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| Pirate Bay defendants found guilty, sentenced to jail Posted: 17 Apr 2009 03:43 AM PDT The four defendants in the Swedish trial of The Pirate Bay have been found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison and $3.6m fine. I don't know much about Swedish copyright law -- and the defense rested on the technical boundaries what constitutes an infringement -- so I have no idea if this is the kind of judgment that is likely to survive the inevitable appeal. A more interesting question is whether The Pirate Bay will disappear now. After the illegal seizure of its servers in 2006, The Pirate Bay supposedly adopted a distributed architecture with failover servers in other jurisdictions that were unlikely to cooperate with EU orders. If The Pirate Bay shuts down, it's certain that something else will spring up in its wake, of course -- just as The Pirate Bay appeared in the wake of the closure of other, more "moderate" services. With each successive takedown, the entertainment industry forces these services into architectures that are harder to police and harder to shut down. And with each takedown, the industry creates martyrs who inspire their users into an ideological opposition to the entertainment industry, turning them into people who actively dislike these companies and wish them ill (as opposed to opportunists who supplemented their legal acquisition of copyrighted materials with infringing downloads). It's a race to turn a relatively benign symbiote (the original Napster, which offered to pay for its downloads if it could get a license) into vicious, antibiotic resistant bacteria that's dedicated to their destruction. Throughout the trial, the Pirate Bay defendants have played up their image as rebellious outsiders, arriving at court in a slogan-daubed party bus and insisting that their position was to defend a popular technology rather than illegal filesharing.The Pirate Bay trial: guilty verdict Previously:
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| Posted: 16 Apr 2009 09:34 PM PDT |
| Time-Warner bandwidth caps cancelled after threats of protests Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:45 PM PDT  Adam sez, "Time Warner will no longer be implementing download caps in all markets. I can't thank you enough. As you know, BB is read by a lot of mass-media outlets and other national organizations. I have it on good authority that Senator Chuck Schumer's office was notified of the impending protest through the Boing Boing post, and it spurred them to take the issue seriously." Time Warner's climbdown on this one is hilarious -- they say that they have to abandon caps until they can "educate" their customers (presumably it takes a lot of education to convince people to let your ISP clobber your participation in digital life to turn a buck). We Won! (For Now) Time Warner Killing Usage Caps "In All Markets" - But TW Press Statements Suggest They Are Still Out Of Touch (Thanks, Adam!) Previously: |
| Free Peter Beagle and Richard Lupoff reading tomorrow (Sat) night in San Francisco Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:39 PM PDT The excellent SF in SF free science fiction reading series will host Peter S Beagle and Richard Lupoff at their next event, tomorrow (Saturday): April Reading - Richard Lupoff & Peter S. Beagle (Thanks, Rina!) |
| Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:31 PM PDT  H1kar1 sez, "We're throwing the first US hacker camp in a decommissioned Titan-1 Missile Silo. A bunch of awesome pictures of the site have just been posted from our visits over the past couple weeks. CFP and campsite organizer sign up form still open and looking for people to participate!" |
| VIable Paradise: week-long intensive science fiction writing workshop on Martha's Vineyard Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:29 PM PDT  Submissions are still open for Viable Paradise, the intensive science-fiction writers' boot-camp held on Martha's Vineyard every autumn. I've taught VP several times and always been impressed with the format, the setting, and the caliber of the students and the instructors. Viable Paradise lasts for a single week, and involves a dawn-to-dinner relentless set of tutorials, personal meetings, critiques, and exercises that aim to impart a career's worth of wisdom in a single week. You can become a successful science fiction writer without attending a workshop like this, and attending is no guarantee of success, but for the right writer, this can be the event that gets you from promising to published. Viable Paradise (via Making Light) |
| Shepard Fairey's Comment on Recent Updates in the AP Legal Conflict Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:18 PM PDT An update from Shepard Fairey, following this recently-Boinged update on the acclaimed artist's legal battle with the AP: UPDATE: Shepard Fairey vs The AP (obeygiant) Previously: Shepard Fairey Counterfiles in Associated Press Obama Poster Conflict |
| Muji USA webstore - simple, clean design from Japan Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:23 PM PDT  Muji has opened a US mail-order store. Muji is a Japanese chain that makes extremely high-quality stationery, clothes, furnishings, and other stuff, all with a very clean line and none of it with any sort of label. I use tons of Muji stationery, our DVDs are organized in Muji DVD boxes, and three of my favorite shirts are Muji shirts. The baby's room has a Muji CD player in it. Our house is filled with useful Muji tools. It's all long-wearing, reasonably priced, and extremely polished. That said, my experience with their UK web-store has been pretty awful. Slow delivery, awkward packaging, and a decidedly second-rate website all make me more apt to walk down to Covent Garden and shop in person at my nearest Muji than to go online. But if the web-store were all that there were, I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at it. Unfortunately, the US range seems pretty limited -- again, it's better than nothing! |
| Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:14 PM PDT  Bart sends us this Instructable for a Legway: "A self balancing, human powered, steampunk styled, Segway. All you need is a brave self balancing human. This is the ultimate green vehicle for all you eco conscious steampunkers." Steampunk Segway ( Legway ) (Thanks, Bart!) |
| Make: Talk 006 -- Jeri Ellsworth, Friday, April 16, 2009 at noon PDT Posted: 16 Apr 2009 08:26 PM PDT  Below is the show player, where you can listen to the live program on Friday, and to past episodes.
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| I Got Your Unicorn Right Here, Maggie Koerth-Baker. Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:08 PM PDT |
| Xeni, I Think We're Going to Need a Bigger Unicorn Posted: 16 Apr 2009 02:58 PM PDT Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine. I am so sorry. I ran across this image while searching for something to illustrate that last post and just can't not share it. Again. My apologies. Rest assured, I'm going to have nightmares tonight, too. We're all in this together.
So that? Is a hairless chimpanzee. According to RedEyedRex, the Flickr user who took the picture, it lives at the Mysore Zoo in India. Its hobbies (presumably) include eating various fruits and making humans feel deeply uncomfortable. |
| Posted: 16 Apr 2009 01:38 PM PDT Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine. Back in February, I went to the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Chicago. The whole thing was pretty much a geeked-out blast, but one of my favorite sessions was this four-hour long symposium, the crux of which can basically be summed up as, "Evolution: It Works, Bitches." This particular tidbit, which I originally heard there in a lecture given by Brown University biology professor Kenneth Miller, is just totally nifty and must be shared.
So here's the thing: We have 46 chromosomes. Our nearest great ape relatives have 48. On the surface, it looks like we must have lost two. But that's actually a huge problem. Made up of organized packs of DNA and proteins, chromosomes don't just up and vanish. In fact, it's doubtful any primate could survive a mutation that simply deleted a pair of chromosomes. That's because chromosomes are to the human body what instruction sheets are to inexpensive, Swedish flat-pack furniture. If you're missing one screw, you can still put that bookcase together pretty easily. But if the how-to guide suddenly jumps from page 1 (take plywood panels out of box--uff da) to page 5 (enjoy bookcäse!), you're likely to end up missing something pretty vital. All this left scientists with a thorny dilemma: How could we have a common ancestor with great apes, but fewer chromosomes? Turns out: The chromosomes aren't missing at all. This evidence laid the groundwork for a brilliant discovery. Rather than falling apart, the two missing chromosomes had fused together. Their format changed, but they didn't lose any information, so the mutation wasn't deadly. Instead, scientists now think, the fusion made it difficult for our ancestors to mate with the ancestors of chimpanzees, leading our two species to strike out alone. In the two decades since the original study, more evidence has surfaced backing this up, which leads us to 2005, when the chimpanzee genome was sequenced around the same time that the National Human Genome Research Institute published a detailed survey of human chromosome 2. According to Kenneth Miller, we can now see extra centromeres in chromosome 2 and trace how its genes neatly line up with those on chimpanzee chromosomes 12 and 13. It's a great example of evidence supporting the common descent of man and ape. I'm currently in the process of putting together a mental_floss story looking at this, and several other awesome experiments revolving around the origins of life. I'm not sure yet when it will be published, but, obviously, I'm really excited about it. |
| Posted: 16 Apr 2009 01:18 PM PDT  Wow! The creators of Nerd Merit Badges made a Boing Boing badge. I love this! Unfortunately, I don't see it on the Nerd Merit Badges site yet. (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!) |
| Subivor subway emergency kit for terrorist attacks Posted: 16 Apr 2009 01:10 PM PDT  Over at the BAMIntelBlog, Danny Loschiavo posts about the Subivor Subway Emergency Kit. It's basically a fanny pack with stuff that supposedly will help you out if you're in the subway during a terrorist attack. The kit is $39.99 and includes a free tote bag and, er, Metro card holder. Here's what the Subivor contains: 1 - SURVIVAL MASK disposable anti-fog full facemask, protects against Toxic Smoke,Concrete Dust, Debris, Radio Active Dirty Bomb, Influenza, Small Pox, and Anthrax.Subivor |
| Doug Rushkoff on DIY currencies Posted: 16 Apr 2009 11:36 AM PDT BB pal and former guestblogger Douglas Rushkoff has an idea for "craigbucks," an alternative currency to be used on Craigslist. (Doug's new book, Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back, is out on June 2.) Annalee Newitz explains "craigbucks" and Doug's vision for DIY currencies in a Portfolio.com article: When the developed world gets over its bias for "printing press–era cash technology" then complementary currencies will be commonplace here too, Rushkoff predicts. He sees a future that has people literally reprogramming their economic systems, using computer networks and handheld devices to administer new forms of grassroots cash. Those currencies could be almost anything: Cash we can use only at one local restaurant, cash cards for Wal-Mart or other chain stores, babysitting dollars we can trade in our neighborhoods."The Future of Money: DIY Currencies" |
| Sacculina are Pretty Much My Favorite Parasite Posted: 15 Apr 2009 09:16 PM PDT Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine. So one of the chapters in Be Amazing is dedicated to teaching you how to be a better mooch. Naturally, the focus is on parasites.
Just focus on that cute little, panhandling filarial worm, while I tell you about something far less adorable. Sacculina are one of those creatures that are both absolutely fascinating and also relatively decent evidence against the existence of a loving deity. Think of them as nature's equivalent of Dracula, on the hunt for a Renfield. Actually more of a barnacle with a parasitic bent, the sacculina starts out life as a weensy, free-floating organism, swimming about the seas. Although she spends her early life footloose and fancy-free, what the female sacculina really wants is to meet a nice crab and settle down. What the crab wants never really factors into the equation. Once she finds a suitable crab, the sacculina swims around to the belly of the shellfish and, using a sharp hollow point on her exoskeleton, injects herself into the crab's flesh, leaving behind an empty husk. Inside the crab, the sacculina begins to take over, burrowing long, nutrient-sucking tendrils into every part of the crab's anatomy, from the eyestalks to the claws. As she does this, the sacculina changes the crab's behavior; effectively neutering it, preventing it from growing and winnowing down its once-vast list of interests to a single hobby: Eating. After the sacculina picks up a mate or two, the crab will even spend what little energy resources it has helping to tend her baby parasites and giving them a good start in the world. Now entirely under her control, the crab ends up living only to serve the sacculina and help her and her family infect other crabs. Image courtesy Michael Rogalski |
| Raymond Scott's Powerhouse performed by harmonica quintet sextet Posted: 16 Apr 2009 08:29 PM PDT Raymond Scott music is always good, but it's taken to another level entirely when performed by five six dapper gents with harmonicas. (Via Filled With Chocolate Pudding) |
| Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:35 AM PDT Darren sez, "A pastor (of all people) gets pulled over in Arizona at an internal anti-terrorism checkpoint and refuses to submit to a vehicular search (as per his fourth amendment rights). Hilarity ensues as authorities break his car windows with hammers and shoot him with a taser." Baptist pastor beaten + tazed by Border patrol - 11 stitches (Thanks, Darren!) |
| Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:00 AM PDT  Like many other people, I've always thought an old church would be an interesting place to convert into a home. Maybe a stay in a monastery that's now a posh hotel would satisfy my curiosity. Intelligent Life Magazine takes a tour of a few of them around the world. Monasteries: The Latest Boutique Hotels |
| Three Ways to Drive an Animal to Extinction Posted: 15 Apr 2009 08:49 PM PDT Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine. This is totally going to lead to a flame-war with PETA, isn't it? For the record, I am not advocating running out and killing you off a species. No, not even S. coleoptrata. I see these as sort-of cautionary tales of how human plans can go horribly, horribly wrong for the denizens of the animal kingdom. Yes, this is an excerpt from Be Amazing, but one can learn the art of fabulosity from the mistakes of others, as well as from their triumphs. That disclaimer accomplished, let's get on to the good stuff. Method 1: Through Gluttony Method 2: Out of Sheer Hatred Method 3: Via Tragicomic Irony It's really sad about the Caracaras, but the passenger pigeons kind of had it coming. |
| Posted: 16 Apr 2009 09:29 AM PDT  Instructables member somebullcrap was inspired by scientists who study ant hills by filling them up with metal, so he made a table using the same process. He says, "I set out to build a table designed by ants using left over, unused, and unwated things (like) a jigsaw found in the trash, aluminum cans, warped wood and salvaged glass, just to name a few." aNtistic design |
| London cops mug tourist for his bus-station photos Posted: 16 Apr 2009 08:40 AM PDT A Viennese tourist has vowed never to return to London after police officers forced him to delete photos he'd taken of the Vauxhall bus station, saying it was "strictly forbidden" and recording details from his identity papers. There's no evidence that terrorists use photos to plan their attacks, nor that preventing photography reduces the likelihood of a terrorist attack. London's police have been granted sweeping "anti-terrorism" powers, including the authority to arrest people who take pictures of the police. Police delete London tourists' photos 'to prevent terrorism' (Thanks, Matt!) (Image: Vauxhall Station, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike photo from Nedrichards' photostream) Previously:
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| Stop motion animation: Wolf and Pig Posted: 16 Apr 2009 08:26 AM PDT Here is a really nice piece of stop motion animation using photo prints displayed in a room and then re-photographed. (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!) |
| Bamboo bike by Ross Lovegrove and Biomega Posted: 16 Apr 2009 08:23 AM PDT  Ross Lovegrove created this lovely high-end bamboo bicycle for Danish bike/design firm Biomega, founded by my pal Jens Martin Skibsted, and it will be available for purchase next month. If you're in Milan, you can see it in person at the Design Library next week. Even better, bring your own bike to the Library at 11am on Thursday (4/23) and go for a ride with Lovegrove and Skibsted! More on Biomega here, or if you'd like details on the bike, Martin says you can email the company directly. Previously: |
| United Airlines wants to charge large people for two seats Posted: 16 Apr 2009 07:19 AM PDT United Airlines has a new policy that would make large people buy two seats, if a flight attendant can't find two open seats together. The carrier is the latest of several airlines to adopt this policy. The carrier, whose parent company is Chicago-based UAL Corp., said it decided to adopt the tougher policy after receiving more than 700 complaints last year from passengers "who did not have a comfortable flight because the person next to them infringed on their seat," spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said.United Airlines could require obese passengers to buy a second ticket |
| Posted: 16 Apr 2009 07:09 AM PDT  A 26-year-old man living in India is said to resemble a baby in every way, the exception being his set of adult teeth. Jerly Lyngdoh is 2ft 9in long and weighs 22 lbs. Doctors suspect his growth hormones are not working properly. (Via Arbroath) |
My lawyers filed my response to The AP's claims against me on Tuesday 
In this episode of Make: Talk, we'll be joined by Jeri Ellsworth, a pinball fanatic and hardware hacker. You might remember her as the chip designer who Easter egged a Commodore 64 emulator in a video game joystick. We'll also present some news from the world of making, and our favorite tricks, tips, and tools of the week. Be sure to call in for prizes that we'll award during the program! The number is (646) 915-8698. 
But the tourists have said they had to return home to Vienna without their holiday pictures after two policemen forced them to delete the photographs from their cameras in the name of preventing terrorism. | You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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