Flying without ID won't work? Try making your own ID.

from Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin

BB reader Mark Olson says,

The CBS affiliate here in Kansas City (KCTV) just did an investigation into airport security, and proved that it doesn't matter what kind of ID you show when you try to board a plane, as long as the ID looks kind of real. So while people test the system and try to fly without an ID at all, I think the bigger story is that requiring an ID at all is a total sham security measure. The TV station made an ID from scratch and the screeners accepted it with no questions asked. They even have an interactive display on their website showing how they created it and all of the crazy stuff they included on it. Kind of funny and scary at the same time.

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Neuros OSD: a set-top box that treats you like an owner

Augustine: this is product-development 2.0

from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

The Neuros OSD isn't just a radically open set-top box -- it's also a radically empowering hunk of technology. Neuros gave me two of their open-source/free-software video recorders for my class to play with all semester. Each week, two of my students took these home and played with them. A few students complained about the clunky user-interface, but others had overwhelming nerdgasms at the power of the tiny, Linux-based box.

The OSD can record from any analog video source, from a TiVo to a satellite box to a DVD player to a games console. It records to any removable media you plug into it, such as a USB thumb-drive or a hard-drive -- so you can record your favorite DVDs, your best video-games, or your TV shows straight to drive. Needless to say, it'll play back from all this media as well.

The OSD is networkable, and can schedule programming in advance like a TiVo. It can play back all the standard download formats, including Xvid and Divx.

Best of all, the OSD is open: anyone can hack its firmware and add features to it (Neuros will even pay hackers for adding features to the box). Unlike traditional PVRs that come lumbered with anti-copying technology to appease the Hollysaurs and anti-hacking technology to appease the investsaurs, the OSD actually treats you, the customer, as the owner of your device, and encourages you to wring every possible erg of value from your purchase. Link

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Your old CD ROMs could help kill a bogus patent!

from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

EFF and its friends are on the verge of busting one of the most bogus technology patents ever granted, and they need your help to drive a spike through its heart. The patent in question is Acacia's ridiculous ownership over the idea of shipping CD ROMs and other media with hyperlinks in them.

To help bust this overly broad patent, we are looking for Prior Art that shows the use of this technology before 1994. Specifically, we are seeking the following items:

1. NetNews CD-ROMs, sold by Sterling Software, preferably volumes #1 through #35. These CDs may have been also available through CD Publishing Corporation.

or

2. Other CD-ROMs that were distributed in 1993 or earlier that contained hypertext content or were installation disks for applications that linked to Internet content.

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Orange Japanese watch tells time with intersecting polyhedrons

from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow TokyoFlash's latest wildly impractical, handsome Japanese wristwatch is the EleeNo WebTime Elite. Although this isn't nearly as impractical as a watch that vibrates the time in Morse code, it is nevertheless extremely handsome. I'm really becoming a fan of "butterfly clasp" watch-straps that make a continuous loop around your wrist. Plus it comes in orange, which is unquestionably the best color a watch can be. Link

See also: Binary LED watch from TokyoFlash Crazy TokyoFlash watch: the Pimp Watch Radio Active watch from Tokyo Flash Scope watch tells time using line-intersections on Cartesian grid Impractical lovely pixelwatch from Japan

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Image-search isn't a copyright violation

from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a mixed blessing in its ruling on the long-running Perfect 10 v Google lawsuit, in which Perfect 10, a photography site, sued Google for including thumbnails of its images in the Google Image Search results. Perfect 10 also sued Google for indexing infringing copies of its images that appeared on other sites.

The Ninth said that Google's Image Search thumbnails are fair use -- that's the good news. The less-great news is that the court also ruled that Google is a "secondary infringer" where it has "actual knowledge" of copycat sites in its index and fails to do anything about it.

Today's decision reversed the lower court's holding [PDF] that Google's thumbnails were not a fair use, following and bolstering an earlier image search engine precedent, Kelly v. Arriba Soft [PDF]. The court rightly took into account the important public benefit that search engines provide -- not simply the impact on the particular parties in this case -- and what would serve copyright's fundamental goal of promoting access to creative works. While Google's transformative use of the image provided a very real public benefit, Perfect 10's potential loss of thumbnail licensing revenue was highly speculative.

The Court also shot down Perfect 10’s claim that Google was displaying the full-sized versions of infringing images from third-party websites by framing them or providing an HTML in-line link tag to end users. The Court correctly discerned the technology at issue, finding that when you frame a page or provide an in-line link, it’s the site that you’re pointing to that could be displaying the picture, not the search engine that coughs up the HTML.

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