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Boing Boing Blog
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| 1. |
Lowcarbing preciptates American bread crisis. American breadmakers have called a summit to discuss strategies for coping with the plummeting sales of carbo-rich bread in an Atkins-ascendant America.
Consumption of bread plummeted in America in the past year with an estimated 40 per cent of Americans eating less than in 2002. The US bread industry is to hold a crisis "bread summit" tomorrow to discuss measures to curb falling sales. In Britain, the Federation of Bakers launched a promotional campaign last month to counter the Atkins effect. British Bread month was advertised with the slogan "Use your loaf, have another slice."
Link
(Thanks, Brian!) |
| 2. |
Funeral interrupted by corpse's cellphone. A Belgian funeral service was interrupted when the corpse's cellphone started ringing from inside the coffin.
The night before the funeral, the family gathered at the undertakers for a final private farewell, when they heard the sound of his cellphone ringing from within the sealed coffin. Several distressed members of the family had to leave the funeral home whilst staff rushed to remove the cell phone.
Link
(via Gizmodo) |
| 3. |
Collaborative object-sexing. 
This object-sexer is a hot-or-not site that asks you to express your feelings about the probable gender of inanimate objects (these tins of soup are considered "male" by 61.4% of respondents).
To quote Ken Campbell's astonishing Wol Wontok (an annotated translation of pieces of Macbeth into South Seas Island pidgin, and my kingdom to a decent link for this), "You know that [linguistic] organization where things are masculine, feminine or neuter, and ridiculously so in German, so you might say, 'Where is the turnip?' and the reply might be, 'She is in the kitchen.' And then you say, 'Where is the young English maiden?' and the reply would be, 'It has gone to the opera.' Nutty!"
Link
(via Geisha Asobi)
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| 4. |
Way being paved for petaflop computing. Cray and Sun are working on radical new operating systems and programming environments for the coming petaflop supercomputers.
Zima said the new language will help software developers exploit both parallel programming techniques and the locality of data in a large clustered system. The language will hide details of the underlying CPU but expose specifics about the communications technology used in the high-end cluster. It will also support today's message-passing interface (MPI) and global-address-space programming models, he added.
Link
(via Hack the Planet |
| 5. |
Skinny people win eating contests. PopSci uses a biology lesson to explain why skinny guys always win eating contests.
Kobayashi's regimen includes shrinking his gut by jogging for hours, then distending it by chugging gallons of water. He regularly feasts on giant meals of low-fat, high-fiber foods like cabbage, which stay in the stomach longer before breaking down. (By the way, the world record for cabbage consumption is 6 pounds, 9 ounces, in 9 minutes, held by American Thomas Hardy.) And he keeps trim: A skinny man's stomach has little fat to push against it and fight the food for space.
Link |
| 6. |
Kyrgyzstani grave-robbers supplying museums with corpse-chunks. A Kyrgyzstani MP alleges that the Kyrgyz mafia has been exporting tons of human corpses and corpse-chunks to museum curators and artists.
But Tashtanbekov, who spearheaded the hearing, said on Wednesday that he intended to keep up his campaign to uncover what he claims is a "mafia operation" that he says has exported 35 tons of bodies and body parts in the last six years.
Link
(via Fark) |
| 7. |
Disney films kicking a$$, despite "piracy". Disney's annual financials reveal that the company is making giant truckloads of money off of its movies, despite a couple of recent flops (and losing money on its themeparks). Funnily enough, this comes at a time when Disney is, along with Fox and other MPAA members, winning the Broadcast Flag fight by claiming that infringing Internet distribution of movies is bad for business, so much so that they need to be put in charge of all PC technology in order to ensure that "anti-piracy" tools are in place throughout every box.
Link |
| 8. |
Kenyan minibus strike ends. Kenya's minibus drivers -- who provide the primary form of transportation for commuters -- have ended their two-day strike over a government mandate requiring them to put seatbelts in their vehicles.
There's something strange happening in Kenya. At the Broadcast Treaty meeting at WIPO this month, the Kenyan delegate revealed that his country has recently outlawed taking photos of the pictures on your television set; when we cornered him on this, he said that he couldn't answer out questions without first consulting with the representative of the US National Association of Broadcasters, who appears to be in charge of shaping Kenyan IP policy.
Link |
| 9. |
E Coli DNA used to assemble nanoscale transistors. Israeli scientists have successfully coaxed DNA into acting as an assembler for nanoscale transistors.
Braun's team began their manufacturing process by coating a central part of a long DNA molecule with proteins from an E. coli bacterium. Next, graphite nanotubes coated with antibodies were added, which bound onto the protein.
After this, a solution of silver ions was added. The ions chemically attach to the phosphate backbone of the DNA, but only where no protein has attached. Aldehyde then reduces the ions to silver metal, forming the foundation of a conducting wire.
Link |
| 10. |
U of C grad students' online health-care preservation campaign. Grad students at the University of Chicago are attempting to shame the administration into reversing its plans to substantially undermine health insurance there. They're soliciting health-care horror stories from U of C grad-students to help them make their case.
Link |
| 11. |
Images from the Victorian Internet. 
Amazing B3TA photoshop challenge: graphics from the "Victorian Internet." Lovely, witty steampunkery to be found here.
Funnily enough, I just (finally!) read Tom Standage's wonderful book, The Victorian Internet on an airplane yesterday. Standage's account of the rise of the telegraph worldwide vividly brings to life the personalities and the mania that brought the first global communications system into being, and draws fascinating parallels to the Internet boom, and the promises raised, fulfilled and betrayed therein.
Link
(via The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century)
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| 12. |
Order-5 Magic Cube discovered. 
A Magic Cube is a three dimensional Magic Square: a 3D grid in which the numbers in all the rows, columns and diagonals total up to the same number. The very first order-5 Magic Cube (previously suspected to be impossible) has been discovered
Link
(Thanks, Johannes!)
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Yahoo! News - Technology
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| 13. |
Yahoo to Buy Chinese Firm for Up to $120 Million (Reuters). Reuters - U.S. Web firm Yahoo Inc's (YHOO.O)
Hong Kong unit said on Friday that it has agreed to buy a
Chinese software firm, 3721 Network Software Co Ltd, for up to
US$120 million in cash over two years. |
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The Register
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| 14. |
Novell looks to Linux to pull it out of the red. Losses, lower revenues in Q4 |
| 15. |
Broadcom bites back against Intel-Mobilian, Atheros. Under Pressure |
| 16. |
NTL waves goodbye to 2,000 jobs. Efficiency gains |
| 17. |
Mixed fortunes for enterprise WLANs. 'low priority' |
| 18. |
Low self esteem makes you thick - official. But PDA-driven brain tickler offers hope |
| 19. |
Don't say nothing to the SCO cops, Gartner advises Linux users. High performance systems? You seen any high performance systems, Rico? |
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Wired News
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| 20. |
Down-Home Cookin' Takes Flight. Astronauts no longer must subsist on dehydrated cubes of flavorless food. Instead, NASA researchers slave over hot stoves to prepare tasty treats just like Mom used to make. The crew's one complaint? Fish stinks. |
| 21. |
AT & #038;T Sues EBay in Patent Dispute. The long-distance telephone company hits the online auction pioneer and its PayPal unit with a lawsuit, claiming their payment systems violate an AT & #038;T patent. |
| 22. |
'Cyber Sweep' Nets 125 Arrests. An international crackdown targets hackers, software pirates, perpetrators of credit card fraud and other cybercriminals. Authorities say they found 125,000 victims who lost more than $100 million in Internet scams. |
| 23. |
Having a Gas in Okefenokee Swamp. Locals tell many tales of odd goings-on in the Okefenokee Swamp. Wireless gadgets go on the fritz, glowing orbs of green light pursue lonely visitors, and wetland flatulence fills the air. Michelle Delio reports from Waycross, Georgia. |
| 24. |
The Key to Genius. Autistic savants are born with miswired neurons -- and extraordinary gifts. Now researchers are using breakthrough science to expand our understanding of the brain. By Wired magazine's Steve Silberman. |
| 25. |
Friendster Quickly Gathering Foes. The intentions of Friendster's founders and its community members are apparently at odds, so many Friendster friends are moving over to other social networks, such as Tribe.net. By Daniel Terdiman. |
| 26. |
EBay Sellers Generous With Junk. Sometimes the crap you think is fit for a charity is also viewed as crap by the charity. Now, eBay has set up a way for sellers to get rid of their castoffs while still helping nonprofits. By Katie Dean. |
| 27. |
Feel Free to Jack Into My IPod. Reinforcing the notion that iPod owners are members of some sort of exclusive, hip club, some of them are plugging their earbuds into total strangers' jacks. By Leander Kahney. |
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NewsIsFree: Security
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| 28. |
Sybase ASE Password Array Heap Overflow Vulnerability |
Friday, November 21, 2003
Boing Boing pal Ken Goldberg of UC Berkeley invites us back to play another round of Tele-Twister, the telepresence-based version of the classic party game. The mad professor says:
