Geek News and Musings

British Goverment Wants To Know Who Your Facebook Friends Are
Law enforcement and security bodies around the world are on a massive push to expand data-retention laws, trying to force ISPs and lots of other companies to track and store data on their customers’ behavior in the name of public safety, crime prevention and investigation. While in some places, like Germany, there’s been some pushback, other places, like the UK are moving full speed ahead. Earlier this year, rules went into place forcing ISPs to keep records on all their users’ email, and now, the government wants to maintain a database of social networking site users’ contacts. As if that’s not bad enough, the BBC says it’s part of a plan to keep a central database of “of all phone calls, e-mails and websites visited.” As a spokesperson for a privacy group notes, it’s fine for law enforcement to monitor the online activity of criminal suspects, but keeping tabs on an entire country’s communications in a government database would, in effect, consider the entire British population suspects, and undermine some fairly fundamental freedoms of its society — and not to mention it’s probably illegal, like an estimated 25 percent of all British government databases. What’s particularly galling about these sorts of plans isn’t just that they’re anathema to the idea of freedom, but that if they’re put into place, they really won’t do any good. Law-enforcement types act as if having this data will be a magic bullet, but simply increasing the volume of retained data — then having to mine through it — will only make their jobs more difficult.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Brother Theodore on David Letterman
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger I’m not sure this story is an actual anecdote or just a meandering way of introducing an amazing YouTube clip, but here goes nuthin’ : Fruitatarian, almost a raw foodist, years before this was common. What influenced my twelve year-old mind to do something like this was an obscure book I found in the local library called “The Mucusless Diet Healing System” by Dr. Arnold Ehret. I won’t go into the details of the diet, which extols the value of avoiding “mucus” and “pus” in your food –sounds like an admirable goal, right?– but suffice to say that while Dr Ehret’s work still has many followers –he’s thought of as the founder of Naturopathy — some diet experts consider him a total quack. But I am not here to debate the merits of his ideas, pro or con, merely to offer some brief context before I send you off to read this short essay, The Definitive Cure of Chronic Constipation. Okay? You got that? At the very least skim it. The language he uses is quite distinctive isn’t it? The total disgust he expresses about the digestive system is almost Nietzschean in its peculiar character. The absolutist tone must’ve contributed greatly to my pre-teen interest in the diet. Now flash-forward to the late 1990s, New York City. I had become friends with the then 91 year old Theodore Gottlieb, better-known as the infamous dark comedian Brother Theodore, a big influence on Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch and Spaulding Gray, who had been performing his totally insane one-man show at the tiny 13th Street Theater for ages and was a frequent guest on David Letterman’s show during the 1980s. No exaggeration to say that Theodore had been around forever. He was delivering lines like “The only thing that keeps me alive is the hope of dying young” long before I was born. What was a great gag when he was, say, 50 years old, and then to STILL be delivering a line like that at the age of 93, as he did on my UK television series, well that existential tension is what made his nonagenarian performances so incredibly spell-binding. The show was in the form of a stern lecture. It was impossible to tell if this was an act you were seeing or if he was utterly batshit crazy, a berserk “genius” impervious to the laughter as long as an audience bought tickets. The props were a chair, a table, a chalk board and a stryrofoam cup. There was a single spotlight. If you were anywhere near the stage in that little theater he could totally scare the shit out of you. Of course, whenever I brought friends, I took them right down the front! It was an act, I can assure you. Theodore in real life was a mellow old bohemian guy who lived several lives in his 94 years. He’d been in Dachau and he’d also been on Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and most famously on Late Night with David Letterman. He was in “The Burbs” playing Tom Hank’s great uncle and was the voice of Gollum in “The Hobbit” cartoon. He had a cameo in Orson Welles’ “The Stranger.” Theodore was an old Beatnik, that’s the way I saw him. (He was even in a porno movie! An X-rated parody of “Jaws” called “Gums.” Theo plays the boat captain, in a thankfully non-balling role. In “Gums” he is seen, rather inexplicably, wearing a Nazi uniform for most of the film). In his nineties he was dating a woman in her mid-forties. He rode a bike around New York City until he was late in his eighties. He really wasn’t anything like his crazed monk act in real life, though. And let me tell you, when you are in your thirties and have a friend who is in their nineties… you learn things about life. Not all of them good, either. 94-years is a long time to live. Too long, if you ask me. I’m quite sure he felt that way, too. Theodore apparently had great difficulty memorizing lines, even his own material and so he only really ever did two major monologues –he’d switch off between them when he felt like it– for over 40 years. One was called “Foodism” -we’ll get to this one in a minute and the other was called “Quadrupidism” where he’d extol the virtues of human beings getting down on all fours. One day I was visiting Theodore at his apartment and I was looking at his sparse book shelf. On it sat “The Confessions of Aleister Crowley,” Baudelaire’s “Les Fleur du Mal,” an Edgar Alan Poe anthology, The Portable Nietzsche, St Augustine, and… ta da… “The Mucusless Diet Healing System” by Dr Arnold Ehret. I remarked to him that I myself was a pre-teen adherent to Arnold Ehret’s ideas about diet and he replied that it was the inspiration for his “Foodism” monologue. “I merely exaggerated his writings. Just slightly. That was all it took!” My jaw hit the ground. He’d managed to craft one of the most brilliant comic monologues of all time based on Ehret’s zany diet-sprach. I was awestruck at how amazing this revelation really was. I mean… how creative!! You read that essay about constipation, right? Promise me? Now go watch this extended excerpt from “Foodism” performed on Letterman in the mid-80s. A Secret Noodle Ring in Minnesota New York Times obituary for Theodore Gottlieb Brother Theodore is Dead by Nick Mamatas Brother Theodore by Jon Kalish (the “TV producer” referred to here is probably me) A radio tribute to Brother Theodore on WNYC’s “The No Show” Tears from a Glass Eye… with a Tongue of Madness! (Brother Theodore record) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (on the Theodore documentary) To My Great Chagrin (Brother Theodore documentary) Note that there are several torrents of Brother Theodore performances out there on the Interwebs.

British cops identify 200 schoolchildren as potential terrorists
200 children in the UK, some as young as 13, have had files opened on them by the British anti-terror cops as potential terrorists — even though they have committed no crimes. The children were reported to the anti-terror squad by their teachers on the basis of school work, journals and conversations that, in the teachers’ view, indicated that the children were susceptible to extremist beliefs. The programme is only 18 months old and has already identified 200 children who should be treated as terrorism suspects. At this rate, every child in Britain should be on the watch list by, what, 2018?

The police say it’s all right, though, so that’s OK.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We are committed to stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists or violent extremists. The aim of the Channel project is to directly support vulnerable people by providing supportive interventions when families, communities and networks raise concerns about their behaviour.”

Police identify 200 children as potential terrorists

Brother Theodore on David Letterman
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger I’m not sure this story is an actual anecdote or just a meandering way of introducing an amazing YouTube clip, but here goes nuthin’ : As a lad growing up in Wheeling, WV in the 1970s, at approximately the age of twelve, I decided that I was NOT going to eat the food I was being served by my parents any more. In a home where greasy pan-fried hamburgers (or “Steakums”) and Kraft macaroni and cheese were the normal dinner fare, I simply wanted to eat healthier. My parents were not very happy about this this demand –for that is what it was– but what could they do? However, the severity of my new diet must have really taken them by surprise. I became, pretty much a Fruitatarian, almost a raw foodist, years before this was common. What influenced my twelve year-old mind to do something like this was an obscure book I found in the local library called “The Mucusless Diet Healing System” by Dr. Arnold Ehret. I won’t go into the details of the diet, which extols the value of avoiding “mucus” and “pus” in your food –sounds like an admirable goal, right?– but suffice to say that while Dr Ehret’s work still has many followers –he’s thought of as the founder of Naturopathy — some diet experts consider him a total quack. But I am not here to debate the merits of his ideas, pro or con, merely to offer some brief context before I send you off to read this short essay, The Definitive Cure of Chronic Constipation. Okay? You got that? At the very least skim it. The language he uses is quite distinctive isn’t it? The total disgust he expresses about the digestive system is almost Nietzschean in its peculiar character. The absolutist tone must’ve contributed greatly to my pre-teen interest in the diet. Now flash-forward to the late 1990s, New York City. I had become friends with the then 91 year old Theodore Gottlieb, better-known as the infamous dark comedian Brother Theodore, a big influence on Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch and Spaulding Gray, who had been performing his totally insane one-man show at the tiny 13th Street Theater for ages and was a frequent guest on David Letterman’s show during the 1980s. No exaggeration to say that Theodore had been around forever. He was delivering lines like “The only hope I have is of dying young” long before I was born. What was a great gag when he was, say, 50 years old, and then to STILL be delivering a line like that at the age of 93, as he did on my UK television series, well that existential tension is what made his nonagenarian performances so incredibly spell-binding. The show was in the form of a stern lecture. It was impossible to tell if this was an act you were seeing or if he was utterly batshit crazy, a berserk “genius” impervious to the laughter as long as an audience bought tickets. The props were a chair, a table, a chalk board and a stryrofoam cup. There was a single spotlight. If you were anywhere near the stage in that little theater he could totally scare the shit out of you. Of course, whenever I brought friends, I took them right down the front! It was an act, I can assure you. Theodore in real life was a mellow old bohemian guy who lived several lives in his 94 years. He’d been in Dauchau and he’d also been on Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and most famously on Late Night with David Letterman. He was in “The Burbs” playing Tom Hank’s great uncle and was the voice of Gollum in “The Hobbit” cartoon. He had a cameo in Orson Welles’ “The Stranger.” Theodore was an old Beatnik, that’s the way I saw him. (He was even in a porno movie! An X-rated parody of “Jaws” called “Gums.” Theo plays the boat captain, in a thankfully non-balling role. In “Gums” he is seen, rather inexplicably, wearing a Nazi uniform for most of the film). In his nineties he was dating a woman in her mid-forties. He rode a bike around New York City until he was late in his eighties. He really wasn’t anything like his crazed monk act in real life, though. And let me tell you, when you are in your thirties and have a friend who is in their nineties… you learn things about life. Not all of them good, either. 94-years is a long time to live. Too long, if you ask me. I’m quite sure he felt that way, too. Theodore apparently had great difficulty memorizing lines, even his own material and so he only really ever did two major monologues –he’d switch off between them when he felt like it– for over 40 years. One was called “Foodism” -we’ll get to this one in a minute and the other was called “Quadrupidism” where he’d extol the virtues of human beings getting down on all fours. One day I was visiting Theodore at his apartment and I was looking at his sparse book shelf. On it sat “The Confessions of Aleister Crowley,” Baudelaire’s “Les Fleur du Mal,” an Edgar Alan Poe anthology, The Portable Nietzsche, St Augustine, and… ta da… “The Mucusless Diet Healing System” by Dr Arnold Ehret. I remarked to him that I myself was a pre-teen adherent to Arnold Ehret’s ideas about diet and he replied that it was the inspiration for his “Foodism” monologue. “I merely exaggerated his writings. Just slightly. That was all it took!” My jaw hit the ground. He’d managed to craft one of the most brilliant comic monologues of all time based on Ehret’s zany diet-sprach. I was awestruck at how amazing this revelation really was. I mean… how creative!! You read that essay about constipation, right? Promise me? Now go watch this extended excerpt from “Foodism” performed on Letterman in the mid-80s. A Secret Noodle Ring in Minnesota New York Times obituary for Theodore Gottlieb Brother Theodore is Dead by Nick Mamatas Brother Theodore by Jon Kalish (the “TV producer” referred to here is probably me) A radio tribute to Brother Theodore on WNYC’s “The No Show” Tears from a Glass Eye… with a Tongue of Madness! (Brother Theodore record) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (on the Theodore documentary) To My Great Chagrin (Brother Theodore documentary) Note that there are several torrents of Brother Theodore performances out there on the Interwebs.

Are A Quarter Of The UK Government’s Databases Illegal?
Governments keep trying to build bigger and bigger databases — and almost every such database eventually gets abused in ways that harm privacy rights. One of the most aggressive governments in building such databases has been the UK — and a new study of such databases has found that approximately a quarter of the UK government’s databases are illegal in that they don’t do nearly enough to protect individual’s privacy and civil rights. Of course, these sorts of things don’t get any attention until it’s too late — and there’s a big enough abuse or leak to really lead to public attention.

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Train Operators Around The World Stopping Others From Helping Riders… Due To Intellectual Property
What is it about folks who operate train lines that make them so confused when it comes to intellectual property? They seem to be focused on harming their own businesses in an effort to “protect” intellectual property. If enforcing your intellectual property makes you worse off, then why are you enforcing it? Just today, we received two separate stories of incredibly backwards thinking from those who operate train-lines — which makes you really wonder why some people get so focused on protecting intellectual property that they lose sight of the fact that it’s harming their business.

We’ve already talked about those who run trains in Germany and Australia cracking down on people creating their own iPhone train schedule apps, claiming they violated intellectual property rights of the train operators. This makes very little sense for a variety of reasons. First, it is still quite ridiculous that any sort of factual information can be covered by copyright — but in Europe such “collections” of information can be covered by the database copyrights — the idea that if you put factual information into a “database” that database then deserves copyright protection. Europe has this, while the US does not — and studies have shown that contrary to what copyright supports insist, this increased right has actually hindered the database industry in Europe… but that hasn’t made the law go away.

But, of course, even more idiotic than just the question of copyrighting facts, is the simple point that these apps make it easier for people to ride the trains, which should be exactly what the train operators are encouraging. Thanks to the mantra of certain copyright supporters that “free is bad,” some folks seem unable to think out more than a single step. The fact is, that if people can make a great train schedule app that makes it easier to take the train, then that means more people will take the train, which is where the real money is for train operators. But, of course, the folks who only see one step out, think “wait, we should be making money on that data!” even if it means fewer people take the train, and the net benefit is less.

The latest to make that decision is the UK’s National Rail Enquiries, who forced the creators of the MyRail Lite app to shut down (thanks to Donald for sending this in). MyRail Lite was a free iPhone app. NRE is offering its own app… for £4.99. So in the short-term rush to try to score a bit of money from a small group of people, NRE is making the overall rail system a lot more complex for the majority of people. Short-term thinking at its finest.

Unfortunately, the author of the article, Rory Cellan-Jones, starts out by agreeing that this is dumb, but then seems to change his mind, after reading the silly James DeLong article about newspapers where he (in typical DeLong fashion) insists that the use of “free” is what destroyed newspapers. The arguments are easy to debunk, but Cellan-Jones seems to have fallen for them. But it’s easy to see how wrong it is in this case: the business NRE is transportation. If it gets people from point A to point B more efficiently, it will be able to make more money charging for that service. A free app that makes the process more efficient helps the bottom line. Trying to scrape up a bit of extra cash at the front end, while making the process more inefficient for more people is incredibly short-sighted.

But, that isn’t the most ridiculous story we heard today about trains and intellectual property. Lucretious sends in the news that a group of four very nice women in New York City who have been voluntarily working to make public transportation in NYC more pleasant have been ordered to stop by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The women have set up a website, MTAService.org where they provide information on how to make your public transit in NY better. It’s run by four women, who also ride the subways regularly (wearing their own made up uniforms) trying to help provide better service — helping people find where they need to go, or helping mothers with strollers, for example.

But, of course, the MTA has sent them a cease-and-desist, demanding they pull down the information. You can see the trademark worries — even though the website clearly states that the MTA Service Specialists (as they call themselves) are in no way affiliated with the MTA (they note “unfortunately.”) But, rather than the MTA doing the smart thing, and seeing if they can actually associate themselves with these helpful women, the MTA just wants to shut them down. This is short-term thinking again. Sure, there almost certainly is a valid trademark claim here — but if someone actually took the time to sit back and look at the facts of the situation, they would realize that a better response would be to see if they could sign these women up officially to help improve service on the subway. As the women note, they’re just trying to improve the MTA’s service, without costing the city any money at all.

Once again… we see how this aggressive believe in “we must protect our IP!” is actually being used to hinder service improvements, rather than help them.

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Are A Quarter Of The UK Government’s Databases Illegal?
Governments keep trying to build bigger and bigger databases — and almost every such database eventually gets abused in ways that harm privacy rights. One of the most aggressive governments in building such databases has been the UK — and a new study of such databases has found that approximately a quarter of the UK government’s databases are illegal in that they don’t do nearly enough to protect individual’s privacy and civil rights. Of course, these sorts of things don’t get any attention until it’s too late — and there’s a big enough abuse or leak to really lead to public attention.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Are A Quarter Of The UK Government’s Databases Illegal?
Governments keep trying to build bigger and bigger databases — and almost every such database eventually gets abused in ways that harm privacy rights. One of the most aggressive governments in building such databases has been the UK — and a new study of such databases has found that approximately a quarter of the UK government’s databases are illegal in that they don’t do nearly enough to protect individual’s privacy and civil rights. Of course, these sorts of things don’t get any attention until it’s too late — and there’s a big enough abuse or leak to really lead to public attention.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Are A Quarter Of The UK Government’s Databases Illegal?
Governments keep trying to build bigger and bigger databases — and almost every such database eventually gets abused in ways that harm privacy rights. One of the most aggressive governments in building such databases has been the UK — and a new study of such databases has found that approximately a quarter of the UK government’s databases are illegal in that they don’t do nearly enough to protect individual’s privacy and civil rights. Of course, these sorts of things don’t get any attention until it’s too late — and there’s a big enough abuse or leak to really lead to public attention.

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Darkly Surreal UK Comedy Masterpiece “Jam”
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Reclusive British comedy genius Chris Morris came out with his darkly surreal masterpiece of weirdness, “Jam” (based on his “Blue Jam” radio show) in 2000, but sadly because of expensive music rights issues, “Jam” has seldom been seen outside of the UK. This is a shame, because “Jam” is a uniquely…um… well… ah…hmmm… I hesitate to call it “comedy” because it’s so odd and disturbing, but if I called it “David Lynchian” comedy, we’d be in the right ball park at least. “Jam” is like a bad –make that very bad– acid trip played for laughs. Take a look at one of the show opens:

Not exactly “funny ha ha” stuff. In fact, there’s nary a traditional “joke” in the entire series. There are six episodes of “Jam” and although I’d classify myself as a huge fan of the show, six episodes of something like this is plenty!! The style would’ve become a creative dead end. But a great talent like Chris Morris wasn’t to repeat himself anyway –his next project, the wonderfully vicious satire of dotcom dickheads, “Nathan Barley” was quite a shift away from the brooding psychopathy of “Jam.” I eagerly await his feature comedy debut, rumored to be about Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers.

This is one of my favorite “Jam” moments, “Mister Lizard” featuring the always brilliant actor, Mark Heap –he’s in tons of stuff– as a creepy television repairman.

Here’s another great “Jam” clip with another UK comedy auteur, Julia Davis, creator of the “wheelchair Gothic” classic, “Nighty Night” as a particularly stupid woman:

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