The Latest from Boing Boing

Posted: 30 Mar 2009 03:50 AM PDT

• The wonderful Steve Wozniak autographed a hackintosh.
• Lego's business cards aren't like anyone else's.
• There was a Super-Secret Spy Lens for DSLRs from Photojojo.
• 15 Vintage Household ads in which women are not entirely condescended to were uncovered.
• Recently reviewed were Sony's Vaio P (Verdict: spectacular but slow), Asus' Eee Top PC (Verdict: Suprisingly good), and the Moto Tundra cellphone (Verdict: Well-armored but very basic for the price.)
• Guess what the Big Ass Fans corporation manufactures?
• Joel wondered How best to turn fruit into shot glasses without a specialized tool? and wished this tiny trackball was available in North America.
• Hyungkoo Lee objectified the human form. It's art.
• Netflix needs even more new features.
• Concord's C1 Quantum Gravity watch looks the bomb.
• Purisme milked the rich with a $600-ish carbon fiber bangle.
• Ulysse Nardin's extravagant Chairman cellphone shows off its angles.
• The gaming computer you dreamed of in 1983 is finally available. And it runs NES carts, too!
• There were emanations.
• Microsoft's best anti-Apple ad yet got 'em hopping.
• The brakes on a new Jet-Ski let it stop and turn on a dime.
• The "Geek Aquad" will help you with your new camera, but not your English paper.
• The Legend of Zelda theme was played on Tesla coils.
• Peek Pronto adds push email and a 50% speed increase to the messaging handheld's feature list.

Scavenger's Manifesto: HOWTO be an urban scavenger

Posted: 30 Mar 2009 01:15 AM PDT

Salon's Katharine Mieszkowski went out foraging with the authors of The Scavengers' Manifesto, a book that explains how to live off the fat of the city: freegan, dumpster-diving wild-herb-harvesting life that lets you enjoy the good things without spending a penny. The econopocalypse means good finds for the pair, but it makes everything a little...grim.

Rufus is motivated in her scavenging less by any environmental ideal than by a deep abhorrence of waste: "I hate it when I see really good stuff in garbage cans. Just chucking stuff away? Junking it? That makes me really mad. It's going to go to a landfill, and some person, poor or not poor, could have had it." In their book, the couple outline a scavenger code of ethics, which includes the admonishments to "obey the law" and "don't eat gross things."
But Rufus and Lawson are acutely aware that scavenging is by definition a fringe activity feeding off the fat of the consumer culture it depends upon. After all, if everyone did it, there would be nothing but scraps left to fight over. But they're confident there's enough to go around for many more people who could be converted to their never-pay-retail mentality. Still, they recognize that the idea of wearing, eating or living with someone else's castoffs is not for everyone, which is OK, too. "We're not saying we're better than regular consumers. We're simply trying to remove the stigma from being scavengers. If you want to be wasteful, be wasteful, and I'll scavenge," says Lawson.
At the end of our afternoon of scavenging, we go just a few blocks past Lawson and Rufus' house to an oak-lined field in Tilden Park, a more than 2,000-acre oasis in the hills. The field is carpeted with so-called Miner's lettuce, a leafy native plant, which is the object of our urban foraging.

Taking in the trash

The Scavengers' Manifesto

Steampunk chronulator

Posted: 29 Mar 2009 10:49 AM PDT

Emmanuel, a French sculptor, was inspired by the Chronulator DIY clock-kits to make this handsome steampunk clocke out of a tea box and some spare parts:

My Chronulator was made of a tea box, some pieces of brass curtain rod ends ( not sure of the translation ) then a piece of amarante wood, patiently cutted and varnished.
For the meters, I made the design on Illustrator, then a friend of me made the engraving on a numeric milling machine. ( Thanks, Pierre ! )
As you imagine, it was a piece of art to disassemble, cut, paint, and reassemble the vu-meters in a new shape... Very thin and fragile pieces !
In front of it you can see two "code morse manipulators", made of brass drawer handles, which push on two stems, to go down to the pushers on the mainboard.

Steampunk Chronulator (Thanks, Emmanuel!)

Previously:

South Korea prepares to nuke its technological competitiveness with a three-strikes copyright rule

Posted: 29 Mar 2009 09:50 AM PDT

Joe sez, "South Korea is arguably one of the world's most internet-connected countries. Regrettably, the corrupt dinosaurs in the Korean National Assembly have just passed a bill in-committee to use a "three strikes" law against ISP connections there. The law awaits approval by the legislature. New Zealand recently defeated similarly-worded ISP laws. A brief prediction from someone who lives in Korea. Korea is like a high-tech ocean miles-wide and one-inch deep. Once the implications are understood, look for this law to collapse under its own bureaucratic deadweight, or to otherwise morph into the usual scofflaw behavior. Consider the following:"

1. Currently, under Korea's copyright law, there are broad classroom exemptions for educational use of material, without compensation to rightsholders. (Chapter 2, Section 4, Subsection 2, Article 25 ) Look for universities and other public schools to become hotbeds of exemption challenges.
2. PC Bangs (internet cafes) might try to put each other out of business using the new laws. This could result in some cafes using advanced black-box anonymizing services to protect themselves and their customers (not necessarily a bad thing).
3. Korean "netizens" might otherwise protest the new system by seeding government BBS and official websites with infringing links and material, and then use the reporting process to overwhelm the system.
4. This proposed law will push internet services into greater black-market criminal activity. Pirated software can be found everywhere, including software commonly-used by government employees. 99% of Korean software is Windows-based. Korea uses active-X controls for practically everything, meaning the entire country is already prone to security problems.
5. Additionally, the use of the internet for organizing civil protest in Korea has been highly effective: the recent Mad-cow Disease protests (while factually incorrect) reached hysterical proportions, delaying implementation of the US-Korea Free-Trade Agreement. Korea still has national security laws against criticizing the government. Online K-blogger Minerva was arrested because he brought to light the Korean government's economic manipulations. With an unstable currency and an undercurrent of restlessness among its populace, the government has been greatly embarrassed. Look for this law to be the perfect tool for Korea to once-again shoot itself in the foot.

Three Strikes, Movie Copyright and The Mad Cow Coming Home to Roost (Thanks, Joe!)