This is broken — a NY subway advert bluescreen

This is why I LOOOVE Windows. It's always worth a good laugh. I use to see this thing all the time in Chicago. In fact Depaul on Jackson and Wabash had about 8 high-def widescreens that were intially running Windows. At any given time the majority would be bluescreened. it went on for months. It was a gas, but alas they switched to a better operating system. (Click on the image to view it full size.)

I stumbled on this on Webrats.com Fun and stupidity at its best, but there is no attribution or any information. It appears to be NY. Would love to know more information.

Jealousy: Apple gives Florida State students free iPod's to combat piracy

Ah, I'm jealous, very. :)

Original article: fsunews.com - FSU to sign deal with Apple

Via: Apple gives Florida State students a totally sweet deal - Engadget - www.engadget.com

The merry men of Rio — Police raid the woodland camp of robbers outside of Rio De Janeiro

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - Robbers living in the forest are legends like Robin Hood and his Merry Men -- or those in Brazil's crime-plagued city of Rio de Janeiro.

Police on Wednesday exchanged gunfire with a group of criminals who attacked tourists and joggers in the hilly Tijuca Forest in the city's posh South Zone. The robbers got away, but police found their camp and some of the booty.

'We found dozens of stolen credit cards, wallets and ammunition for pistols and assault rifles in the middle of the forest, which we believe is the gang's base,' a police officer said.

Muggings on footpaths in the Tijuca Forest and other hillside woods in Rio de Janeiro have become so common that park authorities have installed signs 'Beware of robberies' in some places.

From: Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com

Olympics athlete felled by Bee Sting

ATHENS (Reuters) - Danish mountain biker Mette Andersen had to pull out of the women's Olympic cross country race Friday after being attacked by a bee.

Anderson was stung on the second lap of the five-lap race and had a bad reaction, the whole of the left side of her chest swelling up.

She was receiving medical attention at the course on Mount Parnitha, just north of Athens.

Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com

keywords: bike, bicycling, wacky and weird, obscure / obscura, oddly enough

Syracuse newspaper article bashes wikipedia.org

Anyone who knows me knows that wikipedia.org is my absolute favorite website. As such I'm well beyond the need to defend it when people (whom obviously were raised by monkeys) attack it. I merely in my own smug and arrogant way tell them to pull their heads out of their butts and take a look around at the world at large. Wikipedia is the air we breath. Wikipedia is life itself. You can no sooner deny wikipedia than you could deny the fruits of the world's labor. Wikipedia functions on the same fundamental premise as that which keeps you from getting run over by a car or shot while you're walking down the street. People don't need to be paid money to do good they merely have to see the personal benefit in it.

These people who attack wikipedia are people who invariably think that nothing is any good unless they're getting paid to do it or they're paying somone for it. I say let them eat Encyclopædia Britannica

Today that person is Al Fasoldt, staff righter at the Syracuse Post-Standard. His own ignorance mocks him and it makes for very fun and interesting entertainment for the rest of us. Please do read: Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source

Follow up: Who Do You Trust, The Wiki Or The Reporter? on TechDirt.com

UPS deploys fuel cell-powered trucks in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

United Parcel Services (UPS) yesterday deployed three fuel cell-powered Dodge Sprinters for service in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Ann Arbor, MI. This launch marks the first use of medium-duty delivery vehicles powered by fuel cells in the U.S., made possible by an alliance between UPS, DaimlerChrysler AG, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

From UPS?s Brown Turns Green, Thanks to Fuel Cells

Around the Capital of Magic with the Bikemob — John Perry Barlow on his participation in New York's Critical Mass bicycle ride

This must be the most enjoyable thing I've read in weeks. I'm quoting quite liberally from John's post, practically the whole thing in fact, but please do jump over and visit his site and read the rest of the post at your own leisure.

I'm pleased to report that everybody behaved gracefully and with restraint. While we did routinely run red lights - YOU try to get 5000 bicycles to stop suddenly - the police were chill and even, it seemed, mildly supportive.

Observers on the sidewalks cheered and clapped as we rode past, though there was the very occasional taunt. (My favorite cultural assertion was the guy who yelled at us, 'Get a car, you fukkin' tree-huggin' fucks.') The bikers yelled, whooped, and whistled a lot. One guy even had a kind of drum kit on his handlebars that he whacked away on throughout the ride. Occasionally we broke into various chants, most commonly a refrain where some folks would shout, 'Bush Sucks,' and the larger mass would reply, 'FUCK BUSH!' Not terribly intelligent, I admit, but shouted with apparent heartfelt conviction. I couldn't get the grin off my face, and neither, it seemed, could anyone else, biker or spectator.

There appeared to be no planned route. We turned an arbitrary new direction whenever we encountered resistance, giving the route a very fractal quality. We ended up riding south to Houston, up 6th to 30th or so, over to Madison and north, across to Broadway on some street in the 50's, and back down Broadway through Times Square, down 7th past Madison Square Garden and then over to the East Village.

Finally, after about two hours, the police decided that it was time to put a stop to it, which they did with efficiency and dispassion. Mobilizing suddenly and in force around St. Mark's Place, they created a box canyon of blue, let it fill with about 250 bicyclists and then methodically, if arbitrarily, arrested them all and hauled them off. They were doing their jobs just as, in a sense, we we were doing ours. When one engages in civil disobedience, arrest is a natural consequence that he should expect. I'm just glad they didn't trap me in their noose.

And, even if they had, it would have been worth the moment when we cascaded down the long slope of Broadway into the incandescent canyon of Times Square. We felt like an irresistible river of anarchic order. The air was cool and perfect. For a moment, all things seemed possible. It occurred to me that a Bike to The Polls movement would be a useful thing to start...

From BarlowFriendz: Around the Capital of Magic with the Bikemob

"Bicycle printer" inventor and activist Joshua Kinberg arrested Saturday in NY during the RNC

Joshua Kinberg of Bikes Against Bush fame (previously posted about on mmeiser blog) was arrested for defacement of property over the weekend in New York while demonstrating his bicycle for a news interview. His bicycle, cell phone, computer and other equipment were confiscated and are being held until his trial. Ironically he had just used his invention to print "America is a free-speech zone" in water soluble chalk on the sidewalk as a demonstration for MSNBC reporter Ron Regan.

About the question of defacement of property:

Bikes Against Bush will utilize a water-soluble chalk mixture. It is the same material used for marking athletic fields. It is environmentally safe and removes easily with water, or naturally biodegrades within 15-30 days. Thus, while the messages may have the appearance of graffiti, this is certainly not an attempt to damage or deface property.
from Bikes Against Bush — FAQ

Always check your legal facts and document them before hand, that way when the NYPD arrest you on fraudulent charges in order to sensor you you'll have a great case. It is highly unlikely that Joshua Kinberg will get his equipment back until after the convention. I will definitely be following this closely and will be making further posts when I find out more about his legal representation. He seems like a very smart guy, I hope that in addition to getting legal advice on his invention, that he also had retained legal counsel prior to participation and demonstration at the RNC.

What most ticks me off about this whole thing is that his form of protest was unique and healthy. When the NYPD silences healthy, non-violent protest such as this they in fact fuel the flames of deviant protesters and encourage people to use more extreme and covert means in order to be heard. I'm very disappointed.

NYC IMC: Activist bike creator Joshua Kinberg arrested 8/28/2004

Download a video of the incident via bittorrent and DV Guide.

Cool new aluminum beer bottles

Beautiful, simple, design. It's nice to be able to post something whose face value is obvious ater that last post.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: AP - Business: Beer in aluminum bottles on the way

Bea Arthur of "Golden Girls" TV show fame sparks Terrorist Alert?

Ok, this is just a sign that all the pressure of living as a "nation in fear" is starting to crack us up. What is "this"? Well we're all either cracking up because there's little to no truth to this and it's spreading like wildfire, or it really happened and the TSA is really harassing 81 year old ladies with pen-knives.

Bea Arthur sparked a security scare at Logan Airport in Boston this week when she tried to board a Cape Air flight with a pocketknife in her handbag.

The "Golden Girls" star, now 81, was flagged by a Transportation Security Administration agent, who discovered the knife - a strict no-no following 9/11.

"She started yelling that it wasn't hers and said 'The terrorists put it there,' " a fellow passenger said. "She kept yelling about the 'terrorists, the terrorists, the terrorists.' "From Philadelphia Daily News | 08/26/2004 | Howard Gensler | Could terrorists really Bea after her?

The Details — How bad news propagates.
Turn back now all those who are faint of heart.

I can't determine which is more screwed up the reporting or the actual incident. I can't find a single news source that credibly reports the facts. This is some sort of instant urban legend. Some sort of April fools joke gone terribly wrong. As an example I point to BoingBoing's coverage:

Bea Arthur's fight against the Transport Security Agency
Bea Arthur forgot to take her pocketknife out of her purse last week at Logan airport and when the TSA found it, she ran around screaming, "The terrorists! The terrorists put a knife in my purse! We're all doomed!" She was being funny -- it's what she does. She's the funniest of all the Golden Girls, that's for sure.

The TSA didn't take it well.From Boing Boing: Bea Arthur's fight against the Transport Security Agency

Now, as you know I love the BoingBoing blog, but Cory Doctorow reports that she screamed "We're all doomed!" and cites only the Philadelphia Daily News article which I posted the corresponding quote from above. At no point in the Philly article does it state that Bea SCREAMED "We're all doomed!", nor does the Philly use an exclamation point, nor are the quotes Cory used a series used in rapid progression or even in that order, nor are these exact quotes from Bea's mouth. These are actually in fact quotes different people have attributed to Bea at different times including a random lady near where security stopped her and TSA officials when she got on the plan.

I'm sure you could take the words I've written or said in the last half an hour and string them together like I was plotting a coup. Cory's post is completely misleading and completely untruthful. These words are taken out of context and in fact never necessarily came from Bea's mouth! It would appear that in the space of one person Cory Doctorow has completely recreated the whole story.

Moving on, the San Francisco Gates Coverage. SFGate.com — GOLDEN GIRL CAUSES TERRORIST SCARE IN BOSTON No need to quote it, this SF Gate article is the exact same as the Philly article. Neither of them credit any source, so I'm lead to believe that one of them or perhaps both of them are simply plagiarizing some other article without attribution or even checking the facts. With out attribution any future readers have no way to verify the authenticity or track sources either. It would be better had they not reported this incident at all rather than add to the misinformation.

We now move on to WABC-TV, New York.

'Golden Girls' Star's Comments Don't Get a Laugh at Airport
(NEW YORK - WABC, August 26, 2004) A security scare at the Boston airport involving a heretofore unknown terror threat: namely 'Golden Girl' Bea Arthur.

The 81-year-old actress reportedly left a pen-knife in her handbag, while boarding a 'Cape Air' flight.

Sure it happens, but where she went wrong was to tell security that she didn't put it there, a terrorist did.

Joking about such matters is illegal. But the TSA let the emmy-winning star board the plane anyway."
From 7Online.com: "Golden Girls" Star's Comments Don't Get a Laugh at Airport

I believe it would not be out of order for me to call their coverage downright pathetic. While they have not included few detailed facts that could be wrong they're whole transcript is full of assumptions. Notice how the pocket knife is listed as a pen-knife. Notice how they shorten the article by making rapid generalizations and summarization. Notice the poor grammar and sentence structure. It's almost as bad as mine and I don't have an editor nor a budget. Bad news? "Sure it happens," it did with WABC-TV. ; )

Several sites such as the Seattle Post Intelligencer report the quotes and article as originating from IMDB.com, but I've been unable to find such information on IMDB.

In conclusion, NOT one of these sources bothered to verify there information so far as I can tell. They all have different facts, most of which are obviously wrong, and the only one who properly quoted their sources was the Seattle Post Intelligencer although I cannot verify even that. Not one of the articles includes verifiable sources. Not even the names of the TSA officials, not the name of the quoted bystander are included in any report. It's a mess of misinformation propagation. The tail wagging the dog.

Now, that said if Bea Arthur is running around airports screaming about terrorists and doom I think it's pretty important or at least pretty funny, but if this load of clown poop turns out to be nothing more than a bunch of misquotes and sloppy journalism I think every one of these sources owes their readership an apology.

Note: As of the time of this post, the above news sources represent nearly all the news articles available at news.google.com

Nest sofa - Engadget - www.engadget.com

I love it, but how to describe it. It's public art, it's fun, it's a benh, maybee a sofa, sculpture, functional. It's a public nest bench!

Via Nest sofa - Engadget - www.engadget.com and MoCoLoco: More Tak

New engine runs on compressed air

Very promising new engine runs on compressed air. It's practicle application is still undetermined.

A garden buggy is the first commercially operated vehicle in Australia to use air as a fuel instead of petrol. But a critic says the air motor would be no use in cars.

The vehicle, which is used to pick up garden material, will maintain the lawns of Melbourne's Fiztroy Gardens after its launch today.
— News in Science - Green buggy runs on hot air - 25/08/2004

The Di Pietro engine is a rotary design with two moving parts and, given air in sufficient quantity and pressure, is capable of producing about the same amount of power as a 5-litre V8 petrol engine. It weighs only 13 kilograms, compared with about 90 kilograms for conventional designs
— from ...or even run on air? - National - www.theage.com.au (free registration required)

There is an excellent Real Audio video clip showing its internal workings at ABC News Australia: New Inventors: Rotary Piston Engine.

'Humanizing and democratizing the net' — Wired interview with Craig, that Craigslist guy

Quotes and thoughts on quotes from the Wired interview with Craig Newmark, that Craigslist guy. A follow up from my earlier post Craiglist reaches a billion page views.

WIRED: What is craigslist's greatest contribution to society?
NEWMARK: Just by being good guys, we've created a culture of trust and fairness. The site makes it easier for people to get everyday stuff done, like selling things and finding an apartment.

It's all about the good overall experience: good people, good vision, good site, good culture, a culture of good. The primary value that differentiates Craigslist from it's competitors is in simply being good. Amazing how one can build a business by simply offering a better experience than the next guy.

I admit that when I think of the money one could make from all this, I get a little twinge. But I'm pretty happy with nerd values: Get yourself a comfortable living, then do a little something to change the world.

Craig is a hactivist through and through.

Really, the only thing I'm missing in terms of quality of life is a permanent parking space.

Glad to see he's keeping it simple, success hasn't gone to his head.

I bet Jeff Bezos has a parking space. How would you compare yourself to Amazon's CEO?
Amazon is great. But Jeff decided he wanted to make a business. Craigslist was a happy accident.

So Craig doesn't want Craigslist to be a "business" in the true sense of the word, I wonder how he would describe it? I wouldn't go expecting him to call it a "community" either. I'm sure he has a much more highly developed concept of what it is, and I'd really love to know. The Wired interviewer really missed out on following though on this question. In fact it occurs to me this interview is a "boxed" interview, definitely not done via email, but obviously very short. I wonder.

What could Bezos learn from craigslist?
I'd like Jeff to listen to customers a little more. I'm a sucker for mystery series, but I still can't get a straightforward list of my favorite stuff. Ninety percent of the function of our site is based on suggestions from users.

Google's touchy-feely corporate mantra is "Don't be evil." What's yours?
Give people a break.

A break from what?
A break from how difficult our lives are. It's like, if you're walking out of your apartment building and somebody is coming the other way with an armful of groceries, you hold the door. It feels good - it's the neighborly thing to do. And our species survives by cooperating.

Ha, simple, sweet and to the point. More reiteration on the common themes I cite of providing good experience and building on social capital.

What poses the major threat to that survival?
Kleptocrats and sociopathic organizations that have the almighty dollar as their only goal.

Are you saying that capitalism is flawed?
We've seen that people in corporations often make moral compromise - what I like to call the Halliburton crime syndicate. They're the epitome of being unfair.

We're well beyond such ridiculous generalizations as "anti-corporate". Kleptocracy and sociopathy are two primary problems facing modern corporate institutions most obviously seen in the fallout from the Enron and Worldcom scandals as well as Google's attempt to become a public corporation and maintain their policy of "not being evil".

When are you going to run for office?
My focus is on restoring democracy to America. We have to restore the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. That said, I have no interest in running for office. That kind of job sucks.

Very interesting, as a developer he sees his ability to use technology to engineer social change as being far more effective than effecting change through politics. This is something not openly addressed, but I'm sure if there was a study done you'd find that it's quite common among programers and tech people. I believe it to be a core value of hactivism, a lack of faith in other political models and an embracing and creation of new mean and models. It's a core element of our current rapid evolution in the technological world.

You're also a cyberpunk buff. How has, say, William Gibson's Neuromancer influenced the way you've run craigslist?
Those books talk about a future that's exciting technologically but darker, where everyday people have less of a voice and are increasingly controlled by big organizations. I figure we can be a counter-example.

No real explanation needed, he believes in small organizations, giving people a better voice and that the two directly relate.

At the end of Neuromancer, the hacker cowboy hero gets a huge payday. When's yours?
I'm not in a hurry. Our planning horizon is 200 years, or until the singularity.

Not sure what he means by "until the singularity" it has too many possible meanings. Of course that's part of the reason why he said it.

All quotes are from: Wired 12.09: Mr. Craigslist, Master of the Nerdiverse

Be sure to check out Craigs blog. There's a nice response to eBay's purchase of 25% of Craigslist.craigblog: eBay and craigslist.

via Joi Ito's Web: Interview with Craig from Craigslist and Boing Boing: Craig of Craigslist interview.

The Next Social Revolution

"In a recent interview, Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs) discussed the possibility of a 'new economic system' born of 'unconscious cooperation' embodied by such technologies as Google links and Amazon lists, Wikipedia, wireless devices using unlicensed spectrum, Web logs, and open-source software. Rheingold speculates that 'the technology of the Internet, reputation systems, online communities, mobile devices...may make some new economic system possible....We had markets, then we had capitalism, and socialism was a reaction to industrial-era capitalism. There's been an assumption that since communism failed, capitalism is triumphant, therefore humans have stopped evolving new systems for economic production.' However, Rheingold is worried that established companies with business models that are threatened by these new technologies could 'quash such nascent innovations as file-sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of falling behind the rest of the world.'

— From Slashdot | The Next Social Revolution?

Q: If so, it's a good bet not all companies will be happy with the changes.

A: New digital technologies are creating a crisis in the business models of the companies that depend on having a monopoly on distribution. Look at MP3 blogs: We're now seeing bands that are saying, "Please pirate my material. Here it is." They make money from that. They get bookings from that. They build an audience on that.

Q: Are there more such conflicts and opportunities to come?

A: Assigning frequencies to license holders...is an old-fashioned scheme...based on technologies of the 1920s. We now have technologies that make it possible to use the spectrum the way packets use the Internet. Instead of having a circuit-switched analog system in which you have to have an end-to-end connection, you just send your packets out with their addresses through this network and they find their way. It's much more efficient. It makes for millions more broadcasters in the Internet space. This is all pointing to a kind of voluntary sharing of your property.

Q: Does the pushback by companies threatened by these trends, such as the record and movie companies, threaten innovation?

A: Yes. Never before in history have we been able to see incumbent businesses protect business models based on old technology against creative destruction by new technologies. And they're doing it by manipulating the political process. The telegraph didn't prevent the telephone, the railroad didn't prevent the automobile. But now, because of the immense amounts of money that they're spending on lobbying and the need for immense amounts of money for media, the political process is being manipulated by incumbents.

Q: What might keep these powerful incumbents from holding back this tide?

A: You've got to have some huge force outside of the United States, where it's getting locked down. What if China says, "The FCC doesn't rule us. We're going to stop assigning frequencies within our borders. We're going to regulate devices so that they play fair with each other, and we're going to open up spectrum." That's going to make the U.S. an economic and technological backwater.

Then there's always the idea that maybe we're just beginning to see disruptive technologies. Maybe something is just going to blow it away. Certainly we've seen that over and over again in recent decades."

Full Article: MSNBC -
Howard Rheingold's Latest Connection

'Butt Seriously' — is there a big butt trend in New York?

Motordyke I dedicate this post to you. I hope your leg is feeling better.

I ussually don't concern myself with reading about butts (I prefer to experience them in the real world), but then I've never read such great literary, NY insider, color commentary on the secrete (to me) world of the white female butt. Thank you Village Voice and Sloane Crosley for making me a more well rounded and happier individual.

"White girls with big asses, man. There goes another one, a J. Crew cardigan riding up atop a buttock so big, so out of place, it makes you wonder if Serena Williams woke up this morning wondering where her ass went. Temperatures are going up, taking hemlines with them, and the trendy white ass is hanging out there like a couple of upside-down Tasty-D scoops. They're taking over this city. They're everywhere I turn: in dressing rooms, in store windows, in that pond with the little boats - anywhere I can look down and see my own reflection.

Sloane Crosley is a writer living in New York. She likes to keep her ass out of trouble as much as possible."

From The Village Voice: Butt Seriously by Sloane Crosley. It's a great read wether you're you like the subject matter or not.

via adrants Adrants: Media Tries to Fight Proliferation of White Girls With Big Butts