager to teach us today, they just did this to survive. The web of social relationships was an invisible fabric that permeated the economic life and made that particular society work.

Social capital has served a critical role in the economic life of the Soviet Union and continues to do so in many poorer countries today. Teodor Shanin, an eminent sociologist, has invented a field of study called "peasantology," which looks at how people survive in informal economies. Shanin argues that peasants inhabit an economic structure entirely different from either capitalism or socialism. The key element of the peasant economic structure is the existence of dense and vibrant social and family networks that provide members access to necessary resources. Researchers observed the phenomenon first in Africa years ago where they could not find any economic explanation for how the majority of the population survived. They didn't own land. They didn't seem to have any assets.

Marxist and market economists had always dismissed such activity as marginal. However, as Shanin argues, one is hard pressed to see something as marginal when half of mankind lives like this. In fact, social capital also plays an important role in developed economies, as many researchers such as Manuel Castells and Robert Putnam, among others, have shown. However, far too often we have pushed social capital and notions of non-monetary currencies out of our economic thinking and economic interactions. One can in fact view the whole history of economic development as a long path of taking local, familiar, personal, and social out of economic relationships and replacing them with professional, impersonal, and highly institutionalized economic interactions centered on exchanging one form of capital--money. It is hard to argue that this has brought great efficiency to our economic life and has resulted in spectacular growth rates in societies that have followed the path. In the process, we have built organizations and regulatory frameworks that allowed us to scale what previously were familiar, often familial, economic relationships to include anonymous strangers, thus allowing for aggregation of resources across geographies and social boundaries. Organizations we created and that dominate our economic landscape today, with a limited liability corporation as its crowning glory, have been great innovations in their time and enablers of much of our prosperity. They massively increased the scale of economic interactions and at the same time became institutional proxies for the kind of trust we previously reserved for our neighbors and family.

We have become successful at the art of operating at scales massively beyond the local village and beyond the boundaries of social relations. We know how to organize people and resources for the ultimate goal of maximizing monetary returns. Along the way, we developed a host of management theories and practices that have become bibles to generations of working men and women. And the corporate culture we created spread well beyond the business realm. As Doug Rushkoff points out in "Life Inc.," corporatism or corporate way of thinking has permeated our culture, language, philanthropic organizations, schools, and media. It is how we've come to think about getting things done. We almost cannot conceive of a world without hierarchical organizational charts, mission statements, departments, and clear sets of corporate rules and incentives.

All of this is about to change. Computing and communications technologies are not only linking us into a one global village, one global brain, they are also adding a new layer of sociality to our interactions and are making it possible for us to engage in new kinds of transactions with each other outside of existing organizational boundaries. They are making it possible for us to gain access and build trust that we previously outsourced to organizations. They are also taking anonymity out of many economic transactions. We can gain new levels of knowledge about strangers by following their Twitter streams, looking up their friends on Facebook, checking their reputations as buyers and sellers on E-Bay, measuring their contributions to Wikipedia, watching their Youtube videos. We can lend our money directly to people and projects we find appealing on Kiva.org rather than entrust the money to banks to invest anonymously and without any say from us. Even public relations is changing from relying on official public releases to increasingly whispering to the right people in one's social network (as an example see this recent article in the NYT). We are bringing a whole new level of sociality, familiarity, and connectedness to our economic interactions. In a word, we are socialstructing our organizations, i.e. reorganizing them around social connections rather than against them.

But social connections we organize around are different from face-to-face relationships our ancestors grew up with. We are witnessing a rise in what I call information-driven sociality -- sociality that derives from our ability to get direct access to strangers and remove their anonymity by giving us access to information trails they leave behind, thus providing us with knowledge about many aspects of their selves--interests, reputations, online contributions, musical tastes, even buying preferences. In the process, the raison d'etre for many types of organizations we created over the past few centuries -- organizations needed for aggregating resources and enabling transactions between anonymous strangers -- is disappearing. Amplified with the collective intelligence, access, and resources embedded in social connections with multitudes of others, we are now increasingly able to achieve the kind of scale and reach previously achievable only by large organizations.

Driven by information-driven sociality, the next decade will usher in a whole new array of organizational models, new forms of currencies, and new sets of work practices. At the same time we will need to create new regulatory frameworks suited for organizational forms based on principles of social connectivity and familiarity. Remember the old adage of "Keep social out, don't bring it into the workplace?" The new adage is "Social is business, bring it in."

The sequel to the venerable Don't Copy That Floppy video (an embarrassing 1992 rap video about the evils of software piracy, produced by the Business Software Alliance Software & Information Industry Association ) is apparently ready to ship, and it's a doozy. Taking a page out of The IT Crowd's playbook, suggesting that copying your friends' music, movies and code will lead to you being imprisoned and then forced into brutal slavery by other cons (seriously).

The BSA are, of course, big proponents of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which would require signatories to send noncommercial copiers to prison, so I suppose that there's something to this threat.

I wonder if anyone at the BSA ever sits down and says, "You know, if we keep making stuff like this, eventually people are going to start thinking that giving us money for software only funds more efforts to imprison their loved ones, and thus they should really pirate stuff, if only to starve us of cash for these batshit excursions into private law."

Don't Copy That 2 - COMING SOON! (via /.)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Professor Charles Nesson, the Harvard law professor serving pro bono as counsel to the defendant in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, has been ordered to show cause why sanctions should not be issued against him for violating the Court's orders prohibiting reproduction of the court proceedings. The order to show cause was in furtherance of the RIAA's motion for sanctions and protective order, which we discussed here yesterday. The Judge indicated that she was 'deeply concerned' about Prof. Nesson's apparent 'blatant disregard' of her order."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Susannah Breslin is a guestblogger on Boing Boing. She is a freelance journalist who blogs at Reverse Cowgirl and is at work on a novel set in the adult movie industry.

London-based photographer Sophie Gerrard has created a photo series called "E-wasteland," a graphic look at the toxic effects of electronic waste on India's land and its people.

Every year, Gerrard writes, 20 to 50 million tons of electronic waste are generated worldwide.

India has become one of the world's largest dumping grounds for e-waste. E-waste is highly toxic. It contains lead, cadmium, mercury, tin, gold, copper, PVC and brominated, chlorinated and phosphorus based flame retardants. Many of these heavy metals and contaminants are extremely harmful to humans as well as to animals and plants.

The Basel Convention, of which the UK and India are signatories, bans the transportation of hazardous or toxic waste from the developed world to developing countries.

This illegal toxic trade is, therefore, in direct violation.

E-wasteland: The growing problem of e-waste in India (via riley dog)

Here's a fun little thing to do with your 8 x 8 LCD matrix and an Arduino MCU, create a classic game of Pong. Hey, I have an itty-bitty 8 x 8. Maybe I'll make one of these. Bruno has the code on his site. Unfortunately, the site is in Portuguese.

Ping Pong com Matriz de Leds 8×8

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We've pointed out how incredibly ridiculous the old structure of the recording industry was, where artists would hand over pretty much all of their rights to the label. It's amazing that this sort of indentured servitude model has survived as long as it has. After all, if you look at other parallels -- such as venture capitalists and startups, the VCs don't end up totally owning startups to the same extent as labels. Of course, this was really a function of the limitations inherent in the industry: the very limited ability to promote and distribute music in the past without a major record label behind you. With those barriers falling away, we're seeing much more reasonable models pop up. I still believe there's a big place for record labels, but it no longer needs to be a massive record label where you hand over all your rights.

And, in fact, we're seeing newer, more nimble and smarter record labels who are willing to embrace these new models rather than spending all their money on lawyers and lobbyists to hold back customers. The latest example (sent in by Ruby) is that Radiohead's manager, Brian Message, has teamed up with Nettwerk (who we've written about a bunch) to launch a new, much more artist-friendly record label called Polyphonic. One key point: artists on the label retain their copyright. To be honest, it's amazing that any band has ever been willing to give up the copyrights on its music to a label, so it's good to see alternatives showing up. The other plan is that the artists will get 50% of any profits, a significantly larger percentage than most other labels give.

Remember, also, that Brian Message is the guy who said file sharing is great for music and championed the band's "pay what you want" experiment (which I still don't think was nearly as creative as others' business models). And Nettwerk's Terry McBride has been an enthusiastic supporter of innovative business models that don't focus on relying on copyright as a crutch (in fact, he's discussed that copyright may be a totally pointless concept in the near future, and artists are better off to focus on other ways to build smart business models). It will be interesting to see who the new label signs up.

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The news release from Sandia National Laboratories says the SunCatcher power system (above) unveiled at the National Solar Thermal Test Facility today is the result of a design partnership with Stirling Energy Systems and Tessera Solar. But I think they really designed 'em with Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. Yes, I know he died in 1967, but the gubmint's secret art-zombie time travel machines address that matter. Duh.

We're emerging from the longest, deepest sunspot drought since 1913 (we discussed its depths here) with the appearance of a robust group of sunspots over the weekend. Recently we discussed a possible explanation for the prolonged minimum. The Fox News article quotes observer Michael Buxton of Ocean Beach, Calif.: "This is the best sunspot I've seen in two years." jamie found a NASA site where you can generate a movie of the recent sunspot's movement — try selecting the first image type and bumping the resolution to 1024. The magnetic field lines are clearly visible.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a follow-up to Adam's Game Boy iPhone felt case, Seth Jordan sent us a link to this cute little felt case with the classic Mac on it. You can buy them on Etsy if you don't care to make your own.

Mac Classic iPhone Case Delivers Instant iDrool

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The US Constitution clearly states that the sole purpose of intellectual property monopolies is "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." For quite some time, we've felt that current intellectual property law does not live up to that challenge... and it appears that, of all people, the Pope may agree. Pope Benedict XVI is certainly not subject to the US Constitution, but Roberto Valenzuela alerts us to the Pope's "Caritas in veritate" (Charity in Truth) that just came out today. In it, the Pope discusses what is progress and the importance of economic development, which makes for quite an interesting read, whether you are religious or not. The Pope talks about how economic development, prosperity and economic growth has helped lift many out of poverty and built up nations and created tremendous opportunities for people. However, he is worried about "malfunctions and dramatic problems" in the system. Such as? Well, intellectual property for one thing:

On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care

While there's plenty that I don't necessarily agree with, a lot of the talk certainly does appear to be pretty economically literate, suggesting that an overabundant focus on short term profits can do significant harm to long-term economic growth. He talks up the importance of increasing knowledge and research and better sharing the results of that research.

The impact of technology is a constant theme throughout the entire thing, with an entire section focused on technology towards the end, where he does worry that our fascination with technology for the sake of technology often obscures the overall impact of technology. He talks about the responsible use of technology, but (perhaps I'm reading too much into it), he doesn't appear to be condemning technological progress at all, but noting that for its gains to be sustainable, people do need to think about the wider impact. And, certainly, I disagree with his assessment that technology for things like social communications is not "neutral," but can have a direct moral implication.

It's a worthwhile (if long) read, no matter where you stand on these issues -- but the very fact that even the Pope is concerned about the excesses of intellectual property being used to harm economic and social development again suggests that this is a problem that is having a pretty wide impact.

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The NY Times has a blog posting on the occasion of the Internet advertising industry's release (PDF) of what it describes as tough new standards governing the collection and use of data about users' behavior. The Time's Saul Hansell describes these "new" standards as more of the same old status quo, and outlines four privacy-enhancing ideas, being discussed by Google, Yahoo, the FTC, and Congress, that the IAB has completely ignored. These principles are: every ad should explain itself, users should be able to see data collected about them, browsers should help enforce user choices about tracking, and some information (medical and financial) is simply too sensitive to track.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I am delighted to welcome back a returning Boing Boing guestblogger: author, photographer, and blogger Susannah Breslin.

She has written for Details, Newsweek, Harper's Bazaar, The Daily Beast, Radar Online, Variety, Salon, Wired News, The New York Post, The LA Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Vancouver Sun, The San Francisco Examiner Playboy.com, Nerve, Arena (UK), and Max (France). She has appeared on CNN, FOX, Playboy TV, "Politically Incorrect," UK Channel 4, and NPR. She is writing a novel that's set in the adult movie industry.

She is beautiful, as you can see from the above photo; she is talented, as you will see from the posts to follow; and she is rather tall: 6'1".

Susannah Breslin online: Blog, Twitter, Flickr.

Explosives at the end of sledgehammers? Big fun! (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

Peace Corps Library writes "BBC reports that about 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible, the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript, have been recovered and put on the Internet. 'The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures,' says Dr. Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library. 'This 1,600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the Bible was transmitted from generation to generation.' The New Testament of the Codex Sinaiticus appears in Koine Greek, the original vernacular language, and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. For 1,500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery until it was found in 1844 and split between Egypt, Russia, Germany, and Britain. It is thought to have survived because the desert air was ideal for preservation and because the monastery, on a Christian island in a Muslim sea, remained untouched, its walls unconquered. The British Library is marking the online launch of the manuscript with an exhibition which includes a range of historic items and artifacts linked to the document. 'The availability of the virtual manuscript for study by scholars around the world creates opportunities for collaborative research that would not have been possible just a few years ago.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

RetroComedy posted their picks for "15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time." Above are my faves from the bunch. (Thanks, David Steinberg!)

Last month, we wrote about the lawsuit brought by UK anti-piracy industry group FACT against the company Scopelight and its founders for running a video search engine called Surfthechannel.com. Considering it was simply a video search engine and pointed to content that was both authorized and unauthorized, we wondered how FACT could tell a legit search engine from an illegal one. However, more details on the case are coming to light, and the whole thing seems questionable. Someone, who prefers to remain anonymous, sent along the news that the lawyers for Scopelight have now won the first battle against FACT, and the full decision reveals some rather troubling details about how closely FACT -- a private industry group -- collaborated with the police in the initial investigation, and then FACT's own actions after the police investigation concluded.

It's already troubling enough that a private industry group, involved solely in activities designed to protect a business model, was allowed to work so closely with police in a criminal investigation. FACT alerted the police to potential illegality at Scopelight, which is fine, but from then on FACT was intimately involved in the criminal investigation. When the owners of Scopelight, Anton Benjamin Vickerman and his wife Kelly-Anne Vickerman, had their home raided by the police... FACT came along for the investigation. Not only that, but they had their own private investigator copy information from the Vickerman's computers (exactly what and how much was copied is apparently in dispute). When the Vickerman's were questioned by the police, FACT members took part in the questioning.

It seems troubling enough that private industry reps were allowed to be so closely involved in a criminal investigation where they have clear bias, but it gets worse. The police seized various computers and equipment as part of arresting the Vickerman's, and then allowed FACT employees to inspect the computers and the information found on them -- which, again seems to be granting way too much access to a private group. Then things got even more bizarre: the police gave a bunch of the equipment to FACT to allow FACT to continue to examine the equipment.

A few months after the original raid, investigation and arrest, the police decided that there wasn't enough for criminal charges, and decided not to prosecute the Vickerman's. The police told the Vickerman's their property could be returned, so the Vicerkman's lawyers contacted FACT asking for the equipment back, at which point FACT refused, claiming it was holding onto the equipment because it was considering bringing a civil suit against the Vickermans -- which it eventually did bring.

So beyond the rather stunning close working relationship between the police and a private industry group on a criminal investigation, including handing over evidence to a private party, once the police decided not to prosecute, that private party decided to keep the computer equipment and use it for a civil suit. Thankfully, the court has ruled that this latter decision was improper, and the moment the police decided not to prosecute, the equipment should have been returned. So while this is a victory for Scopelight, it's still a rather stunning revelation of how closely integrated a private industry organization is with criminal investigations, and certainly raises questions as to why such a group should get such access.

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The PING))) ultrasonic sensor is a really easy way to measure distance with a micro-controller. All you have to do is hook up 3 wires and upload some code. These sensors are great for robots, alarm systems, or any other application that requires some type of measurement or obstacle avoidance. Don't forget to check out our other Arduino 101 videos!

Subscribe to the MAKE podcast | Download for iTunes

In the Maker Shed:

More about the PING))) Ultrasonic Sensor

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MIT researchers developed light-detecting fibers that could eventually be woven into a "fabric camera." Instead of counting on a single lens, the new system would use a web of the fibers as a distributed imaging surface. Imagine a shirt where the entire back is a "camera." From MIT News:

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Yoel Fink of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), emphasize that while such an application and others like it are still only dreams, work is rapidly progressing on developing fabrics capable of capturing images. In a recent issue of the journal Nanoletters, the team reported what it called a “significant” advance: using such a fiber web to take a rudimentary picture of a smiley face.

“This is the first time that anybody has demonstrated that a single plane of fibers, or ‘fabric,’ can collect images just like a camera but without a lens,” said Fink, corresponding author of the Nanoletters paper. “This work constitutes a new approach to vision and imaging.”

"'Flexible camera' replaces lens with fiber web"

Karen Hertzberg writes "Since MMORPGs became a mainstream medium, players have debated the two primary methods of advancement. Which is better? Is it the level-based system that is so dominant in today's MMORPGs, or the lesser-used skill-based system? This has been a strong subject of debate on many forums, blogs, and gaming sites for as long as the genre has existed. Ten Ton Hammer's Cody 'Micajah' Bye investigates the two concepts and gathers input from some of the brightest minds in the gaming industry about their thoughts on the two systems of advancement." Relatedly, I've seen a growing trend of players saying that such games don't really take much skill at all. The standard argument is that it just boils down to "knowing how to move" or "knowing when to hit your buttons." In the MMO community, people often make references to FPS or RTS games, saying they have a higher skill cap. However, the same complaints also come from within those communities, with comments like "you just need to know the map," or "it's all about a good build order." At what point does intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics make a player skilled?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here is Destino, the collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí. Production began in 1945 and the film didn't premier until 2003. Apparently, it will finally see an official home DVD release in 2010 along with a documentary about the two artists' history together. Destino (Wikipedia) (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

Miami's exodus125 makes these custom titanium (!) fire pistons himself. They're pricey, and in point of fact there's not much need for titanium (!) in this application when aluminum works just as well and costs way, way less, but still: Titanium! Besides its well-known physical properties--lightweight, noncorroding, and extremely tough--titanium (!) has also been proven to cloud the minds of otherwise rational consumers like me, inducing irrational bouts of spending accompanied by mild ptyalism.

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Over at Offworld, we've just dug up what'll probably be the most mind-bending video of the week: the first look at Joe Larson's 'demake' of Valve's PC/Xbox 360 hit Portal, rendered entirely in ASCII. Its best trick that puts it a leg up on the 2D Flash version: a 'through the portal' view that recaptures everything that made the original game so awe inspiring to experience for the first time (also: its simple 1-character companion cube, and the Donkey Kong tribute toward the end of the video). Watch the video on Offworld.

Today Google announced that they're removing the "beta" label from Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk. They said, "We've come to appreciate that the beta tag just doesn't fit for large enterprises that aren't keen to run their business on software that sounds like it's still in the trial phase." Quoting the NYTimes: "'Obviously we haven't had a consistent set of policies or definitions around beta,' said Matt Glotzbach, a director of product management at Google. Mr. Glotzbach said that different teams at Google had different criteria for what beta meant, and that Google felt a need to standardize those. ... Practically speaking, the change will mean precious little to Gmail's millions of users. But it could help Google's efforts to get the paid version of its package of applications, which includes Gmail, Calendar, Docs and other products, adopted inside big companies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've had a bunch of stories about problems with redlight cameras, in that they don't seem to make intersections any safer, but they do present an easy way for cities to bring in a lot of cash quickly. However, there's an apparent "downside" to the cash influx, as well. Reader mrtraver alerts us to the news that redlight cameras in Kansas City have been issuing so many tickets that the police department needs more money to handle all the tickets. Kansas City wants to hire four new officers just to deal with the automated tickets, or get more money to pay officers' overtime salaries for dealing with so many tickets. Apparently, in just three months, the cameras at 20 intersections have given out 6,900 tickets, and there's a big backlog as officers need to review each photo to make sure it's legit before sending out the citation.

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Every week on Rebooting The News, one of us chooses the Inspiration of the Week. Someone or something that inspires the RTN philosophy and process. Mostly they've been thinkers and doers, but Jay once surprised us with a great simple song, written by Nick Lowe and made popular by Elvis Costello.



One week Jay chooses, and the next week I choose.

I think I managed to surprise Jay yesterday when I chose Sarah Palin as the Inspiration for this week. You can hear the story at minute 35:45 in yesterday's podcast. Briefly I said she was a Source Going Direct, someone who was trying to tell a story through the press, but they weren't passing it along.

Jay wasn't buying it.

I admit it's a tenuous choice. She really should have a blog or podcast to qualify. But somehow the story made it to me, despite the best efforts of the press to hide it.

ABC News ran a story this morning with a quote that supports my theory. "She said a major factor in the decision was the mounting legal bills she and the state have had to incur to fight ethics charges from her political adversaries. None of the accusations has been proven but, she said, the costs of fighting them have been enormous."

What I noticed was this -- she had offered a plausible, reasonable explanation for her choice, and imho, it's the only one that makes sense. But none of the analysis I've read or heard until the ABC News piece even passed it on as a possibility. At a gut level, as much as I despise Palin as a politician, as a human with a story to tell, I sympathize. This is one of the times the press ought to be more of a mirror and not such a filter.

We've blogged a similar idea before, and here's an awesomely ridiculous product based on the same concept, but craftster Casstasstrophie's implementation deserves extra points for style, and it has at least one new feature worth mentioning: the design forces the cat to trod upon an anti-tracking mat designed to remove stray litter from his or her paws on the way out. An electric exhaust fan might be a nice additional touch, and perhaps a self-cleaning litter box while you're at it.

Another alternative, worth mentioning, is training the cat to use the human toilet. This is supposedly not so hard as it sounds, and if one were to also install an automatic flush valve the system would be completely automatic and invisible, at least in theory.

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The first TV commercial in North Korean history is now on the air. It's an ad for a Taedonggang beer described as the "Pride of Pyongyang" and the ad promises that beer will reduce your stress.

North Korea launches beer advert (via MeFi!)

I was disappointed to see this chalk-printing trailer, for the riders in the Tour de France, is towed behind a truck, not a bike like it's predecessor. It looks like it works pretty well, though. The main problem with the original Bikes Against Bush prototype was the huge computer that had to be lugged around with it, but I see here that Nike/Livestrong is using a netbook or similar.

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Tios writes "I've been studying programming languages (C++, Java, C, Visual Basic) on my own with the self-guided, basic textbooks and tutorials, and I'm starting to get tired of working with examples that are not put into real use. I'm motivated to utilize my programming potential, but I've not had any experience programming in a team environment with lead developers, mentors, or collaborators. If finding a programming job isn't an option, I wonder if I could volunteer for programming in an open-source community. If this is a good idea, how do I start? What resources are out there that could get me oriented in volunteering? What kind of basic projects are out there, with a supportive team/mentor for me to develop, practice, learn, and contribute?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nevin sez, "To drum up interest in my forthcoming book "Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip," I am offering interested readers a sample chapter from the book, which comes out on October 1 via Continuum Press. If interested readers send an email to lookingforcalvinandhobbes@gmail.com they can request their very own free copy. Here's a brief overview of the book:

For ten years, between 1985 and 1995, Calvin and Hobbes was one the world's most beloved comic strips. And then, on the last day of 1995, the strip ended. Its mercurial and reclusive creator, Bill Watterson, not only finished the strip but withdrew entirely from public life. There is no merchandising associated with Calvin and Hobbes: no movie franchise; no plush toys; no coffee mugs; no t-shirts (except a handful of illegal ones). There is only the strip itself, and the books in which it has been compiled - including The Complete Calvin and Hobbes: the heaviest book ever to hit the New York Times bestseller list.

In Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip, writer Nevin Martell traces the life and career of the extraordinary, influential, and intensely private man behind Calvin and Hobbes. With input from a wide range of artists and writers (including Dave Barry, Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Lethem, and Brad Bird) as well as some of Watterson's closest friends and professional colleagues, this is as close as we're ever likely to get to one of America's most ingenious and intriguing figures - and a fascinating detective story, at the same time.

Your readers may also be interested to know that I interviewed almost 50 cartoonists for the project, including Berke Breathed (Bloom County/Opus/Outland), Jim Davis (Garfield), Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse), Nicholas Gurewitch (The Perry Bible Fellowship), Keith Knight (The Knight Life/K Chronicles), Bill Amend (Foxtrot), Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey), Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Michael Jantze (The Norm), Mark Parisi (Off The Mark), Hilary Price (Rhymes With Orange), Dave Coverly (Speed Bump), Jan Eliot (Stone Soup), Jeff Smith (Bone), Brad Anderson (Marmaduke), Jef Mallett (Frazz), Mike Peters (Mother Goose & Grimm), Steve Troop (Mayberry Melonpool), Craig Thompson (Blankets), Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Patrick Oliphant, Jim Borgman (Zits), Mark Tatulli (Lio) and Jim Meddick (Monty).

I read the excerpt this afternoon -- fascinating stuff. Looking forward to the book!

Looking for Calvin and Hobbes by Nevin Martell (Facebook)

Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip (Amazon)

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from ETH Zurich have recently managed to create an optical transistor from a single molecule in what is yet another important achievement on the road to quantum computing. The molecule itself is about 2 nanometers in size, much smaller than standard transistors, which means that a lot more could be integrated in a single chip. Dr. Hwang, lead author of the academic paper, said, 'Our single-molecule optical transistor generates almost negligible amount of heat. When a single molecule absorbs one photon, there is some probability (quantum yield) that the molecule emits a photon out. The rest of the energy absorbed turns into heat in the matrix. For the case of the specific hydrocarbon molecule that we use, the quantum yield is near 100%. So almost no heat is generated.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This will come as a surprise to just about no one, but Jammie Thomas' lawyers have pointed out that the $1.92 million verdict against her is excessive, and is asking the judge to either throw out the award, lower it to the statutory minimum or grant a new trial. That was pretty much expected. What's odd, however, is the note at the very bottom of that article, concerning the filing that the RIAA made to the court. The RIAA keeps insisting that it just wants to settle the case, but if that's true, it seems weird to then attack Thomas in court again, but that's what the filing seems to do. It suggests that Thomas (despite this whole process) must still be sharing songs and that the court needs to issue an injunction barring her from doing so. While we've said that there appears to be ample evidence that Thomas used file sharing programs (and that she shouldn't have let this case go to trial), it would be quite surprising if anyone had any evidence that she was still doing this. As far as I know, the RIAA has not presented any such evidence at all. Demanding an injunction, then, seems quite strange.

On top of that, the RIAA appears to falsely claim (or the AP reporter misquoted the RIAA) that Thomas "distributed more than 1,700 songs to millions of others through the file-sharing system Kazaa." That may be true, but it certainly was not shown in court at all. The RIAA only named 24 songs she was charged with sharing, and then did not present any evidence that she actually shared any of them with anyone other than the RIAA's own investigators. The claim that she "distributed more than 1,700 songs to millions of others" was not proven at all, and in fact this entire new trial was because the judge originally made the mistake of assuming "making available" meant distribution. It does not. For the RIAA to misstate this point is really quite odd.

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Youtuber rudeog added a single coli pickup to his homemade kalimba netting some seriously bassy sounds -

Constructed with some parts I had lying around and a few from the hardware store. As you can hear, the dry sound is a little bass heavy. I might try adding a few tines and tuning to a different scale.

Hmm … bass == good! I wouldn't change it one bit. [via Synthtopia]

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I love these flies, CNC'd from trash CDs and DVDs. Sent to us by Jacek Tomasiak from Poland. The flies were posted on the Polish CNC Forums by one of their members. The attachment on the post is the DXF files, if you care to cut your own.

Mucha

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rift321 writes "VLC media player, which we all know for simplifying the playback of pretty much any codec out there, has finally released version 1.0.0. Here's a quick list of improvements: live recording, instant pausing and frame-by-frame support, finer speed controls, new HD codecs (AES3, Dolby Digital Plus, TrueHD, Blu-Ray Linear PCM, Real Video 3.0 and 4.0), new formats (Raw Dirac, M2TS) and major improvements in many formats, new Dirac encoder and MP3 fixed-point encoder, video scaling in fullscreen, RTSP Trickplay support, zipped file playback, customizable toolbars, easier encoding GUI in Qt interface, better integration in Gtk environments, MTP devices on Linux, and AirTunes streaming."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Erica points out this early 80's profile of artist/engineer Remo Saraceni on Omni Television. You're likely familiar with at least one of Saraceni's playful inventions - he created the "Walking Piano" played by Tom Hanks in Big, plus a bunch of other fun pieces of tech.

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Maker Chris Varenhorst's iDoor is a hydraulic door controlled by an iPhone or when security isn't a concern, a secret knock. Cobbled together from scrounged parts including a PIII running Ubuntu and a Phidget 8/8/8 control board, the door is opened with a hydraulic actuator that taps into the sink in the room.

Life at MIT can be tough. With all the problem sets, and projects taking up time, when I come back to my dorm room to crash, I don't want to waste time opening doors myself! That's why my room is outfitted with an iPhone controlled hydraulic door opener and unlocker. Just tap the "iDoor" app on my phone's home screen, and the door opens for me. Its 2009 after all, about time we stopped carrying around shaped bits of metal to open up locked doors.

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Daniel sez, "I work at the American Library Association's Booklist magazine (I make a lot of ALA's videos, including the one of the FBI whistleblower that Boing Boing mentioned last year). My debut young-adult novel, THE MONSTER VARIATIONS, comes out on August 11. As a promotional tool (but mostly because it's fun), I've been posting all the terrible movies I made as a teen growing up in Iowa. The blog is called Francis Ford Iowa. For the most part, we remade movies we liked, including MISERY, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE BLOB, AND THE GODFATHER."

Francis Ford Iowa (Thanks, Daniel!)

ucanlookitup writes "Microsoft has warned of a 'privately reported' vulnerability affecting IE users on XP or Windows Server 2003. The vulnerability allows remote users to execute arbitrary code with the same privileges as the users. The vulnerability is triggered when users visit a web site with malicious code. 'Security experts say criminals have been attacking the vulnerability for nearly a week. Thousands of sites have been hacked to serve up malicious software that exploits the vulnerability.' The advisory can be found at TechNet. Until Microsoft develops a patch, a workaround is available."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ucanlookitup writes "Microsoft has warned of a 'privately reported' vulnerability affecting IE users on XP or Windows Server 2003. The vulnerability allows remote users to execute arbitrary code with the same privileges as the users. The vulnerability is triggered when users visit a web site with malicious code. 'Security experts say criminals have been attacking the vulnerability for nearly a week. Thousands of sites have been hacked to serve up malicious software that exploits the vulnerability.' The advisory can be found at TechNet. Until Microsoft develops a patch, a workaround is available."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In her latest One More Go column, Margaret Robertson argues that Sega's long-underappreciated and entirely absurd Typing of the Dead (above) -- the game which sees players destroying zombies by typing words rather than firing bullets -- is especially brilliant because it lets us do something increasingly rare and magical in the games industry today: press buttons with our fingers. Elsewhere on Offworld there was a lot of good news for old games, as classic LucasArts adventure games are returning to Steam with full XP/Vista compatibility, Atari Museum releases the source code for more than a dozen classic Atari 7800 games, and Nintendo is re-releasing Toshio Iwai's brilliant art/music DS crossover Electroplankton in downloadable form. We also saw Ghostbusters coming to LittleBigPlanet, preorders open for Machinarium, the game soon to be likely the best non-LucasArts adventure of the year, and the first look at Positech's Gratuitous Space Battles, his self-described "tower defense with space fleets", which is every bit as gloriously gratuitous and perfectly scaled (with scores of tiny gnat-like fighters protecting motherships) as the title promises. Finally, our 'one shot's for the day: a hexquisite pixel-art exquisite corpse, the many faces of space invaders, Scott C's Devo meets Space Invaders print goes on sale, and Eliss, Steph Thirion's brilliantly abstract iPhone game, goes on sale for $0.99 for a few more days.

SUL stands for Suggested Users List.

I've written about it many times here on Scripting News.

I think it's finally time to say what I would advise Twitter, Inc to do to clean up the mess. Obviously they don't have to do any of this. But maybe it'll do some good to put the ideas out there anyway.

1. The max period anyone can be on the list is 30 days. Estimate how many followers each person currently on the list had been given, prorate it, and adjust it down to 30 days worth. So if on average, over the last few months, a member of the list would have gotten 100K new followers, but actually received 800K, he or she would lose 700K followers. It's still a gift of 100K followers, nothing to sneeze at. (And if it's true, as Tim O'Reilly says, that they don't matter, then losing some is nothing to complain about.)

2. It's possible that publications receiving the SUL bounty, such as TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOm and ReadWriteWeb, may have been witholding criticism of Twitter. They would now be free to express it. So there may be a bunch of bad press about this. Take the hit now while you're on top. Spin it as proof that unwinding the list was a good idea, because every company needs vibrant and unconflicted critics. Thank them for their feedback and take their advice to heart.

3. Sign a 180-day contract with Mr Tweet to manage the new SUL for $0. If they have a competitor, give them the next 180-day period. Allocate this on a rotating basis. It may be possible at some point for this contract to generate revenue for Twitter, Inc, as long as they keep the choice of people on the list an arm's length matter.

4. It may also be possible to do away with the list entirely, to suggest people to follow based on who they already know. Offer another route into the system, at the recommendation of an existing user. Then you have their network to base suggestions on. The incentives are lined up well for that, it encourages people to find new users and to have them encourage them to actually engage with the network. If the people you're following initially are friends, family members, neighbors, co-workers, the experience will mean more. Nothing wrong with following celebrities too, of course.

5. No more random selections for the SUL by TwitterCorp employees. This is a very bad practice for many reasons.

Jay and I discussed this in yesterday's Rebooting the News podcast. Clearly "real-time search" will require something like Page Rank in Google search, a way to determine the authority or relevance of a tweet or a link in a tweet. Microsoft has already encountered this issue when trying to develop real-time search in their Bing search engine.

While follower-count isn't perfect, it's the only metric we have anywhere in sight that might support relevance in search. Before the SUL it was actually working fairly well, but the SUL introduced a huge distortion. It may not be too late to unwind this and to solve the problem they were trying to solve without losing follower-count as a meaningful metric.

In discussing the basic economics of scarce and infinite goods around here, sometimes certain points get lost or confused. One of the key points that we've tried to make (but that sometimes gets lost), when we say that an old model is obsolete or going away, is that you can try to hang onto that business model, but the economic trends are clear: it's not going to last. So, you can try to keep charging for information in a highly competitive market, and maybe you can pull it off for a little while. But betting your future business on it alone? Good luck.

The Citizen Media Law Group points us to an even better explanation of this very point, by Eric Reasons, noting that artificial scarcity is facing massive deflation. It's such a great concise way of making the point, I wish I'd thought of it:

Every business model relying on intellectual property law (patent and copyright) is heading for massive deflation in our lifetimes. We've seen it with the music industry and newspapers already. The software industry is starting to feel it with the maturity of open source software, and the migration of applications to the cloud. Television, movies, and books are next. I've come to question the ability of copyright and patent law to foster innovation, but leaving that aside, the willingness of people to collaborate and share, and the tools provided for it on the internet, may render these laws obsolete.

He then explains why he believes deflation is the right term:

Why is deflation a better descriptor? Because as businesses whose product is reliant on intellectual property shrink due to Internet-based efficiencies, consumers are reaping the rewards of these efficiencies.

Exactly. The reason old business models are at risk is because the free distribution of content is simply more efficient due to modern technology, and it's about as close to impossible to hold back economic efficiency, once enabled. Artificial scarcity is based on pretending you can hold back that efficiency.

So this is a great way to think about the threat side of things. Unfortunately, I don't think Eric takes it all the way to the next side (the opportunity side), which we tried to highlight in that first link up top, here. Eric claims that this "deflation" makes the sector shrink, but I don't believe that's right. It makes companies who rely on business models of artificial scarcity to shrink, but it doesn't make the overall sector shrink if you define the market properly. Economic efficiency may make certain segments of the market shrink (or disappear), but it expands the overall market.

Why? Because efficiency gives you more output for the same input (bigger market!). The tricky part is that it may move around where that output occurs. And, when you're dealing with what I've been calling "infinite goods" you can have a multiplicative impact on the market. That's because a large part of the "output" is now infinitely reproduceable at no cost. For those who stop thinking of these as "goods that are being copied against our will" and start realizing that they're "inputs into a wider market where we don't have to pay for any of the distribution or promotion!" there are much greater opportunities. It's just that they don't come from artificial scarcity any more. They come from abundance.

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Peace Corps Library writes "The United States and Russia, seeking to move forward on one of the most significant arms control treaties since the end of the cold war, announced that they had reached a preliminary agreement on cutting each country's stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons, effectively setting the stage for a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), a cold war-era pact that expires in December. Under the framework, negotiators are to be instructed to craft a treaty that would cut strategic warheads for each side to between 1,500 and 1,675, down from the limit of 2,200 slated to take effect in 2012 under the Treaty of Moscow (PDF) signed by President George W. Bush. The limit on delivery vehicles would be cut to between 500 and 1,100 from the 1,600 currently allowed under Start. Perhaps more important than the specific limits would be a revised and extended verification system that otherwise would expire with Start in December. The United States currently has 1,198 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-based missiles and bombers, which together are capable of delivering 5,576 warheads, according to its most recent Start report in January, while Russia reported that it has 816 delivery vehicles capable of delivering 3,909 warheads. 'We have a mutual interest in protecting both of our populations from the kinds of danger that weapons proliferation is presenting today,' said President Obama."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Urban Green Council is looking for submissions in their Green Garage Inventors Competition. They write:

The Green Garage Inventors Competition seeks to foster the creative ingenuity needed to usher in the green buildings of tomorrow and to retrofit our existing buildings. The competition will highlight innovative building products that address sustainability in compelling but practical ways. Winning inventions will be showcased in a dedicated section on the Urban Green Expo trade show floor from Sept. 22nd -23rd in New York City, gaining exposure to the most vibrant real estate, media and financial market in the country. Winners will also be featured on the Urban Green Council and Urban Green Expo websites.

Entries must be submitted through the Urban Green Expo website

Submission deadline: July 27th, 2009

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FishWithAHammer writes "Peter Galli of Microsoft posted a blog entry on Port25 today, regarding the explicit placement of C# and the Common Language Infrastructure (the ECMA standard that underpins .NET) under their Community Promise: 'It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions. You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications. ... Under the Community Promise, Microsoft provides assurance that it will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL.'" Adds reader anshulajain: "Understandably, Miguel De Icaza is jumping with joy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the comments in my knife and multitool Toolbox column pointed to a webpage which pointed to a webpage which pointed to a posting of this nice and straightforward article from an issue of Leather Craft, on making your own knife sheaths.

[To see the rest of the article, just advance the last digit in the URL, with "-9.jpg" as the last page]

Make your own knife sheaths

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This fantastic music video from Reyna Perez entitled "Love Love Love" was shot entirely on an iPhone 3GS. Though not the first music video shot using a cameraphone, this video features quality production courtesy of the fine folks at m ss ng p eces and an enchanting song by Ms. Perez.

[via boingboing]

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Paul Alan Levy alerts us to an interesting situation (and question raised) involving General Motors appearing to suppress speech that it did not like, and wonders if Section 230 safe harbors should apply in broader media, as well. The case involves a consumer group that was concerned that the bankruptcy restructuring that General Motors is going through would protect it from certain liability claims from owners of cars with defects. So, they took their case to the public by creating a TV commercial and buying airtime via Comcast. GM, rather than refute the content of the ad, simply told Comcast that the ad contained inaccuracies, so Comcast pulled down the ad. However, as Levy notes, this allows GM to suppress the ad at the moment when it would be most effective, without ever needing to prove the inaccuracies (or respond to the "accuracies" of the ad).

In the last few months, we've seen some claim that Section 230 safe harbors should be scaled back because it's somehow "unfair" to treat online different than offline. I've taken issue with that line of reasoning, because in most cases the situations are quite different. The purpose of the safe harbors is to prevent the platform for being blamed for the actions of a user. But in a traditional newspaper, we're talking about content that has been approved and put in place by an editor.

Levy takes that point into account, but suggests why expanding (rather than limiting) Section 230 might make sense here:

There are, of course, significant differences between the burdens that a cable company like Comcast faces with respect to assessing ads and the situation facing an Internet host (such as Comcast, wearing a different hat) that enjoys the protection of Section 230. There are only so many hours on which ads can be shown on cable; and when Comcast receives a proposed ad, it must take the step of placing those advertisements amidst its programming. Thus, Comcast is in a position to perform pre-broadcast review of the text. This is very unlike the situation facing the provide of an online interactive computer service, which allows thousand or even millions of users to place content online with not opportunity for review. And equally important, Comcast earns significant revenues from each broadcast of a single ad, and hence is able to offset its profits from those broadcasts against the cost of review. This is unlike the situation for most statements posted online, with respect to which the host earns tiny sums, at best, either through a modest monthly fee for web server space, or through advertising on the web page.

But the potential impact on speech is the same -- the sponsor of a message on an important issue of public policy sees its message suppressed merely by claims of inaccuracy. Why should the broadcaster face the prospect of secondary liability for carrying the ad, and why shouldn't the opponent of the speech be put to the burden of responding in the marketplace of ideas and, if it really wants to suppress the speech, why shouldn't it have to go to court and persuade a judge that the speech is both false and defamatory before it gets the relief of suppressing the speech?

This makes a rather compelling point. While I still argue the entire concept of safe harbors like this shouldn't be needed if common sense worked, since common sense isn't so common these days, it does make sense to include safe harbors for situations like this where the company that acts as the "platform" has no reasonable expectation to thoroughly research the content first.

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lee1 writes "A law in the US that is due to take effect in 2012 mandates such tough efficiency standards for lightbulbs that it has been assumed, until recently, that it would kill off the incandescent bulb. Instead, the law has become a case study of the way government regulation can inspire technical innovation. For example, new incandescent technology from Philips that seals the traditional filament inside a small capsule (which itself is contained within the familiar bulb). The capsule has a coating that reflects heat back to the filament, where it is partially converted to light. The sophisticated ($5.00) bulbs are about 30% more efficient than the old-fashioned ($0.25) kind, and should last about three times as long. So they are less economical than compact fluorescents, but should emit a more pleasing spectrum, not contain mercury, and, one supposes, present the utility company with a more desirable power factor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our good friend Dale Wheat has come up with yet another kit, the Wee Blinky. It's tiny, it blinks, and it's a great kit to hone your soldering skills on since it's cheap too! If you were lucky enough to be at Maker Faire this year, you might have met Dale. He was there teaching people how to solder together his kits, including the Wee Blinky. Thanks Dale!

Check out the Wee Blinky kit

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Check out the astounding, elaborate Russian cosplay scene for the game Fallout II (mangled Google Translate text below Thanks to Denisvi in the comments for a much-improved translation; you do indeed pass the Turing Test!)!

On June 21st, 2009, at one of the abandoned air-defense bases in St. Petersburg region, a game based on "Fallout 2" universe took place, organized by "Albion" workshop. Some 300 people participated in the game, working with workshop group, tech support group and emergency/medical services. And, of course, the players themselves, who prepared for the game over the course of many months. Much was accomplished by the workshop crew: sealed military bases, including the memorable Sierra from Fallout II, were built; plot and game coordination accomplished, including rapid response by the creators to changes in game environment. Players were hard at work as well. They made authentic costumes, modified airsoft guns to the point of being unrecognizable, outfitted a special car, operated establishments such as cinema, working radio station, few bars, hospital, casino and much more. Combined efforts of workshop people and players made the world come to life for two short days.

Fallout 2009 «????? ????????????» (Thanks, Bill!)

Last month, we wrote about the problems with the American Press Institute's "plan" to help save newspapers, which seemed really misguided. Steve Yelvington has now gone through the report and does a great job explaining why the report is so far off: it's basic assumptions are all wrong. He lists out each assumption and explains why it's wrong:

Consumers perceive that content produced by news organizations is valuable to them. This myth persists primarily in organizations that are dangerously out of touch with their markets. Public opinion of journalism, and of newspapers, has gone into a nosedive. Decades ago, people might trash-talk "the media" but generally would make an exception for their local paper. No more. Newspaper managers should know this, but many of them have fired their research people to save money, preferring to stumble through the fog without eyes and ears.

Consumers will actually make content purchases when they are confronted with many free options. Over the last 15 years, this assumption has been demonstrated to be false in digital paid-content experiments by newspapers all over the world. The numbers of consumers so inclined aren't great enough to sustain a business of significant scale. This idea persists primarily because so many newspaper people are deeply ignorant of what's been going on in their own companies, and because digital people generally lose power struggles with print people. Almost everyone I know who ran a paid-content online media experiment no longer works for the company where they tried it. Those companies are now largely ignorant of their own histories.

Publishers can exert their influence in the marketplace through laws and public policy, both of which could change. Newspapers have been trying without success to get rid of FCC's cross-ownership ban for decades. Newspapers, which are deeply despised by many politicians and sweeping sectors of their own customer bases, aren't going to persuade the government to outlaw Google.

Publishers will invest in emerging technologies that establish new work rules, new systems for organizing content and new designs for packaging editorial and commercial content. These would be the same newspapers that underinvested in the Internet for the last 15 years, while pouring cash into glitzy corporate headquarters, printing presses, and more newspaper acquisitions? The ones who now can't pay back the capital they've already borrowed?

News organizations can make the leap from an advertising-centered to an audience-centered enterprise. News organizations -- OK, let's be specific: newspapers -- are deeply addicted to high-volume revenue streams and huge profit margins that have enabled them to gobble up other newspapers and create huge, dangerously leveraged media chains. Such organizations require growth to survive and will fail in spectacular ways when asked to cope with shrinkage. And make no mistake, the scale of any news business that asks its readers to take primary responsibility for underwriting the costs of journalism will be tiny when compared with the fat times at the end of the last century.

The rest of the post is worth reading, as well. Yelvington notes that many of these myths were already debunked for the API, so it's not clear why they've been brought back up. Instead, Yelvington notes that no business model based on "attempts to reverse 15 years of social and technological change" simply won't go very far.

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Ravin sez, "Hello, I'm Ravin Pierre, I'm not an actor but I portray one on the television. I'm co-founder of Cardboard Tube Fighting League out of Seattle. One weekend only, I'm traveling to the east coast (again, Tube Fight - Washington DC 2008) to seed new groups in Philly and NYC. I'm big into DIY and creative costume enthusiasm, as most Boing Boing readers are, I'm hoping they will show up in their best cardboard costume and battle."

7/12: Cardboard Tube Fighting League Tournament - New York City, NY (McCarren Park)

7/11: Cardboard Tube Fighting League Tournament - Philadelphia, PA (Near Philly Art Museum, Rocky Steps)

(Thanks, Ravin!)

I'll be in Chicago on July 9 to see a production of the highly praised theatrical adaptation of my novel Little Brother. The July 9 show is sold out (performances run until July 18), but Bill Massolia, who wrote the play and runs the company, has organized a get-together beforehand. If you're in Chicago, I'd love to see you and say hi!

Meet Cory Doctorow before the show.
July 9, 5:45pm to 7:00pm.

Jack's Bar & Grill/404 Wine Bar
2856 North Southport Ave. Chicago
773-404-8400

I love the name of the Wine Bar -- though I worry about it being not found.

Jack's 404

Little Brother, the play

Robbo sez, "With the CRTC [ed: Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Canada, analogous to Ofcom or FCC] holding hearings on network management, the arrival of the Pirate Party movement in Canada can only be welcome news to those of us participating in the copyfight. While it's not likely they will have much clout within the halls of parliament, the conventional rules of *mis*representation don't apply when a party, political or cultural movement is driven by such a focused issue. It is enough to acheive the means by which it can be raised in debate - not just in parliament but also the media and the streets - so as to ensure public awareness of the actions of elected representatives and to subsequently steer them to the public's will and not be merely (and silently) beholden to the influence of corporate lobbies. Arrrrr, eh?"

Pirate Party of Canada

Free music, movies for all? Copyright-fighting Pirate Party comes to Canada. (Thanks, Robbo!)

Watchismo's got a freakish and wonderful new pocket watch, the Eris:

Either way, this watch, designed by students from l'Ecole d'Arts Appliqués Genèva is a 100 % Swiss made product by Pierre Junod Switzerland and can be worn as a pocket watch, pendant or used as a small desk clock. The Materials are white hour hand & orange minute hand, anthracite anodized aluminum case, laser engraved figures, mineral glass, Swiss quartz movement, each watch is sold with a natural rubber strap to hang from your neck, a wall, anything you wish to have time fly by.

The time is displayed with two pointers (extended from hidden hands) floating around the "equator" of the globe. The minutes indicated on the upper hemisphere and the hours highlighted down below.

Eris Planetary Sphere Watch (Thanks, Mitch!)

"Shot in the Back of the Head," the top-selling iTunes track off Moby's new, self-released album "Wait for Me," is also the song he released as a free download, which has been available for months and remains available as a free download.

In related news, Henrik sez, "Imagiro explains why they released their debut album What to Do and How to Do It (yes, the title is inspired by an old BoingBoing post) on a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license and made it freely available at the same time as they market it through the ordinary channels of music distribution. They did this with the blessing of KODA, the Danish rights-holders society. It is available in mp3, ogg and flac formats, the latter of which via bittorrent."

First of all, releasing What to Do and How to Do It on a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license is a very clear way of communicating to the users of the album what uses we think are fair. We love when people make remixes and mash-ups and thus combine old works to create new ones. By allowing non-commercial uses and derivatives everyone can use our music, e.g. as background for a Youtube-video or post remixes on a blog. However, if you want to use the music for a commercial or release the remix commercially, you'll have to ask us first and agree to a contract.

Free Download an iTunes Shot In The Arm For Moby

Why Creative Commons?

(Thank, CF and Henrik!)

Greg sez, "Albert Borris' debut novel, a YA book called Crash Into Me, comes out today... but back in December, Albert suffered a massive stroke that left him unable to get words out on paper or verbally in the proper order. He's a writer unable to write... and currently unable to help promote his own book. Fellow young adult and middle grade debut authors in the Class of 2K9 of which Albert had been co-president, are working together along with others to help spread the word so that Albert's novel gets the attention it deserves... and which he is unable to help generate."

When Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin-Ae meet online after each attempts suicide and fails, the four teens mak e a deadly pact: they will escape together on a summer road trip to visit the sites of celebrity suicides...and at their final destination, they will all end their lives. As they drive cross-country, bonding over their dark impulses, sharing their deepest secrets and desires, living it up, hooking up, and becoming true friends, each must decide whether life is worth living--or if there's no turning back.

Crash Into Me

Press Release -- Albert Borris, Crash Into Me

Albert Borris

(Thanks, Greg!)

I first encountered the video embedded above last week, but shrugged it off as (a) someone's colonoscopy home movie repurposed for internet lulz, (b) stealth marketing campaign for a Cloverfield sequel, or (c) a portrait of Sarah Palin's soul. As usual, I was wrong.

Snipped from i09's post with the delightful title, "Public Utilities Group Confirms "Sewer Monster" Is Real, But Doesn't Know What It Is" --

[The] city of Raleigh, North Carolina, is responding as the viral video of a seething blob in the city sewers made its way across the internet yesterday. Marti Gibson is the Environmental/EMS Coordinator for Public Utilities in the city of Raleigh, North Carolina, and she has been as confused as the rest of us. When she first looked at the video, she emailed our anonymous source to say it was a slime mold that was in the phase of its lifecycle where it looks like a throbbing, breathing animal (see io9's report on slime molds from a few weeks ago where we talked about this exact thing).

She assured our tipster that any water passing by this slime would pass through a treatment plant and be thoroughly cleansed. But then, a few hours later, Gibson retracted her statement in an email...

Click for the rest of the story, including pictures that will probably make you hurl.

Spoiler alert: IT'S A SEETHING MASS OF DISGUSTING GRODY WORMS, WRITHING IN BUSBY BERKELEY-STYLE SYNCHRONIZED SQUIRMEOGRAPHY, BATHED IN WARM, DELICIOUS RAW SEWAGE. You're welcome!

(HT: Doug Lussenhop)

The Fancy Fast Food blog is dedicated to remixing horrible fast food so that it looks and tastes great, even it still has all the nutritive value of a sack of greasy, heavily salted fiberglass. Here's tortellini made from a pair of Taco Bell Fancy Burrito Supremes:

Think outside the tortilla. Carefully unwrap the Burrito Supremes and soft taco, and extract their stuffings in a bowl. Carefully rinse off each of the tortillas, and then briefly steam them in a steamer to soften and moisten them. Then lay each tortilla on a cutting board and cut circles in it using a small circular cookie cutter, or simply an empty tin can measuring around 2 1/2" in diameter. Take the filling and put a small amount in each small tortilla circle, then fold it in half and pinch it into a tortellini shape. The moisture should keep it sticky enough to stay put. Pile the tortellinis on a plate. Next, cut open and pour the contents of the sauce packets in a measuring cup, then generously drizzle the sauce over the tortellini. Garnish with parsley and serve with Sierra Mist in a wine glass.

Fancy Fast Food (via Kottke)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Jammie Thomas-Rasset has made a motion for a new trial, seeking to vacate the $1.92 million judgment entered against her for infringement of 24 MP3 files, in Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset. Her attorneys' brief (PDF) argues, among other things, that the 'monstrous' sized verdict violates the Due Process Clause, consistent with 100 years of SCOTUS jurisprudence, since it is grossly disproportionate to any actual damages sustained. It further argues that, since the RIAA elected to offer no evidence of actual damages, either as an alternative to statutory damages, or to buttress the fairness of a statutory damages award, the verdict, if it is to be reduced, must be reduced to zero."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You may remember last year that there was a bunch of attention paid to Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit appeals court supposedly having "pornographic" or "obscene" images and videos posted to his own web server just as he was deciding a big obscenity trial. While it made for great headlines, as the details became clear, the whole thing became an obvious witch hunt that was falsely portrayed in the press. First, the content in question was often described as pornographic or obscene (with some including claims of "deification" or "bestiality") but that wasn't quite accurate. One of the videos was apparently a video of a guy trying to go to the bathroom in the wilderness when a horse or some other animal discovered him (I haven't seen it, but read the description) -- which seems like the sort of funny "home videos" you see all the time. Hardly "obscene" in the classical sense. Furthermore, the judge had not really shared this content (most of which was widely available all over the internet) but had merely stored it on his home server, which happened to have been configured incorrectly such that someone found a way in. The person who found it was someone who had a great dislike of Kozinski and had been shopping this "story" for quite some time, and the LA Times sat on it until this obscenity case came along.

So given all that, it's good to hear that the "investigation" into the matter has now ended with Kozinski basically getting a slap on the wrist saying Kozinski made mistake, apologized for it, and won't let it happen again, but it certainly has no bearing on his ability to judge various cases, even ones involving obscenity. The whole thing was basically a show trial brought on by someone who clearly had it out for Kozinski, so it's good to hear that it's over.

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Photojournalist James Rodriguez, whose work in Guatemala I've blogged here before, is in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, covering the popular response to the coup d'etat that occurred on June 28th.

I share with you a special photo-essay about yesterday's tragic events at Toncontin Airport, in Tegucigalpa, where the Army opened fire against civilians killing at least 4 and injuring dozens. (...)

BBC News has published the best video so far of the Army's repression against the protesters. The army's shooting can be clearly seen: Video link.

All work here in Honduras has been self-financed. If you would like to contribute to MiMundo.org, you can do so via Rights Action here - it is tax deductible in the U.S. and Canada.

Tragedy at Toncontin: Army Shoots and Kills Protesters / Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (MiMundo.org)

See also this related, recent photo-essay from Honduras by Rodriguez: Mel, Our Friend, the People are with You! / Tegucigalpa, Honduras (MiMundo.org)

Did you know that in case of emergency, you can use your frame mattress or box spring as a boat? This is useful for all those hurricane and flood-prone areas.

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(Photo by Plug1 of whatimseeing.com)

Oh, this is stupid and sad. Pez Candy Inc., makers of pixel-y candy dosed out in those iconic character dispensers, is suing the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia for copyright infringement. Doctor Popular blogs about it over at Laughing Squid:

The suit, filed last week, claims that the museum deceives the public into believing they are operating under the authority of Pez and asks that the museum’s 7 foot tall replica of Pez dispenser be destroyed. The lawsuit also takes issue with the museum’s sales of toy truck Pez dispensers which had been modified with Obama and McCain logos during last years elections. The museum has been opened since 1995 and is said to be the only place in the world were you can see every Pez dispenser ever made.

Pez Suing Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia (Laughing Squid)

Update: The love that dare not Pez its name. At left, Scott Beale snapped this scandalous pic proving what Star Wars slashfic scribes have long known: The 'droid hearts Chewie, as evidenced in two giant Pez dispensers. Lawsuits be damned. C-3PO & Chewbacca, Together At Last.

In the last few weeks we've seen companies like Amazon drop affiliates in a bunch of different states, due to proposals in cash-strapped state legislatures to force the online retailers to collect sales tax even if there are only affiliates in that state. Apparently, California politicians put forth a similar proposal, and following threats from Overstock to drop its local affiliates, Governor Schwarzenegger has promised that no such bill will pass (thanks Eric Goldman). It seems that the willingness for these online retailers to cut off affiliates (and the anger that creates among those affiliates) caught the attention of at least someone with power in California.

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Cyrus Farivar blogs,

Dare I say it, “green hat” hacker extraordinaire Austin Heap (See SF Chron a few weeks ago) and a group of domestic and foreign techie folks wanting to help Iran have announced the upcoming release of Haystack. Heap writes on his blog that it’s a “new program to provide unfiltered internet access to the people of Iran. A software package for Windows, Mac and Unix systems, called Haystack, will specifically target the Iranian government's web filtering mechanisms.

Here's the Haystack site (nothing there at the time of this blog post).

Related reading: Clerical Leaders Defy Ayatollah on Iran Election (NYT)

theodp writes "Back in 1992, the SIIA released Don't Copy That Floppy!, a goofy video in which anti-piracy rapper MC Double Def DP convinces a young lad not to copy a game by appealing to his sense of right and wrong. Now, to address what it calls 'new generations and new temptations,' the SIIA has uploaded a trailer for a new anti-piracy rap video — Don't Copy That 2 — that will be released this summer. To underscore the video's it's-not-just-a-copy-it's-a-crime message, the new film is a tad darker than the original. A smug teen who's downloading files from 'Pirates Palace' and 'Tune Weasel' finds his world turned upside down when automatic weapons-toting government agents break down the door and take his Mom away in handcuffs. The teen finds himself in a prison jumpsuit forced to tattoo shirtless adult inmates who eventually turn on him, physically attack him, and make him run for his life back to his jail cell (image summarizing his plight)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have figured out how to predict Social Security numbers from publicly accessible birth data with frightening accuracy. The researchers analyzed a public information source known as the "Death Master File," which includes birth data and SSNs for people who have died. The scientists found that in many instances, if you know the date and state in which a person was born, you can deduce their SSN.

With just two attempts, the researchers correctly guessed the first five digits of SSNs for 60 percent of deceased Americans born between 1989 and 2003. With fewer than 1,000 attempts, they could identify the entire nine digits for 8.5 percent of the group.

There's only a few short steps between making a statistical prediction about a person's SSN and verifying their actual number, Acquisti said. Through a process called "tumbling," hackers can exploit instant online credit approval services -- or even the Social Security Administration's own verification database -- to test multiple numbers until they find the right one. Although these services usually block users after several failed attempts, criminals can use networks of compromised computers called botnets to scan thousands of numbers at a time.

"A botnet can be programmed to try variations of a Social Security number to apply for an instant credit card," Acquisti said. "In 60 seconds, these services tell you whether you are approved or not, so they can be abused to tell whether you've hit the right social security number."

Social Security Numbers Deduced From Public Data (Wired Science)

Predicting Social Security numbers from public data: Abstract (text) and full article (PDF) (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Spotted on Liquidware, the new version of their Arduino IDE now supports Ruby scripting.

It is integrated as a Scripting tab in the Arduino IDE. Upon startup, a listing of your ruby script files is generated from your Sketchbook directory. Ruby scripting support is built into the Antipasto Arduino IDE in versions 0.8.11 or greater.

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Last month, we noted that baseball manager Tony La Russa had sued Twitter over an obviously fake profile pretending to be him (the profile bio even said it was fake). Even if there was any sort of claim here, it would be against the person who created the account, not Twitter itself. Oddly, a few days later, La Russa announced that Twitter had settled the case, and was donating money to La Russa's charity. That seemed like it would set a bad precedent in that it would just give others incentive to sue Twitter. Except... it turned out it wasn't true. Even though La Russa said it happened, Twitter said there was no truth at all to the settlement or the charitable donation (quick question: would that make La Russa guilty of defamation?)

However, as Michael Scott alerts us, the lawsuit has now ended for real, with La Russa dismissing the charges after a "settlement" was reached, with no money exchanging hands either way. Hopefully, others quickly realize that suing Twitter for the actions of its users is a dead end, but I get the feeling this is not the last of these sorts of lawsuits.

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Brad Feld, one of the increasing number of VCs who's grown skeptical of the value of patents (software patents in particular) alerts us that domain registrar GoDaddy has apparently applied for a patent on selling shares of equity in a domain name. You can see the application itself, which only has six claims and seems pretty straightforward. It's only an application, so there's still a decent chance this gets rejected -- but the very fact that anyone even thought it was worth applying for such a patent is quite telling. It's difficult to see what is new or unique about what's in the patent, other than it applies the standard process of selling equity in anything to a domain name.

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Justin Huynh sent in this:

At Maker Faire a couple weeks ago, Matt and I showed off the Open Source Gameboy and OpenBerry, and in the tradition of hacking together arduino versions of cool handheld gadgets, Matt put together the Open Source PSP with two player ping-pong on it. It's got two inputshields and a touchshield slide, sitting on a triplewide extender which is all hooked up to the arduino. Here's a link to the blog and youtube.

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