flutterecho writes "A sophomore at Valdosta State University was expelled after criticizing his university's plan to build two new parking garages with student fees. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university's president, wrote that he 'present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus' and referred to an image on the student's Facebook page which contained a threatening description. 'As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: "Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?" It doesn't mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that "shoot" in that context meant "record."' In a post-Virginia Tech world, has university surveillance of online identities gone too far?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source:
Slashdot | 13 Jan 2008 | 12:58 pm
angryfirelord notes a DesktopLinux article on Lenovo's promise to deliver ThinkPads with pre-installed Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 in the week of January 14. Quoting: "Lenovo will release pre-installed SLED 10 on its Intel Centrino processor-powered ThinkPad T61 and R61 14-inch-wide notebooks. In February, Lenovo's pre-integrated Novell Linux offering will expand to include some Penryn-based ThinkPads. The starting price for this system will be $949, $20 less than the same laptop with Vista Home Premium."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Slashdot | 13 Jan 2008 | 9:26 am
Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels: this half-head of a statue on display in the British Museum.
Link
Source:
Boing Boing | 13 Jan 2008 | 7:11 am
The threatening message received by a US Navy ship in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a notorious radio troll known to seasoned skippers as the "Filipino Monkey."
Indeed, the voice in the audio sounds different from the one belonging to an Iranian officer shown speaking to the cruiser Port Royal over a radio from a small open boat in the video released by Iranian authorities. He is shown in a radio exchange at one point asking the U.S. warship to change from the common bridge-to-bridge channel 16 to another channel, perhaps to speak to the Navy without being interrupted...
“For 25 years there’s been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats,” he said. “He could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship.”
And the Monkey has stamina.
“He used to go all night long. The guy is crazy,” he said. “But who knows how many Filipino Monkeys there are? Could it have been a spurious transmission? Absolutely.”
Link
(
Thanks, Bill!)
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Boing Boing | 13 Jan 2008 | 7:11 am
theodp writes "Time reports that vinyl records are suddenly cool again. Vinyl has a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs or MP3s; records feature large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos, and liner notes. 'Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl,' says 15-year-old David MacRunnel, who owns more than 1,000 records."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Slashdot | 13 Jan 2008 | 6:23 am
Over at Blogging.la, Ruth Waytz writes:
With a heavy heart I deliver the sad news that our friend Maila Nurmi, famous for her portrayal of Vampira, has passed at age 86.
Maila passed away peacefully in her sleep at home.
Funeral arrangements are pending legal steps as Maila had no relatives. Her friends are trying to get her a spot at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and will likely plan some sort of hearse procession for her.
Link.
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Boing Boing | 13 Jan 2008 | 4:59 am
Noah Shachtman at Wired's Danger Room blog writes,
It's not completely surprising that the Army wants to hire a band to tour its bases jn Afghanistan and Kuwait. The armed services get all kinds of folks, to entertain the troops. "But it's the way that they solicit for rock bands that makes the whole thing hilarious," Stephen Trimble notes.
First, a summary of what the Army is seeking:
Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band, group not to exceed seven people for tour of FOB's [forward operating bases] in Kuwait and Afghanistan for February 4-13 2008. The band should be an active rock band, with a music genre consisting of Southern Rock, Pop Rock, Post-Grunge and Hard Rock. At least one member of the band should be recognizable as a professional celebrity. Protective military equipment, such as kevlar, body armour, eye and ear protection will be provided when the group is travelling on military rotary or fixed wing aircraft.
Oh, and it gets better.
Link.
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Boing Boing | 13 Jan 2008 | 4:43 am
ride
cup
snack
laptop
safari
firefox
paper
name
CC-licensed image from Flickr user c h e e s e roc's photostream: Link.
Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)
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Boing Boing | 13 Jan 2008 | 4:37 am
Snip from an article on AllAfrica.com:
"It is the Kenyan People Who Have Lost the Election," headlined Pambazuka News in its special Kenya election edition on January 3.
"But the real tragedy of Kenya," the editorial continued, is that the political conflict is not about alternative political programmes that could address ... landlessness, low wages, unemployment, lack of shelter, inadequate incomes, homelessness, etc. ... [instead] it boils down to a fight over who has access to the honey pot that is the state. ...[citizens] are reduced to being just being fodder for the pigs fighting over the trough."
Commentaries of particular interest from the U.S.include an op-ed in the Washington Post by Caroline Elkins, "What's Tearing Kenya Apart? History, for One Thing," a statement by Africa Action stating that U.S.-Kenya policy should support "robust democratic processes" rather than be defined by "a narrow agenda of the war on terror and international business", and a statement by the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars highlighting "the role of the U.S. government -- far from a neutral player -- both before and after the elections" and the danger that U.S. involvement will be biased by its close military relations with the Kenyan government..
More on current events in Kenya at AllAfrica.com:
Link 1,
Link 2,
Link 3.
(via Ned Sublette)
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Boing Boing | 13 Jan 2008 | 4:25 am
eldavojohn writes "The One Laptop Per Child Project plans to launch OLPC America in 2008 , to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally intended for developing nations to needy students here in the United States. Nicholas Negroponte is quoted as saying, 'We are doing something patriotic, if you will, after all we are and there are poor children in America. The second thing we're doing is building a critical mass. The numbers are going to go up, people will make more software, it will steer a larger development community.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Slashdot | 13 Jan 2008 | 4:11 am
A special event for the release of the terrifically entertaining new Feral House book,
The Hollywood Hellfire Club (with a beautiful cover by Drew Friedman), will be held on January 15 at
The Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles at 8pm.
They made fans go crazy and censors apoplectic, spent fortunes faster than they made them, forged Rembrandts and hung them in major museums, went on trial for committing statutory rape with necrophiliac teenage girls, reinterpreted Hamlet as an incestuous mama’s boy, and swilled immeasurable quantities of spirits during week-long parties on wobbly yachts. They were “The Bundy Drive Boys,” and they made the Rat Pack look like Cub Scouts.
The last thing one might expect from the tony street north of Sunset Blvd. in Brentwood’s Bundy Drive would be a clan of obstreperous dipsomaniacs, but this was the '30s and '40s, when cocktail hour was a patriotic imperative, and the studio system was an autocratic lunacy to rebel against. (Well, some things never change.) This evening we’re celebrating the release of Feral House’s Hollywood’s Hellfire Club: The Misadventures of John Barrymore, W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn and ‘The Bundy Drive Boys’ by screening the amazing early talkie Svengali starring John Barrymore as the piercing-eyed hypnotic music master and Marian Marsh as the mesmerized underage beauty Trilby.
Also showing: W.C. Fields’ dirty short "The Dentist" and rare clips from Barrymore and Errol Flynn home movies. We’ll also be displaying original art by John Decker, the man who collaborated on a West Hollywood art gallery with Errol Flynn, drew the notorious Barrymore Death Bed Sketch, and whose forgeries now hang in museums across the country, including Harvard’s Fogg Museum. Authors Gregory William Mank, Charles Heard and Bill Nelson will be available to sign copies of their celebrated book.
Tickets - $10
Link
Sample chapter 1 | Sample chapter 2
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Boing Boing | 13 Jan 2008 | 3:36 am
Web Goddess writes "The 2007 Darwin Award Winners have been announced. Precarious sex, squashed thieves, animals eradicated with electricity, the obligatory macho competition involving a train, and one computer (which survived.) But think twice before you read them. Do you really want to know about The Enema Within?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Slashdot | 13 Jan 2008 | 2:13 am
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In Atlantic v. Howell, the Phoenix, Arizona, case in which a defendant who has no legal representation has been battling the RIAA over its theory that merely 'making files available for distribution' is in and of itself a copyright infringement, Mr. Howell has received some help from an outside source. On the last day allowed for the filing of supplemental briefs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus curiae brief agreeing with Mr. Howell, and refuting the RIAA's motion for summary judgment. The brief (PDF), which is recommended reading for anyone who wants to know what US copyright law really says, points out that 'contrary to Plaintiffs' arguments, an infringement of the distribution right requires the unauthorized, actual dissemination of copies of a copyrighted work.' This is the same case in which the RIAA claimed that Mr. Howell's MP3s, copied from his CDs, were themselves unlawful."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Slashdot | 12 Jan 2008 | 10:21 pm
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