Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Anti-Olympic mural censored in Vancouver

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 10:20 PM PST

Greg sez, "Yesterday the Crying Room Gallery got a visit from City of Vancouver bylaw inspectors who demanded that they remove "graffiti" from the front of their gallery. The graffiti in question was an anti-Olympic mural by a local artist. The City says it had 'nothing to do with content' and everything to do with graffiti bylaws, but the Crying Room has had art up in that space for the better part of ten years without complaint. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has come out against the City's crackdown. The BCCLA Legal Observer Program, set up to monitor for rights violations during the Games, has started a gallery of Olympic censorship in Vancouver."

Vancouver orders removal of anti-Olympic mural (Thanks, Greg!)

(Image: Globe and Mail)

Previously:


Elevator mural casts you as Adam on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 10:14 PM PST

Scanned from an unknown source, a mural near the elevator in a plastic surgeon's office that casts the rider in the role of Adam on the Sistine Chapel.

Advertising / Be Born Again (via Geisha Asobi)

Previously:


Homebrew, $300 book-scanner

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 10:10 PM PST

Wired has a great feature on grad student Daniel Reetz $300 homebrew book-scanner (David linked to the Instructable for it in April). The device uses a couple of digital cameras, some acrylic and some wood to scan a 400 page book in 20 minutes, converting the scans to text with free software.

So over three days, and for about $300, he lashed together two lights, two Canon Powershot A590 cameras, a few pieces of acrylic and some chunks of wood to create a book scanner that's fast enough to scan a 400-page book in about 20 minutes. To use it, he simply loads in a book and presses a button, then turns the page and presses the button again. Each press of the button captures two pages, and when he's done, software on Reetz's computer converts the book into a PDF file. The Reetz DIY book scanner isn't automated-you still need to stand by it to turn the pages. But it's fast and inexpensive.

"The hardware is ridiculously simple as long as you are not demanding archival quality," he says. "A dumpster full of building materials, really cheap cameras and outrageous textbook prices was all I needed to do it."

DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes
Previously:


RIAA, MPAA and US Chamber of Commerce declare war on blind and disabled people

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 11:51 PM PST

Earlier this week, I told you about an open letter for writers in support of a treaty that would ensure that blind and disabled people all over the world would have legal protection when they converted books and other written matter to accessible format.

You'd think this would be a slam-dunk at the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization. Who could oppose non-profit blind/disabled groups helping disabled people get access to written work?

Well, The US Chamber of Commerce, the MPAA and the RIAA, that's who. All three organizations have urged the US trade delegation to oppose the treaty, because they fear it might set a precedent that users have rights to copyrighted works.

But that prospect doesn't sit well with American business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest lobby representing 3 million businesses, argues that the plan being proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, "raises a number of serious concerns," (.pdf) chief among them the specter that the treaty would spawn a rash of internet book piracy.

The treaty also creates a bad precedent by loosening copyright restrictions, instead of tightening them as every previous copyright treaty has done, said Brad Huther, a chamber director. Huther concluded in a Dec. 2 letter to the U.S. Copyright office that the international community "should not engage in pursuing a copyright-exemption based paradigm."

Echoing that concern, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry of America told the Copyright Office last month that such a treaty would "begin to dismantle the existing global treaty structure of copyright law, through the adoption of an international instrument at odds with existing, longstanding and well-settled norms."

Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind

Update: My wife reminds me of the accessibility research that says that 70% percent of us will experience vision disability in our lifetime. So even if you're not blind or disabled, this probably directly affects you, too. (Thanks, Freddie!)

Previously:


Barbara Streisand's enduring legacy

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 04:51 PM PST

The detective originally in charge of investigating a child's disappearance believes that the parents covered up her death. Why do I know this? Because his book was banned. [BBC]

Make: Electronics, a great new book to learn hands-on electronics

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 04:15 PM PST

V Vspfiles Photos Mkee2-2-2

Maker Media has just published a new book called Make: Electronics, by Charles Platt, and it's the best electronics primer I've ever come across (admittedly, I'm the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Charles' friend, but I really do think it's the best).

Here's what Gareth Branwyn (the book's editor) said about it:

I'm thrilled to announce our latest offering from O'Reilly/Make: Books, Make: Electronics, by Charles Platt. This is a book that we've wanted to do for awhile. Many of us at Maker Media have had an interaction that goes something like this: You're at a talk, Maker Faire, or elsewhere, and someone spirits you aside, like they're going to confess to a petty crime or some marital indiscretion. What they want to whisper sheepishly into your ear is that they love MAKE, all of the excitement they see over open source electronics, and the cool kits we sell in the Maker Shed, but they have NO IDEA how electronics work, and the "beginner" books and resources they look at online zoom quickly over their heads and frustrate their efforts to learn. Ultimately, they find themselves too embarrassed to admit their lack of high-tech smarts or to ask questions (which is why they've taken you behind a dumpster to confess their ignorance).

So we decided to make it our mission to create a book that would patiently guide readers into the world of electronics in a way that was fun, clear-spoken, graphical, and experiential. Charles dubbed it "learning by discovery." He has you experimenting with parts right out of the gate, licking batteries (really), breaking and frying stuff, and then you learn what happened and why, the theories behind the parts and processes, and how to do the experiment correctly. For all of those would-be makers and wireheads who've been looking for a book that will finally let them in on all the fun, we made this one for you!

In 340+ pages, Make: Electronics takes you from the most basic aspects of electronic components and theory to essential techniques, such as soldering and using a multimeter, gathering basic tools and setting up a workshop, all the way up to working with integrated circuits, microcontrollers, and building sophisticated devices such as robots. The book is full-color, with hundreds of photos, illustrations, schematics, even fun cartoons. Charles Platt, being the true Renaissance man that he is, did all of this himself. So the book has something of a charming, handmade feel to it.

To give you an idea of what the book feels like, we've put together this 40-page PDF. It contains the cover, table of contents, two complete projects from the book, and the index.

The deluxe kit, shown above, has many of the tools you'll need to make the projects in the book.

Make: Electronics

Cigar box guitar Christmas music

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 03:03 PM PST

Cigar Box Nation has an album of holiday music available as a free download.
200912111452Cigar Box Nation offers our own gift of music to you. This album is free for everyone this Christmas...just go ahead and download. We've compiled almost one hour of holiday music played on cigar box guitars, ukuleles, dulcimers and more. Please spread the word (and holiday cheer)! May the world ring with the awesome sounds of cigar box guitars this Christmas.

If you have trouble downloading the album, try this alternate download link. A huge thanks to CBNation member, Thomas Boatwright for the awesome cover artwork!

Cigar box guitar Christmas album

New York Times ninth annual "Year in Ideas" issue

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 01:52 PM PST

The NYT Magazine's "Year in Ideas" issue is a fantastic collection of short, intriguing proposals, problems, and possibilities.
Zombie-Attack Science

Working with a professor and two other graduate students, Munz built a mathematical model of a city of one million residents, in which an outbreak occurs when a single zombie arrives in town. He based the speed of zombie infection on the general rules you see in George Romero movies: after getting bitten, people turn into zombies in 24 hours and sometimes don't realize what's happening to them until they change.

When he ran the model on a computer, the results were bleak. "After 7 to 10 days, everyone was dead or undead," he says. He tried several counterattacks. Quarantining the zombies didn't work; it only bought a few extra days of survival for humanity. Even creating a "cure" for zombification led to a grim result. It was possible to save 10 to 15 percent of the population, but everyone else was a zombie. (The cure in his model wasn't permanent; the cured could be rebitten and rezombified.)

There was only one winning solution: fighting back quickly and fiercely.

New York Times ninth annual "Year in Ideas" issue (Thanks, Daniel!)

Wolfram|Alpha app for iPhone marked down from $50 to $20

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 01:34 PM PST

Picture 5-30

The amazing Wolfram|Alpha app for iPhone is on sale for $20 (normally $50) for the rest of the year.

With its simple interface the Wolfram|Alpha App lets you instantly compute answers to questions across thousands of domains—from finance and food, to math and medicine, to stocks and spacecraft, to wordplay and weather...

eBoy poster for Amnesty International

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 01:20 PM PST

Eboy Wp-Content Uploads 2009 12 Aoa-Amnesty-28.1T
The hypercreative pixel pushers eBoy have published their latest poster, a collaboration with Amnesty international for the organization's Poverty is Modern campaign. eBoy's Amnesty Poster

Hanukkah Mix from the Idelsohn Society

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 01:11 PM PST

Media Featured Fields Bagels Bongos Dynamic-Images Blog Job 61C58Tq0Snl. Ss500
My pal David Katznelson is co-founder of Idelsohn Society, a non-profit dedicated to the musicology of great old Jewish music. Indeed, it was named after Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, a musicologist who also wrote the classic tune "Hava Nagila." The Society reissues incredibly strange, offbeat, "space age," and fantastic vintage Jewish albums by the likes of Irving Fields, Gershon Kingsley, and The Barry Sisters. I have all of the releases and every one is absolutely fantastic. I can't recommend them enough. Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah, and in celebration David and his gang put together what is now my favorite Hanukkah compilation ever. Hit play below and head over to the Idelsohn Society to buy some CDs in support of the organization!



From the Idelsohn Society:
In honor of the holiday season, we are proud to offer this little mix of music culled from our various albums, archives and projects. There's plenty of choice old-school tracks mixed in with new school Idelsohn exclusives like the re-mix of the Yemenite Trio by Soulico's DJ Sabbo. Songs from Lionel Hampton and Marlena Shaw are just a taste of what's to come on our next release forthcoming in 2010, Black Sabbath, an homage to the musical history of Blacks and Jews. Of course, there's also a couple of classic Christmas anthems courtesy of that other tradition's most beloved holiday crooners, Barbra and Neil.

Track list:
"The Problem"- Ray Brenner & Barry E. Blitzer
"White Christmas"-Barbra Streisand
"Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel"- Ella Jenkins
"Hava Nagila"- Lionel Hampton
"Mizrachi on the Drums (Sabbo Remix)"/"Seeing Israel"- The Yemenite Trio Vs. George Jessel
"Kale Kale"- Avram Grobard
"Holiday Mambo"- Machito & His Afro-Cubans
"They're Serving the Fish"- Benny Bell & The Brownsville Klezmers
"Blue"/"Santa Claus"- King Midas Sound vs. Ray Brenner & Barry E. Blitzer
"Where Can I Go?"- Marlena Shaw
"The Jewish Experience (MIS Remix)"/ "In The Beginning"- Gershon Kingsley vs. Charlton Heston
"Songs My Mother Loved"- Milton Berle
"That Old Black Magic"- Johnny Mathis
"Loco"- Don Tosti
"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"- Neil Diamond
"Hanukkah Dance"-Woody Guthrie
Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation

Previously:


Tiger Woods UK media gag order leaked

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 02:18 PM PST

Wikileaks has published a copy of the UK media gag order that makes it a crime to publish real or Photoshopped images of "Eldrick Tont (Tiger) Woods... naked, or any naked parts of Claimant's body or of him involved in any sexual activity." So all you would-be UK slash-artists dreaming of hot Tiger-on-Klingon homo love tableaus in space can forget it. Right now. Forget it this instant, I say. Update: actually, the sweeping gag order covers pretty much any and all reporting about Woods' personal life.

Artificial intelligence reborn at MIT

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 11:25 AM PST

Newsoffice Images Article Images 20091204121447-1-1 MIT has launched a new $5 million, 5-year project to build intelligent machines. To do it, the scientists are revisiting the fifty year history of the Artificial Intelligence field, including the shortfalls that led to the stigmas surrounding it, to find the threads that are still worth exploring. The star-studded roster of researchers includes AI pioneer Marvin Minsky, synthetic neurobiologist Ed Boyden, Neil "Things That Think" Gershenfeld, and David Dalrymple, who started grad school at MIT when he was just 14-years-old. Minsky is even proposing a new Turing test for machine intelligence: can the computer read, understand, and explain a children's book. More details after the jump.



From MIT News:


Gershenfeld says he and his fellow MMP members "want to go back and fix what's broken in the foundations of information technology." He says that there are three specific areas — having to do with the mind, memory, and the body — where AI research has become stuck, and each of these will be addressed in specific ways by the new project...



One of the projects being developed by the group is a form of assistive technology they call a brain co-processor. This system, also referred to as a cognitive assistive system, would initially be aimed at people suffering from cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. The concept is that it would monitor people's activities and brain functions, determine when they needed help, and provide exactly the right bit of helpful information — for example, the name of a person who just entered the room, and information about when the patient last saw that person — at just the right time.


The same kind of system, members of the group suggest, could also find applications for people without any disability, as a form of brain augmentation — a way to enhance their own abilities, for example by making everything from personal databases of information to all the resources of the internet instantly available just when it's needed. The idea is to make the device as non-invasive and unobtrusive as possible — perhaps something people would simply slip on like a pair of headphones.


"Rethinking artificial intelligence"

Fun Biz Markie commercial for TuneUp

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 10:58 AM PST


I've always gotten a kick out of Biz Markie. He reminds me of a cartoon character. That's why he's such a great fit on Yo Gabba Gabba! where he does the "Biz's Beat Of The Day" segments! I was delighted when my pal Gabe Adiv got Biz to star in a commercial for his start-up TuneUp Media, the service I've posted about before that cleans up digital music libraries. Apparently, Biz is a big fan of TuneUp and DJ'd at their launch party, so he was game to act endearingly ridiculous in the commercial. Co-starring is Andy Milonakis who used to have a show on MTV. Gabe said he met Andy at a card table in Vegas a couple years ago and they hit it off, so Gabe called him last minute to see if he would be in the commercial too. I love the way it came out.

Chicken-suited street musician plays "What is Love" on Melodica, rocks righteously (video)

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 01:00 PM PST

Here is your Friday soundtrack, people. Alex Ringis of Synthtube says,

I was in Melbourne for Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP) 09, and I found this busker standing outside Flinders Street Station in Melbourne. He was playing the hit 90's track "What Is Love" on bass guitar, Pianica Melodica, with the assistance of a loop pedal. What is remarkable (evidently) is that he did the entire thing wearing a chicken suit. The real action in this video starts at around 1:20, when he gets DOWN with the improv action on the Pianica.
Holy wow, this rooster can play! Synthtube link, and Vimeo link.

Man's ecstasy collection stolen

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 11:00 AM PST

A thief ripped off a man's collection of more than two thousand Ecstasy tablets. (Stock photo for illustration purposes only.) The 46-year-old, who lives near Amsterdam, Netherlands, contacted the police because he's afraid that someone might take some of the pills which he claims could be poisonous. From the Edmonton Sun:
925336 Com EcstasyA report in De Volkskrant daily Thursday said the man claimed he was not a drug dealer or user.

"I've tried it before but didn't like it," the report quoted him saying. "My passion for collecting comes from the varied collection of colours, shapes and logos that are printed on the pills."

According to a police statement, the man gathered the pills over a 20 year period and carefully stored them in coin collecting folders.

Ecstasy pill collection allegedly stolen (via Dose Nation)

Previously:


Reformed British alien appears in Raisin Bran ad

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 10:00 AM PST

This short video advertising Kellogg's Raisin Bran Crunch shows a reformed alien sitting at the breakfast table, engaged in a rambling monologue about how he has metamorphosed from a scary flesh-eating monster into a pilates-practicing, go-with-the-flow type of guy that you might want to sit down and have a bowl of cereal with.

[via AdFreak]

Tour of secret smuggling tunnel

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 10:00 AM PST


CNN tours a pretty amazing tunnel between the US and Mexico used to smuggle drugs. The entrance on one side is in the bathroom of a warehouse. The entire floor of the bathroom is on a hydraulic lift to bring people up and down.

The Year Before The Flood: "Getting to town"

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 10:02 AM PST

(Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette is a writer, historian, photographer, and singer-songwriter based in New York.)

nola.jpg

This week and next I'm presenting excerpts from my new book, The Year Before The Flood (Lawrence Hill Books). One of Amazon's categories for it is "21st-century history," which I like.

It's a memoir of the last year New Orleans was whole, 2004-05, the way I saw it when my wife Constance and I went to live there for ten months. (We returned to New York in May 2005, though I came back to New Orleans for a visit three weeks before the city went underwater as of August 29.) It's not that deadly publishing category, the "Katrina book." (For that matter, I don't call what happened to New Orleans "Katrina." It wasn't a vengeful goddess that took the city out, it was a social and infrastructural failure.) The book is about the music, from Fats Domino to Dr. John to the Nevilles to world-class local bands like - I don't want to mention just one or everyone'll be mad at me, and there are so many -- to Lil' Wayne, but there's a lot of death in it, too, because murder and music were both in the air, all year long.

It's got multiple narrative threads, but one of the ideas it proposes is that it's a mistake to ignore hiphop when we talk about New Orleans music, just as it's a mistake to talk about New Orleans hiphop as if the rest of New Orleans music didn't exist. This excerpt covers our getting to town.

I had never bought a car before, nor had I driven anything but an occasional rental in over twenty years, but we were going to need a car to get around. In Long Island City I signed a commitment to make seventy-two monthly payments on a Saturn SL2 (four years old, forty-four thousand miles). Not that I had previously known what a Saturn was. Nor did I quite realize that in effect you have to buy a car twice, the second time in payments to the insurance racket. I was going to receive all of ten monthly paychecks from Tulane, but I figured I'd sell the car at year's end.

I spent an unbelievable number of hours putting stuff in boxes, padding the boxes out with bubble wrap, taping them shut, numbering them, keeping an inventory of what they were, and stacking them up. I shipped more than half my CDs, all the books I might need to refer to in a year of writing and researching, all my negatives and slides, and a lot of other things I might as well have left at home.

We drove in our newly acquired Saturn from Manhattan to New Orleans, spending two nights en route. It was a good car, but I really screwed up by not noticing that it had no radio antenna. It could pick up FM signals in town OK, but once we got out in the country, we could go for miles at a stretch without hearing anything at all. To me, a car is a radio on wheels. Highway driving without radio? Unthinkable. A car radio is your best way of understanding what you're driving through.


Alas, my Saturn was radio-impaired. I would put it on "scan," which sent it stepping through the frequencies until it locked in on a signal. Often it would be silent for twenty minutes or more until, passing a town, it found something. Suddenly out of nowhere a loud voice would snap on, startling us with the proclamation that Jesus had our backs as we waged spiritual warfare in the crusade against secular humanism. I left it on as a kind of early warning system that we were near a town.


Coming into Birmingham, the radio locked into a welcome funky-music signal. As I blearily followed the directions to the historic-Tutwiler-Hotel-where-Tallulah-Bankhead-had-once-stayed-now-owned-by-Hampton-Inns, I heard for the first time the song that would mark our year in New Orleans. I could tell from the way the DJ hit it that it was the new jam in power rotation. It expressed the inner torment of a man trying to decide whether to obey the no-hands rule in a lap-dance club:


Unngh! I like it like that

She workin' that back

I don't know how to act

Slow motion for me, slow motion for me...


Every aspect of the vocalist's diction had a musical function. That, back, and act rhymed, with act snapping on the upbeat. I don't was one word. The words "I like it like that" recalled the 1961 record of that title by New Orleans R&B genius and fuckup Chris Kenner, later a big hit for the Dave Clark Five. Its Ls were juicy both-sides-of-your tongue laminal American Ls, not tip-of-your-tongue frontal British Ls, and the vocalist milked them for all they were worth. The Ms outlined a subrhythm all their own. There was a funky Latinesque guitar loop behind it; the producer, I later found out, was Danny Kartel (Daniel Castillo), a guitar-playing Honduran-Nicaraguan kid in New Orleans with an appropriately hip-hop capitalist nom du disque. It was scientifically calculated to move at the same velocity as a slow-grinding stripper's big ass. It sparkled.


I know a great radio record when I hear one. "Slow Motion" was the new release by New Orleans's Juvenile, but that part I just quoted--which was the whole appeal of the record--was by Soulja Slim, who had been murdered in New Orleans ten months previously and didn't get to see his hit happen.


Unngh, I like it like that. Our temporary new home was coming into focus, via a dead man's horniness.


The next morning, the last leg of our drive was through 150 miles of thunderstorms. I drove most of it at eighty miles an hour. I had told myself I wouldn't drive that fast, but everyone else was going at autobahn speed, even in the rain. Like religion, politics, and music, driving in the United States has become more belligerent in recent years. Despite the increased probability of carnage if you crash at a higher speed, it's easier to flow with the traffic than to have Hummers and semis whipping around you constantly, hurling blinding sheets of water onto your windshield, while a suicide-jockey motorcyclist darts around between you. A small truck passes with FEAR THIS painted on its back, and a verse citation from Revelation. A giant chemical tank roars past with the cautionary MOLTEN SULFUR painted on its side. Isn't that the stuff that spews out of volcanoes?


I-10 runs mostly through forest from Jacksonville to San Antonio, but to get in and out of New Orleans you have to cross water. Coming in from the east, we drove on a thin ribbon of concrete set atop thousands of pilings, a viaduct called the Twin Span that bridges a five-mile segment of the 630 square miles of Lake Pontchartrain. It didn't rise way high above the lake but sat right on the water, giving you the dreamlike sensation of driving on the surface of the lake. I don't know if there's a psychological term for the fear of being trapped on preposterous structures, but the only thing I can compare the feeling to is when I was working temp on one of the higher floors of the World Trade Center on a windy day, when the building swayed and the water sloshed in the toilets. Once in a while a vehicle will go out of control on the Twin Span and careen off the lane through the barrier, sinking horribly down into Lake Pontchartrain and drowning the occupants.


As we crossed the lake there was sunshine and blue August sky all around, but directly overhead a tiny squall was shooting lightning and pounding hard rain down on us, making for highly localized weather drama. I had forgotten that the radio was scanning, but suddenly, blam! It locked in on a frequency, making us jump with the sudden blast of sound. Welcoming us to our new temporary hometown as we drove through our personal mini-storm was the musical smirk of B. Gizzle:


I want it, you got it

Don't make me have to go in your pockets


It went on:


It's game time, and I'm ready to play

Gimme my remote and my remote is my K, I spray with it...


My K. Meaning, my AK-47.

It seemed to say: welcome to New Orleans, Ned and Constance. Keep your hands where I can see them.



[Photo: Twin Span, facing out of town. Courtesy Constance Ash.]



Previously:

The elephant in the testing room

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 09:44 AM PST

elephantexcuse.jpg

Hemant Mehta, "The Friendly Atheist", is also a math teacher. This is what he found on one of the tests he was grading this week. The ol' Elephant Excuse. Pretty crafty. So how does a responsible educator of young minds respond to such a stunt? The answer is after the jump ...

elephantgrade.jpg

If you're going to throw a Hail Mary Pachyderm on your final exam, you damn well best get your artwork correct.

Bed looks like a dinosaur's mouth

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 09:47 AM PST

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Here's one creative way to help kids overcome irrational fears, like the fear of being eaten alive by a dinosaur: make them sleep in between a pair of giant dinosaur jaws every night. A Jupiter, Florida couple made this, presumably for their kid. The lower jaw has a storage drawer hinged onto it.

3Murphys via Gizmodiva

Lawsuit: Fusion Garage registered JooJoo domain weeks before ditching TechCrunch, misrepresented production costs

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 09:23 AM PST

joojoovscrunchpad.jpg TechCrunch has filed its lawsuit against Fusion Garage over the CrunchPad/Joojoo web tablet. After planning together to make the gadget, the two companies parted ways under acrimonious circumstances. I am not a lawyer, and nor do I play one on the internet. That said, the lawsuit contains at least one jawdropping allegation that makes Fusion Garage look supremely, hand-wringingly, cacklingly evil.

Namely, that it registered the "Joojoo" domain some time before the parting of ways, but strung TechCrunch's Mike Arrington along for at least a month afterwards--until three days before the planned launch. In the meantime, Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan claimed in emails that he was relaying stuff as it came, under pressure from shadowy investors.

It's a one-sided story, of course, and the story is of Singapore-based Fusion Garage spotting Arrington's public call for a cheap web tablet, then bilking TechCrunch for money and marketing right up to the point of the completed tablet's public unveiling.

Here's some choice cuts:

When Defendant met TechCrunch in September 2008, it claimed to have developed a browser-based operating system, just like the one TechCrunch was seeking for its CrunchPad project. In fact, it had developed no such thing, and the demo product it showed to TechCrunch was little more than an off-the-shelf browser and some HTML --something TechCrunch did not realize until nearly a year later. Moreover, Defendant had not even been working on a browser-based operating system.

...

When TechCrunch executives visited the Taiwan headquarters of Pegatron, the company preparing to manufacture the CrunchPad, TC learned that the Defendant had been falsely representing to TC the costs of the product's components ...

...

During the fall of 2009, Pegatron terminated its relationship with Defenant because of Defendant's failure to pay its debts. ... Nevertheless, after that date, Defendant ... concealed the loss of the most critical supplier.

...

Defendant had substantial financial difficulties and was relying on loans at exorbitant rates from unorthodox loan sources.

My bias: I think it likely that Arrington got taken advantage of by scoundrels and my sympathies are with his admirable vision of a cheap, hacker-friendly (if not entirely open-source) tablet computer. That said, the allegedly-concealed components bill would have always denied it mainstream appeal: a 3G modem, and hence the option to consumers of a carrier subsidy, would have shaved a lot of pain off that $500 tag.

The communications attached as evidence, if at all accurate, allay suspicions that TC wanted to escape the venture after it became clear the CrunchPad would be a poor commercial prospect.

Another interesting point: the lawsuit alleges that Fusion Garage was not planning to make a tablet before its collaboration with TechCrunch. This, if true, hurts one common and reasonable defense of Fusion Garage: that everyone is making tablets and its hookup with TechCrunch merely added a marketing and branding imprimatur to its own. It worked on the third prototype and final product, and had no involvement in the earliest versions of the tablet, according to the lawsuit.

A proposed merger, to which Rathakrishnan agreed in principle, would have given Fusion Garage a 35% share (it wanted 40%) of the resulting company.

Often mentioned is the value of Arrington's "original concept" or "entire concept," as publicly proposed at TechCrunch. As appealing as the design is, it's hardly imbued with novelty by core feature descriptions such as "an iphone-like touch screen". Got a patent on that?

TC exhorts the court to consider the tablet project a partnership under California law, and hence subject to statues on shared property. But, alas, the lawsuit offers no contracts in evidence.

The lawsuit does, however, find it salient to remind the court that Time Magazine declared Mr. Arrington one of the world's 100 most influential people last year. Hey, at least he got something in writing!

Lawsuit [DocStoc-gimped PDF]

Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 11:45 PM PST

My friend, the wonderful sf writer Peter Watts was beaten without provocation and arrested by US border guards on Tuesday. I heard about it early Wednesday morning in London and called Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She worked her contacts to get in touch with civil rights lawyers in Michigan, and we mobilized with Caitlin Sweet (Peter's partner) and David Nickle (Peter's friend) and Peter was arraigned and bailed out later that day.

But now Peter faces a felony rap for "assaulting a federal officer" (Peter and the witness in the car say he didn't do a thing, and I believe them). Defending this charge will cost a fortune, and an inadequate defense could cost Peter his home, his livelihood and his liberty.

Peter's friends are raising money for his legal defense. I just sent him CAD$1,000, because this is absolutely my biggest nightmare: imprisoned in a foreign country for a trumped-up offense against untouchable border cops. I would want my friends to help me out if it ever happened to me.

Update: Here's more from Peter, in his own words: "Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario's first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

"In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face."

Sf writer David Nickle writes,



Hugo-award-nominated science fiction author Dr. Peter Watts is in serious legal trouble after he was beaten, pepper-sprayed and imprisoned by American border guards at a Canada U.S. border crossing December 8. This is a call to friends, fans and colleagues to help.


Peter, a Canadian citizen, was on his way back to Canada after helping a friend move house to Nebraska over the weekend. He was stopped at the border crossing at Port Huron, Michigan by U.S. border police for a search of his rental vehicle. When Peter got out of the car and questioned the nature of the search, the gang of border guards subjected him to a beating, restrained him and pepper sprayed him. At the end of it, local police laid a felony charge of assault against a federal officer against Peter. On Wednesday, he posted bond and walked was taken across the border to Canada in shirtsleeves (he was released by Port Huron officials with his car and possessions locked in impound, into a winter storm that evening). He's home safe. For now. But he has to go back to Michigan to face the charge brought against him.


The charge is spurious. But it's also very serious. It could mean two years in prison in the United States, and a ban on travel in that country for the rest of Peter's life. Peter is mounting a vigorous defense, but it's going to be expensive - he's effectively going up against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and he needs the best legal help that he can get.


He's got that help, courtesy of one of the top criminal lawyers in the State of Michigan. We, Peter's friends and colleagues here in Canada, want to make sure he gets the help he needs financially to come out of this nightmare whole.


The need for that help is real. While Peter is a critically successful science fiction writer, he is by no means a best-selling author. Without help, the weight of his legal fees could literally put him on the street by spring.


We can't let that happen. So there's going to be fundraising.


We're going to think of something suitable in the New Year - but immediately, anyone who wants to help can do so easily. Peter's website, rifters.com, has a link to a PayPal account, whimsically named the Niblet Memorial Kibble Fund. He set it up years ago for fans of the Hugo-nominated novel Blindsight and his Rifters books, to cover veterinary bills for the cats he habitually rescues from the mean streets of Toronto. Peter has made it clear that he doesn't want to use the veterinary money to cover his lawsuit. But until we can figure out a more graceful conduit for the legal fund, that's the best place to send donations for now. Just let Peter know that the donation's for his legal defense, and that's where it will go.


Here's the link to the backlist page on Peter's website, rifters.com, or you can just send a PayPal donation to donate@rifters.com.


The link to the Niblet Memorial Kibble Fund is in the middle of the page. The page also links to Creative Commons editions of all his published work, which he's made available free. Peter would approve, we think, if you downloaded one or two or all of them. Whether you make a donation to the legal fund or not.

Update: David Nickle adds, "there's a very small correction I need to make to the account that's gone, erm, viral. I had thought that Peter had made his way back on foot; in fact, police released him in shirtsleeves at the Canadian side of the border. It was a winter storm, he was in shirtsleeves, but he didn't have to cross the bridge on foot.

I'd misunderstood Peter's account on that point. "


Previously:

Anti-DRM Free Software Foundation membership drive

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 08:37 AM PST

Join now Holmes Wilson from the Free Software Foundation writes, "We're at a crucial moment in the fight against DRM. This year--thanks to the strength of the movement you've built and been a part of--we defeated DRM on music. But DRM on books, games, and other digital media is a bigger threat than ever. Meanwhile the Free Software Foundation, the organization behind Defective by Design, is engaged in a broader battle: fighting for our rights to control the technology we use by promoting free software. The FSF is a member-supported nonprofit. Please consider donating or becoming a member today. FSF membership is $10 a month or $5 a month for students.

Join the FSF!

Previously:


Haunting dead mall photo-gallery

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 08:11 AM PST


The Morning News's gallery of ghostmalls, accompaniment to an interview with photographer Brian Ulrich, is haunting and lovely. So much hubris. So many vinyl plants. These are the ruined temples of consumerism: "How can an economy sustain a lifestyle based on exponential growth and the leisure and wealth to support it? It's not rocket science to expect these kind of illusions to fail. What's strange is how ingrained the brands and spaces are to us that so many were not only surprised to see major retailers and malls sink but were saddened. Many of these ideas were set in motion decades ago."

Ghosts of Shopping Past (via Beyond the Beyond)

Previously:


Junkbots made from old hard-drives

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 08:06 AM PST

Mall cops in Norwich, England get police powers

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 08:33 AM PST

In England, the police are allowed to give "policing powers" to private individuals. The private security guards in a shopping mall (called "The Mall") in Norwich now have police powers. These civilian security guards can now "issue on-the-spot fines, give lawful orders and check normally confidential police records."

Until now the powers have generally been used by security firms covering special events or by local authority staff such as housing officers. This will be the first time they have been used as part of routine patrols...

Paul Allen, chairman of Norwich magistrates, has referred the matter to the national Magistrates Association. Yesterday he said: "We have expressed concern in the past that unaccountable civilians have been given the power to act as judge and jury in issuing fixed penalty notices.

Mall security staff will get police powers in Norwich (Thanks, Gill!)

(Image: TheMall.co.uk)

Previously:


Interactive timeline of secret copyright treaty

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 07:58 AM PST

The ACTA Timeline on Dipity.

Michael Geist writes, "The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is generating growing concern as many people learn about the secret copyright treaty for the first time. I've create a visual timeline to trace its emergence that includes links to the leaked documents, official government statements, and NGO letters and work in the area."

The ACTA Timeline

Previously:


Kenyan bike-mechanic's homemade tools

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 07:47 AM PST

Scientists study bird courtship with help of a "Fembot"

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 08:36 AM PST

sexygrouse.jpg

She's not packing heat, but she does have a camera hidden in her (apparently attractive) breast. Researchers at the University of California, Davis built a robotic version of a female sage grouse in order to get a bird's-eye view of courtship rituals. They're hoping to learn more about the evolution of sexual selection, and what the sage grouse do to survive in a shrinking habitat. Bonus: The video features Miles O'Brien. Yeah, Miles O'Brien!

Watch the video at NSF.gov Science Nation: Bird Courtship
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