The Latest from Boing Boing

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• "No Endorsement" -- aligning the interests of creators and fans
• Skeptical UK bestseller about the paranormal can't find US publisher, goes self-published
• Transhumanism and heretical Russian Orthodox Christianity
• Peruvian TV station owners held out for bribes that were 100X larger than those received by judges
• Key-guns: 17th century cell-door keys with built-in guns
• Spam is way down, but new malware is really tough
• Move to Amend: coalition to abolish corporate personhood
• Gallery of 1970s sticker art
• Curious medical-school newspaper masthead from 1898

"No Endorsement" -- aligning the interests of creators and fans Posted: 02 Jul 2011 12:20 PM PDT My latest Locus column, "No Endorsement," talks about how print-on-demand, 3D printers, and other technologies that make products available when people want them change the economics of fannish activity, fan art, and homemade merchandise. I propose a ""No Endorsement" badge that fans could use that indicates, "The creator of the work from which is this derived hasn't reviewed or approved this; but s/he is still getting a piece of the action." Here's how that could work: tens, hundreds or thousands of fans with interesting ideas for commercially adapting my works could create as many products as they could imagine and offer them for sale through i.Materialise or Shapeways. There's no cost - apart from time - associated with this step. No one has to guess how many of these products the market will demand and produce and warehouse them in anticipation of demand. Each product bears the ''no endorsement'' mark, which tells you, the buyer, that I haven't reviewed or approved of the product, and if it's tasteless or stupid or ugly, it's no reflection of my own ideas. This relieves me of the duty to bless or damn the enthusiastic creations of my fans. But it also cuts me in for a piece of the action should a fan hit on a win. If your action figure hits the jackpot and generates lots of orders, I get paid, too. At any time, we have the option of renegotiating the deal: ''You're selling so many of these things, why don't we knock my take back to ten percent and see if we can't get more customers in the door?'' Setting the initial royalty high creates an incentive to come to me for a better deal for really successful projects. No Endorsement

Skeptical UK bestseller about the paranormal can't find US publisher, goes self-published Posted: 02 Jul 2011 12:25 PM PDT Richard sez, "Best-selling author Richard Wiseman's latest book, Paranormality, takes a skeptical look at the paranormal and examines what seemingly supernatural phenomena tell us about our brains, beliefs and behavior. The book is doing well in the UK and has been picked up by lots of overseas publishers. However, no major American publisher made a serious offer for it, saying that there was no market for a skeptical book about the paranormal. As an exciting experiment, Wiseman has just released the book himself on Kindle, promoting it as 'the book that they don't want you to read'. About 80% of Americans think that they have had a paranormal experience. Maybe it's time they had an opportunity to hear the other side of the story." Paranormality launches in the USA....and the Friday Puzzle! (Thanks, Richard!)

Transhumanism and heretical Russian Orthodox Christianity Posted: 02 Jul 2011 12:32 AM PDT Charlie Stross has found one of the most distant ancestors of transhumanism and Singularity-style thinking, a heretical 19th century Russian orthodox teacher called Nikolai Fyodorov (or Federov). Federov believed in a teleological explanation for evolution, that mankind was on the path to perfectibility: and that human mortality was the biggest sign of our imperfection. He argued that the struggle against death would give all humanity a common enemy -- and a victory condition that could be established, in the shape of (a) achieving immortality for all, and (b) resurrecting the dead to share in that immortality. Quite obviously immortality and resurrection for all would lead to an overcrowded world, so Federov also advocated colonisation of the oceans and space: indeed, part of the holy mission would inevitably be to bring life (and immortal human life at that) to the entire cosmos... So. Transhumanism: rationalist progressive secular theory, or bizarre off-shoot of Russian Orthodox Christianity? And should this affect our evaluation of its validity? You decide! Federov's Rapture (Image: Pasternak_fedorov.jpg, Wikimedia Commons/public domain)

Peruvian TV station owners held out for bribes that were 100X larger than those received by judges Posted: 02 Jul 2011 10:43 AM PDT The Fall, 2004 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives carried a fascinating analysis of the relative bribability of different elements in governance and reporting, based on the records of the Peruvian secret police under Fujimori, during their concerted effort to subvert government, the judiciary, and the press (all while drawing millions in payments from the US government, due to their "antiterrorist" stance, used to fund the bribery campaigns): Which of the democratic checks and balances - opposition parties, the judiciary, a free press - is the most forceful? Peru has the full set of democratic institutions. In the 1990s, the secret-police chief Montesinos systematically undermined them all with bribes. We quantify the checks using the bribe prices. Montesinos paid television-channel owners about 100 times what he paid judges and politicians. One single television channel's bribe was five times larger than the total of the opposition politicians' bribes. By revealed preference, the strongest check on the government's power was the news media. How to Subvert Democracy: Montesinos in Peru (Thanks, Paul!)

Key-guns: 17th century cell-door keys with built-in guns Posted: 02 Jul 2011 12:26 AM PDT Here's a gallery of "key guns," used by jailers in the 17th century so that they could open a cell-door and still be armed and ready. jailers key guns (via Neatorama) (Image: Horst Held = Antique Handguns)

Spam is way down, but new malware is really tough Posted: 02 Jul 2011 12:23 AM PDT Brian Krebs looks at the remarkable drop in spam that the Internet has experienced this year (25-50 billion spams/day today, down from a peak of 225 billion spams/day last July), and at the vicious new malware that's appearing as spam-crooks get more desperate. One such vector is TDSS (AKA "TLd-4"), a rootkit that infects your computer, kicks out all the other malware running on it, and then helps hackers distribute malware. Krebs says that there's plenty of gains to be realized by attacking the financial instruments used by criminals and he's promised a series on how these work. The evolution of the TLd-4 bot is part of the cat-and-mouse game played by miscreants and those who seek to thwart their efforts. But law enforcement agencies and security experts also are evolving by sharing more information and working in concert, said Alex Lanstein, a senior security researcher at FireEye, a company that has played a key role in several coordinated botnet takedowns in the past two years. "Takedowns can have an effect of temporarily providing relief from general badness, be it click fraud, spam, or credential theft, but lasting takedowns can only be achieved by putting criminals in silver bracelets," Lanstein said. "The Mega-D takedown, for example, was accomplished through trust relationships with registrars, but the lasting takedown was accomplished by arresting the alleged author, who is awaiting trial. In the interim, security companies are getting better and better about working with law enforcement, which is what happened with Rustock." Where Have All the Spambots Gone?

Move to Amend: coalition to abolish corporate personhood Posted: 02 Jul 2011 12:07 AM PDT A new coalition called Move To Amend is working to abolish corporate personhood in the US; they're working at the local and state level to pass laws to undo the work of Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that equated money with speech. Boulder is not alone in this fight, nor is it the first community to consider such a resolution. In April, voters in Madison and Dane County, WI overwhelmingly approved measures calling for an end to corporate personhood and the legal status of money as speech by 84% and 78% respectively. Similar resolutions have been passed in nearly thirty other cities and counties. Resolutions have also been introduced in the state legislatures of both Vermont and Washington... Move to Amend is gaining momentum rapidly in communities throughout the country precisely because the problems of corporate power are most evident locally. Developers seeking special favors pour money into elections. Big polluters avoid investigations and litigation by hiding behind their illegitimate "rights." Bad employers lie to the public about unfair labor practices with no legal consequences. People see it every day. They get it and they're ready to fight back. Move to Amend is here to help them do that with a strategy for long-term success. Movement to Abolish Corporate Personhood Gaining Traction (via Reddit)

Gallery of 1970s sticker art Posted: 02 Jul 2011 12:13 AM PDT JasonLiebig, a prolific sticker and packaging collector, has a set of miscellaneous 1970s sticker scans ("All kinds of stickers!") as part of his Flickr account; the artwork's amazing, and he's got great notes on each one. All kinds of stickers! (via IZ Reloaded)

Curious medical-school newspaper masthead from 1898 Posted: 02 Jul 2011 06:32 AM PDT Bibliotek sez, "Originally the 'Omaha Medical College', UNMC had a great masthead for their first campus publication, 'The OMC Pulse'. Thought you would like to see it, too." Love the weird mix of medieval and modern here -- a memento mori skull, a bionic arm, an Aladdin lamp... 1898_Pulse with date (Thanks, Bibliotek)

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