Monday, August 17, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Campaign to get UK government to apologise for hounding Alan Turing to his death

Posted: 17 Aug 2009 03:06 AM PDT

Robbo sez, "Genius mathetician Alan Turing was arrested and convicted of 'gross indecency' because he was a homosexual. His brilliant career was destroyed, his service to his country was ignored and he was hounded throughout the rest of his life until his death by suicide. Time to clear his name and give him the honours so long overdue."
John Graham-Cumming, a leading British computer expert who launched the campaign, said: "I think that Alan Turing hasn't been recognised in Britain for his enormous contribution because he died in his forties and almost certainly because he was gay.

"It is atrocious that we don't recognise this man and the only way to do so is to apologise to him. This man was a national treasure and we hounded him to his death.

"One of the things for people in the computing world is that he was part of the war effort but we don't give him recognition in the same way as other heroes. To me, he was a hero in the second world war."

Since his death, plaques, buildings and statues have been raised in Turing's honour. The computing world's equivalent of the Nobel Prize has been called the Turing Award since 1966.

Campaign to win official apology for Alan Turing (Thanks, Robbo!)

Going underground versus the database nation

Posted: 17 Aug 2009 03:03 AM PDT

Wired's Evan Ratliff has a good feature up today on the difficulty of escaping your identity in the modern database nation, tracking Matthew Alan Sheppard, a middle-manager who started dipping into the company credit card to finance his penchant for electronic toys, and who then decided to fake his own death, wait for his (unknowing) wife to collect the insurance, and then bring her and his kid to Mexico and open a tequila factory.

What's most interesting about this is how little esoteric tech there is in catching underground desaparecidos -- tap a phone or two, look in their Google caches, wait for them to use their SSN or register their kids at school (how Ratliff got caught). The database nation turns out to be a most banal panopticon.

Two weeks before, when Sheppard sat down to formulate a plan to fake his death, he'd been armed only with Google and LexisNexis. Stumbling on an article about Steve Fossett, the explorer whose plane disappeared in September 2007 and whose remains were yet to be discovered, Sheppard concluded that even without a body, Monica would likely be able to obtain a legal determination of death and thereby collect his company-issued life insurance policy -- worth $1.3 million. He pored over recent reports of missing persons and faked deaths, looking for strategies to emulate and pitfalls to avoid.

That, in fact, was how he'd come up with the idea of leaving his BlackBerry conspicuously at a gas station on the Friday before his disappearance. It was a classic misdirection: Someone would grab the phone and start using it, Sheppard hoped, and any cop who didn't buy the drowning would trace the phone to some petty thief -- while Sheppard's real trail faded. (The ruse backfired, it seems, when the thief sent a few messages and then quit, convincing Sergeant Roberson that Sheppard was alive.)

Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear?

San Francisco zine fest Aug 22-23

Posted: 05 Jul 2009 10:45 PM PDT


FranCois sez, "I help to run the San Francisco Zine Fest [ed: Aug 22-23, SF County Fair building], this is our 9th year... we have a really great set of zine and comics creators from the Bay Area and Beyond, like Joey Sayers (thingpart), Theo Ellsworth (Capacity), and Special Guest Andy Hartzell (Fox Bunny Funny), we host hands-on workshops and panels, and I think your readers would find a lot of awesomeness there!"

San Francisco Zine Fest (Thanks, FranCois!)

Kid Uses Apple Store To Shoot Audition Reel

Posted: 16 Aug 2009 01:49 PM PDT



YouTube user nicholifavs is using the Apple Store as his own, personal A/V studio and audition space. So far, the little dude's shot dozens of lip sync videos including this one of the Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow."

Discuss this and more over at BBG.

Back to school donation drive for my books

Posted: 02 Jul 2009 02:41 AM PDT

In Canada, the US and the UK, kids will be going back to school in a short while, so now's a good time to remind you of the donation program for my books. Here's how it works: teachers, librarians (and others, like people who work in family shelters, halfway houses, prisons, etc) indicate that they'd like copies of my books for their classes or collections. Then, people like you order copies and have them sent straight to the teachers. I pay someone who checks out each donation solicitation to make sure that it's legit.

I do this in lieu of cash donations, because this has so many beneficial side effects: it registers as a sale, which means my publisher is happy; it supports booksellers (you can donate a copy from any bookseller that has a mail-order business), who are firmly on the side of the angels; it gets me a royalty and keeps my rapidly growing toddler in shoes and sailor suits; and, of course, it gets books into the hands of teachers, librarians, care-givers, case workers, and the kids, clients, and patrons they serve. It's a win all the way around (and yes, I'm thinking of ways to automate and expand this program to include other authors, possibly through a charity that can issue tax-receipts to donors, which would be just so kick-ass).

We've given hundreds of books to schools, libraries and other worthy institutions this way. For years, readers have asked me if they can donate cash to me because they've downloaded my books and don't need the physical objects. I'm really happy with this solution, even though to date it has made a small loss (it's not cheap to pay someone a fair wage to hand-write all the web-pages, and vet all the solicitation).

Donate Little Brother

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