LOL

Britney Spears shaves her head: "
Not sure if this is some kind of Vista protest. Or Zune. Or maybe the Norwegians got to her and she's angry about DRM. Who knows? Well, at least now the drapes match the carpet."

(Via The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.)

evil umpire strikes out?

New Microsoft Dirty Tricks Revealed: "Conrad Mazian writes 'Robert X. Cringely has an article on the Technology Evangelist web site where he claims that Microsoft destroyed evidence in the Burst vs Microsoft case. Specifically Burst's lawyers had asked for certain emails, Microsoft claimed that they couldn't find the backup tapes the emails would be on, and while this was happening the tapes were in a vault at Microsoft — until they mysteriously disappeared. It's a fascinating story, and even names one person at Microsoft.'

"

(Via Slashdot.)

Photoshoppers are at it again-and "photoshoppers" is now a noun

Fine art/toon mashup photoshopping contest: "Cory Doctorow:


Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: fine art mashed up with cartoons. Mona Jessica -- heaven!

Link

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

science vs. faith finally mapped out

2007-01-15 -- science vs faith.png 894×700 pixels: ""

(Via .)

That's what we ned

Lava Lamp speakers are pretty groovy, I guess: "

It's the best technology of the 1970s married to the best technology of the early 1990s: the lava lamp speakers. They're technically called the I-Light speakers, because everyone knows that when you stick that vowel in front of a very basic description of your product the sales go triple. Sigh. Let's just refer to them as the lava lamp speakers, shall we?

In any case, the lights go along with your music, which I'm sure makes them really cool to stare at after you smoke a roach while listening to old Deep Purple albums. They're a relatively steep $68, which would be more worthwhile if they would give us more stats on the speakers other than 'crystal clear.' Gee, thanks for all that info guys. — Adam Frucci

I-Light Speakers, via MobileMag

"

(Via SCI FI Tech Blog.)

must be kong Isle

Impossible history photoshopping contest: "Cory Doctorow:


Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest: photos of impossible things that appear to have been taken a long, long time ago.

Link

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

No duh - poking sharp stick in eye not too good either

Medical study concludes that sword swallowing is dangerous: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Simon Owens says:

The British Medical Journal published an awesome article on the dangers of being a sword swallower. He came to the conclusion that their biggest threat to their health was being distracted. In one instance, an audience member merely put money in his pocket and the blade severed his throat.

Link (Via Bloggasm)

Update:

Pesco says:

Same guy did a previous study on sword swallowing and published in the same journal a year before

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Let's live there

Nasa space colony paintings in public domain: "Mark Frauenfelder:
These beautiful paintings of space colonies (and other cosmic scenes) from a future we forgot to have been granted to the public domain, by the artist, Donald Davis.

Donald Davis was commissioned to do paintings for NASA in the 1970s and is now offering them to the public domain. The 'toroidal shaped space colony' above is an incredible piece of paleo-futuristic art from 1975. Click on the images to make them larger or visit his site to see all of his space paintings.

Link

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

I'd like to see dozens running down Market Street

Giant hamster-ball for humans: "Cory Doctorow:


Virtusphere is a giant, human-sized hamster-ball on rollers that stays in one place as it spins. The idea is to let you 'run around' while in your VR goggles without needing a lot of floor-space to accomodate you.

Link

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Web zen: making stuff zen: "Xeni Jardin:


money making hobbies


box rivets


paint chip card holders


block posters


cheap screen printing


compound microscope


drawbot

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!).

Image: Aqua Teen Bomber Force t-shirt: Link.

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Majority of music execs hate DRM: "Cory Doctorow:
A new Jupiter Research report reveals that the majority of music execs don't like DRM and think that they could sell more music without it. So, let's see: music fans hate DRM, retailers have DRM, musicians and labels hate DRM, and music execs hate DRM. DRM doesn't work. DRM encourages honest people to save their money and rip off (DRM-free) music on P2P instead. So... Why do we still have DRM?

The survey was conducted between December and January, before Jobs spoke up against DRM technology. It showed that 54 per cent of executives surveyed believe current DRM systems are too restrictive, and that 62 per cent believe that dumping DRM would boost legal digital music sales.

That 62 per cent reflects differently in different sectors: at labels, 48 per cent believe losing DRM would boost sales; outside labels, 73 per cent of music executives think dumping these technologies would boost the market.

Link

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Simply Brilliant: iPod dock in car cassette deck: "

Not often do we come across a piece of gear that makes us wish we'd thought of it. But when we saw this in-dash iPod dock (more of a slot, really) adapted from a car cassette deck, we dusted off the award statuette. With a Kenwood head unit, you can select the iPod as a source so song information and playlists are visible on the stereo's LCD readout — good to have, since your iPod's clickwheel and screen will be a little obstructed. And that Apple button is a nice touch.

Tragically, the highly evolved dock is a one-shot mod of a dashboard cassette player done by CarDomain.com user JPPadula, and it's doubtful he's taking orders. We hope that some smart manufacturers are paying attention, but in the meantime, Alpine's iDA-X001 can stand in as the next best thing. — Peter Pachal

Jalopnik, via Coolest Gadgets

"

(Via SCI FI Tech Blog.)

unbelievable

Teacher faces jail time over "accidental porn" in classroom: "Xeni Jardin:
The Connecticut substitute school teacher who exposed 11 and 12-year-old students to porn in the classroom -- unintentionally, she says, because of malware on an infected PC -- may now go to jail. If her claims are true, she'll be the first American ever jailed for having had the misfortune of being forced to use a buggy school computer, with incompetent or nonexistent tech support from that school's administration despite repeated requests for help.

From the New York Times story excerpted below, it sure sounds like the school administrators bungled the hell out of this one, and are now scapegoating Julie Amero instead of fessing up to their own failure to protect children:

Ms. Amero’s husband, Wes Volle, was emphatic in saying she was clueless about computers and was in over her head once the pop-ups began. Mr. Volle, a graphics designer, accused the school system of sacrificing his wife to deflect attention from its own failure to install effective filters on its computers.

‘The computer was infected long before Julie walked into that room,’ he said. No other staff members in the southeastern Connecticut district have been charged or are expected to be charged.

During the trial, Robert Hartz, the information services manager for Norwich’s schools, said the computer’s filters that would have blocked such ads were not fully operational, since they had lacked the proper updated information for several weeks.

In an interview, Pam Aubin, superintendent of the Norwich schools, said that Mr. Hartz had ordered an upgrade, but that the supplier had sent it to the wrong e-mail address, using ‘B’ for Bob rather than ‘R’ for Robert in Mr. Hartz’s name.

reg-free NYT Link.

Brian Krebs at the Washington Post interviewed Ms. Amero, and has a thorough, updated writeup on the case here: Link (Thanks, Robin)

Previously:

Teacher faces 40 years for porn in classroom, blames adware

Reader comments: Robin Hendrickson says,

This exact same thing has happened to me in my classroom. Luckily, I knew how to close the flurry of porn windows (it still took a little while) and my students aren't as young. The computers now in most classrooms are more powerful (and vulnerable) than people realize, and the fact that this hapless sub is facing jail time is absurd. They are treating her as though she walked in and said 'Today, children, we're going to learn about gang bangs. Now gather 'round the monitor!'

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

I had always suspected in this fave movie

Invasion of Iraq prophesied in old Harryhausen movie - video: "Mark Frauenfelder:
Robyn says:

An ancient magician-oracle accurately predicts and describes a future war, in the city of Bagdad (from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad).

Harryhausen, the prophet?!

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:

• Ray Harryhausen tribute site with lots of good clips

• Ray Harryhausen's Village People

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

posted because of the wprd "proprioception" - love finding a new word

Extra Senses on BBC Radio 4: "David Pescovitz:
The BBC Radio 4 is airing a five part series called Extra Senses about the senses beyond the classical five of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. In the first episode, host Graham Easton visited the Institute of Psychiatry's Pain Research Laboratory and talked about masochistic sideshow performer The Torture King. Programme 2 will be about balance. It'll be interesting to find out which other senses they'll explore. Maybe proprioception? Link to the program archive (via Mind Hacks)

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Interesting read on copy protection

Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD broken - processing keys extracted: "Cory Doctorow:
Arnezami, a hacker on the Doom9 forum, has published a crack for extracting the 'processing key' from a high-def DVD player. This key can be used to gain access to every single Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disc.

Previously, another Doom9 user called Muslix64 had broken both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD by extracting the 'volume keys' for each disc, a cumbersome process. This break builds on Muslix64's work but extends it -- now you can break all AACS-locked discs.

AACS took years to develop, and it has been broken in weeks. The developers spent billions, the hackers spent pennies.

For DRM to work, it has to be airtight. There can't be a single mistake. It's like a balloon that pops with the first prick. That means that every single product from every single vendor has to perfectly hide their keys, perfectly implement their code. There can't be a single way to get into the guts of the code to retrieve the cleartext or the keys while it's playing back. All attackers need is a single mistake that they can use to compromise the system.

There is no future in which bits will get harder to copy. Instead of spending billions on technologies that attack paying customers, the studios should be confronting that reality and figuring out how to make a living in a world where copying will get easier and easier. They're like blacksmiths meeting to figure out how to protect the horseshoe racket by sabotaging railroads.

The railroad is coming. The tracks have been laid right through the studio gates. It's time to get out of the horseshoe business.

But then I realized why I first didn't find the Media Key: it was removed from memory after the Volume ID was retrieved and the VUK calculated. I also saw that in my 'corrupt' memdump the VUK, Vol ID, Media Key and the Title Key MAC were all closely clustered in memory: in the first 50kb (of the entire multi megabyte file!) but there were large empty parts around it. Almost as if it was cleaned up.

This gave me an idea: what I wanted to do is 'record' all changes in this part of memory during startup of the movie. Hopefully I would catch something insteresting. In the end I did something a little more effiecient: I used the hd dvd vuk extractor (thanks ape!) and adapted it to slow down the software player (while scanning its memory continously) and at the very moment the Media Key (which I now knew: my bottom-up approach really paid off here) was detected it halted the player. I then made a memdump with WinHex. I now had the feeling I had something.

And I did. Not suprisingly the very first C-value was a hit. I then checked if everyting was correct, asked for confirmation and here we are.

Link

(via Engadget)

See also:

HD-DVD/Blu-Ray cracker muslix64 interviewed

Report: HD-DVD copy protection defeated

Felten and Halderman on high-def DRM crack

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

yeah yeah yeah baby

Beatles Not Exclusive to iTunes? Apple Trademark Licensing Terms?: "This FoxNews.com story offers some confirmation that the Beatles will offering their music catalog digitally. Neil Aspinall, head of Apple Corps Ltd. confirms that all 13 core Beatles albums have been remastered.



There have been a l..."

(Via MacRumors.)

The science of Godzilla - needful thingie

Science of Godzilla: "David Pescovitz:

Over at the Tetrapod Zoology blog, Darren Naish wrote a fantastic post about Godzilla's biology and her place in the hypothetical taxon Godzillasaurus. From the post:

Godzilla is meant to be something like 100 m tall and between 20,000 and 60,000 tons in weight (his size fluctuates in the various films). Of course lots of people who like doing sums and talking about cubes and so on have used the mathematics of scaling to show why - duh - Godzilla couldn't really walk, stand, or even exist. Michael Dexter presents the argument here, and also brings in thoughts on blood pressure, circulation and physiology to show that a living Godzilla would variously fall to pieces, tear itself apart, have its organs turn to jelly, explode due to a build-up of internal heat... you get the picture.

Link (Thanks, COOP!)

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

Can you say oink

Homeland Security spending: idiotic pork: "Cory Doctorow:
The USA has earmaked billions for 'Homeland Security' but the money is being allocated by capricious, idiotic bureaucrats who take funding away from Democrat-leaning coastal cities like New York and shower it on 'heartland' towns, with bizarre stipulations. A tiny Massachusetts hamlet was given the largest grant in Mass, but with the stipulation that the money not be spent on useful equipment like fire-engines.

When the fire department in the tiny Berkshire hamlet of Cheshire needed a new fire truck, it asked Uncle Sam for a little help.

The response last month was stunning: a $665,962 homeland security grant.

The award was nearly 26 times the annual budget of the volunteer fire department in the town of 3,500. And the rub: The department is not allowed to spend it on a fire truck...The town does have the Cheshire Cheese Monument, a sizable concrete sculpture of a cheese press commemorating a 1,450-pound cheese hunk given by town elders to Thomas Jefferson in 1801. But its value as a terrorist target is not readily apparent...

'We really needed the truck,' he said.

Link

(via Schneier)

"

(Via Boing Boing.)

well f*ck you too walmart

Walmart Rejects Firefox and Safari: "babooo404 writes 'Last week, Walmart launched their online video download service. Immediately there were posts that the service did not work with the Firefox or Safari browsers. There was a collective, 'WTF' when this happened as this is 2007, not 1997. Now it appears that reports are out that Walmart has completely turned off the ability to get into the application at all by Firefox, Safari or any other browser it does not like.'

"

(Via Slashdot.)