Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

New Free/Open Source Software law journal launches

Posted: 14 Jul 2009 03:46 AM PDT


Andrew Katz of the new International Free and Open Source Software Law Review sez, "OK, so it's not going to appear in airport bookstalls any time soon, but we think that the launch of the Review is a pretty big step forward for openness, and a sign that (1) free and open source software is moving into the mainstream; and (2) even lawyers can adopt a collaborative model and create something both free as in freedom, and as in beer."

International Free and Open Source Software Law Review Issue 1 PDF (Thanks, Andrew!)

Major Lazer video for "Hold the Line," featuring Mr. Lexx and Santigold

Posted: 14 Jul 2009 03:25 AM PDT

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.

Xeni, I see your laser portraits and raise you a Gunz Don't Kill People Lazers Do! Wacky video for "Hold the Line" directed by Ferry Gouw. (Maybe some NSFW language; hard to tell. Via Submarine Channel.)

Britain's loony rules for artist visas embarrass festival organizers

Posted: 14 Jul 2009 01:17 AM PDT

The British government's new restrictive rules for artists' visas are a national embarrassment; Allison Crowe has been fingerprinted, imprisoned and deported for failing to get the paperwork right and now a major Indonesian feminist poet has been denied entry for a festival to which she was invited because some snivelling bureaucrat decided that she might be sneaking in for permanent residence to steal jobs from hardworking British poets. Also given the bum's rush were Moroccan poets, including Hassan Najmi, the director-general of the book and publications department of Morocco's Ministry of Culture. The festival organizer said, "This is like holding a dinner party and finding you have a bouncer on the door who is barring guests."

All of this is drawn from the national panic over immigration, the last respectable bastion of racism ("I mean, if they want to come in here, they should play by the rules, don't you know" -- ever seen those rules, much less tried to follow 'em? They'd give Kafka fits). Next time you hear someone whittering on about immigrants, call 'em on it. I'm an immigrant and the son of immigrants and the grandson of immigrants who shredded their papers to get through the Czech border and snuck into Canada without "following the rules." You got a problem with immigration, you got a problem with me.

Dorothea Rosa Herliany, according to the festival, is one of the most important poets writing in Indonesia today. She is a feminist, note the Muslim society in which she works, and has eight volumes of poetry to her name. Currently resident for a short time in Germany, she received this crushingly dim response to her application for a visa.

"You have provided an invitation to participate in the Ledbury Poetry Festival in the UK, however you have failed to provide any documents showing the funds available to you or demonstrating your current circumstances in Germany. I note that you only arrived in Germany in April 09, and have limited leave to remain until 30/07/09. I am therefore not satisfied on the balance of probabilities that you are a genuine visitor, that you intend to leave the UK at the end of your visit..."

If you want to know about the new visa requirements, the excellent Manifesto Club has done much work on a campaign with the Observer. If you want to contact Woolas, the address and number given on his website, from which you can also email him, are 11 Church Lane, Oldham, OL1 3A. Telephone: 0161 624 4248.

Stopping culture at our borders (via We Make Money Not Art)

Javanese batikers say thanks but no thanks to copyright

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 11:18 PM PDT

Peter sez, "This article in the Jakarta Globe describes the resistance of Javanese batik-makers to suggestions from well-meaning government officials that they copyright their motifs. Looks like the batikkers have their own model of open-source design: 'They believe that each time they create something, it is not they who worked, but it is God who worked through their human body and soul...Being grateful [to God] is sufficient for them.'"

Candra Malik (Thanks, Peter!)

(Image: Candra Malik, JG)


Paranoid Larry sings about privacy and paranoia

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 11:15 PM PDT

Larry sez, "Paranoid Larry's video of the song 'You Can't Search me' from the LP entitled, 'Paranoid Larry and his Imaginary Band.' Check him out live. He's mesmerizing."

Love the message and the Linux-grade beard.

You Can't Search Me (Thanks, Larry!)

Stross's hilarious ROGUE FARM performed live with a full cast

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 11:13 PM PDT

John sez, "At Balticon this past May, Charlie Stross was the guest of honor. As a special treat, the first ever live full cast recording of the excellent Escape Pod podcast was performed of Stross's story Rogue Farm - his tale of future tech, biological hacking, and human nature is well-presented."

I've been listening to this all morning while brushing my teeth, cooking breakfast, etc. Convulsively funny, in a way that does justice to Charlie's wonderful story!

"Buggerit, I don't have time for this," Joe muttered. The stable waiting for the small herd of cloned spidercows cluttering up the north paddock was still knee-deep in manure, and the tractor seat wasn't getting any warmer while he shivered out here waiting for Maddie to come and sort this thing out. It wasn't a big herd, but it was as big as his land and his labour could manage - the big biofabricator in the shed could assemble mammalian livestock faster than he could feed them up and sell them with an honest HAND-RAISED NOT VAT-GROWN label.

"What do you want with us?" he yelled up at the gently buzzing farm.

"Brains, fresh brains for baby Jesus," crooned the farm in a warm contralto, startling Joe half out of his skin. "Buy my brains!" Half a dozen disturbing cauliflower shapes poked suggestively out of the farms' back then retracted again, coyly.

"Don't want no brains around here," Joe said stubbornly, his fingers whitening on the stock of the shotgun. "Don't want your kind round here, neither. Go away."

EP206: Rogue Farm (Thanks, John!)

Steampunk leather doll

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 11:11 PM PDT

Slobbovia: a rich fantasy world created through a play-by-mail game

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 11:09 PM PDT

On Play This Thing, Greg Costikyan reviews Slobbovia, a collaborative writing exercise disguised as a game:
To call Slobbovia a Diplomacy variant is, however, misleading; the game purposefully had no victory conditions, and the formal game itself served as little more than a framework for structuring a written roleplaying game. The postal Diplomacy hobby has a tradition of "press," whereby a player may, each turn, include a written statement that is published with the turn's results (e.g., "The Office of the Kaiser today announced..."). In Slobbovia, press was the focus of the game, rather than a minor adjunct.

In other words, it was a form of collaborative story-telling in written form; each player had a single "main" character, but could also introduce subsidiary characters. An tacit rule prohibited killing off another player without his permission, and it was considered polite to get a player's input and permission if you intended to include one of his characters in a scene. Events in the ongoing story would certainly cause players to change their behavior in the underlying game, and vice versa, but no one seriously tried to play the game in a min-max, win or die kind of way.

A typical issue of the Slobinpolit Zhurnal, the fanzine that carried the game, would have more thsn 100 pages of prose, and perhaps 3 pages of game results.

Slobbovia

New Zealand ready to reintroduce "three strikes" copyright rule

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 11:07 PM PDT

Uh-oh: New Zealand is ready to reintroduce the "three-strikes" rule that says that everyone in your household will be denied Internet access (and all that goes with it, from education to civic engagement to health information) if one person is accused of infringing on copyright:
Due to New Zealand's geographical isolation the internet is a vital tool for connecting to the rest of the world, and is also becoming more pervasive with vital services moving online such as parts of government, health care (records, scheduling) and social interaction tools (newspapers, phone, email, social networks). Disconnection may hinder people's ability to pay bills, operate their business or do their job, access banking, education, insurance, etc. Due to this the internet is already a necessary service like other utilities such as the phone and postal systems. With internet use showing no signs of slowing, in future years disconnection will be seen as a shortsighted and increasingly unfair penalty.

For artists, fines have the potential to include compensation for copyright infringement, whereas broad and indirect punishments that harm innocent people will simply reflect badly on artists.

It's likely that there will be significant business compliance costs with termination. ISPANZ have estimate that 90% of NZ Businesses use network devices that are currently incapable of tracking and we see no coverage of this in the draft (although it's unsure whether we would expect at this early stage).

Terminator 2: MED release Section 92A Proposal. (via Michael Geist)
Previously:


Public Resource demands the source code to America's operating system

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 10:55 PM PDT

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,
Public.Resource.Org has sent in 3 letters to the Administration to try and get Federal Law to become open source:

1. An appeal to the Executive Office of the President to help us make the Federal Register and the U.S. Patent databases available in bulk and for free. The letter is addressed to Aneesh Chopra and Vivek Kundra, the President's CTO and CIO. I've met both of them and they're both very good and I'm hoping they'll be able to help cut through the red tape.

2. A formal FOIA request to the National Archives asking them to make the very expensive standards that are "Incorporated by Reference" into the Code of Federal Regulations available for free. These standards cost *big* bucks from groups like ANSI and Underwriters Laboratories. Although these "Standards Development Organizations" are ostensibly nonprofit, you'd be shocked how many million-dollar CEO salaries they have.

3. Last year, we pooled our money with Sunlight Foundation and other groups and forked over $17,000 for the bulk feed of the Code of Federal Regulations. Well, the product is defective and we want our money back.

These 3 actions taken together are trying to establish a basic principle: the laws of our society need to be readily available for all to read, not locked behind a cash register. The past practice of parceling out the public domain to private parties is illegal and needs to stop.

Open Source America's Operating System (Thanks, Carl!)
Previously:


Creepy unmarked cage for people in Superior, Colorado

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 08:27 PM PDT

200907132014 200907132014-1

(Click for big)

Here's a human cage built next to a park in Superior, Colorado. It is designed to contain two people, separated by a metal wall. There's no sign or indication of its intended purpose (beyond the obvious of caging people).

Laser Portraits

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 06:37 PM PDT

lazer.jpg
The Laser Portraits photo-blog amounts to "a tribute to the greatest school photo backdrop there ever was." (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

Personal Transformations in the Internet Age

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 09:29 PM PDT

Images Printcover 200906 Toc Guestblogger Marina Gorbis is executive director at Institute for the Future.

l find many things remarkable about psychiatrist George Vaillant's longitudinal studies of 268 Harvard men, not least of which is their time span -- 72 years! To see someone transformed from a teenager to an old man is usually the stuff of fiction, not academic research. It turns out though that real lives are not that different from fiction, what with so many unpredictable twists and turns. What struck me most was the depth of personal transformations many of Vaillant's subjects' lives take. For example, starting out as a promising well-adjusted student with a loving family and later coming to resent your kin, seeing them as cold and detached; veering from a happy marriage to an affair with a much younger woman and eventual divorce; finding God, abandoning God, all in the span of one life. These transformations are so stark, some of the study participants barely recognize themselves when presented with vignettes of their past selves. As Joshua Wolf Shenk writes in the June issue of Atlantic Monthly:
"One of the men in the study at age 50 declared, "God is dead and man is very much alive and has a wonderful future." He had stopped going to church, he said, when he arrived at Harvard. But as a sophomore, he had reported going to mass four times a week. When Vaillant sent this--and several similar vignettes--to the man for his approval to publish them, the man wrote back, "George, you must have sent these to the wrong person." Vaillant writes, "He could not believe that his college persona could have ever been him. Maturation makes liars of us all."
The stories reported in the study are complex yet familiar -- they are not so different from stories of our own lives or those of our parents, grandparents, or others we know. I have come to view my own life as a progression of different personas --- a young girl in Ukraine, a young professional in Silicon Valley, a mom of a teenager. At each stage, I was a different person with a different outlook on the world, different circumstances and sets of aspirations. Reminders of my past selves are contained in a few photographs tucked away in a shoe box that I occasionally bring out, a box of letters to my family in Odessa, and, more recently, increasingly growing compilations of videos, e-mails, online photos, etc.


Reinventing ourselves as we go through life is a natural part of human experience. It is what we do as we mature, encounter new circumstances, build new relationships.  It is an inherent part of the immigrant experience as one changes homes, learns new language, and internalizes new cultural norms. But such reinventions and transformations are not the exclusive domain of immigrants -- we are all subject to them to a greater or lesser degree as a part of living.

A key part of the process of reinvention of self is the acquisition of new reference points that serve to give us a sense of our new identity -- new friendships, new relationships, new places. An equally important part of this process is the shedding of old ones. This is what is so interesting about high school reunions.  We realize that the people in the room who were so important to us during our teenager years, whose acceptance and approval defined so much how we thought about ourselves, matter so little to us twenty years later. Indeed, it is hard to believe they once mattered so much at all. They simply no longer serve as reference points to who we are today.

Almost ten years ago when doing research on technology and identity, my colleague Kathi Vian wrote:  "We create our identity through reference points. We know who we are in reference to others... Identity is a conception of self that we create based on various reference points in our life."   Meaning that we know we are tall because there are people around us who are shorter, we know we are smart because someone tells us we are, and we know we are shy or outgoing by comparing ourselves to those around us.

What is interesting about the technology environment we live in is that for the first time in our human history we are able to create persistent and mirror-like references points of our lives that keep former identities in constant view. Videos and photographs taken from birth, snippets of life documented on Facebook, streams of thoughts on Twitter, inner wonderings revealed in blogs -- these are all new reference points for creating and shaping our identities, our senses of self. And unlike previous reminders, often tucked away in shoe boxes, desk drawers, and attics, these are much more sensory-rich, pervasive, and easily accessible, to us and others.

Sociologist Amitai Etzioni raises an alarm about existence of these persistent trails and reference points. In an article titled "Second Chances, Social Forgiveness, and the Internet"  he writes:
By computerizing local public records, the Internet casts the shadow of people's past far and fast; like a curse they cannot undo, their records now follow them wherever they go. True, even in the good old days, arrest records, criminal sentences, bankruptcy filings, and even divorce records were public. Some were listed in blotters kept in police stations, others in courthouses; anyone who wished to take the trouble could go there and read them. But most people did not. Above all, there was no way for people in distant communities to find these damning facts without going to inordinate lengths.
In the Internet era, in contrast, a person's conviction of graffiti vandalism at age 19 will still be there at age 29 when he is a solid citizen trying to get a job and raise a family, and the conviction will be there for anyone to see. Same is potentially true for a high school prank captured on someone else's Facebook page or Youtube channel. While this is of concern, I wonder if as a result of pervasiveness of such information we may actually see greater social forgiveness and tolerance. After all, the more people see that even those they admire do stupid things once in a while, particularly when they are young, wouldn't our tolerance level go up also? And hasn't it happened already? The more we find out about personal indiscretions of various politicians and celebrities, the more inured the public has become, it seems. We are finding out that many of our heroes are fallible. Maybe, along with everything else, the Internet is democratizing human fallibility.

What I do wonder about, however, is how will personal transformations be achieved in this era of persistent and vivid reference points from the past? I see these transformations as an integral and necessary part of going through life, a part of creating new selves as one matures, learns, and acquires new life experiences. What tools and practices will we develop to shed the old reference points as a part of such transformations? In other words, what is the new equivalent of the old shoebox or cobwebbed attic in the Internet era?

Miniature Bottle story for Significant Objects

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 05:37 PM PDT

Last week, our guest blogger Susannah Breslin wrote about Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker's Significant Objects Project. (She wrote about it today as well, here).

Glenn and Walker's idea was to invite people to write stories about thrift store trinkets and then post the stories on eBay to find out how much people will bid on the objects. (There is no intent to deceive -- that would ruin the purpose of the experiment. The eBay descriptions for the objects include a disclaimer that "The significance of this object has been invented by the author.")

Here's the first three paragraphs of my story:

200907131618 Matt saw the tiny blue bottle on the third step of the main entrance to the Los Angeles Central Library. It was next to a sleeping man, obviously homeless. A $100 bill, rolled-up, was protruding from the bottle's open neck. Matt slyly scooped up the bottle on his way into the library. He hid the bottle in his fist until he got to a desk with side partitions.

A chipped decal on the bottle read, "Arrow De Luxe Apricot Flavored Brandy." He pulled the rolled-up bill from the neck. When he unrolled it, it was a just note printed on what looked like a $100 bill. He'd picked up these phony bills before. They were religious tracts. What kind of religion tries to win members by pulling a dirty trick? he wondered.

Matt dropped the note on the ground and pocketed the bottle. It looks like an antique, he thought. I might get some money for it. He barely made it to the computer card catalog when the bottle appeared in his mouth. The oddly ribbed neck protruded from his lips, while the rest of the bottle uncomfortably occupied his mouth, pushing his tongue down and preventing him from closing his jaws completely.

Read the rest of the story here.

(The eBay auction for this miniature jug ends on July 14 at 5:21 am PDT.)

Kappa Machine

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 03:09 PM PDT

TEMP-Image_5_4718.jpg
By way of background: the critter depicted in the image above, and after the jump, is a Japanese kappa monster. Their favorite foods are cucumbers and human bungholes. (For more, view this two-part Boing Boing TV kappa-monster-hunting series: one, two).

Sean Bonner says,

Yokai Attack co-author Matt Alt and his pal Marugame claim to have discovered this disturbing creation deep within the bowels of Tokyo's sewer system. It's a totally handmade homage to an old Japanese toy series from the Seventies: the Jumbo Machinders! Kappa missiles! Kappa shuriken! Kappa cucumber cudgel! Kappa... anal intruder!?!

Whatever the case, it's going to be on display at the Artist Garden gallery in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, from July 9th through the 21st. It's part of the Kappa Exhibition, an annual gathering of kappa-crazed artists amateur and pro. Fans of the yokai should pencil in their date with destiny. Directions and map here.

And Matt has posted an in-depth report on how the piece was made.

(..more photos after the jump!)

TEMP-Image_5_4715.jpg

Previously:


Doll, haunted, $22.49

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 03:08 PM PDT

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.

 280260613_tp.jpg

The other day, io9 posted about Significant Objects, a project I wrote about here.

In the comments, one "eviladrian" wrote: "Try searching ebay for 'haunted dolls,'" and included this link.

Suffice to say, if you're in the market for a haunted doll, today is your lucky day.

This is one of the MANY dolls given to me by my Grandmother,her name is JENNA. JENNA IS THE LOVING POSITIVE SPIRIT OF A 9 YEAR OLD LITTLE GIRL. LITTLE JENNA HAD A ROUGH SHORT LIFE. HER FATHER RAPED, AND BEAT HER ON A DAILY BASIS. AS A VICTIM OF HER FATHERS TORTURE SHE HAD NO ONE TO TALK TO ABOUT IT. SHE WAS ALL ALONE, HER MOTHER PASSED AWAY DURING HER BIRTH, AND LEFT JENNA WITH HER FATHER A MONSTER. IF JENNA DIDNT DO SOMETHING TO HER FATHERS LIKING LIKE CLEAN HER BEDROOM, SHE KNEW WHAT AWAITED, SHE WOULD BE THRASHED SEVERLY THEN HANDCUFFED IN HER BEDROOM CLOSET WITH NO RESTROOM PRIVALAGES, NO FOOD, NOTHING. THE ABUSE BEGAN WHILE JENNA WAS ONLY 2 AND CONTINUED UNTIL THE DAY SHE PASSED. JENNA WAS COURAGEOUS AND WAS AFFRAID TO ESCAPE, HER FATHER WOULD TELL HER THAT SHE WOULD NOT BE BELIEVED AND THAT THEY WOULD ONLY TAKE HER AWAY TO A PLACE MORE HORRIBLE THEN WHERE SHE LIVED. JENNA BROKE DOWN, AND COULD NOT HANDLE THE ABUSE ANY LONGER. ON THE DAY AFTER HER NINTH BIRTHDAY, SHE TOOK AN OVERDOSE OF PRESCRIPTION MEDICINE HER FATHER HAD, SHE WENT TO SLEEP AND NEVER WOKE UP.~IF YOU FEEL A CONNECTION TO JENNA THEN YOU SHOULD BID, YOU COULD BE THE ONE DESTINED TO WATCH OVER HER AND KEEP HER SAFE FROM HARM!~

Prospective bidders, please note: "These dolls and their spirit hosts do not perform on command, they are the vessel of live spirits, from someone who lived and attached their spirits with the doll for some reason or another." Also? Her Aunt Celeste "read" the dolls. Finally, "Due to the fact that paranormal item or items are involved in this sale, I am 'forced' by Ebay's rules and regulations to make the following statement: this is for entertainment purposes only."

See you at the auction!

*HAUNTED DOLL~JENNA~9 YRS OLD~VERY ACTIVE SPIRIT~L@@K!*

Web Zen: Food Party Zen

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 02:02 PM PDT


david sedaris delivers a pizza
food party
fancy fast food
waffles
school lunches
sausages
cookstr
fry that chicken
ifc food party

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store, Twitter. (Image courtesy Eric Curry. Thanks Frank!)

Do the robot

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 02:27 PM PDT

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.

R. U. Sirius sends word of the latest on going cyborgian. Whether you're a newly manufactured robosupermodel or a goth with a technofetish, man-made parts are the new black.

It turns out that the human body may adapt well to such Borg-like accessorization. A recent study in Current Biology by Alessandro Farné and Lucilla Cardinali of the University of Claude Bernard in Lyon, France suggests that the brain can incorporate cyborg additions -- a cyborg arm or other body part -- into its body schema.

"Since the origin of the concept of body schema, the idea of its functional plasticity has always been taken for granted, even if no direct evidence has been provided until now," says Farné. "Our series of experiments provides the first, definitive demonstration that this century-old intuition is true."

Using a mechanical grabber that extended their reach, subjects behaved as though their arms really were longer. What's more, they perceived touches delivered on the elbow and middle fingertip of their arm as if they were farther apart after using the grabbing tool.

"Strike a Pose, Cyborg!" (Thanks, RU!)

Photoblog of experimental aircraft

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 02:20 PM PDT

200907131418

x planes is a blog about "experimental aircraft. exotic aeromachines. oddities. sleek silver cigars. pedal-o-trons. soviet hive-mind bombers. aerial joy. the olden days. action shots. propaganda posters."

The Gyrodyne Model GCA-55 single-seat ground cushion vehicle of the annular jet type, powered by a 72 h.p. Porsche four-cylinder engine. It was developed under a U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics contract and flew for the first time in October, 1959.
(Thanks, Len!)

I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 02:16 PM PDT

200907131411

Jag Bhalla wrote a fun book for National Geographic called I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World. It's illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist Julia Suits. Here are some examples:

Not hanging noodles on your ears: Russian - not kidding

To live like a maggot in bacon: German – live in luxury

To reheat cabbage: Italian – rekindle an old flame

Like fingernail and dirt: Spanish, Mexico – well suited

Bang your butt on the ground: French - die laughing

Plucked like a chicken: Yiddish - exhausted

To bite the elbow: Russian – to cry over spilt milk

Smoke from 7 orifices of head: Chinese – to be furious

To become naked: Japanese – to go broke, poor

An ant milker: Arabic – a miser, tight wad

Give it to someone with cheese: Spanish - to deceive

Squeezer of limes: Hindi – self invited guest, idler

To break wind into silk: French - live the life of Riley

I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World

John Shirley's Sky Pirates serialized

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 03:38 PM PDT

200907131402 Shaun Lawton, publisher of the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is serializing John Shirlley's novel, Sky Pirates. Start here with Part 1.

80 year old wind up bear polishes his spectacles, over and over and Over

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 01:18 PM PDT


Via Dinosaurs and Robots:

D+R reader Eric points us to a video of his father's wind-up bear that wanders around a little bit while polishing his glasses and periodically holding them up to check for spots.

Tuber head photoswap

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 01:24 PM PDT

200907131310 I posted this photo to Twitter, asking someone to swap the heads. Mr. Lee was the first!

UPDATE: Our own Rob Beschizza did it with color correction!

State of the Neuros Link open set-top box

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 01:02 PM PDT

Joe sez, "The Neuros LINK is a set-top box that takes a unique approach: unlike most closed set-top boxes, it's built from the ground up to be open. In fact, it started its 'gamma' phase of life as a stripped down PC, with the vision to become more 'electronics-like' using a remote, navigable from the couch etc. A recent release of its software shows how it's evolving on that path, with increasing functionality available without a mouse and keyboard, largely with the help of a lot of third party open source software, like XBMC, etc."

Screen Capture of Neuros LINK v 1.3 release "Handcock" (Thanks, Joe!)

Previously:


Live feed of images being posted to Twitpic

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 01:03 PM PDT

Pingwire

Allan Grinshtein's PingWire is addictive.

PingWire is an (almost) live feed of images being posted to Twitpic. Clicking on a thumbnail will take you to the full sized photo.


Saudi family files lawsuit against cellphone-stealing genie

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 12:38 PM PDT

CNN reports that a family in Saudi Arabia is suing a genie for harassment.
The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper.

An investigation was under way, local court officials said.

Saudi family sues genie, alleges harassment (Via The Agitator)

Elevator warning sign

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 12:32 PM PDT

200907131229 If you push the bin against the elevator door while going down, this might happen to you. (Via Cynical-C)

Photos from county fairs

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 11:47 AM PDT

Notley sez, "In regards to Cory's post about state fairs, Here some photos from 'County Fairs' around Missouri."

Fairs (Thanks, Notley!)


The Years, an album of CC songs inspired by decades from the 50s forward

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 11:43 AM PDT

John sez, "The Years is the latest release from vosotros. The album was conceived as a musical journey through time - and is made up of songs inspired by the decades, starting in the 50s and ending in the future ... Amazon recently covered the project on their list of the 'Best 2009 Albums You (Probably) Haven't Heard, But Should'. The album was released under a BY-NC-SA Creative Commons license - and is available for free download during the month of July."

John started Vosotros, a Creative Commons label, as a final project in my class at USC a couple years ago. I'm incredibly impressed with it (and I gave him an A+!).

vosotros presents: the years (Thanks, John!)

Previously:


RIP, Charles Brown of Locus Magazine, one of science fiction's grand old men

Posted: 13 Jul 2009 10:40 AM PDT

Locus Magazine reports that publisher Charles N Brown, one of science fiction's great figures, has died peacefully in his sleep on his way home from ReaderCon. I read Locus from the time I was old enough to see over the counter at Bakka, the science fiction bookstore where I later worked, and for some years now I have been a columnist with the magazine. Charles's obsessive, affectionate fascination with the field and all its readers, writers, fans and critics made him one of the most beloved figures in it, a sort of Forry Ackerman minus the id. Liza Groen Trombi -- my editor at Locus -- is taking over the magazine; I wish her the best of luck with it and look forward to my continued association with it. My sincere condolences to the Locus staff and Charles's many friends around the world.
Brown co-founded Locus with Ed Meskys and Dave Vanderwerf as a one-sheet news fanzine in 1968, originally created to help the Boston Science Fiction Group win its Worldcon bid. Brown enjoyed editing Locus so much that he continued the magazine far beyond its original planned one-year run. Locus was nominated for its first Hugo Award in 1970, and Brown was a best fan writer nominee the same year. Locus won the first of its 29 Hugos in 1971.

During Brown's long and illustrious career he was the first book reviewer for Asimov's; wrote the Best of the Year summary for Terry Carr's annual anthologies (1975-87); wrote numerous magazines and newspapers; edited several SF anthologies; appeared on countless convention panels; was a frequent Guest of Honor, speaker, and judge at writers' seminars; and has been a jury member for various major SF awards.

Charles N. Brown, 1937-2009

(Image: charles brown, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from catsprks' photostream)
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