Saturday, November 27, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

EFF rescues ASL Ally's sign-language YouTube music videos

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 10:13 PM PST

When popular YouTuber ASL Ally -- who posts videos that interpret song lyrics in American Sign Language for deaf and hard-of-hearing people -- had her YouTube channel yanked after complaints by Warner and Universal, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cindy Cohn came to the rescue. Cohn called up YouTube, and YouTube contacted the rightsholders, and everyone agreed that there was nothing wrong with Ally's wonderful work. However:

"The problem is that the various music groups hire zombies and trained monkeys who scour the Internet searching for any use of their licensed material regardless of the context or purpose," Cohn said by phone on Monday.

"Often, this leads to flagged entries and complaints on sites like YouTube that really should have been approached with greater discretion."

YouTube Reinstates Ally ASL's Account
 


Diamond-ring-store urinal plaque asks pissers to consider the up and downsides of bailing on marriage

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 10:08 PM PST


Reportedly, this extraordinary ranty plaque hangs over a urinal at an unnamed jeweler's specialized in diamond engagement rings; it reads like a cross between Trainspotting and Fight Club, and, if genuine, is a remarkable piece of retail psychology. I wonder if it works?

a plaque above the mens urinal in an engagement ring store (lookitskelvin.com)

 


Heroes of Science laser-engraved tree ornaments

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 11:34 PM PST


Etsy seller Eavesmade has a fine collection of science themed needlepointed laser-engraved festive ornaments for your Midwinter Science Tree. Featured scientists include Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson, Gregor Mendel, Elizabeth Blackwell, Marie Curie, Johannes Kepler, Rosalind Franklin, Dmitri Medelev, Galileo, William Harvey, Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Copernicus, and Alfred Russel Wallace -- 20 in all! I just bought a complete set for this year's tree.

Heroes Of Science: Non-Denominational Festive Ornaments (Thanks, Sharon!)

 


Obama says, "Don't touch my junk"

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 09:51 PM PST

NPR on the future of the Internet, 1993

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 09:49 PM PST


17 years ago, Internet radio pioneer (and future rogue archivist) Carl Malamud and search engine inventor (and future Internet Archive founder) Brewster Kahle appeared on an historic segment of NPR's Science Friday to talk with Ira Flatow about the amazing future of the Internet. Scientists from Xerox PARC helped them put this broadcast onto the Internet, and they even received call-ins from people on powerful Unix workstations at academic institutions with blazing-fast ISDN connections (which no doubt sent their sysadmins into a panic as the traffic across the campus routers spiked). Call-in guests asked how we'd manage the glut of information, how we'd figure out what was true, what you could do with your overstuffed email inbox, and, of course, how copyright would fare. Good times!

Science Friday, 1993: The Future of the Internet

MP3 link

(Thanks, AnotherTucker!)

(Image: 1994/1995 Flatland BBS Menu Screen, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from timpatterson's photostream)

 


Channel 101's 'Everything' series

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 02:13 PM PST

Video link. Underground video festival Channel 101 has had a lot of great shows over the years, but few have had the staying power or range of Everything. Shown above is Episode 2, and each ep has an interesting segment or three. If you're in LA and haven't been (or haven't been in a while), they've moved from Cinespace to The Downtown Independent. The 2010 Channy Awards are Saturday, December 4 at 8pm, so come root for your favorites. If you aren't in LA, this is a great weekend to check out all the weird and wonderful work that premiered in 2010. Maybe it will inspire you to make your own show!

Glenn Beck believes in four insane things before breakfast

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 11:40 AM PST

Glenn-Beck Missed in the brouhaha over Sarah Palin's verbal flub about our North Korean "allies," and much more telling:

According to host Glenn Beck's own transcript, Beck's very next utterance was to proclaim that the "mystery" jet contrail recently seen in California (explained weeks ago (even by Fox News online) as almost certainly an optical illusion created by still air and a jet contrail from a known UPS delivery flight) was in fact a secret two-stage missile launch by the Chinese government to assert their power over America, "sending a signal that the world has changed."

Beck then went on to state that the Chinese "control the world."

Did Sarah Palin, would-be leader of the United States, disagree with any of this?  Nope.

Palin's verbatim response: "Well, that's right."

For Beck's (and apparently Palin's*) version of reality to be accurate, of course, these four logical conditions must also be true:

(a) China can launch missiles in or near U.S. waters in broad daylight without provoking any American response; (b) the Pentagon either does not know this, and therefore cannot defend our shores, or they do know, and are now engaged in a massive coverup (either one of which must be sufficient for both Beck and Palin to question their avowed support of the Pentagon); (c) for the missile to have any meaning, China must have assumed that the Pentagon would understand the source and significance, something even Americans ourselves apparently cannot assume, according to (b); and (d) China must have also either assumed that the Pentagon would be cowed and not respond, or been eager to start a hot war with massive loss of life for no explicable reason.

Beck's assertion -- with which Palin showed no disagreement whatsoever -- requires belief in no less than four different insane things -- and that's even if the contrail hadn't already been fully explained. 

And this gets virtually no comment anywhere.

Apparently we've all been numbed by stupidity for so long that while the media can still grok an obvious up-is-down screw-up, the presence of mind-blowing nests of illogic immediately adjacent to the famous gaffe... that's just dismissed as normal. 

*Some may suggest that Palin was agreeing only with Beck's unique notion of Chinese global dominion. After all, Beck's assertion about a Chinese missile occurred a full eight seconds before her statement of agreement. One can defend Palin simply by insisting that eight seconds is an unreasonably long time to retain information. 

1970s California punk videos

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 10:29 AM PST

Domino Recording Company recently released Black Hole, a 26-track anthology of late 1970s California punk, curated by Jon Savage, a UK music writer.
Domino is proud to announce the release of Black Hole, a compilation celebrating the first wave of California Punk that briefly flourished between 1976 and 1980. Compiled by esteemed writer Jon Savage, Black Hole will be released on November 15th 2010. This compilation contains ideas, anti-establishment rants, sharp comments about the world, attempts at transcendence and plenty of savage wit. Featuring The Dead Kennedys, The Germs and The Zeros, the collection of tracks on this album sound as fresh as the day they were recorded.

Above, The Bags -- "Survive" (Live in Portland, OR). After the jump, four videos of songs included on the album (I chose live performances when possible, rather than the studio recordings that actually appear on the album).




X -- "We're Desperate" (From the documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization)




The Avengers -- "We Are the One" (Studio recording)




The Zeros -- "Beat Your Heart Out" (Studio recording)




Dead Kennedys -- "California Über Alles" (Mabuhay Gardens, San Francisco, CA 1979)

Glif Available to Public

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 09:57 AM PST

The Glif, an iPhone 4 tripod adapter, can now be purchased by anyone. The little adapter that could came into being in part through a Kickstarter crowdfunding effort designed to raise as least $10,000, but which pulled over $130,000. I've already received the rapid-prototype or 3D-printed version of the Glif promised to donors at a higher level; the mass-produced injection-molded item will be out soon to supporters, followed by anyone ordering from the Web site.

Crows vs. Kitteh vs. Kitteh ULTIMATE INTERSPECIES STREET FIGHTING

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 01:36 PM PST

Video Link (via Tara McGinley)

Update: YouTube commenters have identified the expertly sequenced music accompanying this video as cut up bits from Alan Silvestri's score for Predator 2.

Rip M.D.: graphic novel about a kid who solves problems for hurt/neurotic monsters

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 09:12 AM PST

Freakazoid producer Mitch Schauer's debut graphic novel RIP M.D. is a warm and spooky tale for monster kids of all ages. Ripley Plimpt is a monster-obsessed 11-year-old who sneaks out of bed every night to see if he can find any monsters to befriend in the nearby cemetery. Then, one night, he gets his wish: a friendly zombie follows him home from the graveyard. Delighted, Rip names him Dead Guy and sweet-talks his mom into letting him adopt the shambling horror. Rip's dad is less keen on the idea, but after some wife/son tag-teaming, he comes around.

Dead Guy is only the first of many monsters who come around to Rip's bedroom window in the dead of night. Once word gets around the demimonde that Rip can help monsters with their problems -- whether it's reattaching Dead Guy's dropped-off body-parts or offering self-esteem therapy to a shy werewolf -- a steady stream of friendly, messed-up otherworldly pals come by to play.

Rip is in heaven -- he's finally got his life's wish (though he could use more sleep!). But, of course, his happiness and his very life are soon endangered by a pair of mysterious kids who once lived in Rip's house. These little monsters (you should forgive the expression) are bent on driving Rip and his family out of "their" place, no matter what it takes. Lucky for Rip, his monster pals (including the ghost of the cat the bad kids cruelly murdered) rise to his defense, making for a fantastic, madcap monster chase through school, freeway, museum and the afterlife.

Drawn and inked in pitch-perfect EC Comics monster style, Rip M.D. pushes every one of my monster-loving buttons. The writing is witty, the plot sprightly, and the monsters are the heroes I always knew them to be. What's not to like?

RIP M.D. (Amazon)

Publisher's Flickr set of interiors

 


Raising money for a hackable, open hardware-based USB protocol analyzer

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 08:42 AM PST

A stellar pair of reverse engineers, bushing and pytey from iPhone DevTeam/Team Twiizers, have launched a Kickstarter fundraiser to back OpenVizsla, a open/hackable hardware-based USB protocol analyzer. They've got my support -- this work will continue to enable free/open drivers for everything from iPods to 3G modems, and allow indie software developers to continue making tools that interact with our hardware:

USB has a standard, published interface that is properly described (at great length) but the actual protocols for connected devices are not common and are often proprietary to the individual vendors or manufacturers. USB succeeded at eliminating most strange cables, but requires custom drivers for many types of hardware. Often, these USB protocols are intentionally obfuscated to make them confusing and complex in order to attempt to restrict support to the original manufacturer of the device. In this case the USB packets themselves hold the key to the information that is necessary to write independent third party drivers.

Protocol analysis and reverse engineering is needed to create such drivers and these tasks rely on the real-time capture of USB traffic. Software-based analyzers are available, but only useful in certain limited applications. Hardware based protocol analyzers are expensive and are usually out of the reach of most independent developers, hobbyists and hackers. The most popular products cost $1400+ and, with few exceptions, use proprietary Windows-only client software, proprietary protocols, and proprietary data formats that are hard to export for use with other software.

OpenVizsla will be a completely open design of a device that can capture USB 1.1/2.0 (high-speed, full-speed and low-speed) traffic passively between a target USB device and the connected host (usually a PC, but potentially anything that has a USB host port -- think Xbox 360 and PS3). It will be controlled by any computer using open-source client software or potentially in standalone mode (where captured traffic is stored onto an on-board SD card).

"OpenVizsla" Open Source USB Protocol Analyzer
 


Bike lock that hoists your bike up a lamp-post

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 06:14 AM PST

The German toy/model company Conrad ran a TV advert featuring an amazing Rube Goldberg bike lock that used motorized skateboard wheels to raise your bike several meters off the ground and up a lamp-post; here's a making-of video showing the R&D that went into this fantastic gadget.

Die Bauteile zum Fahrradschloss aus dem Conrad-TV-Spot (Thanks, Stelb, via Submitterator)

 


Zimbabwean law will put legislation, parliamentary gazette, etc, under state copyright

Posted: 26 Nov 2010 06:09 AM PST

Joeblack69 says, "Our Justice Minister in Zimbabwe is currently steering a bill through Parliament that I believe requires scrutiny. The General Laws Amendment Bill, among other issues, seeks to amend the Copyright and Neighbouring Act by giving copyright protection to legislation, notices and other material in the Government Gazette, court judgments and certain public registers. Copyright in all these documents will vest in government. Government, as copyright holder."

Which means, fundamentally, that the law and the doings of government will become copyrighted, and not freely distributable to the governed. Versions of this are already law in many commonwealth countries, and it sucks here; Zimbabwe's version is even more extreme than the versions that we in the UK and Canada labour under.

Veritas, a local lawyers grouping, blasted the changes as inimical to democracy.

"The amendment proposed by clause 16 of the Bill will violate Section 20 of the Constitution, will be inimical to transparent government, human rights and the rule of law, and will be contrary to best practice in the southern African region," Veritas said.

"Amending the Copyright and Neighbouring Act has serious implications for the rights of citizens to freely access and distribute legislation, notices and other material in the Government Gazette, court judgments and certain public registers. It is important that such information should remain in the public domain." Section 10 of the current Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act does not subject certain public documents to copyright such as official texts or statutes; official texts of judicial proceedings and decisions (judgments); notices and material published in the Government Gazette and the contents of official registers.

General Laws Bill 'inimical to democracy' (Thanks, Joeblack69, via Submitterator!)
 


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