BRUSSELS (Reuters) - French telecom and media group Vivendi won permission from the European Commission on Wednesday to merge its videogame unit with Activision Inc in a $9.85 billion... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 1:24 pm
An anonymous reader writes "After months of rumors, the new 8.9in screen Eee PC is out in the open and the first review is online. As well as the larger screen you get 1GB RAM, 20GB Storage and a multi-touch touchpad. It costs more than the old Eee PC, but it definitely sounds like it's worth the extra cash." I always thought the appeal of the original was the ridiculously low price, coupled with the ease of hacking. Not sure if the sequel will meet that challenge.
At Gear Live, we use ExpressionEngine to manage our vast array of sites, authors, and blog posts. Things like MovableType, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal just don’t cut it for us. During SXSW,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 1:08 pm
The amazing Gary Veynerchuk, the most digitally savvy retailer anywhere, has now parleyed his wine vlog into a wine book. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 1:07 pm
After a nearly 30,000-year silence, Neanderthals are speaking once more, thanks to researchers who have modelled the hominids' larynx to replicate the possible sounds they would have made,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 1:06 pm
whencanistop writes "Having seen Google set up their Google Analytics product for free (in an attempt to get everyone to spend more money on adwords) and then seen Microsoft release their version of a free web analytics tool into beta, Yahoo have decided to do the same thing, by buying someone else and releasing it into the wild for free. Great news for bloggers who don't want to sign up for Google's 'evil' plans."
Add To Your Site: At Gear Live, we use ExpressionEngine to manage our vast array of sites, authors, and blog posts. Things like MovableType, WordPress, Joomla,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 12:30 pm
About 600 European firefighters on Thursday begin their first ever joint exercise in Sardinia following a European Union decision to build an emergency team to fight continental forest... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 12:16 pm
Rep. John Dingell, the veteran Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has put out a statement: Dingell Takes Carbon & Gas Tax Proposals Off the Table Congressman Declares... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 12:07 pm
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "It probably won't surprise you, but in 2005, the FBI manufactured evidence to get the power to issue National Security Letters under the PATRIOT Act. Unlike normal subpoenas, NSLs do not require probable cause and you're never allowed to talk about having received one, leading to a lack of accountability that caused them to be widely abused. The EFF has discovered via FOIA requests that an FBI field agent was forced by superiors to return papers he got via a lawful subpoena, then demand them again via an NSL (which was rejected for being unlawful at the time), and re-file the original subpoena to get them back. This delay in a supposedly critical anti-terror investigation then became a talking point used by FBI Director Robert Mueller when the FBI wanted to justify their need for the power to issue National Security Letters."
Meeting coordination service Timebridge now has serious competition from Tungle, a Montreal-based service that opens up into public beta today. When I met with Tungle CEO Marc Gringas this past January,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 12:00 pm
Spain's Nuclear Safety Council has issued an alert after a case of equipment containing low-level radioactive material was stolen from a car. The council said "the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:19 am
Broadband customers are still receiving less than half the download speed they pay for, according to new research. Companies are delivering an average of 48% of their... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:19 am
Kerio Technologies Inc., a provider of award-winning Internet security and messaging software, today announced the official opening of Kerio Technologies Russia in Moscow, a new subsidiary of Kerio Technologies Inc. headquartered in San Jose, Calif. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Tim Flach, The State, Columbia, S.C. Apr. 16--Lighthouse Marina in Ballentine is putting green dye in boat tanks to make it easier to spot illegal dumping of sewage into Lake Murray. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Gabriela Rico, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Apr. 16--Tucson copper company Asarco, LLC has agreed to pay up to $13.5 million to clean up copper, lead and arsenic in Hayden and avoid having the town designated a Superfund site by the federal government. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Henry Brean By HENRY BREAN REVIEW-JOURNAL Since January, weather forecasters and water managers have been predicting a promising year on the Colorado River. Now the bright outlook has some numbers attached to it. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Bruce Henderson, The Charlotte Observer, N.C. Apr. 16--With thousands of local jobs predicted to develop in environmentally related fields, Central Piedmont Community College is taking on a new training role. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
DALLAS, April 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Debate on expanding and preserving wetlands protections in the Clean Water Act is heating up on Capitol Hill. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Oracle and IBM have expanded their partnership to focus on the mid-size business market, initially in the US and Canada. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
LOS ANGELES, April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- To commemorate the centennial anniversary of Mother's Day and honor and celebrate moms everywhere, Teleflora, the world's leading floral wire service, announced today the release of its latest creation, the America's Favorite Mom Bouquet. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Benjamin Spillman BY BENJAMIN SPILLMAN REVIEW-JOURNAL Chasing active, mobile customers from the office to the gym is an unfamiliar role for the industry that created the couch potato. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Text of report by corporate-owned Russian news agency Interfax Moscow, 15 April: The number of internet diaries (blogs) in the Russian sector of the internet has risen by 23 per cent over the last six months (November 2007 - April 2008), says a report based on research by the Russian internet company Yandex. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Online content and applications service provider Akamai Technologies has announced a Transcoding Certification Program that it said will enable companies to accelerate content distribution workflow across different platforms. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Al Gibes How old is old enough for a child to have their own mobile phone? Ten? Twelve? Sixteen? Younger? Older? While parents across the globe grapple with this question, the answer may be a little easier thanks to a new phone designed for kids and controlled by parents. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Tony Batt BY TONY BATT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - Although he supports congressional efforts to roll back the Internet gambling ban, the vice president of a poker Web site on Monday said he is skeptical that will happen in the near future. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
AOL has acquired Sphere Source, a developer of contextual-search tools to make connections between content from blogs, video, media, photos, and advertisements. The company's third-party network includes 50,000 content publishers and blogs. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report related to the Renewable energies industry is available in its catalogue. The U.S. Solar Energy Market http://www.reportlinker.com/p087192/The-US-Solar-Energy-Market.html The U. S. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Along 15th Street near Cherry, the din of the drilling has stopped for a while. Beyond the trucks and equipment is a wellhead. Fifteen feet along, another. Six in all. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Out on prairie as flat as a polished dining room table, where he has no river or even rivulet to dam, Commissioner Steve Radack intends to dig a hole and build a 500-acre lake that will teem with sportfish and lure anglers from afar. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Express delivery company DHL is shutting down a branch that depends on a Nokia Corp. plant in Germany which is to close in June, a move that will affect some 230 employees, DHL's parent company said Wednesday... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 10:14 am
Who is the father of modern venture capital? Surely someone from Silicon Valley in the late 60s and early 70s, right? Wrong. The father of modern venture capital is General Georges Doriot who helped... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:50 am
MOEGLINGEN, Germany, April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a recent study conducted by the American market research company ECP, USU is one of the world's leading... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:42 am
Twitter. Don’t leave home without it. I don’t know if this is as good for Twitter as the Charlie Rose incident was for Apple, but it’s close. UC Berkeley graduate journalism student James... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:35 am
GLEN ALLEN, Va., April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- NanoMarkets, an industry analyst firm, has just issued a new white paper on nanocrystalline silicon and silicon inks. The paper Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:34 am
WATERTOWN, Mass., April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Corey McPherson Nash (CMN), a leading national branding and design firm based in Watertown, Massachusetts, announced today that Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:33 am
SAN JOSE and SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Bell Microproducts Inc., one of the world's largest value-added distributors of storage and computing... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:30 am
BASKING RIDGE, N.J., April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Wireless, the builder and operator of the nation's most reliable wireless network, and VOCEL, publisher of... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:30 am
An anonymous reader writes "I'm a high school senior who is trying to pick a college to attend. I've been accepted by two comparably selective schools. One is a highly regarded tech school, and the other is a highly regarded liberal arts institution. I prefer the liberal arts college, but the computer science program is small, graduating about a dozen students a year. The course load is heavily theory based; programming languages are taught in later years. How much would the tech school vs. non tech school matter? Are CS majors from non-tech school considered inferior? What would an HR department think? What would you think if you were hiring?"
Two of my favorite twitter add-ons are Tweetscan, which I check at least once a day for twitters that have my name in it (ie messages being sent to me), and Twitlinks, which I check throughout the day... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:24 am
Nintendo is keeping the hits coming with their announcement that the long-awaited Wii Fit will be launching here in North America on May 19. The game, which comes packaged with the Wii Balance Board,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:18 am
Japanese stocks rose Wednesday as high-tech shares climbed on hopes for improvement in the chip sector after U.S. giant Intel Corp. posted strong first quarter results. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 9:16 am
"Up and Then Down," Nick Paumgarten's New Yorker feature on elevators, is centered around Nicholas White’s ordeal of being trapped in an elevator for 41 hours after he left his office at Business Week to go downstairs for a cigarette. The article is accompanied by an extraordinary time-lapse video of White in his cage, rattling back and forth like a trapped insect:
At a certain point, he decided to open the doors. He pried them apart and held them open with his foot. He was presented with a cinder-block wall on which, perfectly centered, were scrawled three “13”s—one in chalk, one in red paint, one in black. It was a dispiriting sight. He concluded that he must be on the thirteenth floor, and that, this being an express elevator, there was no egress from the shaft anywhere for many stories up or down. (Such a shaft is known as a blind hoistway.) He peered down through the crack between the wall and the sill of the elevator and saw that it was very dark. He could make out some light at the bottom. It looked far away. A breeze blew up the shaft.
He started to call out. “Hello?” He tried cupping his hand to his mouth and yelled out some more. “Help! Is there anybody there? I’m stuck in an elevator!” He kept at it for a while.
WASHINGTON President Bush will deliver a Rose Garden speech on Wednesday to lay out specific goals for limiting the greenhouse gases that scientists say are responsible for warming the planet a first... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 8:36 am
In Rose Garden speech planned for Wednesday, President Bush is set to lay out for the first time a specific long-term goal for limiting the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases linked to global warming... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 8:36 am
ASML Holding NV, one of the largest makers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, said Wednesday its first-quarter net profit fell 5 percent as customers cut back on spending. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 8:29 am
A scientist says gannets nesting on a rock in the Firth of Forth in Scotland are flying longer distances to find fish, a sign of future trouble. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 16 Apr 2008 | 8:00 am
In a related story, check out the Chinese "Green Brothers", high-tech environmental activists who "do monthly, explainer-style documentary pieces on wind power, biomass engineering, and solar water heaters (?!) in China. They clearly know their stuff, and Zhao's favored Ghostbusters tee has a charming effect. Here's their first effort, on the problem of waste in Chinese cities."
Across Chinese society, parents appear completely at sea when it comes to raising their children. Newspapers run advice columns, their often rudimentary counsel—"Don't Forcibly Plan Your Child's Life" is a typical headline—suggesting what many parents are up against. Some schools have set up parent schools where mothers, and the occasional father, can share frustrations and child-raising tips.
At times educators go to extremes: At the Zhongguancun No. 2 Primary School in Beijing, vice-principal Lu Suqin recently took two fifth-grade boys into her home. "Their parents couldn't get them to behave, so they asked me to take them," she explains. "After they learn disciplined living, I will send them back."
Bella had one free day during the 2006 weeklong National Day holiday. Some of her extended family—seven adults and two children—took a trip to Tongli, a town of imperial mansions an hour's drive from Shanghai. Bella's father hired a minibus and driver for the trip; a friend had just been in a car accident and broken all the bones on one side of his body. Bella sat alone reading a book.
Scientists say last year's missile test added a significant amount of junk to an already cluttered area, and ultimately threatens the world's satellite network. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 7:00 am
Proponents say the measure would lead to lower monthly bills. Critics say it would impede the Public Utilities Commission in protecting the public interest. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 7:00 am
The social network hopes to attract fans with free music videos. A Santa Monica company whose investors include... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 16 Apr 2008 | 7:00 am
rsax writes "Bell Canada's chief of regulatory affairs Mirko Bibic has been attempting to justify the throttling of the last-mile connection to independent ISPs. As is typical, Bell Canada is abusing people's confusion between issues around Network Neutrality and the last mile natural monopoly. If people continue to confuse these two related but separate issues, Bell Canada and other incumbent phone and cable companies will win this critical debate."
Wired's got a great article on all the diverse uses that hackers are coming up with for the Chumby, the adorable, hackable, wide-open bean-bag computer that does anything you can think of.
The Chumby is designed in a way such that its core electronics can be easily separated from its outer shell. This lets Chumby owners create that exact look they want. Some enterprising crafters have already stuffed the screen into teddy bears and footballs and even exquisitely designed wooden cases.
Carlos Camargo, an assistant engineering professor at the National University of Columbia, has taken to hacking both the Chumby's hardware and its software. His current project, which centers on constructing a Chumby-based vehicle-tracking system, will let the Chumby communicate with a cellular modem and with GPS to measure the driving habits of people in Columbia.
"The Chumby's accelerometer will be a good driving indicator, storing the mean speed and acceleration and the strong changes in the acceleration," says Carmargo, who is currently writing the source code and developing his user interface with Qt application-development framework.
Indeed, with so many sensors and potential applications for the Chumby, it's often hard to keep track of the myriad projects developers, hackers and crafters are embarking on, Maxwell says.
It's tax day in the USA and we all need cheering up. We're celebrating at Small Beer Press by publishing John Kessel's first collection of short stories in ten years, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories, as well as releasing it as a free download in a number of completely open format -- with, of course, no Digital Rights Management (DRM).
The Baum Plan is licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license allowing readers to share the stories with friends and generally have at them in any remixing/interpretation/Web 2.0 huddly-cuddly noncommercial manner. The collection is provided in these formats: low-res PDF, HTML, RTF, and text file. We encourage any and all conversions into other formats.
Kessel's a superb writer and this is an amazing collection -- well done, Small Beer!
Link
(Thanks, Gavin!)
The State of Oregon is sending out cease and desist letters to sites like Justia and Public.Resource.Org that have been posting copies of Oregon laws, known as the Oregon Revised Statutes.
We've sent Oregon back two letters. The first reviews the law and explains to the Legislative Counsel why their assertion of copyright over the state statutes is particularly weak, from both a common law perspective and from their own enabling legislation.
The position of the Legislative Counsel is that their public access obligations have been fulfilled by their web site. However, their web site has over 500,000 HTML errors, does not meet Section 508 accessibility requirements, has no metadata, as our second letter points out.
Particularly galling is the fact that Thomson West has also made a copy of these statutes and has done so without a commercial license, but the Legislative Counsel explicitly told Tim Stanley of Justia that they weren't going to send cease and desist letters to West. Evidently, it is much easier to pick on the little guys.
Oregon is not unique in asserting copyright over state law, but they are definitely one of the more aggressive in this kind of FUD campaign. Justia and Public.Resource.Org have decided this is an important issue to resolve and we're going to hold firm on this. Anybody else who is making a mirror of the Oregon law should drop me a line and let me know.
Jan Korbes's Garbage Architecture is a trove of beautiful things made out of salvage and trash, from a chair made out of radials to a staircase made out of timbers from a castle.
Link
(via Cribcandy)
Etsy seller Hannapt's catnip eyeballs are a grisly hoot -- love the idea of little Moggy chewing ferociously on a felt eyeball, a glazed, feral, stoned gleam in her eye.
Link
(via Craft)
KQED TV's science program QUEST visited the MAKE: magazine laboratory where Jake McKenzie showed how to make a desktop biosphere, complete with shrimp, snails, and pond scum. Once you seal the biosphere, you never have to open it again! Link(Thanks, Shawn Connally!)
spiracle writes "A German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, has revised NASA's figures for the chances that the Apophis asteroid will hit earth. Apparently if the asteroid hits a satellite in 2029, its path could be diverted enough to cause it to collide with Earth on the next orbit, in 2036. NASA had calculated the chances as 1 in 45,000 but the 13-year-old, in his science project, made it 1 in 450. NASA agreed."
A Connecticut gun manufacturer tells the government it should require interchangeable parts. The Army agrees, and he gets the first-ever contract with that spec.
wrttnwrd, an Internet marketer, opens a can of whup-ass on LinkAdage and the Pickering Institute, which have teamed up to rent blog space on a .edu domain for $50 a month. Technically legal maybe but undermining of the trust a .edu engenders.
Continuing in our week-long retrospective of viewer favorites on Boing Boing tv (we're a big honkin' six monfs old now!), a look back at this epic Lego time-lapse from Boing Boing Gadgets editor Joel Johnson:
Here are several evenings of my life condensed into 3:38 of time lapse footage as I assemble the "Ultimate Collectors Millennium Falcon" LEGO set, the largest yet sold, with over five thousand individual elements.
My thanks to Matt Goodell for cutting me a great deal on this set. It was even better than new, since he even sorted out all the pieces for me. Thanks also to Judson "Cicada" Cowan for letting me use the track "Earth's Assault on the Enemy A.I.," one of my favorite tracks of 2007. Finally, thanks to Brian Lam and Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo who had the idea first but were kind enough to give me permission to run my version before theirs to celebrate the 50th anniversary. Thanks, everyone!
I captured one frame out of every 150. It's a great set; much more fun to put together than the giant Star Destroyer. Far fewer repetitive sections. Now the ultimate question: keep it on my shelf to scare potential dates, sell it, or press its parts into service to build more ships of my own design?
(Don't miss: My snazzy sweatpants with the hole in the knee, then my realization that I have a hole in the knee after, like, a day of filming.)
I'll be interviewing Douglas Rushkoff in IRC in 90 minutes if you'd like follow along and ask questions of your own. We'll post a transcript later. Transcript after the jump! [Details]
--- joelev sets mode +m #boingboing
--- joelev gives voice to rushkoff_
[joelev] Ahem.
[joelev] This is where I get my James Lipton voice going.
[joelev] Doug, thanks for coming!
[rushkoff] blessings
[joelev] I've moderated the channel so it's just you and me talking, but for most the talk I hope to be passing on questions from everyone else. (Hint!)
[rushkoff] can they talk in "rows" like the old AOL days?
[rushkoff] the metaphors of bygone years.
[joelev] I have no idea what that is, so I'm guessing no :)
[joelev] So where are you living now? Did you actually leave Park Slope?
[rushkoff] they used to divide the "audience" into arbitrary rows
[rushkoff] I'm up the Hudson in an undisclosed location.
[rushkoff] Yeah, we left Brooklyn. It was more of a stopover, all told, from the East Village to up here.
[joelev] Do you feel like that was a good decision? (I'm curious primarily because I live in the Slope.)
[rushkoff] It ended up just too expensive.
[rushkoff] If we owned some townhouse or apartment, we might have tried ot stay.
[rushkoff] But we were in a 2.5 bedroom apartment, and they were upping the rent to...get this ...4500.
[rushkoff] per month.
[rushkoff] And the more we looked around for something else, the worse it seemed.
[joelev] My kind of town!
[rushkoff] Plus, I couldn't seem to go anywhere without getting blogged about.
[joelev] I'm blogging this right now
[rushkoff] There were just too many internet writers per square foot.
[rushkoff] If I were William Burroughs or something, it might have made sense.
[joelev] Okay, I'll try not to tail off into navel gazing New York real estate talk for everyone else, but I had to ask :)
[rushkoff] But when I showed up at a Tot Shabbat and someone then blogged about my attitude there, it was really too much.
[rushkoff] Didn't make me move, but made me glad I was about to.
[joelev] Really? That's icky.
[rushkoff] It is.
[rushkoff] Plus, they decided to stop doing tot shabbat during the summer.
[joelev] And ruins my next question: what *were* you so mad about that day?
[rushkoff] Too many people went to their places in East Hampton to keep it going.
[rushkoff] So I got out my old guitar and started doing it myself.
[rushkoff] Which was fun, until *that* got blogged.
[rushkoff] Really, it's a great part of town in its way - don't get me wrong.
[rushkoff] I just imagine it was better when it was more affordable.
[rushkoff] Same reason I left the West Village, and then the East Village.
[rushkoff] I realized I'd have to start deciding what kind of work I took based on what would pay the rent (or mortgage).
[rushkoff] And that was a deal I was unwilling to make.
[joelev] So waht are you working on now? I know about the forum.
[rushkoff] It was one thing being single in Manhattan.
[joelev] http://corporatized.net/
[rushkoff] it's another when you're doing a whole family.
[joelev] (for those who missed it)
[rushkoff] Yeah - I'm working on a book tentatively called Corporatized.
[rushkoff] It's looking, primarily, at the way people have internalized corporatist values.
[rushkoff] I'm going back to the renaissance -
[rushkoff] the invention of chartered corporations,
[joelev] So this is about more than just American capitalist idealism?
[rushkoff] modern centralized currency,
[joelev] Which is right in line with the main theme of "Testament," your last comic series
[rushkoff] the kinds of institutions created to promote central authority at the expense of commmunity, local authority, individual agency
[rushkoff] I go through the industrial age, how things were automated against labor
[rushkoff] then the advertising era, how laborers were transformed into consumers,
[rushkoff] and then the last stage, as consumers were transformed into shareholders.
[rushkoff] Yeah, it dovetails on the comic book -
[rushkoff] but also on the novel Bull,
[rushkoff] the non-fiction book Coercion,
[rushkoff] and even the early stuff like Cyberia, which looked at the promise of the cyberpunk ethic.
[joelev] META: Backchatter channel created at ##boingboing
[rushkoff] DIY has been systematically removed from our options
[rushkoff] can I look at that at the same time, too?
[joelev] You can, provided you're using a client that supports multiple channels. (Colloquy does.)
[rushkoff] I did it.
[rushkoff] detach window
[rushkoff] I was inspired early on by BB, mondo, everything cyber, as well as FRPs, hypertext
[joelev] What are you seeing as the most immediate threats from corporatism?
[rushkoff] the whole DIY culture and possibility for value creation (and reality creation) from the bottom up
[rushkoff] But then I saw how easily these things became corporatized, and got a little less optimistic.
[rushkoff] The immediate threat is to our ability to conceive.
[rushkoff] We tend to think of things only being real once they've passed through some central authority.
[rushkoff] They have to be processed by a corporation, paid for in centralized currency, or recognized by mainstream media.
[rushkoff] It's an ego thing, to some extent.
[rushkoff] We don't feel it's real if it isn't recognized.
[rushkoff] So the most immediate threat is to consciousness - sorry to be "spiritual," if it sounds like that.
[joelev] I think you'd allowed :)
[joelev] s/you'd/you're/
[rushkoff] Knitting counts, for sure. The whole craft thing.
[rushkoff] Make magazine, the return to objects.
[rushkoff] (from the sidechat)
[rushkoff] And this stuff is a threat.
[rushkoff] Remember that Amazon ad a while back?
[rushkoff] The one that showed a grandma knitting stuff for people's xmas presents?
[rushkoff] And everyone was gonna hate the stuff.
[rushkoff] She was supposed to just buy things on Amazon like everyone else.
[rushkoff] Cause who wants a homemade present?
[rushkoff] That was so anti-WholeEarthReview
[rushkoff] the other immediate threat is the money thing
[rushkoff] Our financial system outlaws (essentially) the creation of true alternative currencies.
[rushkoff] They're not quite cracking down on this stuff yet. (except when Ron Paul tried it)
[rushkoff] But the possibility of alternative currencies shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.
[joelev] That was something that clicked for me reading Testament. I'd always sort of presumed a financial monoculture was a good thing.
[rushkoff] They don't have to replace the main currency, but can work in a complementary fashion.
[rushkoff] Allowing local regions to create value, rather than being at the mercy of speculative currency markets.
[rushkoff] Barter works, too.
[rushkoff] But it has to be a direct back-and-forth.
[rushkoff] If you can earn currency into existence - like through a babysitting club -
[rushkoff] you end up with communities of trust rather than just two-person relationships.
[rushkoff] It can be a bit more complex.
[rushkoff] doesn't just have to be gold.
[rushkoff] Well, we all like monocultures of one kind or another (back to your question).
[rushkoff] I mean, the invention of monotheism was meant to create a universal god system.
[rushkoff] It was specifically designed to break people of local religions and gods.
[rushkoff] And, as a Jew, I've generally seen this as a good thing.
[rushkoff] Break superstition and make god more abstract - to the point of irrelevancy.
[rushkoff] But I played against this a bit in Testament -
[rushkoff] showing some of the dangers of monotheism,
[rushkoff] the problems with over-abstraction and universality.
[rushkoff] Especially when they're applied to so-called Open Markets.
[rushkoff] to the side chat:
[rushkoff] Fiat money is a great thing.
[rushkoff] And offers terrific flexibility.
[rushkoff] But it's biased in a particular direction.
[rushkoff] Centralized currencies were developed by monarchs looking to maintain power.
[rushkoff] Once a currency is dependent on the king for legitimacy...
[rushkoff] everyone is dependent on the king for the value of their cash.
[rushkoff] But if you can pay a mechanic for his labor in local currency, and his parts in centralized currency...
[rushkoff] you end up with a more workable system that supports both the corps providing the stuff, and the laborers with whom you actually live.
[joelev] LSK asks: Do you believe that atheism solves some problems that monotheism presents? (And I would follow: is there an analog to atheism with regard to currency or markets?)
[rushkoff] Tricky, but fun question.
[joelev] We'll have no fun here!
[rushkoff] Atheism would solve a lot of problems - particularly an evolved atheism rather than a reactionary one.
[rushkoff] When you push through, you get to the same demand for ethical conduct.
[rushkoff] If there's an analog to currency, it's whether or not you can use currencies without "faith" involved.
[rushkoff] And I'd argue yes -
[rushkoff] it's not a matter of having faith in the currency (a false god if ever there was one) but having trust in the people who are creating it with you.
[rushkoff] Local currencies are different, in that people in a community are interdependent on one another as more than customers.
[rushkoff] I make your bread, and you mix my drugs.
[rushkoff] If you screw up my drugs, I'm dead.
[rushkoff] If I screw up your bread, you are more likely to be sick and screw up my drugs.
[rushkoff] So I need you to be a good druggist as well as a good customer.
[rushkoff] The fact that our current currencies are more about the speculator than those of us actually using the currency is not a good thing.
[joelev] See: Bear Stearns.
[rushkoff] yeah. and then they end up pumping more into the system. that was a funny one.
[rushkoff] Because the initial problem was that investors had too much cash.
[joelev] Markets too complex for even those running them to comprehend.
[rushkoff] They need a place to invest it - someone to lend it to.
[rushkoff] So the mortgage thing was really excess supply looking for demand.
[rushkoff] And after it falls, what do they do?
[rushkoff] Add more supply.
[rushkoff] Brilliant.
[rushkoff] You think any of that is going to the poor fools who got mortgages over their heads?
[joelev] Does that mean the current system is fucked beyond repair, in your opinion?
[rushkoff] the current financial system?
[joelev] Are we just riding out a long, inevitable collapse?
[joelev] Right.
[rushkoff] I think the surest path towards fixing it is to support the real transactions that people need to conduct with alternative means of value transfer.
[rushkoff] It's how people in Japan got healthcare for their elders when the currency was non-functional.
[rushkoff] They earned eldercare dollars by taking care of old people where theylived
[rushkoff] And they could 'spend' the dollars on their own grandparents, out wherever they lived.
[rushkoff] the trick with decent wages (from sidebar) is this:
[rushkoff] People who are employed by big, centralized corporations are - for the most part - at odds with short-term shareholders.
[rushkoff] the whole thing is quite anonymous.
[rushkoff] I might have shares of the corporation in my retirement account that's giving you shitty wages.
[rushkoff] But I want the share value to go up so I can sell the shares at a profit and get out.
[rushkoff] and those shares do go up when they announce that they're cutting your pay or your whole job.
[rushkoff] That's the problem with today's shareholder mentality.
[rushkoff] (taxes?)
[joelev] Which is a symptom of share ownership now abstracted through funds, not a direct belief that a company will profit through smart long-term strategy?
[rushkoff] abstracted through funds, to some extent.
[rushkoff] But the reason Walmart commands a much higher P/E than CostCo is because "the street" respects WalMarts shittier labor policies
[rushkoff] cut the fat.
[rushkoff] Circuit City got a shares bounce this year by announcing awful cuts.
[rushkoff] It's not that shareholder people are so evil, is what I'm trying to say.
[rushkoff] OR even that management is so evil (they're just listening to their shareholders).
[joelev] No, they're acting logically within the system.
[rushkoff] It's a game that's biased towards this kind of behavior.
[rushkoff] Right.
[rushkoff] And if we look at how this game was programmed originally.
[rushkoff] ..we get a better sense of how this came to be and how to reprogram it with longer range goals in mind.
[joelev] So what can we do to correct the system's course?
[joelev] (And yes, I just said "the system.")
[rushkoff] That's why I'm going all the way back to the renaissance, the creation of the early charters, discovering their biases, and then seeing how they're reflected in our implementation of these programs today.
[rushkoff] Especially after a century of industrial age social programming.
[rushkoff] How to correct the system?
[rushkoff] Restore some of the importance of the local.
[rushkoff] The peripheral.
[rushkoff] People need to be able to create value from the periphery.
[rushkoff] The internet provided some great models for that.
[rushkoff] But open source gets too easily shifted to crowd-sourcing.
[rushkoff] Media virus too easily got shifted to viral marketing
[joelev] The challenge seems to be preventing those small success from being subsumed by larger entities, though.
[rushkoff] How to create direct contacct between people and farmers?
[rushkoff] Community sponsored agriculture...
[rushkoff] replacement of certain market functions with social functions
[rushkoff] When we had our baby, all the things that the community used to provide were provided instead by the market.
[rushkoff] Lactation consultants, childcare....
[rushkoff] It's as if taking a favor from a friend is too dangerous.
[rushkoff] Creates all those messy obligations.
[rushkoff] People seem more ready to work with "professionals"
[joelev] I'm reminded of the woman Mark wrote about who let her 9-year-old ride the subway alone.
[rushkoff] In Park Slope they'd have taken the kid away.
[joelev] And while the Happy Mutants were all for it, many others on the net were in shock.
[rushkoff] Remember the woman who left her kid in the car when she picked up something at Home Depot?
[rushkoff] She got reamed.
[rushkoff] Hell, when I got mugged (I really shouldn't bring all this up again) I posted where it happend on the Park Slope Parents list,
[rushkoff] and then I got not one but two emails from people angry that I had mentioned the street.
[rushkoff] That it would negatively effect their property values.
[rushkoff] Talk about short-term thinking.
[rushkoff] you there?
[joelev] So to get back to something that I think about pretty much every day, what do we do about the products or service needs that are best met by large corporations over which we have little influence?
[rushkoff] buy them
[joelev] My neighbor can't build my iPod, for instance. At least not as well as Apple.
[rushkoff] sometimes, a big company can make stuff better.
[rushkoff] If you really want it, you get it.
[rushkoff] But if you really only bought the stuff from big companies that only big companies could make....
[rushkoff] you'd find you were buying most of your stuff from little ones or local ones.
[rushkoff] We electronics people are likely to have some more of that stuff.
[rushkoff] But I don't know that my shoes need to be made in china.
[rushkoff] Or my garlic.
[rushkoff] (a&P garlic comes from China, or so says the stamp on the package)
[joelev] Your Chinese garlic is probably made of shoes!
[rushkoff] seems like a convoluted supply chain.
[joelev] Folks: We have about 15 minutes left. Hit me for any last questions.
[joelev] In the meantime...
[joelev] Actually, Akamarkman has a question:
[joelev] Hi, this is akamarkman in #boingboing. Since he mentioned an earlier work (Cyberia) previously in conversation, I wanted to ask Douglas what he thought about Media Virus! as it stands in today's media landscape. Do the ideas still apply? If he were ever to revise and update, what would be the first step?
[rushkoff] It sounds like I'm somehow anti-corporate or anti-capitalist, and that's not what I mean to say, btw.
[rushkoff] Media Virus.
[rushkoff] Well, the main difference between then and now is we didn't have the web when I wrote that.
[rushkoff] So things have gotten more complex.
[rushkoff] But the most important thing I'd want to change is the prevailing notion of what "viral" is.
[rushkoff] The folks who adopted media virus and turned it into viral marketing really don't know what viral means.
[rushkoff] They think it's any form of word of mouth.
[rushkoff] And it's actually more complex than this.
[rushkoff] I'd probably explain the difference.
[rushkoff] That a media virus really has two parts -
[rushkoff] the shell and the memes.
[rushkoff] And that they spread initially because they've exploited some new permutation of media.
[rushkoff] They break a media rule.
[rushkoff] They get attention from the media because the media is obsessed with media.
[rushkoff] Then, after that,
[rushkoff] the memes only spread because they challenge cultural code.
[rushkoff] They get us talking and spreading the thing.
[rushkoff] I'd probably also attempt to frighten marketers more.
[joelev] Funke asks: What are your thoughts as you follow the presidential primary? ...did you follow the campaigns of Ron Paul and/or Mike Gravel? The Paul campaign, in particular, had a very interesting following.
[rushkoff] I had no idea there was that whole marketing community out there back then.
[rushkoff] Paul was great.
[rushkoff] Not so much as a potential president
[rushkoff] but as a powerful candidate
[rushkoff] He was able to spread ideas and speak frankly and kind of fearlessly.
[rushkoff] And he introduced a different sort of libertarianism.
[rushkoff] Paul's followers sometimes bordered on the Larouchian, though.
[rushkoff] and he had some Ross Perot moments.
[joelev] Speaking of big ideas...
[joelev] Primordius Draco asks: What's his perspective on technological singularity & its ramifications for society?
[rushkoff] almost like an Alan Keyes
[rushkoff] I shy from the singularity - probably because folks like Kurzweill talk about it so much, and in a way that makes me get nauseous.
[rushkoff] I look forward to any moment that can help people remember what it means to be human.
[rushkoff] What differentiates life from simulation from technology.
[rushkoff] So while on the one hand I'm all for the post-dual cyborg that Donna Harraway talks about.
[rushkoff] On the other, I don't think of the singularity as some Colossus moment.
[rushkoff] Rather, it's a moment when the simulation or artificial intelligence becomes so compelling that we realize humanity isn't really a drive towards intelligence at all.
[joelev] What are we driving toward?
[rushkoff] Compassion.
[joelev] Is that something you feel is addressed well by (some) religion?
[rushkoff] buddhists have a lot of that down
[rushkoff] but it's one thing to really get it on the pillow
[rushkoff] and another to exercise it, apply it to cultural programming rather than individual programs
[rushkoff] and yes - corporatism has definitely been looked at before -
[rushkoff] especially in fiction
[rushkoff] But I think I might be able to explain some of how we got here in non-fiction,
[rushkoff] deconstruct some familiar situations
[rushkoff] help people separate what's real from what has been imposed
[rushkoff] Yeah, I'm gonna go do some non-fiction.
[rushkoff] I think I'm better at non-fiction, ultimately.
[joelev] Well, thanks for making the time for us.
[rushkoff] It's kind of sad, cause fiction is more fun to write.
[rushkoff] sometimes.
[rushkoff] Hey, thanks for having me.
[joelev] Would it be fair to say that if peopel want to talk to you about this more they should head to your discussion board?
[rushkoff] I'm a happy mutant from way way back.
[joelev] (Which is, again, at http://corporatized.net/)
[rushkoff] Yeah, I'm just starting a little Vanilla board that will get more active when I'm done wiht the book at the end of the summer.
[rushkoff] But for now it's a great way to build a community.
[rushkoff] I'm hoping to start a new kind of mutual fund afterwards.
[rushkoff] Some kind of bottom-up wiki-driven group investment cluster fuck.
[joelev] Yeah, I saw talk of that. Ethical investing would be amazing. (Or, yes, horrible!)
[rushkoff] That makes everyone money while supporting local developmenet
[joelev] Have you seen kiva.org?
[rushkoff] No. I shall go.
[rushkoff] Oh yeah.
[rushkoff] That's good stuff.
[joelev] It's a great way to put your money into local economies that you might not otherwise be able to reach. (But not really make a profit.)
[rushkoff] I'm thinking to keep it to places where investors actually live.
[rushkoff] But an international offering might be nice, too!
An anonymous reader writes "I am a senior security xxx in a Fortune 300 company and I am very frustrated at what I see. I see our customers turn a blind eye to blatant security issues, in the name of the application or business requirements. I see our own senior officers reduce the risk ratings of internal findings, and even strong-arm 3rd party auditors/testers to reduce their risk ratings on the threat of losing our business. It's truly sad that the fear of losing our jobs and the necessity of supporting our families comes first before the security of highly confidential information. All so executives can look good and make their bonuses? How should people start blowing the whistle on companies like this?"
The murder defendant sits stonefaced while prosecutor Paul Hora draws uncontrolled laughter from the jury with his closing statement: "Holes in the floor. What? Come on!"
News.com has a piece looking at renewed efforts by both state and federal lawmakers to subject Internet sales to state taxes. "Two bills are pending in Congress that would allow tax collectors to target out-of-state Internet and mail-order retailers, and their supporters are optimistic about their political prospects... Meanwhile, pro-tax states are trying their own ways to circumvent a long-standing rule saying a retailer must have physical presence before it can be forced to collect taxes. One effort came from New York state, where legislators recently approved a measure requiring Amazon and other online retailers (that lack a physical presence in the state) to collect sales tax on New Yorkers' purchases... This is not exactly a new debate... But now, with a Democratic Congress and a potentially Democratic administration next year, the arguments may gain more political traction."
Patent experts, including an ex-Apple patent attorney, think the Cupertino company may have trouble shutting down a rival computer company selling a low-cost Mac clone.
Patent experts, including an ex-Apple patent attorney, think the Cupertino company may have trouble shutting down a rival computer company selling a low-cost Mac clone.
Sen. John McCain's proposal to suspend the federal gas tax will save you about $28. But it will cost the government $9 billion and probably drive up fuel costs.
An anonymous reader writes "The Internet Storm Center notes that emails that look like subpoenas are being sent out to the CEOs of major US corporations. The email tries to entice the victim to click on a link for 'more information.' According to the ISC's John Bambenek: 'We've gotten a few reports that some CEOs have received what purports to be a federal subpoena via email ordering their testimony in a case. It then asks them to click a link and download the case history and associated information. One problem, it's [totally] bogus. It's a "click-the-link-for-malware" typical spammer stunt. So, first and foremost, don't click on such links. An interesting component of this scam was that it did properly identify the CEO and send it to his email directly. It's very highly targeted that way.'"
What may at first glance seem like a regular blog is actually a splog -- a wretched hive of spam-driven scum and internet villainy. Learn how to tame the beast in Wired's How-To Wiki.
The Chumby is designed in a way such that its core electronics can be easily separated from its outer shell. This lets Chumby owners create that exact look they want. Some enterprising crafters have already stuffed the screen into teddy bears and footballs and even exquisitely designed wooden cases.
It's tax day in the USA and we all need cheering up. We're celebrating at Small Beer Press by publishing John Kessel's first collection of short stories in ten years, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories, as well as releasing it as a free download in a number of completely open format -- with, of course, no Digital Rights Management (DRM).
