The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- Used book domino run
- Ambitious and improbable gears: video
- South Korea's US-led copyright policy leads to 65,000 acts of extrajudicial censorship/disconnection/threats by govt bureaucrats
- British Airways chairman: "stop kowtowing to US aviation security demands"
- Print-and-stick zombie wounds
- Raiders of the Lost Ark as a Popeye comic
- Good news, of a kind, from a dark world
- Gator Machete Junior
- Rand Paul supporter who pinned down a woman before she was curb-stomped wore "Don't Tread on Me" button
- iPhone "secret button sequence" security flaw: fix promised in November
- Star Wars Calaveras by artist José Pulido
- Watching Curiosity grow
- Infographic: is Google a Monopoly? A Historical Perspective
- Envisioning consumer packaging for pot
- Letterpress isn't debossing
- Space: The DIY Frontier (MAKE: Vol 24 launches today)
- Neatorama launches Bit Lit fiction blog
- How To: Make a particle accelerator with tape
- Welcome to the Boing Boing guestblog, Joseph Menn!
- Remarkable unicycle riding (video)
- Impaling: Not as deadly as you might think
- Paul is dead
- Cyclogenesis is the bomb
- Lola Dupre's strange photomontage portraits
- Very early photo of a human being
| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 10:45 PM PDT Mammoth Arizona used book seller Bookmans made this sweet advert featuring a warehouse sized store in which thousands of used books do a domino run across counters, shelves, floors, etc. Hypnotic! Bookmans Does Book Dominoes (via Neatorama)   |
| Ambitious and improbable gears: video Posted: 26 Oct 2010 10:41 PM PDT Back in September, I blogged Quilty1987's mesmerizing YouTube tutorial on making weird, erratically shaped gears that really mesh and spin. At the time, I pondered what these would look like if they were part of a larger, more ambitious project. Now I know: here's another Quilty1987 (AKA Clayton Boyer) video of several geared creations that do improbable and wonderful tricks with teeth and spins. These Gears Really Work? (via JWZ)   |
| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 10:36 PM PDT Tens of thousands of South Koreans have had their websites censored or been kicked off the Internet by their ISPs on the strength of a single, unsubstantiated accusation of copyright infringement, in a process that has no right of appeal, no right to face your accuser, and no right to see or contest the evidence against you. South Korea changed its Internet and copyright laws a year ago, after being arm-twisted into a new set of rules as part of its US Free Trade Agreement (the US has also demanded new, tougher-than-domestic copyright laws in its FTAs with Australia, Chile, Central America, and many other states). Under the new rules, Korean ISPs are obliged to kick their customers (and their families) off the Internet after receiving three unsubstantiated copyright accusations. But a second procedure allows the Minister of Culture to recommend that households be disconnected from the Internet; or that material hosted on web servers be censored, or that an ISP send a threatening "warning" letter to a customer. In the past year, the Minister has sent out 65,000 "recommendations" to Korean ISPs, and in all but 40 cases, the ISPs have complied with the recommendation -- meaning that the recommendation carries the force of law. Except, unlike a law, it has no judicial oversight, no due process, and is handed down by fiat from an unaccountable government bureaucrat. The US-Korea FTA was the template for the much-watered-down Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret, closed-door copyright treaty negotiation through which the US is attempting to write the whole world's copyright and Internet laws (South Korea joined the US in fighting to keep the treaty process closed and the drafts secret). South Korea was once the world's leader in the use of Internet as an engine for economic growth and civic engagement, far outstripping the US's own rather anemic showing in the global league-tables for Internet penetration and speed. The US Trade Representative has done his damndest to undo that competitive advantage by forcing Korea's Internet to wear shackles and weights, and he wants to do the same for your country, too. Hopefully, it's clear what's going on. Basically, the Commission has sent out a lot of warnings, and blocked/deleted a ton of content. A total of 31 users have had their accounts suspended -- again, with no indication that there was any number of warnings or pre-notice at all. Separately, the blog post in question does note that the other method (the actual three strikes way, involving the Culture Minister) has sent out a much smaller 275 warnings and 41 orders to delete content, but none to suspend accounts. A Look At How Many People Have Been Kicked Offline In Korea On Accusations (Not Convictions) Of Infringement (via /.)   |
| British Airways chairman: "stop kowtowing to US aviation security demands" Posted: 26 Oct 2010 11:50 PM PDT Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways, has called on Britain's aviation industry to stop "kowtowing" to the USA's ridiculous and inconsistent aviation "security" procedures. Broughton points out that carriers flying to the US from Britain are forced to subject their passengers to inconvenient and expensive checks that internal US flights often omit. Meanwhile, Colin Matthews, the head of BAA, has called for scrapping all security procedures and starting over with "a clean sheet of paper." UK should not put up with US airport security - BA chairman (Image: Airport security. Get ready to de-shoe, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from redjar's photostream)
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| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 10:12 PM PDT  Ben Tripp sez, "Rise Again, my zombie apocalypse novel (reviewed here by Cory) is in bookstores today! In honor of the occasion, I wish to direct readers to my downloadable sheet of zombie wounds. Print them on full-sheet sticker paper, then cut, peel, and stick. You can also find some zombie eyeglasses on the site for the instant undead look." (Thanks, Ben, via Submitterator!) |
| Raiders of the Lost Ark as a Popeye comic Posted: 26 Oct 2010 10:04 PM PDT  Chuck Forsman created this wonderful retelling of Raiders of the Lost Ark in the form of an old Popeye newspaper strip; he's selling prints for $20. (Thanks, Tim!)   |
| Good news, of a kind, from a dark world Posted: 26 Oct 2010 03:22 PM PDT  As a fan of BoingBoing dating from a decade ago, when it was delivered on horseback, I wanted to share something positive with fellow readers in my first guest post. Unfortunately, the thing I've been most passionate about in my reporting and writing since 1999--cybercrime and tech security--doesn't lend itself to much that's happy. What I'm offering today is a compromise. It was good news to me personally, and it will be good news to those of you who have my read my book, Fatal System Error. For the rest of you, it won't be pleasant, and I'm sorry about that. On Friday, I got a Skype message from a longtime source of mine: "My friend got his daughter back." We spoke on Sunday, and I will tell you what I can from that talk. To begin with, though, my source uses the fake name Jart Armin of HostExploit. Like the people who work at Spamhaus, Jart is one of those people dedicated to tracking the worst cyber gangs who works in anonymity in order to protect himself. I don't like quoting people I can't name, but I did so in the book with Jart because he has done important research and because he is entirely right to be afraid of the people he has been tracking. To explain that in the book, I briefly told the story of a colleague of Jart's who was investigating mob activity in St. Petersburg, Russia. The colleague made the mistake of working with the local police. Before he finished his assignment, the man's teenage daughter was kidnapped from her Western country, and the investigator got a message that if he dropped the case, the rest of his children might be okay. That was five years ago. I had to leave the story hanging in the book because there had been no closure. A couple of weeks ago, the man got a new message. His daughter was in Kazakhstan, and he could have her back as long as he agreed not to look into certain of the gang's activities. One factor in the change of heart was the additional attention that Fatal System Error brought to the mob. The family has been reunited, though the young woman is not the same as she was. She was fed drugs and used to service men. A grim story, but at least it has an ending now, and I wanted to update those who knew the first part. There are many reasons why cybercrime is as bad as it is, and getting much worse. One of them is lack of awareness of how dangerous and well-connected the gangs are. The most serious identity thieves and fraudsters are not isolated teenage script kiddies. They are mobsters who kill people, and worse, though those stories are seldom told. Folks need to know just how bad they are, every bit as much as they need to know the stories of the heroes who are risking their lives to stop them. |
| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 02:10 PM PDT  This Gerber machete has a normal 16" blade on one side and a serrated saw on the other side. I go gold prospecting in very overgrown and brushy areas, so the hollow ground machete blade will take care of the smaller stuff and the saw is right there for the occasional limb or larger brush. This eliminates carrying a saw with me when I already have a lot of other equipment to carry. I had never seen a machete with a saw on the back, and when I noticed it in the catalog I knew I had to have one. -- Glenn Kangiser [Note: A commenter pointed out that Gerber recalled an older version of this machete. This model has an improved handle and many other reviews noted an improvement in quality post-recall.--OH] Gerber Gator Machete Junior $17 Available from Amazon Comment on this at Cool Tools. Or, submit a tool!  |
| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 03:09 PM PDT  Update to Cory's post: Mike Pezzano, a member of The Lexington Rand/Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty Group, wore an instructive button to remind his pals not to curb stomp *him*.  |
| iPhone "secret button sequence" security flaw: fix promised in November Posted: 26 Oct 2010 01:22 PM PDT An iPhone 4 security flaw makes it possible to bypass a passcode-protected lock screen with a few button presses: tap the "Emergency Call" button, then enter three pound signs, hit the green Call button and immediately press the Lock button. Voilá, full access to the phone function, including contacts, voicemail, and call history. Apple has acknowledged the issue and promises a fix in November. More: 9to5Mac, Wired News, MacRumors.   |
| Star Wars Calaveras by artist José Pulido Posted: 26 Oct 2010 12:50 PM PDT  Star Wars figures reimagined in the form of traditional Mexican art one sees around Día de los Muertos time, by artist José Pulido (who is based in California). View more here. And behold, there are gocco prints for the buying! Not just Star Wars-themed, and they start at just ten bucks. I love the bicyclist and the furry. ( ¡gracias, ejival! )
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| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 12:03 PM PDT This is nerd porn of the purest uncut variety: A live webcam stream of the Mars rover "Curiosity" being built in a clean room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. It provides a weirdly mesmerizing backstage view of the nuts-and-bolts process that results in an extraterrestrial explorer. There's a chat window where viewers (1820 as I write this, mid-morning on a weekday) can ask questions for a JPL rep to answer in real time. The tandem of video and comment is educational in all sorts of ways. For instance, I've learned that the construction of a Mars rover apparently requires a lot of guys to stand around in futuristic white jumpsuits, making the scene look like an outtake from Woody Allen's "Sleeper." And as a bonus, I've learned what what the jumpsuits are called: NASAJPL: Curiosity's clean room technicians are covered head-to-toe in white smocks, aka "bunny suits," to protect against [giving] Earthly contaminants a ride on the rover to Mars.There are worse ways to spend a Tuesday. Curiosity will launch late next year for her seven-month trip to Mars. (Via Coudal.)    |
| Infographic: is Google a Monopoly? A Historical Perspective Posted: 26 Oct 2010 12:00 PM PDT  Information designer Jess Bachman tackles the history of Google, and the ever-frequently asked question: is Google a monopoly? Google has a dominate market share of a very important gateway; internet search. Can they stay impartial when they have their own products to pitch? Whether or not they are a monopoly is up to the government and the best way to predict the future is to look to the past. Examining these four historical monopolies, and their outcomes, should give us a better sense of Google's fate.A small snippet is posted above, but you really need to go view the whole thing.
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| Envisioning consumer packaging for pot Posted: 26 Oct 2010 11:09 AM PDT  "If Prop 19 passes and marijuana becomes legal(ish) in California," asks Todd Lappin, "what might that mean for pot's future as a consumer product? This being California, some will inevitably be positioned as an artisanal item — like locally produced wine or gourmet food." |
| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 11:01 AM PDT Letterpress printing was all about pounding deep grooves down with the ink, right? Wrong! Like handcrafted pottery and bread you could kill a burglar with, the flaws didn't become desirable until the tech was commercially dead. [Economist]   |
| Space: The DIY Frontier (MAKE: Vol 24 launches today) Posted: 26 Oct 2010 10:17 AM PDT  MAKE blasts into orbit and beyond with our DIY SPACE issue. Put your own satellite in orbit, launch a stratosphere balloon probe, and analyze galaxies for $20 with an easy spectrograph! We talk to the rocket mavericks reinventing the space industry, and renegade NASA hackers making smartphone robots and Lego satellites. Of course, as usual, we've got a full payload of other cool DIY projects, from a helium-balloon camera that's better than Google Earth, to an electromagnetic levitator that shoots aluminum rings, to a simple stroboscope that takes the most amazing freeze-frame photos. Plus: party-pleasing automated photo booth that prints out photo strips, MythBusters' Adam Savage teaches you hard-shell moldmaking, and much more. MAKE Volume 24, on sale October 26. Short listing of articles: • Making Your Own Satellites by Chris Boshuizen - Build and launch your own sat for as little at $8,000 • Rocket Men by Charles Platt - Mavericks of the Private Space Industry • Listening to Satellites by Diana Eng - Tune in to space with a homemade yagi antenna • Weather Balloon Space Probes by John Baichtal - Sense, signal and snap photos in the stratosphere. • High Resolution Spectrograph Simon Quellen Field - Lab-worthy spectrum analysis for cheap • Five Cool Participatory Space Projects by Ariel Waldman • Cash Prizes for Space Scientists by John Baichtal - A summary of student and professional challenges • Space Science Gadgets You Can Make for NASA - by Matthew F. Reyes • Open Sourcing Space by Dale Dougherty And more... |
| Neatorama launches Bit Lit fiction blog Posted: 26 Oct 2010 08:18 AM PDT  Our pals at Neatorama just launched a new fiction page, Bit Lit: We're thrilled to announce a new sub-blog we're launching today, BitLit. Bit, as in binary digits, Lit, as in literature! As far as we know, this is unique to the blogosphere in that we'll be serializing entire novels and short stories--even some poetry, many published by major publishers like Random House. Every day, a new chapter until the entire story is complete.It's launching with chapters of Frostbite; a far-from-routine werewolf tale by David Wellington, and Trivial Pursuits, by David K. Israel and Jennifer Byrne; and something by me, too! Introducing BitLit: Our New Literary Sub-Blog [Neatorama] Bit Lit   |
| How To: Make a particle accelerator with tape Posted: 26 Oct 2010 07:33 AM PDT  When you peel off a strip of Scotch tape, you're holding a tiny particle accelerator. Think of this during the upcoming holiday season. As you wrap present after present, you're simultaneously creating an electric field powerful enough to accelerate any free electrons hovering around. Under the right conditions, this can coax the electrons into spewing out X-rays. The good news: As long as you aren't playing Santa in a vacuum, you don't need to worry about the radiation exposure—the electrons will bump into air molecules long before they get a chance to start emitting any X-rays. Science News explains:
Thanks to RebNachum for Submitterating this one! Image: Some rights reserved by conskeptical   |
| Welcome to the Boing Boing guestblog, Joseph Menn! Posted: 25 Oct 2010 05:53 PM PDT  I am delighted to welcome author and journalist Joseph Menn (web / Twitter / Facebook) to Boing Boing as guestblogger. His most recent book, Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet From his bio: Menn has spoken at major security conferences including RSA, Black Hat DC and DefCon on his findings, which include hard evidence that the governments of Russia and China are protecting and directing the behavior of some of the world's worst cyber-criminals. He also has given invited talks at meetings convened by the US Secret Service and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. He is a two-time finalist for the Loeb Award, the most prestigious in financial journalism, for coverage of Microsoft and the Hollywood writers' strike. Earlier, he won a "Best in Business" award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for tobacco coverage at Bloomberg News, where as legal editor he directed stories that revealed the landmark settlement talks between the cigarette companies and the states.   |
| Remarkable unicycle riding (video) Posted: 25 Oct 2010 06:25 PM PDT Video link. This footage prepared for the North American Unicycling Championships and Convention contains some pretty unbelievable footage, including jumping over a picnic table, up a flight of 7 stairs in one hop, and the you-gotta-see-it-to believe-it "maxwhip." Also some amazing Kris Holm vids here and here. |
| Impaling: Not as deadly as you might think Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:53 AM PDT  A recent case-study in the Lancet (heh) revealed that it would, indeed, be possible to survive the kind of injury seen in the horrific and somewhat unbelievable 1550 portrait of unfortunate Hungarian Gregor Baci. Also: You now have a great idea for a Halloween costume. You're welcome. Also: Good morning! (Via Vaughan Bell)   |
| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:36 AM PDT |
| Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:32 AM PDT  The Phrase of the Day: Bomb Cyclogenesis Sounds very terrorism-cyberpunk, doesn't it? Sort-of-luckily for the state of Minnesota, it's actually a meteorological term. I say "sort of" because bomb cyclogenesis will probably work out better for us as a weather phenomenon than it would as a tactic of the android jihad, but it's still not great. Basically, bomb cyclogenesis is the formation of an over-land cyclone ("cyclogenesis") in a dramatically short period of time ("kablooey"). The phenomenon might be involved in the formation of Atlantic Nor'easters, and was the force behind some of the biggest blizzards of the mid-20th century. In fact, Minnesota Public Radio's Updraft blog is going so far as to call this incoming weather system a "land hurricane" ("telegram"). The Eastern side of Lake Superior is expecting 25-foot waves this afternoon. Should be exciting. And we've all learned a new word. Image: Taken in Minnesota, but not today. Some rights reserved by MattLaws   |
| Lola Dupre's strange photomontage portraits Posted: 26 Oct 2010 06:31 AM PDT   Scotland-based artist Lola Dupre cuts up photographs and collages the snips into mind-bendingly weird and witty deformed portraits. She is a master of scissors, glue, and surrealism. Hi-Fructose posted an interview with Dupre and includes shots of the cutting room floor too. From Hi-Fructose: Lola Dupre interview   |
| Very early photo of a human being Posted: 26 Oct 2010 07:04 AM PDT  Last month at the excellent Krulwich Wonders blog, Robert Krulwich examined a set of astoundingly-sharp 1842 daguerreotypes of Cincinnati along the Ohio River. According to the University of Rochester, it's "the oldest photograph of an urban area in existence." Zooming way in, one could barely make out what appeared to be two people at the edge of the river, collecting what looked like a bucket of water. Inspired, one of Krulwich's readers did a bit of photo forensics and provided us a much better glimpse of those two folks. He blogged about his findings at Hokumburg Goombah. Krulwich followed up with another post and asks if this is the "first photo of a human being ever?" (No, it actually isn't.) From Hokumburg Goombah: Remarkable Picture of the Past from NPR (Hokumburg Goombah, thanks Bob Pescovitz!) "First Photo Of A Human Being?" (Krulwich Wonders) "Once In a Lifetime River Tour Starts Here! Unfortunately, Everybody's Dead" (Krulwich Wonders) |
He suggested the practice of forcing passengers on US-bound flights to take off their shoes and to have their laptops checked separately in security lines should be dropped, during a conference of UK airport operators in London. 
, was published this January in the US and comes out today in an updated paperback form. 
, the definitive 2003 work selected as a book-of-the-year finalist by the trade group Investigative Reporters & Editors Inc. "All the Rave" reversed the conventional wisdom on what had been the most exhaustively covered start-up of the era. The New York Times wrote it "provides a well-documented history of one of the most celebrated collapses of the Internet. But it goes far deeper, giving an inside account of the creation of Napster, the battle for its control and the maneuvering by big Silicon Valley names to try to turn music piracy into gold." 
(1998) and a principal editor of The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras (1987). He has taught advanced technology and business writing at the University of California at Berkeley's graduate school of journalism and lectured at other universities and conferences.
First an image for manipulation has to be selected and sometimes this is what takes most of my time. Going into a project I often have a very fixed idea of what I want to work with: finding the image with the right background, foreground, resolution, and content can take all day sometimes! I usually search Google images for sources, or alternatively I scan images that myself or my contacts have.
(Krulwich) thinks this detail shows a short man and a tall man with a bucket between them. I have lightened it up a bit and messed with the contrast a little, and I think the man on the left is standing behind the wooden beam wall (wharf? dock?) with his left leg up on the wall and his left hand resting on his knee, while the man on the right is standing on top of that wall. What do you think?
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