The Latest from Boing Boing

Commodore 64 laptop Posted: 06 Apr 2009 12:46 AM PDT Stagueve sez, "Ben Heck just finished his new project, a gorgeous Commodore 64 Laptop:" This project somehow has the distinction of being both the longest and fastest portable electronics project I have ever done. I originally started making a C64 laptop in the fall of 2006, and kept pecking away at it every so often. Finally, a few weeks ago, I said "screw it" and started over. Commodore 64 Original Hardware Laptop (Thanks, Stagueve!) Can't see the video? Click here

Six good technological ideas for improving publishing Posted: 05 Apr 2009 11:55 PM PDT Here's Michael Tamblyn, the CEO of BookNet Canada, presenting six technology initiatives that could radically alter the course of publishing for the better. It's a refreshing presentation, focused on selling more paper books using better technology that improves workflow and marketing, while acknowledging that there's lots of room for improvement in ebook readers as well. Michael Tamblyn - 6 Projects That Could Change Publishing for the Better (via Beyond the Beyond)

Angelenos: public "piracy" hearings TODAY in Van Nuys! Posted: 05 Apr 2009 10:06 PM PDT Congressman "Hollywood" Howard Berman (who once proposed legislation that would allow rightsholders to hack American net-users' PCs if they believed the machines were involved in infringement, but excused them from liability if they targeted the wrong machine) is holding "piracy" hearings in LA later today (Monday), and the speaker's list consists of nothing but representatives of giant studios and theater chains, as well as someone from the "Global Intellectual Property Strategy Center." If you're a copyfighter and you're around Van Nuys today, why not attend the meeting and see if you can't ask an impertinent question or two? On Monday, April 6, Congressman Howard L. Berman will chair a field hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to assess the financial impact of global intellectual property piracy. The public is welcome to attend this hearing, which will be held in the City Council Chambers at the Van Nuys Civic Center, 14410 Sylvan Street, from 10 a.m. to noon... Witnesses will be: Steven Soderbergh, National Vice President of the Directors Guild of America; Richard Cook, Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios; Michael F. Miller, Jr., International Vice President of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE); Zach Horowitz, President and Chief Operating Officer of Universal Music Group; and Timothy P. Trainer, President of Global Intellectual Property Strategy Center, P.C. Congressional Hearing in Van Nuys Will Explore How to Sink the Copyright Pirates (Thanks, Lewis!) Previously: Congress shuffle: Hollywood Howard Berman to move on, copyfighting ... Secret super-copyright treaty MEMO leaked - Boing Boing Congressional elections and copyright reform: new Dem IP chair ... Congresscritters take money from RIAA/MPAA, then threaten ... Hollywood asks Congress for Letters of Marque - Boing Boing Newsweek's Stephen Levy: Capitol Hill P2P Prohibition craziness ... Washington's Worst Coders - Boing Boing

Shanty houses of Manila Posted: 05 Apr 2009 10:02 PM PDT Here's a gallery of elaborate shanty-houses, hanging at L.A.Galerie in Frankfurt. They're from Peter Bialobrzeski and Oliver Boberg, and the exhibition's called "Case Studies." It's hanging until May 23. Bialobrzeski's photos come from the Bataan Shipyard Corporation Compound, a squatter camp located at the mouth of the River Pasig near the Port of Manila, in February 2008. 70,000 people live there, and 45% of Greater Manila live in a camp like it. Case study homes, 2008 (via Beyond the Beyond) Previously: Sacramento to make its tent-city permanent? - Boing Boing Poorism, poverty tourism - Boing Boing Riveting narrated slideshow of the world's slums: The Places We ... Poorism: tourism in slums - Boing Boing Shadow Cities: the untold lives of squatters - Boing Boing Squatter City blog - Boing Boing

Science fiction's contributions to science terminology Posted: 05 Apr 2009 09:50 PM PDT From the Oxford University Press's blog, "Nine Words You Might Think Came from Science but Which Are Really from Science Fiction." 4. Deep space. One of the other defining features of outer space is its essential emptiness. In science fiction, this phrase most commonly refers to a region of empty space between stars or that is remote from the home world. E. E. "Doc" Smith seems to have coined this phrase in 1934. The more common use in the sciences refers to the region of space outside of the Earth's atmosphere. 5. Ion drive. An ion drive is a type of spaceship engine that creates propulsion by emitting charged particles in the direction opposite of the one you want to travel. The earliest citation in Brave New Words is again from Jack Williamson ("The Equalizer", 1947). A number of spacecraft have used this technology, beginning in the 1970s. 6. Pressure suit. A suit that maintains a stable pressure around its occupant; useful in both space exploration and high-altitude flights. This is another one from the fertile mind of E. E. Smith. Curiously, his pressure suits were furred, an innovation not, alas, replicated by NASA. 7. Virus. Computer virus, that is. Dave Gerrold (of "The Trouble With Tribbles" fame) was apparently the first to make the verbal analogy between biological viruses and self-replicating computer programs, in his 1972 story "When Harlie Was One." Nine Words You Might Think Came from Science but Which Are Really from Science Fiction (via Beyond the Beyond)

Congressman who's giving payday loan companies legal 391% APR loans says he's powerless to resist their lobbying Posted: 05 Apr 2009 11:51 PM PDT The US House subcommittee on Financial Services is agitating to legalize payday loans with 391% APRs. Key committee members have received large campaign contributions from the "payday" industry, and the committee chairman, Luiz Gutierrez (who also received contributions from the payday people) says the reason he's offering the industry this sweetheart deal after being on record as opposing this sort of thing is that their powerful lobbying has left him powerless to resist them: "...[T]hey're very powerful. Their influence should not be underestimated." After watching members of the military fall prey to exorbitant payday loans, Congress in 2006 capped the interest rates for military payday loans at 36%. Fifteen states have similar caps or outright bans. Congressman Gutierrez is competing with Congressman Joe Baca to see who can author the biggest giveaway. Baca's legislation would allow rollovers, higher fees for online banks, and would pre-empt state laws banning payday loans. House Preparing To Legalize Payday Loans With 391% APRs Previously: Payday Loan scumbags prey on the elderly, illiterate, poor - Boing Boing Previously: Bank pushing 120% APR loans - Boing Boing Can't see the video? Click here

Mister Jalopy on Studio 360 Posted: 05 Apr 2009 09:04 PM PDT Maker/artist Mister Jalopy was featured on Kurt Anderson's Studio 360 radio program last week. Says Jalopy: "Kurt Andersen is a sterling gent, a real class act. Our conversation brought us to topics I had not really thought about or connected before." The video above is just a small excerpt from the show. In the same episode, there's a great story about the origins of Devo and an interview with the jilted boyfriend of artist Cindy Sherman. Mister Jalopy on Studio 360 radio program

Trouble logging in? Posted: 05 Apr 2009 05:30 PM PDT Try to shake it awake by shift-refreshing the homepage to get a fresh cookie. Some folks report that they can't get in until they clear the old ones and empty the cache: in Firefox and IE, head to the Tools menu and the delete/clear history option. In Safari, it's under the Safari menu, as "Reset Safari." (We're still working on some of the tail-end issues, so don't panic if you still can't get in! Lots of stuff in old posts will be broken--links to profiles, for example--until we give the all-clear on the upgrades and hit "epic republish" on many years of posts.)

Homer's Odyssey on Twitter Posted: 05 Apr 2009 02:48 PM PDT Eric Alt imagines how Homer's Odyssey would have read, had it instead been written 140 characters at a time on twitter. "If Homer's Odyssey Was Written On Twitter" (Holy Taco, Thanks, John Andrew Walsh!)

Crocheted Mario blanket Posted: 05 Apr 2009 01:08 PM PDT This stupendous crocheted Mario blanket comes from Craft Flickr-pool member Gege-Crochet, who's posted some intriguing notes about the fabrication process on her blog: "There is no pattern that I followed. I searched the internet for screen shots of SMB and then used them for the map I had in my head. There is no 'master graph' for any of the panels, much less for the entire project. The most involved panel was the battle scene and is the only one I drew out. I have absolutely no intention of creating a graph of my entire work; however, there may be a time when I decide to make a graph of a panel or two.....dunno when/if that will happen, though." Crochet Mario blanket whole Gege Crochet: Mario follow-up (via Craft) Can't see the video? Click here

Free remarkable short sf from Paolo Bacigalupe Posted: 05 Apr 2009 01:02 PM PDT Juliana sez, "Think Galactic, a Chicago-based reading group, is proud to announce that this month they're reading three stories from from Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi. When asked nicely, Bacigalupi and Night Shade Books created a free PDF download of the stories available for book group members and random interwebs denizens to enjoy! The three stories incude the Hugo nominee 'Yellow Card Man,' and the Sturgeon Award-winning story 'The Calorie Man.' Think Galactic, which seeks to engage with speculative fiction from a radical left perspective, is hosting the file on their website, and hosting a convention in Chicago this June. They're ecstatic that Bacigalupi and Night Shade Books are giving people a chance to taste cutting-edge works that Kelly Link describes as, 'Ferocious, intelligent, and precisely rendered, these stories include some of my favorite contes cruels and cautionary tales for the twenty-first century. Paolo Bacigalupi is clearly the fifth rider of the apocalypse - you know, the one who writes science fiction in his spare time.'" PDF Link Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi (Thanks, Juliana!)

Obama's "reset button" metaphor: which is more correct, "restart," "reboot," or "reset"? Posted: 05 Apr 2009 10:08 AM PDT (Photo: "Check Reset," shot at the Computer History Museum by Flickr user Kreg Steppe, who hosts the Technorama podcast.) The latest "On Language" item from New York Times columnist William Safire ponders the difference between the words "restart," "reboot," and "reset." Mr. Safire contacted me for my opinion on how the words are different, and I kind of went nuts thinking about it for a day. I asked friends and Twitter-pals for their thoughts, too, and after thinking and talking about it for a day, emailed a short reply which is mentioned in this piece. Anyway, the whole column is interesting, here's a snip: Bemoaning "a dangerous drift in relations" between Russia and the NATO nations, Vice President Joe Biden told a conclave on security policy in Munich, "To paraphrase President Obama, it's time to press the reset button." At C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia less than two weeks later, on Feb. 19, Biden paraphrased again: "The president has made it clear that he wants to hit the reset button on our relations with Russia." Just short of two weeks after that repeated indirect quotation, President Obama publicly embraced and extended the metaphor attributed to him: "We've had a good exchange between ourselves and the Russians. I've said that we need to reset or reboot the relationship there." The reset button had been pressed, hit or punched into politics on a grand scale in world newspaper coverage of Obama's upset victory over Senator Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic field in the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucus. On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, London's Evening Standard reported, "She has tried to hit the reset button and radically change her strategy." She adopted that figure of speech every time her campaign shifted gears, to no avail. Not surprising, then, on her first European tour as secretary of state, Clinton told NPR in Brussels that in discussions with the Russians, "we're going to hit the reset button and start fresh." She went so far as to present Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, with a red desk ornament representing a reset button, and they both merrily pressed it in a photo-op. Her gag gift was labeled in Russian as peregruzka, supposedly meaning "reset," but actually meaning "overcharge" -- in the sense of "electrical overload," not meaning "gouging the unsuspecting consumer" -- but the American mistranslation gave the Russian diplomat a chance for a sly dig. Reset Button (New York Times. Special thanks to everyone who replied on Twitter!)

Man detained, threatened and abused by TSA for flying with $4700 in cash Posted: 05 Apr 2009 09:26 AM PDT Here's a recording of Steve Bierfeldt, a US citizen who tried to board a domestic airplane while carrying $4700 in cash, and was detained by the TSA and subjected to abusive language and threats when he said that he would only answer the TSA's inquiries ("Where do you work?" "Why are you carrying cash?") if he was required to by law. The TSA agents threatened to turn him over to the DEA. He was returning from a Ron Paul event in St Louis, MO, and worked for the campaign. The cash on his person arose from sales of t-shirts and stickers at the event. The transport cops in the audio recording of his interrogation actually tell him if he's not guilty he has nothing to fear. Exactly what security threat does cash pose to an airplane? Are suicide bombers wont to carry a lot of liquid capital in case they flub it and need to bribe their way out? Cue clueless commenter who says, "Well what did he expect when he told the law enforcement person that he expected to be informed of his rights and legal obligations before he would answer his questions?" After all, constitutional liberties are only there to be admired, not exercised. In 3...2...1. Man detained and harassed at airport for carrying CASH! (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Help save Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic from US immigration hell! Posted: 04 Apr 2009 11:53 PM PDT Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic have run into a little trouble with the US immigration people. Because they are "internet people," their marriage has not left the kind of paper-trail that the authorities like to see, and now Jasmina is under threat of deportation. But there's a solution: if you've spent any time with Bruce and Jasmina since their marriage, you can swear out an affidavit to that effect and send it to Bruce before April 15, and save their asses. Bruce doesn't mention it, but other friends of mine who've been through the same thing have benefited from the production of photos of them together, like these two that I took, so you might send those on to Bruce, too. Surprising news has just arrived for us at our American home address. Although we have been married for four years now, the American Immigration services can't find any paper trail for the two of us. We have no joint bank account, no insurance accounts and no joint children. The authorities therefore suspect that our marriage is a phony "Green Card marriage," and they would like to have Jasmina deported from the USA. This is not too entirely surprising a mistake, since we're an Internet couple. By our nature, we just don't generate much paper. We use electronic banking. Bruce uses American banks, while Jasmina uses Serbian banks. Why would anyone want to make his or her alien spouse use an American or Serbian bank? There's no reason for us to jointly speculate in American real-estate, since we each already own places to live. No sane European would ever want American health insurance. And so forth. Like a lot of geek couples, we live out of our cellphones and laptops. Furniture, wedding china, massive home improvement loans: we don't even go there. We have a light material footprint that'll generally fit onto a couple of rollaboards. We're nevertheless a genuine married couple. Any reasonable Internet person would recognize this fact in two minutes... We must therefore implore your help. Have you ever witnessed the two of us hanging around together? Were you convinced that we're the real deal, spouse-wise? Do you have solemn, impressive, legal-looking letterhead? For instance, are you some kind of American federal agent yourself? Lord knows we know some. If so, then, please -- write us a testament to that effect. It's meant for the American authorities, and will be using your own letterhead. Please tell them we are, indeed, a "bona fide marriage." You are talking to the "UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES" in Vermont, USA. Our lawyer will see to it that they get it. Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic Request Your Moral Support Our Immigration Lawyer Suggests This Template

Pneumatic tube-based systems -- the real series of tubes Posted: 04 Apr 2009 11:44 PM PDT Molly Wright Steenson continues her trailblazing research project into the secret history of the lost pneumatic "series of tubes" that presaged packet switching in many contexts, in this fascinating video'd presentation. Molly Wright Steenson - A Series of Tubesvia Beyond the Beyond) Previously: Pneumatic tube-based postal systems of the late 19th century ...

Berlusconi declares war on the press Posted: 04 Apr 2009 11:40 PM PDT An anonymous reader writes, This Italian news piece reports the latest uncostitutional boutade of PM Silvio Berlusconi, who actually declared "I am tempted to direct and strong actions against the media because of their disinformation about me". Translated from mafiaspeak (his ties with that organization have been widely documented in several trials, so this is no slander), this means: "I am going to sue the hell out of anybody not incensing me, and order their immediate firing just like I did a few years ago with journalistic legends like Indro Montanelli, Eugenio Scalfari and others". But what is all the fuss about? Well, those evil media people - and yes, I am one of them - dared to report yet another series of diplomatical blunders by Berlusconi. I.e. shouting in presence of H.M. the Queen of England, who had to reprimand him; Ignoring the assembled world leaders to have a friendly chat on his mobile phone while the International press was watching; Claiming credit for the success of yesterday's G20 meeting after a very embarassing performance before his "not-so-peers"; Accusing America as the only responsible of the Italian crisis and requesting Barack Obama to "sort out the mess you made in my country", and the list goes on and on. And... ready for the final straw? The Italian minister responsible for policing the Internet is none other than... a former showgirl and Berlusconi's mistress, with family ties in the local equivalent of the RIAA. Do you really want a piece of the Interweb in the manicured hands of such a person? Berlusconi furioso con la stampa italiana "Mi calunniano, tentato da azioni dure"

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