Monday, February 14, 2011

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

NYC gives Optimus Prime a parking ticket

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 02:36 AM PST

With a Little Help: first post-publication progress report

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 05:35 AM PST

My latest Publishers Weekly column documenting my DIY short story collection With a Little Help has just gone up. It documents the first six weeks after publication -- what went right and what went wrong. The good news is that I'm heavily in the black, thanks, in large part, to the limited edition hardcovers. The bad news is that the paperback sales have been really lacklustre -- due to a too-high pricetag, lack of Amazon availability, and a paucity of reviews. Thankfully, these problems can be fixed -- and as always, I'm letting future experimenters know how and where I went wrong so that they can avoid the pitfalls that caught me.
First, the good news: I've made a ton of money on the $275 limited edition. I've already sold more than 50, and I get a new order every day or two, without news or advertising. The recipients have been universally delighted with their purchases and the packaging. The combination of a cardboard book mailer, a section of burlap coffee sack, and acid-free tissue paper is a huge hit, with some customers even producing lavish "unboxing" YouTube videos and Flickr sets.

The typo-hunting project has also been a smash success. My readers have sent in 123 typos to date, about the same as I turned in for the second printing of my first story collection, which was proofed by my editor. With a Little Help was proofed by my mother, who routinely scores on par with professional proofers who do my novels. The number of reported typos has slowed to a tiny trickle, which tempts me to believe I may, in fact, perfect the text of this book, possibly a first in the history of publishing.

Now for the mistakes: first, the minor ones. I blithely assumed that I would spot all the errors without outside help, forgetting a key lesson I'd learned as a software developer. I was wrong. Turns out that I failed to notice that the e-mail addresses for reporting typos and requesting copies for libraries and schools were both malfunctioning. The former took less than a day to fix, but the latter took a month. I also failed to notice that my e-commerce system (the free WordPress eShop plug-in) was adding $15 shipping charges to orders of the hardcover. Thankfully, I noticed this about a day in, but I still had to send refunds to about 10 people who hadn't noticed they'd been billed for $290 instead of $275.

I'm also unconvinced that having multiple covers was worth the effort. I love all four of the covers that I sourced for the book, but overwhelmingly my readers have chosen the Pablo Defendini cover, which incidentally is the only one without a real painting. What's more, having four covers has geometrically multiplied the complexity of updating the text (to fix typos). Having done about 100 re-uploads of the source file to Lulu's system--which is decidedly not optimized for editing your books several times a day--I've probably lost a good five hours to maintaining the separate editions. If I was starting over right now, I'd probably go with one cover, though I'd solicit several sketches and try them out on my Twitter followers to pick the best. But now that I have four covers I can't see any reason to eliminate any of them.

With A Little Help: The Early Returns
 


Record industry sues isoHunt for millions using Canada's "lax" copyright laws

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 05:11 AM PST

Michael Geist sez,
As the debate over Canada's copyright reform legislation, Bill C-32,continues to rage before a legislative committee, one of the most frequently heard claims is that tough reforms are needed to counter Canada's reputation as a "piracy haven". The presence of several well-known BitTorrent sites, most notably B.C.-based isoHunt, is cited as evidence for Canada's supposedly lax laws that the industry says leaves it powerless.

When the bill was first introduced last June, the Canadian Recording Industry Association stated that "stronger rules are also needed to rein in Canadian-based peer-to-peer websites, which, according to IFPI,have become 'a major source of the world's piracy problem'."

Politicians have taken note of the concerns. Industry Minister Tony Clement said the new bill will target "wealth destroyers" and Liberal MP Dan McTeague has lamented that "the very existence of an isoHunt in Canada is problematic and is very much the result of what appears to be a legislative holiday for companies and other BitTorrent sites."

While the notion of a "legislative holiday" appears to be the impetus for some of the provisions on Bill C-32, what is left unsaid - and thus far unreported - is that 26 of the world's largest recording companies launched a multi-million dollar lawsuit against isoHunt using existing Canadian copyright law just three weeks before the introduction of the bill.

Weak Canadian Copyright Laws? Recording Industry Files Massive Lawsuit Against isoHunt
 


Zombie Valentine -- BB Flickr Pool

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 02:58 AM PST

Nokia's radical CEO has a mercenary, checkered past

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 03:24 AM PST

Some interesting perspective on Nokia's radical new CEO Stephen Elop from 2008, when he left his job of one year running Juniper Networks to work at Microsoft. The article paints a damning picture of a mercenary short-timer who costs his employer huge wads of cash in expenses, cash and bonuses, without delivering, and who leaves the day after he vests:
Stephen Elop is making news by giving up his job as chief operating officer job at Juniper Networks after one year to take over as the top executive of Microsoft's business software division.

The move will actually cut down Elop's commute to work. He lives in Canada...

That's right, Elop was commuting from Canada to Silicon Valley these past two years, and doing it on his employer's dime. First at Adobe Systems, which bought his previous employer Macromedia in late 2005. Adobe paid out $145,149 to cover Elop's commuting from Canada in 2006.

After he had been working at Adobe for about six months, Elop told the company in June 2006 he'd be leaving, setting his departure date as Dec.5, one year to the day since he had been hired. For his year of service, Elop was paid a $500,000 salary and $315,000 bonus. Oh, and got a $1.88 million severance payment, on top of that. And all of his restricted shares vested when he left, despite the original performance strings that had been attached to them.

Microsoft beware: Stephen Elop is a flight risk (via O'Reilly Radar)

(Image: Stephen Elop talking Android, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from gsi-r's photostream)

 


Fixing the kilogram with the roundest objects in the world

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 04:58 AM PST

The "reference kilogram" is a lump of metal in France -- the kilo being the only metric measurement not based on some objective standard. A project is underway to replace the kilo with something independently reproducible: perfectly spherical balls of based on Carbon-12. Incidentally, these new kilos would also be "the roundest objects in the world."
Fabrication of a Silicon SphereBy definition, an Avogadro number of Carbon-12 atoms weigh exactly 12 grams. As such, the kilogram could bedefined as the mass of 1000/12 * Avogadro's number of Carbon-12 atoms. The Avogadro constant itself is obtained from the ratio of the molar mass to the mass of an atom. For a crystalline structure such as silicon, the atomic volume is obtained from the lattice parameter and the number of atoms per unit cell. The atomic mass is then the product of the volume and density.

The Avogadro Project involves an international collaboration between laboratories in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Japan, Australia and USA. Currently the Avogadro constant is known to an uncertainty of approximately 0.1 ppm. It is hoped that the uncertainty will be reduced to 0.01 ppm after a further five years.

In determining the Avogadro constant, the preferred method has been to use one of the high-precision spheres fabricated here at the ACPO. These come in the form of a highly polished 1 kg single crystal silicon sphere, fabricated with a roundness in range of 60 nm. Silicon is used because of its well known crystal structure, stability and its relative ease of use. The volume is determined from the measurement of the silicon sphere's diameter and roundness. Accurate measurement of the mass then allows the density to be derived.

The Avogadro Project (via JWZ)
 


Italy: Bad Day for Sultan Berlusconi as Millions of Women Demand He Resign

Posted: 13 Feb 2011 01:57 PM PST


Photos in this post (click for large) by Francesca Ottobelli: anti-Berlusconi protesters in Italy today.

"If Not Now, When?" was a national demonstration of Italian women, against Berlusconi and, to put it bluntly, his porno-democracy. The demo had other slogans as well: Resign! Basta! I don't give up! ADESSO, NOW!

A flash mob in 280 cities of Italy and 50 cities abroad, millions of people, mostly women, but also men and children. The demonstrations have been growing in the months since Berlusconi got caught up in the sex scandal vertigo with minors, prostitutes, pimps and orgies.

A week ago in Milan, in a big rally, the prominent intellectuals in Italian public life threw themselves into the campaign: the distinguished professor and writer Umberto Eco, Roberto Saviano the star of the antimafia campaign, the judges of of the constitutional court, trade union leaders and many others. But as one of the speakers, the orchestra director Pollini remarked : Berlusconi will never step down.

Berlusconi did not leave public life. On the contrary, he sped up his counter-campaign, attacking the judges in Milan who brought the latest of many legal cases against him. He even threatened to take his case to the European Parliament and sue the nation of Italy. He organized rallies in his support , claiming that his innocent altruistic interest in young girls had been cruelly misunderstood. He also accused the investigators of orchestrating a communist-biased coup against himself as head of government.

But his luck may be turning these days, after sixteen long years of media monopoly and political domination. Even the Catholic daily, Avvenire, came out with a big editorial claiming that decent Catholic women should be in the public squares on the 13th of February. It's rare of the Church to urge women to take to the streets to defend their dignity. Then there is the dignity of the state to consider, for the ludicrous shambles of Italian public life has become a matter of international concern.





(Click for large)

A British comment in the Guardian justly noted that European Union as the monitor of high democratic standards within the community of states. Yet while they preach good governance to applicant countries like Turkey and Serbia, they ignore the calamitous decline of democracy in Italy, an EU founding state. Italy has become a European laughingstock, all harems, dictators, old men and underage girls.


An irate 18 year old guy in Italy demanded publicly: how am I supposed to get a girlfriend of my own age, since Berlusconi, the grandad of the nation, is buying them all? I don't have his years, his money and power, I don't even have a job or a decent education. University and hospital funds are cut, jobs are in recession and Berlusconi's parliamentary allies are cutting the country apart with regionalist laws. Berlusconi' s government still holds the majority in the parliament. The president of Italy had to admonish him that the country is not his private property.


The president also alleged that Italian democratic institutions are sound, but clearly Berlusconi doubts that and so do the millions of Italians today in the squares all over Italy. In Torino, the capital of Italy in its unification years ago, a protester said: we are the head of the boot extending toward Africa.


The demo today lacked party or ideological symbols: it was a flash mob with umbrellas and screams; RESIGN. It was extremely successful, unitary and grand. It brought out of the closet what is left of Italian decency after long reign of a small macho dictator, who has publicly realized the worst dreams of Italian macho culture. As a woman demonstrator put it: some men after all do prefer a partner to a harem.


Today women of all ages and political opinions were in the squares and streets; I saw Italian women, foreign women, clandestine women, special needs women, female beggars and hobos, girls, babies, even nuns!...and I saw men, boys, old men... The performance was to open the umbrellas, scream RESIGN and spread colorful woolen threads among the crowd to bind those different people. Music played: Patti Smith, Fabrizio de Andre. Girl bloggers asked for a ban of internet use of nude bodies. Women have a value, not a price! Men made fun of their macho patriarchal language with banners and in drag clothes. Pornocrazia!

Today 13th February is the "international day of mistresses." Tomorrow it's Valentine's day, the day of love. Whatever this meeting will bring to future of Italy and the reign of Berlusconi, it's clear beyond doubt that nobody doubts Berlusconi's guilt. They despise his use and abuse of girls and money. Now the big question is -- does public indignation matter? The old Sultan will leave his thone someday, and if not now, when?

Women toppled their rich, remote, corrupted regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. If not here, where? So why not in Italy too?

Jasmina's blog: jasminatesanovic.wordpress.com

Website for Egyptian Presidency: best "under construction" page ever

Posted: 13 Feb 2011 01:12 PM PST

Got that right, bub. Link. via Jon Jensen.

Should The Leather Man, 19th-c. proto-hobo of New York, be exhumed?

Posted: 13 Feb 2011 01:49 PM PST

From The New Haven Register:

The Leather Man lived the simplest of lives in the mid- to late 1800s, walking the countryside in a set pattern through parts of Connecticut and New York, sleeping in caves, saying very little, living off the land and, later, eating through the kindness of strangers. He became a folk hero, as much for the mystery of his past as for the uniqueness of his lifestyle and personality.
122 years after his death, the Leather Man is at the center of a controversy: historians want to dig his remains up from a cemetery in Ossining, N.Y., because of the site's "dangerous proximity" to a busy road, and because they want to perform forensic tests, due to his historical significance.

A local middle school history teacher, Don Johnson, wants them to leavetheleathermanalone.com. He "uses the life of the Leather Man to teach students about prejudice, bullying, harassment, stereotyping and recycling." There's even a Facebook page for those who want to leave his grave undisturbed.

(via BB Submitterator, thanks Jack)

Noisy "exhaust system" for kids' bikes

Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:10 PM PST

Turbospoke is a fake noisy exhaust system for your bicycle, a commercial update to sticking hockey cards through your spokes. It uses one of three different cards (each makes a different sound) coupled to an "exhaust pipe" that acts as an amplifier. I have to say that nothing makes me want to string a throat-level monofilament across the road more than the jerks who drive the streets of London with their bikes tuned to deafening levels, but I have to admit that I'd have enjoyed this no end when I was six years old (which is a commentary on the emotional maturity of the attention-starved look-at-me bikers with their dumbass "straight pipes save lives" bikes).

Turbospoke (via Red Ferret)

 


Poetry in jazz: Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Posted: 13 Feb 2011 09:09 AM PST

Some rhythmic Sunday morning fun: this jazzy, cool version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, written by Bobby Troup and performed by the Page Cavanaugh Trio. Hey baba ree bear!

Page Cavanaugh Trio - Three Bears

Waltham, Mass becomes Steampunkville

Posted: 12 Feb 2011 11:03 PM PST


David Weinberger says, "To raise money for the Charles River Museum of Industry, Waltham is becoming International Steampunk City May 6-8. 'Enjoy special events all throughout the town, dine in restaurants offering specials to all chrono-adventurers, watch Steampunk films at the local cinema, see Steampunk theatre, ... interact with all manner of performers and actors and dramatis personae, dance in a historic mansion, see art and Steampunk creation from around the world!' Mainly for free. Brass diving helmets optional."

The International Steampunk City | The world's greatest Steampunk metropolis!

 


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