Thursday, January 28, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Get what's yours! Demented, explosion-filled ad for injury lawyer

Posted: 28 Jan 2010 04:54 AM PST

Pittsburgh is home to Berger and Green, a law firm specializing in injury cases. Its recent television advertisements are tasteful, white-backgrounded affairs. As you can see here, this was not always the case. Larry Green is angry because you have not received all the money the law allows. Ecce YouTube.

Laugh Out Loud comic auction to benefit Haiti

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 11:36 PM PST

Lost Landscapes of Detroit from the Prelinger Archives

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 09:21 PM PST

Film archivist Rick Prelinger sez,

For the past four years I've been putting together bits of archival footage (especially amateur and home movies) that show vanished places, people and events in San Francisco. The past two compilations, sponsored by Long Now Foundation, are free to view here.

Now I've been given the chance to do the show I've always wanted to do: Lost Landscapes of Detroit. It's happening February 10 at Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit.

This isn't going to be a narrative of urban decline or the "ruins porn" that's become fashionable. Rather, it's a collection of amazing and almost-all-lost footage that celebrates a vibrant, busy and productive Detroit from 1917 through the 1970s. The idea is to bring these images back to Detroiters for their contemplation and use as they rebuild their city for the future.

In that spirit, at the screening I'm going to give out copies of the show so people in Detroit can reshow and remix it, and it'll be online at the Internet Archive after the screening.

Films from Prelinger Archives: Lost Landscapes of Detroit
Previously:


Retro robots done in glass

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 09:18 PM PST


Eric Bailey, an Oregon glass-blower, is making these robot-shaped "scent-bottles" for fun and profit: "Last year, it began to enter my mind that it might be interesting to make a robot in glass, something I haven't seen done before. I am also currently working on three designs for rocketships."

e.b. glassworks, flameworked glass art by eric bailey - glass:

Glass Robot Invasion From Oregon

(Thanks, Laurie!)

Previously:


Shapeways interviews Makerbot: 3D printing ahoy!

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 09:13 PM PST

In this delightful interview, Joris Peels from Shapeways (a 3D printing startup) interviews Bre Pettis from Makerbot, another 3D printer startup -- and the two have a fine time:
What was the first thing you 3D printed?

A shot glass. Promptly filled with a deadly Scandinavian concoction.

Your favorite thing so far?

Everyday I wake up and check out what's new on Thingiverse and I'm never let down. Lately there has been a trend to make tools to do other things with a MakerBot like the MicroLathe. When folks are using the tools we design to make other tools to make other things it gets me excited. We make things that make things that people use to make things that make other things that make things. Try saying that 3 times fast.

Shapeways interviews Bre Pettis of Makerbot Industries (via Beyond the Beyond)
Previously:


Book Sharing Bankrupting Publishing Industry!

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 04:54 PM PST

pirate-librarians.jpgLibrarians are the worst sort of pirates. Eric Hellman has a wry look at how Offline Book "Lending" Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion
To get to the bottom of this story, Go To Hellman has dispatched its Senior Piracy Analyst (me) to Boston, where a mass meeting of alleged book traffickers is to take place. Over 10,000 are expected at the "ALA Midwinter" event. Even at the Amtrak station in New York City this morning, at the very the heart of the US publishing industry, book trafficking culture was evident, with many travelers brazenly displaying the totebags used to transport printed contraband.

As soon as I got off the train, I was surrounded by even more of this crowd. Calling themselves "Librarians", they talk about promoting literacy, education, culture and economic development, which are, of course, code words for the use and dispersal of intellectual property. They readily admit to their activities, and rationalize them because they're perfectly legal in the US, at least for now.

For a more serious look at library economics, I suggest Hellman's post Why Libraries Exist where he cites a study comparing circulating libraries and video rental stores The study included the effects of transaction costs, production costs and the different values of owning and sharing, and found that library-like sharing benefits both publishers and consumers when the transaction cost of sharing is less then the marginal production cost:



1) more books will be read;

2) consumers will pay a lower price per reading;

3) the sellers will make a higher profit; and,

4) consumers will be better off.


See also: Confessions of a Book Pirate.


[image http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylvar/ / CC BY 2.0]

[via copyfight]

Howard Zinn, RIP

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 07:34 PM PST

Default Zinn Howard Zinn, radical historian, professor, and author, has died. He was 87.
Boston Globe obituary (Thanks, Gil Kaufman)

Peter Serafinowicz on the new Apple iPad

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 06:43 PM PST

serafth.jpgFunnydude Peter Serafinowicz has what the kids on YouTube like to call "a response video" to today's iPad launch news. Honestly, when I was sitting in the crowd in San Francisco this morning and saw these iPad videos for the first time, I immediately thought of Peter's funny Apple parody ads. This one does not disappoint. Oh alright: it, too, lacks a camera.

I should add that Peter says they created this video well before today's product launch. Good guess on the name, guys.

The iPad (Funny or Die UK)

Previously:


Clear lens face piercing

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 05:50 PM PST

Screen Shot 2010-01-27 At 5.47.15 PmI haven't seen this particular body mod before, but I don't get out as much as I used to. Is it common?

Clear lens face piercing

Letter from Mark Twain to a snake oil peddler: "You, sir, are the scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link"

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 05:34 PM PST

The wonderful "Letters of Note" blog has this gem of a letter, written in 1905 by Mark Twain to a fraudulent medicine salesman.
201001271728 Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd 
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain


It looks like 1212 Webster St is now a parking lot with a car wash.

You're an idiot of the 33rd degree

This post serves no purpose but to mildly entertain

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 05:52 PM PST

This is a perfunctory decontextualized link to a typical incendiary blog post.

Build privacy into national broadband policy says CDT

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 08:33 AM PST

rural-electrification.jpgThe Center for Democracy and Technology filed two sets of comments (1, 2) to the Federal Communications Commission regarding privacy concerns and expectations that will come along with a national broadband policy that they are currently stumbling towards. The FCC says that policies "...must promote technological neutrality, competition, investment, and innovation to ensure that broadband service providers have sufficient incentive to develop and offer such products and services." The CDT thinks we need to go much further than that "[F]ully protecting consumer privacy interests online requires a rigorous mix of self-regulation, enforcement of existing law, development of technical tools and standards, and enactment of new legislation."

Here is their list of six recommendations to help create and maintain a thriving Internet.

1) The National Broadband Plan should release an updated version of FIPs to guide privacy practices by the federal government and industry.
2) The National Broadband Plan should recommend enactment of a federal baseline consumer privacy law.
3) The National Broadband Plan should recommend updates to the Privacy Act of 1974.
4) The National Broadband Plan should promote the incorporation of Privacy by Design principles into both innovation and business and government practices.
5) Encourage a marketplace of privacy protective, user-centric decentralized identity providers.
6) The National Broadband Plan should encourage innovation and consumer protection in third-party applications.

Meanwhile, with 49 days until the National Broadband Plan, it's unclear what the plan has in store for rural, tribal and disabled segments of the US population. Schools and libraries receiving federal Universal Service Fund money are still on the hook to install filters and censor internet traffic. Reading the comments on the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program is terribly poignant. My local nearly-bankrupt telco explains why providing broadband to rural New England is so difficult.

Pietenpol's DIY airplane: "a common man's airplane"

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 03:32 PM PST

Bernard Pietenpol wanted to build "a plane that was affordable and easy to construct for home builders." He designed and built the AirCamper which flew using an automobile engine... in 1928! The same plane can now be built for less than $2000 and there's a small cottage industry devoted to selling plans. Delicious Filmworks has just created a new short documentary about his vision.
800px-Pietenpol.air.camper.g-buco.arp.jpg"During the Great Depression, Bernard H. Pietenpol, with no more than an eighth-grade education, designed a "common-man's airplane" built with scavenged and hardware-store parts. Today his son and grandson carry on his legacy, and his airplane's simple design enjoys a popular following among people of all ages who share his dream of flight .
[via 10engines]

iPhone app: HourFace

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 02:02 PM PST


HourFace is a 99-cent iPhone app that artificially ages faces in photos. Looks fun!

HourFace: The picture of Dorian Gray in an app

Man arrested 74 times in 24 months

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 01:14 PM PST

I wonder if Douglas Robinson of Cincinnati, Ohio could be eligible for a Guinness World Record. He's been arrested 74 times in the last two years. Robinson has been busted for panhandling, trespassing and resisting arrest, and is always quickly released due to overcrowding. On Monday, he received a mandatory 90 day sentence after a drug bust, but by the time that happened, he had already been sprung due to lack of jail space. On Tuesday though, he was busted for drugs again and this time he wasn't released before sentencing. From Cincinnati.com:
"The sheriff has to prioritize," (the county's director of pretrial services Wendy) Niehaus said. "Is it Douglas that he keeps? Or is the person charged with aggravated robbery? That's the bottom line..."

Hamilton County Municipal Judge Ted Berry was so shocked when he saw Robinson's record Wednesday that he asked if it was a typographical error. It wasn't a mistake, courtroom staff assured him. Berry set Robinson's bond at $9,500.

"Man arrested 74 times in 2 years" (Thanks, Rick Pescovitz!)

Does the iPad kill the netbook?

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 01:17 PM PST

Some guy called Joel Johnson reckons that Apple Just Tried To Assassinate Laptops. The proposed formula has that faintly absurd but strangely convincing Cupertino formula: ask why most consumers buy them, then aim at that restricted set of needs without much regard to what tech fans consider important. Adam Frucci thinks he's nuts. [Gizmodo]

Panopticlick: EFF's tool for telling you how unique your browser profile is

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 12:40 PM PST

Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist Peter Eckersley has published some new research showing that individual browsers can be identified to a high degree of accuracy without cookies or other tracking technology. EFF has produced a tool called "Panopticlick" that tests how unique your browser is, and they're using the results from it to further their research:
Is your browser configuration rare or unique? If so, web sites may be able to track you, even if you limit or disable cookies.

Panopticlick tests your browser to see how unique it is based on the information it will share with sites it visits. Click below and you will be given a uniqueness score, letting you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web.

Only anonymous data will be collected by this site.

Panopticlick Help EFF Research Web Browser Tracking (explanation)

How to do a bee cutout

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 11:44 AM PST


Backwards Beekeeper Kirk Anderson shows how he transferred a colony of bees that had taken up residence in a vacuum cleaner into a hive belonging to Erik and Kelly of Homegrown Evolution. The video was produced by Russell Bates. Backwards Beekeepers TV: The ShopVac Bees

Previously:


The netbook is dead, long live the netbook: 10 things to know about the iPad

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 12:58 PM PST

ipadbb.jpg • It's a buck short of $500 for the cheapest model. Wifi only: 16GB=$499. 32GB=$599. 64GB=$699. Wifi and 3G: 16GB=$629. 32GB=$729. 64GB=$829. • The battery is good for 10 hours on a charge, Apple claims, with a month of 'standby.' • It's half an inch thin, weighs 1.5 pounds, and has a custom-cut operating system that will have its own applications. • It has a 9.7" high-res display, but the display is fullscreen: 1024x768. • Books, newspapers and mags, including the NYT, will be available. • iPad 3G models are unlocked, there's no contract, and you pay $30 a month for unlimited data. Don't fall for the $15 250MB deal: if you're interested in this gadget, you'll use more. AT&T users get free use at their hotspots. • It has a 1GHz "Apple A4" chip and flash storage. • It has Wifi-N, Bluetooth, speaker, mic, iPod connector, an accelerometer and compass. No camera. • There's a keyboard dock, turning it into a desktop computer. Expect third party ones that turn it into a netbook, too: making this a category killer app given the cheap, contract-free 3G. • The name is a Fujitsu trademark registration. Here it is at the USPTO website. I wonder if this guy regrets abandoning the mark in 1999. And what on earth is this crazy application filed a couple of weeks ago? IP troll, perhaps? There are others, too, in other fields: Siemens does machines. Coconut grove does bras. Here's another computer-related one, but it's long-dead. More info is up at the Apple store. Update: Now, this list is mostly positive, so check out commenter Robert's 10 caveats. Update 2: Xeni got a hands-on and a photo up close. More later! Previously: liveblog coverage of the event.

Glenn Barr print from Pressure Printing

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 01:21 PM PST

Barrpresss
Our friends at the fantastic fine art publisher Pressure Printing issued this stunning limited edition of 50 prints by underground master painter Glenn Barr. I think Barr does a wonderful job feeding his his 1960s pop/pulp influences into a very contemporary and fresh style. For more, I highly recommend the Barr monograph published by Last Gasp a few years ago, titled "Haunted Paradise: The Art of Glenn BarrHaunted Paradise: The Art of Glenn Barr." The new Pressure Printing edition, titled "Evening," has a 23" x 11" image on 30" x 18.5" paper. There are 50 available at $395 each. More details at the Pressure Printing blog.

A Nepali child's drug awareness drawing

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 05:36 PM PST

IMG_1431.JPG

This drug awareness illustration drawn by a Nepali child is displayed on a bulletin board in Kathmandu's Patan Hospital. Aasara means "shelter"; the drug addict appears to be bottled up in a shelter crying while two men point weapons at him — one appears to have already fired off a bullet.

Secret safe inside trailer hitch

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 01:19 PM PST

Images Hide-A-Key-2 Images Key-Vault-1
HitchSafe is a small, lockable insert that slips into a standard trailer hitch receiver. Not sure how truly useful it is, but I do like secret compartments and safes! HitchSafe

Previously:


Liveblogging The Tablet. Join us! (Update: it's called the iPad!)

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 11:54 AM PST

tablettonuge.jpg Join us on our liveblogging page for up-to-the-second coverage of the Apple Tablet-thingy announcement. Xeni's in the reporter moshpit and will be liveblogging from the event. Raw feed: Xeni's twitter. Update: turned post comments back on, since the Cover it Live chat widget turned into Cover it Died. Update 2: 10 things to know about the iPad. (number one is that it's cheap.)


Here's a pic of the iPad:

tezj.jpg

Footage from outside the event:

Another look at the device itself:

9fgax.jpg

Smuggler arrested at airport with dozens of lizards in his underwear

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 04:38 PM PST

Hans Kurt Kubus was arrested last month at Christchurch International Airport for trading in exploited species. He had 44 geckos and skinks in pouches sewn into his underwear. Kubus has pled guilty and will be deported to Germany once he's out of the slammer. From the Associated Press:
Department of Conservation prosecutor Mike Bodie told Christchurch District Court that Kubus could have faced potential maximum penalties of 500,000 dollars and six months in prison.

Bodie told Doherty that the department sought a deterrent sentence for "the most serious case of its kind detected in New Zealand for a decade or more...."

Doherty said Kubus had come to New Zealand and set about poaching the animals in a premeditated way which would have had an impact on particular colonies.

"Man caught at airport with 44 lizards in pants"

Prints of inside-out teddy bear photos

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 01:17 PM PST

Bear 51 52
Kent Rogowski takes portraits of cute teddy bears that are gutted and turned inside out to reveal their even more lovable sides. The series of photographs is compiled in the delightful 2007 book Bears. Today, 20x200 issued limited edition archival pigment prints of two of Rogowski's bears. The 14" x 11" editions are limited to 500 and sell for $50. Two 40" x 30" prints of each are also available for $2,000. Kent Rogowski "Bears" prints here and here. (Thanks, Alan Rapp!)
Previously:


Valentine: serialized multilingual device-independent comics

Posted: 25 Jan 2010 04:09 PM PST

EP01_anim_scr005.gif Valentine: A supernatural thriller published in 14 languages, and multiple digital reading devices, simultaneously. Creative Commons licensed. Multilingual peeks over at Robot Comics.
Valentine is a fantasy / thriller graphic novel series by writer Alex de Campi and artist Christine Larsen. It is available in 14 languages and counting. You can't buy it in a comic book shop because it's not a traditional comic; it's a project which has been tailored specifically to be enjoyed on wireless devices
First one's free, cheap after that. Full-color digest edition available in print format when the run's done. From an interview with de Campi:
The thing you also need to keep in mind is that comics overseas are far, far bigger than they are in America. In France and Japan, there are single issues of a bande dessinee or a manga tankubon that regularly outsell in volume the entire US comic industry's output for the year.

And the format thing? Well, frankly, that's just showing off. (No, seriously, as I was talking to people about "Valentine," everyone was like, "Oh, I read on Stanza, can you have it for Stanza?" and "Could I get it on my Kindle?" and "But, I have a Sony e-Reader"...) and the joy of doing one panel per screen is that it makes the format very adaptable, both for different size screens and for right to left languages. One panel per screen may not be the way of the future, as technology evolves on an almost moment by moment basis, but it has worked very well so far for "Valentine."

Photo gallery of famous literary drunks & addicts

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 09:06 AM PST

Tweaker-Ayn

Life has a great photo gallery of famous literary drunks and addicts. Rand looks a bit tweaked in this photo.

How the brain works

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 08:48 AM PST

Excellent primer on the inner workings of the brain by noted science educator, John Cleese. (Via the Mind Hacks blog.)

Science Channel refuses to dumb down science any further

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 08:37 AM PST

The Onion reports that one science-related cable channel is standing firm, refusing to reduce its actual science content below the 5% it has maintained for the last few years. 95% mindless drivel is enough, producers said. "We already have a show called Really Big Things, which is just ridiculous if you think about it, and one called Heavy Metal Taskforce, which I guess deals with science on some distant level, though I don't know what it is. Plus, there's Punkin Chunkin. Punkin Chunkin, for Christ's sake."



Why is the secret copyright treaty a secret?

Posted: 27 Jan 2010 12:05 PM PST

Michael Geist sez, "Part Three of my ACTA Guide [ed: ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a brutal secret copyright treaty presently under negotiation in Guadalajara] focuses on the issue that has dogged the proposed agreement since it was first announced - the lack of transparency associated with the text and the talks. As yesterday's public letter from Canadian NDP MP Charlie Angus and the UK cross-party motion highlight, elected officials around the world have latched onto the transparency issue and demanded that their governments open ACTA to public scrutiny. Reviewing the ACTA transparency issue involves several elements: the public concern with ACTA secrecy, the source of the secrecy, and the analysis of whether ACTA secrecy is common when compared to other intellectual property agreements.
Identifying the sources of ACTA secrecy are alternately easy and difficult. The confidentiality statement that forms the basis of ACTA confidentiality has been leaked and makes it clear that the U.S. set the initial terms of secrecy. A more detailed discussion can be found in several documents responding to access to information/freedom of information requests. For example, the Declaration of Stanford McCoy of the USTR on ACTA disclosure of documents provides the U.S. perspective, while European Council response on ACTA transparency and disclosure of documents provides the EU view (second EU document here).
ACTA Guide, Part Three: Transparency and ACTA Secrecy (Thanks, Michael!)
Previously:


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