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Virgin and BPI take the position that being a copyright holder means you get to specify the router configuration of every computer connected to the Internet. That just because open WiFi makes it harder for the BPI to hunt downloaders, no one should be allowed to offer it, no matter how convenient useful open WiFi might be. I've run open WiFi networks for close to a decade now -- I rely on open networks when I'm out and about, so it only seems fair to return the favour. Plus, closed WiFi networks are a pain in the ass if you have houseguests, exotic wireless devices, or older consoles and the like that can't handle passwords gracefully.
If I play my music with my window open, my neighbour might decide to open his window and listen in, instead of buying his own music. Does that mean that the record industry gets to order me to bolt my window shut?
Just one more reason not to pay for Virgin Broadband -- they're just not on their customers' side.
Virgin Media are the only ISP sending out BPI notices. They don’t have to - there’s no law or industry regulation that says so. They just leapt into bed with the BPI and the BPI couldn’t be happier that they’ve got someone doing their “policing” for them.Link (Thanks, Will!)In September, we’re building a home server in our flat. It’ll be a Tor node so that finally Virgin Media don’t need to worry themselves with what’s flowing through their routers. It’s just data. Like I paid for.
See also: Virgin Media UK working with record industry to spy on and threaten downloaders
AFP - Indian billionaire Anil Ambani on Saturday threatened legal action against his brother if he tries to block a big telecom merger deal, a source said, as the battle in India's richest family heated up.
 Videogamer.com | Sony PS3 outsells Xbox 360 again in May I4U - The Sony PS3 outsold the Microsoft Xbox 360 in May in the United States according to new NPD video game sales numbers. In February the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 the first time. PS3 outsells Xbox 360 in May, Wii still on top Report: Sony Prepping Wii-like 'Break Apart' Pad |
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 eFluxMedia | Nintendo Sues Nyko Over Wirelelss Nunchuk Product For Wii dBTechno - Boston (dbTechno) - Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Nyko, a company known for third-party accessories for all of the major gaming consoles. Nintendo Sues Nyko Over Wireless Nunchuks Nintendo Suing Nyko Over Wireless Nunchuk |
 The Tech Herald | Space shuttle Discovery prepares for Florida landing Reuters - By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., June 14 (Reuters) - Astronauts aboard the US space shuttle Discovery closed their ship's cargo bay doors on Saturday and prepared to land two weeks after blasting off on a mission to give Japan a permanent toehold ... Video: NASA: Missing Clip Won't Affect Shuttle Landing Weather looks good for shuttle landing |
Thunderstorms may strike valley, weather service states Poughkeepsie Journal - By Sarah Bradshaw • Poughkeepsie Journal • June 14, 2008 As the day progresses and the temperature heats up to the high 80s, a cold front could bring thunderstorms to the mid-Hudson Valley. Storms possible this afternoon Your Saturday Forecast |
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AP - Miami real estate agent Lucas Lechuga began blogging to share his knowledge of the local market. He didn't bargain for a $25 million defamation lawsuit when he wrote that a Miami developer had gone bankrupt decades ago.
Ten thousand more Canadians signed up for the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group in the day following the Bill's introduction, bringing the grand total up to 50,000. Michael Geist has more ways you can show the government what you think of these shenanigans.
Link
- 1. Write to your MP, the Industry Minister, the Canadian Heritage Minister, and the Prime Minister. If you send an email, be sure to print it out and drop a copy in the mail (no stamp is needed - c/o House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A0A6). If you are looking for a sample letter, visit Copyright for Canadians.
- 2. Take 30 minutes from your summer, to meet directly with your MP. From late June through much of the summer, your MP will be back in your local community attending local events and making themselves available to meet with constituents. Give them a call and ask for a meeting. Every MP in the country should return to Ottawa in the fall having heard from their constituents on this issue.
- 3. If you are not a member of the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, join. If you are, consider joining or starting a local chapter and be sure to educate your friends and colleagues about the issue and starting working through the list of 30 things you can do.
 PhysOrg.com | NASA's Phoenix Gets the Dirt on Mars RedOrbit - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Phoenix probe scraped the frigid Martian ground with its robotic arm on Friday and revealed what looks like a layer of ice or perhaps bright salt just beneath the red soil. Mars team gets peek at dark, glassy bits in soil Phoenix Mars Lander Inspects Delivered Soil Samples |
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AP - Microsoft Corp.'s abandoned takeover bid for Yahoo Inc. appears to have culminated with a disheartening thud for those two companies but amounted to yet another coup for online search leader Google Inc.
CNN: What is your assessment of the increasing prevalence of barriers and CCTV in public buildings and spaces today?Link to CNN interview, Link to buy The Seduction of Place
JR: I think it is a tragic development. I think it cuts a swathe out of public space. In a way, I think the American Embassy in London led the way but other institutions have followed. It has blocked off a bit of London.
Whether embassies are entitled to do that or not, I don't know. But it certainly presents itself as a fort or a castle. That's the metaphor that occurs to one going past it.
In a way, it suggests foreign domination in a way that embassies never did before. There are other embassies on the square and they are very modest by comparison.
The growth of security areas is something which is a reflection on our society. We are a frightened lot in a way that the people of the 1920's and 1930's were not.
This is not a British phenomenon, it is worldwide. You find gated communities in India and China perhaps even more than you do in England. Partly, of course, it's a feature of the unadvertised growing inequality in our society. But obviously it is a symptom of fear. It's also paralleled by the growth of the great commercial shopping centers which also cut up public space. Behavior has to be conformable, conforming to. Everybody has seen The Truman Papers. I think that kind of conformity is something that is imposed by turning the citizen into a customer.
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: Image: Marvel When a scientist witnesses Bruce Banner's transformation into an anger-fueled green giant in The Incredible Hulk, he calls it the most extraordinary thing he's ever seen.
The CGI spectacle starts with the classic green-eyed flash in the eyes of actor Edward Norton, who plays Banner, and moves impressively through vein-popping, muscle-roiling territory into all-out lab-trashing ferocity. It's the best screen presentation yet of the radiation-induced metamorphosis that turns the brooding Banner into the smash-prone Hulk, and the latest in a long line of silver-screen transformations in sci-fi and horror flicks.
From the The Fly's Brundlefly to the fleshy, obese explosion of Neo-Tokyo biker Tetsuo in Akira, here are some of the best.
Which unforgettable scenes did we leave out? Submit your faves in the comments below.
Left: The Incredible Hulk
Each time molecular scientist Bruce Banner, played by Ed Norton, forgets the cardinal rules of anger management, audiences are rewarded with his transformation into an enormous green brute.
: Image: Sunset Boulevard/CorbisThe quintessential werewolf movies starring Lon Chaney as the Wolf Man used extensive camera trickery, yak hair and rubber prosthetics to produce the actor's full-body transition from man to wolf man.
: David Cronenberg's 1986 sci-fi flick about a lab experiment gone horribly awry features one of the most memorable long-form transformations in movie history. When a fly zooms into the teleportation device used by scientist Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum, the results are disastrous. First the scientist gains superhuman strength and libido thanks to a dose of housefly DNA. Then, he quickly deteriorates into a jawless, decaying, acid-vomiting mess he calls Brundlefly. Ick.
: Image: Sunset Boulevard/CorbisAnimal House director John Landis' 1980s comedy-horror film beats out its lupine brethren Teen Wolf, Wolven and The Howling purely for its lethal combo of camp and creep. The mixture of robotic and prosthetic body parts used in the extended lunar transformation sequences led the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to create an award for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup in 1981 -- and hand An American Werewolf in London the Oscar.
: Shape-shifting supervillainess Mystique wowed fanboys and fangirls alike in 2000 with her seamless CGI transformations into various characters, and the blue-skinned bodysuit worn by former model Rebecca Romijn as the cerulean evildoer only added to the appeal.
Romijn works Mystique's magic in all three X-Men films before she's finally transformed into Raven Darkholme, after being injected with an antidote that suppresses her mutant X-gene.
: When rebel biker Tetsuo Shima uncannily channels the psychic power of a superhuman 10-year-old by the name of Akira, he inherits kinetic powers beyond his bodily control.
The futuristic city of Neo-Tokyo is no match for Shima's grotesquely deformed body, which eventually becomes an obese blob of tentacles, mechanical parts and veiny appendages. Did we mention Akira was buried in a cryogenic chamber beneath an Olympic stadium nearly 40 years earlier? Yeah, he's that powerful.
: Image: Marvel Forget Spidey sense. When an extraterrestrial symbiotic life form takes up shop in Eddie Brock (played by Topher Grace), the slimy reporter becomes a powerful creature with superhuman strength and a mangled maw of pointy chompers.
Known as Venom, Brock resembles an evil, mirror image of Spider-Man, and he's hell-bent on conducting a vendetta against Spidey's alter ego, Peter Parker.
: Though this film was ridiculed on Mystery Science Theater 3000, there's nothing funny about slowly liquefying into a gelatinous, murderous mass.
Steve West, the only surviving astronaut from an ill-fated mission to Saturn, begins a rapid descent into insanity and gloop upon his return to Earth. Before West disintegrates into a pile of red slush, viewers are treated to lengthy eyefuls of open sores, jellylike matter and bones in this late-'70s screen gem.
: When Norwegian researchers awaken an alien being in Antarctica, they're probably hoping for a friendly creature a la E.T. the Extraterrestrial. Instead, they got the Thing. John Carpenter's 1982 creature feature revealed the darker side of an alien invasion -- a murderous, shape-shifting being able to infect and assimilate anything.
: Image: John Springer Collection/CorbisAfter swilling his highly addictive home-brew tonic, Dr. Jekyll (Fredric March) morphs into his skirt-chasing, hard-drinking alter ego in a transformation sequence that stunned movie audiences in 1931. With the help of camera tricks and lens filters, the kindly scientist devolved into the iconic Mr. Hyde on-screen.
: Michael Bay's 2007 live-action adaptation of the cult classic '80s cartoon didn't shy away from full-frontal money shots of the army of Deceptacons and Autobots as they assembled. Though the 2007 movie adaptation included cameos from Starscream to Jazz, it was Optimus Prime's lengthy transition from red-and-blue cab into a massive, 20-foot-tall bipedal bot that stole the show.
: Step aside, Silver Surfer. The upgraded T-1000 cyborg killing machine in James Cameron's 1991 Terminator sequel is able to mimic almost any shape, thanks to its poly-alloy molten-metal form. The T-1000's effortless mutation into other people and simple weapons creates one of the most terrifying -- and eye-popping -- movie villains ever.
AP - For the first time, Verizon Communications Inc. is set to give discounts to wireless customers who don't have landlines but order Internet or TV service from the phone company.
Mother Jones's Michael Mechanic created a chart that associates presidential campaign donations with the donors' stated occupation, from science teacher to professional golfer to baker to candle manufacturer. The data comes from FundRace.org.
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Reuters - Motorola Inc , the No. 3 mobile
phone maker, said on Friday it would roughly halve the size of
its research labs to about 300 people as it plans to halt some
projects and move at least 180 people to other units.
 Canada.com | MySpace plans redesign for next week Reuters - NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp's (NWSa.N: Quote, Profile, Research) MySpace plans a global redesign next week in an attempt to widen its demographics and boost user engagement on the site, the social networking site said on Friday. MySpace eying Facebook in rearview mirror with big redesign Facing pressure from Facebook, MySpace regroups |
My friend Joe Hutsko contacted me a few weeks back with the intriguing offer to serialize his novel, The Deal, on Boing Boing. I jumped at the chance. I read The Deal when it first came out in 1999 and loved the thrilling story about a Apple-like company's undertaking to create an iPhone-like device.
Here's a link to Chapter 2 as a PDF or a text file. (Here's chapter 1 and an introduction to the book.)
To buy a paperback copy of the book, visit JOEyGADGET or purchase directly from Amazon.
Reuters - Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey
has accepted a year-long position as a theater professor at
Oxford University, the institution said in a posting on its Web
site on Friday.
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Today on Boing Boing Gadgets we looked at an iPhone hidden in a Moleskine, the new Robocop, and had Newegg on toast. Joel found a beautiful pollution-themed table, John uneathed Dell's Eee clone—The "Dell E", and Rob spotted Femisapien heading east. There was a dongle that installs OSX on any PC; Nintendo execs screaming "NERRRRRDS!"; and a beautiful Japanese iPod dock.
Then there was the bad: 1Up outed Konami's threats to detain game reviewers who wouldn't sign an NDA and Denon started selling $500 ethernet cables to credulous audiophiles.
Joel also got a preview copy of the Spore 'Creature Creator' and has been busy making monsters to keep him company.
There's always a wonderful note to leave on, though: I dare you not to click on the Garlic Zoom! Ninemsn | No peace over Pluto MSNBC - The latest round in the planethood debate may well provoke planetary scientists into a revolt against the international body that usually has the last word on astronomical terminology, according to the top scientist for NASA’s mission to Pluto. Meet Pluto, the Plutoid Just don't call Pluto a dwarf |
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 dBTechno | NASA previews future astronaut threads Register - By Austin Modine → More by this author NASA is banking on a new lead contractor to design the next generation of space suits worn by astronauts on future moon missions. Del. company misses out on space suits for moon NASA taps Oceaneering to build spacesuits for moon |
: Photos: Courtesy AAAS Science and Human Rights, © 2007 DigitalGlobeIf your town was bombed out of existence, would anyone care?
If you live in one of the dusty, poor corners of the world, maybe not. Carnage in developing countries often goes unnoticed in the more wired, wealthy parts of the world.
That's where the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences' Geospatial Technology and Human Rights Project comes in. It is charged with using the latest in technology, primarily high-resolution satellite photography, to detect and call attention to possible human rights violations.
"I don't consider what we look at to be war in the sense that it's two armies [or] groups of soldiers. These things are slaughters, genocides, butchery and the like," said Lars Bromley, director for the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program, who was profiled in Wired 15.12. "Women and children are the primary targets. It's rare we look at anything that approaches an actual battle."
This gallery presents a variety of before and after satellite photographs spanning the globe, including the most recent photographs from Ethiopia, which helped make the case for what Human Rights Watch declared "crimes against humanity" by government soldiers in the Ogaden region of the country. When before and after pictures are shown, the before shot is above the after shot.
Left: In this before-and-after sequence, you can see the aftermath of a visit by Ethiopian troops to the town of Labigah. In the after shot at the bottom, taken six months after the attack, Bromley's team counted dozens of destroyed buildings. Bromley believes that the blue-grey color of some rubble indicates the presence of ash.
"You still have apparent ash on the ground six months after the attack took place," he said. "It was probably a pretty significant burning event."
That's backed up by the team's ability to pull out the infrared signature from the raw satellite data, and in that spectrum, Bromley said that burned material has a distinctive spectral signature.
"Really what we do is stare at these things forever and verify each structure from one image to another," Bromley said.
: Photos: Courtesy AAAS Science and Human Rights, © 2007 DigitalGlobeBurma's military junta has long been suspected of waging a campaign of repression against its political adversaries in the state of Keren, which borders Thailand. In April, Bromley got reports that the town you can see in the top left image had been attacked. During a break in the monsoon-season clouds, a satellite snapped this shot of the village's former site. All that remains of the village is burn scars.
"This place was attacked and wholesale burned to the ground, which is relatively rare for Burma," he said. "Most of the attacks are shelling and mining and shooting."
Despite presenting this evidence in the United Nations, which caused an international stir, the government in Burma, also known as Myanmar, remains in power.
"We're getting images of human misery on pretty much a daily basis and where do we go from here?" Bromley asked. "Governments are less confident that they can hide these things, but they are more confident they can get away with it."
The settlement in the image pair at left shows burn scars for about 12 to 14 structures. This corresponds with reported attacks in the area on April 22, 2007 (Lat: 18.54 N Long: 97.05 E).
The before image was taken on Dec 13, 2006. The after image is from June 24, 2007.
: Photos: Courtesy AAAS Science and Human Rights, © 2007 DigitalGlobeIn July 2006, intense fighting broke out between Israeli troops and the Hezbollah paramilitary group in Lebanon. As rockets rained down on northern Israel, the Israelis responded with a devastating aerial attack on Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut.
Referring to the neighborhood pictured here, Bromley said, "The so-called Hezbollah suburb in Beirut is the most catastrophic destruction we've ever looked at."
A strange amendment to the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act, which governs U.S. satellite image distribution, prevents the commercial distribution of high-resolution satellite images of Israel, so Bromley's team was unable to assess the damage that Hezbollah rockets did to Israeli towns. Human Rights Watch placed the death tolls of the short conflict at 1,200 Lebanese and 39 Israelis.
As an indication of scale, you can see a soccer field in the lower left-hand corner.
Pictured are close-up satellite images of part of Beirut City before (June 19, 2006) and after (August 12, 2006) attacks.
: Photos: Courtesy AAAS Science and Human Rights, © 2007 DigitalGlobeSince coming to power in 1980, Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe with an iron fist. These aerial photographs show the erasure of the town of Porta Farm, a settlement that had the bad luck of being in a known opposition area. Bromley wryly called it Mugabe's version of "gerrymandering."
"He destroyed all the homes, because if you don't have a home, you're not gonna vote there," he said.
While seeing the destruction can be easy once you know where to look, finding areas in distress can be difficult. And once they are found, local informants have to be very careful to avoid getting caught distributing this type of information.
"We had really good communications with the people inside, [who were] writing to us on Hotmail accounts in the middle of the night, that kind of stuff," Bromley said.
: Photos: Courtesy AAAS Science and Human Rights, © 2007 DigitalGlobeIn February 2008, the Sudanese government launched a military campaign in Western Darfur to drive out rebels fighting under the name the Justice and Equality Movement. The images show the damage from a single town in the region, Abu Suruj. The areas in red show all of the areas that burned during the conflict.
A UN report on the attacks (.pdf) noted the Sudanese offensive included "aerial bombardments by helicopter gunships and fixed-wing aircraft." In addition to showing the ashy remains of homes, the close-up picture shows what is probably a rebel stronghold in the upper-right portion of the image. Crater impacts, probably from mortar fire, are visible within the ring-like defensive perimeter.
: Photos: Courtesy AAAS Science and Human Rights, © 2007 DigitalGlobeBack in 2000, during a two-year war between Ethiopia and Eritrea over what Bromley described as "literally 10 square miles of the most desolate place on Earth," Ethiopian troops occupied a portion of Eritrea. In the process, they destroyed several Eritrean towns. One of them, Serha, is shown in these images. The seven buildings clearly visible in the top photograph from June 2000 had been destroyed when a new satellite image was taken in August. These images were used in international legal proceedings against Ethiopia that resulted in a monetary settlement for Eritrea, which was never paid. Relations between the countries remain tense.
"The Ethiopians and Eritreans are about to go at it again, hammer and tongs," Bromley said.
He did note, however, that at least in the case of actual national armies, blame can be assigned to countries and politicians. That's not always an option that his team has.
"When you get into Darfur and some of these other places where it's just five thousand kids with guns, you get a more horrific medieval situation."
: Photos: Courtesy AAAS Science and Human Rights, © 2007 DigitalGlobeFrom 2000 to 2004, the Israeli Defense Forces began the construction of a security wall around Israel. As part of that effort, they removed about 2,500 homes in the Gaza Strip. "The Israeli security forces wanted to clear a perimeter and they went in with bulldozers and cleared what they needed to clear," Bromley said.
Bromley did note, however, that the missing buildings in this case were not caused by burning or bombing but by "bulldozers surrounded by tanks."
: Photos: Courtesy AAAS Science and Human Rights, © 2007 DigitalGlobeSatellite images of North Korean prison-labor camps, like this one, helped human-rights groups show the extent of what they called the "hidden gulag" system. By showing the images to escaped prisoners, the researchers were able to estimate the layouts and capacities of the camps. Their stunning estimate that 150,000 to 200,000 people were being held focused attention on the scale and gravity of the situation.
"Governments are less confident that they can hide these things," Bromley said.
But, he noted, atrocities that have long been documented in satellite images and from on-the-ground accounts still rage on.
"We're getting images of human misery on pretty much a daily basis," Bromley said. But his organization can't stop the fighting, and neither can nongovernmental organizations or (generally speaking) the UN.
"Have we ended all human suffering? No. Does that bother me? Yes," he concluded.
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For his first solo show in Los Angeles, Ramos replicates the natural history museum experience for his audience, fusing the natural world with the art world. A series of twenty four large-scale paintings based on classic grand dioramas and a special installation of skeletal structures will transform the gallery into an epicenter of fl ora and fauna. The concept of the exhibition is based on Ramos’ childhood fascination with natural history museums and the “authoritative” impression they made on him growing up.Link to view art, Link to Corey Helford Gallery
 Telegraph.co.uk | Steve Jobs: Life after the Whipple CNNMoney.com - Much of the speculation about Steve Jobs’ rail-thin appearance at the unveiling of the new iPhone on Monday has tended to be all or nothing. Apple unveils iPhone 2, both the phone and the business Eight Questions for Steve Jobs |
 iPhone World | Coming To The iPhone: Enterprise Apps InformationWeek - Analysts say that the latest iPhone has the security and speed businesses seek in a smartphone, and the enterprise applications they depend on are not far behind. TomTom for iPhone lives; Jobs' true health; green iPhone 3G? Apple's App Store: $1 Billion-Plus By Next Year? |
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