Lot 49

A first for New Scientist: publishing an article about copyleft under the copyleft license. Monkey read, monkey do -- I ordered a case of OpenCola from Think Geek after finishing the story. Also, monkey think, monkey move mouse. Researcher Daniella Meeker's observation is a bit troubling: "We found that [the monkey] became quite reluctant to move his arm to the reach command once the cursor was introduced into the game. Apparently it was easier just to think about reaching." The same is true of ethics...easier to think about than to act on. But there's more to life than Enron, like a map of Australian toilets. Somewhere in here, there's a joke about flushing tax dollars away. Oh well.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:44 AM | Permalink

Brazil to Scare Smokers with Pictures on Packs. Among the images being considered: John Ashcroft. The Japanese meanwhile have made the networked home a reality. According to IDG News Service, the house never runs out of beer. A drawback: reliance on modern electrical devices means vulnerability to electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks, or so said Dr. Lowell Wood in testimony before Congress. Which doesn't preclude low tech attacks: the FBI is warning that terrorists have been scouring the Web for information related to the US water supply. Pepsi (PBG), which sells about 5.5% of the world's bottled water, closed up 2.28% today. Also worth noting: the National Institute of Health today announced the opening of a rat store, where researchers can procure "high-quality laboratory rats." Located in Bethesda. MD, NIH sits just outside Washington, DC, which explains a lot.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:30 PM | Permalink

Salon reports that media coverage since the September 11th attacks has contained fewer facts. I'm reminded of the way companies reduce the size of products in lieu of raising prices, as candy makers did in the 1970s when the cost of chocolate increased. However, those mourning lost facts may console themselves with knowledge that while you may know less about what the government is up to, the government would like to know more about you, particularly if you travel.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 05:00 PM | Permalink

Toilet Paper. Custom printed.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:47 PM | Permalink

I hadn't realized that Minority Report is based on a Philip K. Dick story. Having seen the trailer at a showing of The Fellowship of the Ring, I thought the film looked pretty interesting. Now I'll definitely see it.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:33 PM | Permalink

World Cup hooligans face police 'spidergun'

Any hooligans causing trouble at the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament in Japan and Korea may find themselves trapped by police using a net-launching gun, currently on test. Police in Sapporo, in Hokkaido region, North Japan, are currently testing a gun that entangles assailants in a five-metre square net so that they can be restrained more effectively. The city will host a match between England and Argentina on 7 June, which is considered a high risk for street violence.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:37 AM | Permalink

Scientific American has an excellent article, Teaching Robot Dogs New Tricks, on hacking and the DMCA as applied to Sony's Aibo.

Aibo, the Sony Corporation's popular robot dog, has delighted scores of critics and consumers since its introduction. But the plastic pup has also caused its creators some grief. Sony is currently struggling to resolve a copyright dispute that centers on the work of a quirky hacker known only as AiboPet. The controversy poses serious questions about the proper use of robots in homes and exposes a potentially stifling effect of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. The copyright at the heart of the case protects Aibo's encrypted brain. AiboPet violated that copyright when he cracked the robot's source code to reverse-engineer software that allows Aibo owners to teach their pets to dance, speak, obey wireless commands and share the color video that serves as their vision, among other things. None of the programs are usable without Sony hardware and software. They earned AiboPet no money. He never revealed the encryption code or the program he used to defeat it. Still, because the DMCA makes it illegal to break any encrypted digital code, AiboPet's actions made him a criminal. The fun began when Sony decided to treat him like one.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 09:51 AM | Permalink

Warehouse 23 Basement. Try opening one of the boxes.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 02:47 PM | Permalink

Army Lost Track of Anthrax Bacteria

The Army's premier biowarfare research facility at Fort Detrick, Md., lost track of more than two dozen potentially dangerous biological specimens around 1991, including some containing the microbe that causes anthrax, according to scientists who worked there at the time and documents from a 1992 internal Army investigation that looked into the loss. Moreover, Army investigators were told in 1992 that a Fort Detrick biological warfare research laboratory apparently had been the site of unauthorized anthrax research during weekends and evenings earlier that year, according to the documents, filed as part of a pending lawsuit.

What exactly is "unauthorized anthrax research"?

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:49 PM | Permalink

‘Sucks’ sites to be doled out for free

Cyber-gripers, take heart. You and your “ThisCompanySucks.com” Web site have a patron. Free speech lawyer Ed Harvilla is worried that too many “sucks” domains have been taken away from owners and given to their target companies. So he and some silent partners have developed a system to dole out “sucks” Web sites — and he’s given them away for free.

One of the reasons cited by WIPO that VivendiUniversalSucks.com was trademark infringement: the company might "post a site suggesting it 'sucked' — such as a vacuum cleaner retailer." That makes sense. What more logical brand extension could there be for an entertainment company than vacuums? Theaters showing Universal films could use them to suck up spilled popcorn. And Vivendi Vacuums has sort of ring to it.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:50 PM | Permalink

Cow Used in Man-Made Spider Web

A Montreal biotech company and the U.S. Army say they've developed the first man-made spider silk, made from mammal cell cultures of a cow, with properties similar to the real thing. Nexia's BioSteel fibers will be used for commercial products such as medical sutures, biodegradable fishing lines and soft body armor. Nexia and the Army jointly published their ground-breaking research Thursday in the journal Science.

Picking the bugs off one's spider silk body armor should be fun.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 02:35 PM | Permalink

Enron Code of Ethics book, eBay item 1061797199. Auction ends Jan-18-02 07:06:40 PST. At $202.50 presently, it's rather an expensive work of fiction.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:15 PM | Permalink

Europe GPS Plan Shelved

Exasperated European officials say U.S. pressure appears to have torpedoed a $3 billion project to build a European version of the U.S. global positioning system, which uses signals from orbiting satellites to track geographical position within 36 meters. The proposed system, dubbed Galileo, was intended to give Europeans more autonomy, both industrially and militarily. That's no small concern, since the United States can selectively block access to GPS, as it has during the military campaign in Afghanistan.

I'm surprised. While Europeans may bristle at Microsoft's hegemony, dependence on US-based GPS will prove even more limiting.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 10:00 AM | Permalink

Having noticed a previous post about Coincidence Design, a visitor to Lot 49 passed along a link to this article, Rent-a-Stalker Online?

Precisely because some people are, in fact, prepared to go to such great lengths to find true love, it's easy for the line between reality and fiction to blur. As it does with the mysterious Nick, at Coincidence Design. Nick claims he replaced his true phone number with a fake one when his site's popularity began climbing in December. This, too, appears to be untrue, since the registration shows that phone number was input the day the site was created, 18 months ago. But putting aside questions about Nick -- is his Web site a hoax or a legitimate business?

It's a hoax, but the story behind it bears reading.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 09:33 AM | Permalink

A powered exoskeleton could transform the average joe into a supersoldier

Lamont Drechsel is a mild-mannered mechanical engineer, but right now he looks like the violent offspring of G.I. Jane and Robocop. Clad in camouflage fatigues, he is strapped into a Plexiglas framework hinged at his elbows, hips, and other joints to follow his movements. He kneels, stretches, and casts menacing glances around a machine shop at Sarcos, the Salt Lake City, Utah, engineering firm that made the apparatus. "It's surprisingly comfortable," he says, breaking into a grin. "I feel like I can do pretty much whatever I want."

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 05:01 PM | Permalink

Anti-Terror Campaign Cloaking Human Rights Abuse

The anti-terror campaign led by the United States is inspiring opportunistic attacks on civil liberties around the world, Human Rights Watch warned in its annual global survey released today. ...Some countries, such as Russia, Uzbekistan, and Egypt, are using the war on terror to justify abusive military campaigns or crackdowns on domestic political opponents. In the United States and Western Europe, measures designed to combat terrorism are threatening long-held human rights principles.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 03:02 PM | Permalink

This is one of the more interesting clocks I've seen online. Actually, I haven't seen that many. But it's still pretty cool.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:11 PM | Permalink

On the lunch menu at Portico on Beale Street: Tuna Dynasty. Likely they use genetic testing to verify royal lineage. Or not? Slashdot has a link to a beta tester's comments about the reanimated Napster. I give it two years to live.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 03:03 PM | Permalink

It's a surprisingly chilly day here in San Francisco. I'm busy writing a story about SONICBlue. If you're looking for something worth reading, try Divining the Future of Law and Technology.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 03:34 PM | Permalink

Who Killed Clinton's Dog? What did Buddy know, and when did he know it?

"It was strictly an accident. The dog just darted out." That is what the media wants us to believe about the death of Buddy, Bill Clinton's 4-year-old Labrador retriever. (See "Who Is Buddy?" Wall Street Journal, Dec. 1997.) But is the truth about this—the latest Clinton casualty—that conveniently simple? What do we really know about Buddy's death? Who stood to benefit?

Better than The Onion.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 04:53 PM | Permalink

Report: Poverty, Disease Worsening. Curiously, there's still no Poverty Channel. I guess that sort of thing perplexes advertisers.

The world needs a global war on poverty and environmental degradation that is as aggressive and well funded as the war on terrorism, reports State of the World 2002, which was released today by the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington D.C.-based research organization. “Ten years after the Rio Earth Summit, we are still far from ending the economic and environmental marginalization that afflict billions of people,” says Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. “Despite the prosperity of the 1990s, the divide between rich and poor is widening in many countries, undermining social and economic stability. And pressures on the world’s natural systems, from global warming to the depletion and degradation of resources such as fisheries and fresh water, have further destabilized societies.”

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 04:12 PM | Permalink

According to Popular Mechanics, Electromagnetic Bombs Could Throw Civilization Back 200 Years. That's in terms of technology. Socially and politically, we're already hastening back toward the Dark Ages.

The next Pearl Harbor will not announce itself with a searing flash of nuclear light or with the plaintive wails of those dying of Ebola or its genetically engineered twin. You will hear a sharp crack in the distance. By the time you mistakenly identify this sound as an innocent clap of thunder, the civilized world will have become unhinged. Fluorescent lights and television sets will glow eerily bright, despite being turned off. The aroma of ozone mixed with smoldering plastic will seep from outlet covers as electric wires arc and telephone lines melt. Your Palm Pilot and MP3 player will feel warm to the touch, their batteries overloaded. Your computer, and every bit of data on it, will be toast. And then you will notice that the world sounds different too. The background music of civilization, the whirl of internal-combustion engines, will have stopped. Save a few diesels, engines will never start again. You, however, will remain unharmed, as you find yourself thrust backward 200 years, to a time when electricity meant a lightning bolt fracturing the night sky. This is not a hypothetical, son-of-Y2K scenario. It is a realistic assessment of the damage the Pentagon believes could be inflicted by a new generation of weapons--E-bombs.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 04:28 PM | Permalink

The One Ring, only $295 each (you can order up to ten).

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 03:48 PM | Permalink

Wayne Klick has posted a favorable review of my book, Reflecting Fires, at Amazon.com. Four stars. I'm quite pleased.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:12 PM | Permalink

What's Wrong With This Picture?

For all their economic clout and cultural sway, the ten great multinationals profiled in our latest chart--AOL Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann, AT&T and Liberty Media--rule the cosmos only at the moment. The media cartel that keeps us fully entertained and permanently half-informed is always growing here and shriveling there, with certain of its members bulking up while others slowly fall apart or get digested whole. But while the players tend to come and go--always with a few exceptions--the overall Leviathan itself keeps getting bigger, louder, brighter, forever taking up more time and space, in every street, in countless homes, in every other head.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:22 PM | Permalink

Is CD copy-protection illegal?

Record companies' efforts to protect CDs against digital copying are beginning to draw scrutiny from lawmakers concerned that the plans might violate the law. On Friday, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., sent a letter to executives of the recording industry's trade association, asking whether anti-piracy technology on CDs might override consumers' abilities to copy albums they have purchased for personal use. A 1992 law allows music listeners to make some personal digital copies of their music. In return, recording companies collect royalties on the blank media used for this purpose. For every digital audio tape (DAT), blank audio CD, or minidisc sold, a few cents go to record labels. "I am particularly concerned that some of these technologies may prevent or inhibit consumer home-recording using recorders and media covered by the" Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA), Boucher wrote. "Any deliberate change to a CD by a content owner that makes (the allowed personal copies) no longer possible would appear to violate the content owner's obligations."

Boucher for President!

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 04:04 PM | Permalink

Face recognition technology a proven farce

Crowd surveillance kit using face recognition technology by Visionics has been a comic failure in tests by the Tampa, Florida police, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has discovered. By leveraging the Florida open-records law, the watchdog organization obtained system logs proving that the Visionics contraption has thus far failed to identify one single crook or pervert listed in the department's photographic database, while falsely identifying 'a large number' of innocent citizens.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:50 PM | Permalink

Lord of the Rings: What to Expect in the Other Lord of the Rings Films

And here's some good news for fans disappointed by some of FOTR's omissions: the DVD, being released later this year, should have an extra thirty to forty minutes of footage on it. The additions would include some much-needed interaction and development among the members of the Fellowship, an important aspect of the book that was weakly portrayed in the film. Another addition would include the sequence in which Gimli falls for Galadriel, a turning point for his distrust of Elves.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 01:43 PM | Permalink

Rise of Net 'Borders' Prompts Fears for Web's Future

It is the modern-day equivalent of a border sentry. When visitors try to enter UKBetting.com, a computer program checks their identification to determine where they're dialing in from. Most people are waved on through. Those from the United States, China, Italy and other countries where gambling laws are muddy, however, are flashed a sign in red letters that says "ACCESS DENIED" and are locked out of the Web site. For much of its life, the Internet has been seen as a great democratizing force, a place where nobody needs know who or where you are. But that notion has begun to shift in recent months, as governments and private businesses increasingly try to draw boundaries around what used to be a borderless Internet to deal with legal, commercial and terrorism concerns.

You have the right to free speech, as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it. - The Clash

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 09:16 AM | Permalink

Spam Restrictions Upheld

The California Court of Appeal for the First District has ruled that California's spam statute is constitutional and valid. This means that from now on, spammers must comply with its requirements or face legal liability and/or criminal punishment. Read the decision by clicking here.

It's about time.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:37 PM | Permalink

Thermal camera captures guilty faces

A camera that detects liars by monitoring the temperature of their face could lead to more effective screening procedures at airports and other high-security locations, according to US researchers. Norman Eberhardt and James Levine of the Mayo Clinic and Ioannis Pavlidis of Honeywell Laboratories, both in Minnesota, have developed the high-resolution thermal imaging camera. This can identify an instant rush of blood to the area around the eyes, a phenomenon that has been linked with lying.

Great news for those who've never told a lie.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 12:50 PM | Permalink

Legless Man Wanted in Pants Heist. That is a great headline.

Posted by Thomas Claburn at 07:21 PM | Permalink