Thursday, March 21st, 2013

Time	Event
4:38p	Internet-of-Things answering machine from 1992, with marbles http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/lu8AZVle5kg/internet-of-things-answering-m.html http://boingboing.net/?p=220013 Durrell Bishop's 1992 grad project for his design program at the Royal College of Art was a brilliantly conceived riff on the answering machine, making use of physical, legible interfaces that made a point of exposing the conceptual workings of the device to its users. Durrell Bishop is a partner in Luckybite with Tom Hulbert, working on physical interfaces, product design and interactive media. Prior to this he was a senior interaction designer at IDEO Europe. He co-founded Itch, which won a D&AD Gold award for large-scale work on the Science Museum Welcome Wing, and he was a partner in Dancing Dog, working on camera-based interfaces to computer games. Durrell Bishop’s Marble Answering Machine (via Timo Arnall)
5:31p	Why did Lee Baca win Sheriff of the Year award? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/o5DIPaCeaDI/why-did-lee-baca-win-sheriff-o.html http://boingboing.net/?p=220232 The National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) awarded LA County Sheriff Lee Baca "Sheriff of the Year." What does it take to win Sheriff of the Year? 1,480 wrongful incarcerations? The LA Times reported that "hundreds of people have been wrongly imprisoned inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department jails in recent years, with some spending weeks behind bars before authorities realized those arrested were mistaken for wanted criminals." Widespread prison rape? Just Detention International reported that "Two years ago, it came to light that gangs of deputies were brutalizing jail inmates, using sexual assault and excessive force to instill a climate of terror. Sheriff Baca has repeatedly sought to duck responsibility for the crisis. Yet the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence placed the blame squarely on his shoulders, citing a 'failure of leadership.'" Pervasive abuse of jail inmates? An ACLU report quotes Thomas Parker, a former FBI agent as saying "Of all the jails I have had the occasion to visit, tour, or conduct investigations within, domestically and internationally, I have never experienced any facility exhibiting the volume and repetitive patterns of violence, misfeasance, and malfeasance impacting the Los Angeles County Jail system..." Why did he win? Your guess is as good as mine! Coincidentally, Baca is a member of the NSA Board of Directors and serves on its Executive Committee.
5:51p	GoPro sends fraudulent DMCA notice to site that ran a negative review of its products http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/-d3rsIKHU7w/gopro-sends-fraudulent-dmca-no.html http://boingboing.net/?p=220017 GoPro, manufacturers of small digital video cameras, sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Notice to a site called DigitalRev, which had compared GoPro's latest camera to Sony's rival Action Video Camera, and concluded that the Sony camera was much better. When GoPro was called on its censorship, the company said, The letter that was posted next to the review on DigitalRev was not sent in response to the review. Obviously, we welcome editorial reviews of our products. This letter was sent because DigitalRev is not an authorized reseller of GoPro products and they were using images and had incorrect branding and representation of our product in their online commerce store. As part of our program – we ask merchants who are selling our product to use authorized images. That is why DigitalRev was contacted. But – our letter did not clearly communicate this and that is something we will correct. However, the DMCA cannot be used to remove alleged trademark violations. As the name implies, the DMCA concerns itself with copyright, not trademark (that's why it's the DMCA and not the DMTA), and it is nothing less than fraud to send a DMCA notice over an alleged trademark violation. In other words, GoPro violated the law, and then offered a lame-ass, weak-ola excuse for it. You don't need a trademark holder's permission to use its marks in a review, nor do you need to be an authorized reseller to review products. As GoPro surely knows. As a reminder, apparently Sony's Action Video Camera kicks the GoPro camera's ass. GoPro Uses DMCA to Take Down Article Comparing Its Camera with Rival (Thanks, Paul!)
6:40p	How to fix the worst law in technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/NoiTnm0tgC8/how-to-fix-the-worst-law-in-te.html http://boingboing.net/?p=220106 Tim Wu's New Yorker piece on Aaron Swartz and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act explains how Obama could, with one speech, fix the worst problem with the worst law in technology. The CFAA makes it a felony to "exceed your authorization" on a computer system, and fed prosecutors have taken the view that this means that if you violate terms of service, you're a felon, and they can put you in jail. As Wu points out, Obama doesn't need Congress to pass a law to fix this, he could just tell the DoJ that they should stop doing this. There's plenty of precedent, and it would be excellent policy. When judges or academics say that it is wrong to interpret a law in such a way that everyone is a felon, the Justice Department has usually replied by saying, roughly, that federal prosecutors don’t bother with minor cases—they only go after the really bad guys. That has always been a lame excuse—repulsive to anyone who takes seriously the idea of a “a government of laws, not men.” After Aaron Swartz’s suicide, the era of trusting prosecutors with unlimited power in this area should officially be over... There is a much more immediate and effective remedy: the Justice Department should announce a change in its criminal-enforcement policy. It should no longer consider terms-of-service violations to be criminal. It can join more than a dozen federal judges and scholars, like Kerr, who adopt a reasonable and more limited interpretation. The Obama Administration’s policy will have no effect on civil litigation, so firms like Oracle will retain their civil remedies. President Obama’s DREAM Act enforcement policy, under which the Administration does not deport certain illegal immigrants despite Congress’s inability to make the act a law, should be the model. Where Congress is unlikely to solve a problem, the Administration should take care of business itself. All the Administration needs to do is to rely on the ancient common-law principle called the “rule of lenity.” This states that ambiguous criminal laws should be construed in favor of a defendant. As the Supreme Court puts it, “When choice has to be made between two readings of what conduct Congress has made a crime, it is appropriate, before we choose the harsher alternative, to require that Congress should have spoken in language that is clear and definite.” So far, at least thirteen federal judges have rejected the Justice Department’s interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If that’s not a sign that the law is unclear and should be interpreted with lenity, I don’t know what is. Fixing the Worst Law in Technology
6:41p	Elf beer needs your vote http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/Xv9vmiMpe00/elf-beer-needs-your-vote.html http://boingboing.net/?p=220234 Attention, users of "The Face Book": self-published indie comic ElfQuest (syndicated of late exclusively here at Boing Boing — see also TTDB, Brain Rot and Wilcock) is running neck and neck with Doctor Who and Superman in a contest to have a microbeer made in its honor for the 2013 Denver Comic-Con. So allow me to humbly suggest that you vote for Pike's Dreamberry Ale right here. Cheers! Update: polls closed. Not a bad showing!
8:18p	Skull wedding cake http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/W7Iwkjq40-s/skull-wedding-cake.html http://boingboing.net/?p=220157 Baker Anna at Eat Your Heart Out Bakers made this astounding skull wedding-cake. Food artist Annabel de Vetten, also known as Conjurer’s Kitchen, created this incredible skull wedding cake for the Eclectic Wedding Extravaganza in Birmingham this weekend. Her theme being ” ‘Til Death Do Us Part”. It features solid chocolate skulls of 16 carrion crows, 12 domestic kittens, 3 Vervet monkeys, and 4 barn owls, all of which the artist sculpted by hand. Made from White Chocolate Mudcake, the cake took her over 100 hours to complete in total. There are two options of toppers: a chocolate conjoined kitten skull, or dried flowers from an actual wedding bouquet (ones shown here from her own). The Ultimate Skull Wedding Cake (Thanks, Emma!)
9:23p	DRM-free label for all your DRM-free stuff http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/S-4Re1eMdVA/drm-free-label-for-all-your-dr.html http://boingboing.net/?p=220163 Kxra sez, "Defective by Design, the Free Software Foundation's campaign against DRM has just released a new graphic to mark DRM-free works on the web. The DRM-free label quickly communicates the DRM-free status of files, increases in value as more distributors adopt the label, and adds value to being DRM-free by linking to an informational page about DRM. The logo is already in use by O'Reilly, Momentum, the Pragmatic Bookshelf, and Magnatune. It is available in a few different styles with source files under CC-BY-SA 3.0." New and improved label for DRM-free files (Thanks, Kxra!)

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