Boring Boring: A Directory of Dull Things

Friday, April 1, 2005

Boring Boring grinds jackboot in face of some other stupid site

Actually, the previous post gave us an idea, so -- after the cagey use of search and replace (which we just learned about last week over at Sony's Lifehacker) -- we forwarded Mr. von Lohmann's letter to this guy. (Thanks, Cory!)

posted by ~~Cory Doctorow~~ Chris James at 3:40:42 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Cory grinds jackboot in the face of Boring Boring

Copyfight zealot Cory Doctorow talks a big game about copyright reform, but when it comes to protecting his own work, he reverts to Jack Valenti mode, in this case delivering a cease and desist letter to Boring Boring via an intermediary. Here it is.

Dear Sir or Madam,
I am legal counsel for and write on behalf of celebrated science fiction author Cory Doctorow and the award-winning website BoingBoing. We have recently learned that your organization, BoringBoring, is violating Mr. Doctorow and BoingBoing's copyrights by posting on your site, www.boringboring.org, certain copyrighted content from www.boingboing.net.
Our copyrighted material can be found here:
http://www.boringboring.org/
The copyrighted work that we believe has been infringed upon can be found here:
http://www.boingboing.net/
Pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), we are writing to provide you notice of your illegal activities and copyright infringement. Acting as an agent on behalf of Mr. Doctorow and BoingBoing, I have a good faith belief that the use of Mr. Doctorow and BoingBoing's copyrighted material in this manner is not authorized by us, our agent, or the law.
Your organization's conduct constitutes willful copyright infringement and unfair competition and is damaging Mr. Doctorow, BoingBoing, our customers and our advertisers.
Mr. Doctorow and BoingBoing hereby ask that you remove all content and materials from your web site that was copied from boingboing.net. We insist that you confirm you have ceased all acts of infringement and destroyed all infringing materials within 5 days of your receipt of this letter.
Furthermore, Mr. Doctorow and alice greenfingers 2 pc BoingBoing own all rights in all new hidden object games site and everyone need aveyond the lost orb to find more free turbo fiesta the last cats supplement registered mark BoingBoing (the "Mark"), which has been in continuous use in interstate commerce since the world-renowned website entitled "BoingBoing" was first published in 2000. BoingBoing is the exclusive licensee of the publishing and merchandising rights to the Mark in connection with the internet and all related collateral products and services (collectively, the "BoingBoing Properties"). As I am sure you are aware, BoingBoing is quite probably the most famous website ever published. Indeed, millions of pageviews of the various posts on the website have taken place since first publication. As a result of this enormous number of pageviews and the attendant publicity, the public associates the Mark and its distinctive logo solely with Cory Doctorow and BoingBoing.
It has come to our attention that you registered the domain name "boringboring.org." We continue to be very concerned about your use of BoringBoring and stylized logo as it constitutes an improper association, which trades on the goodwill and reputation of BoingBoing and is likely to cause confusion with those Properties and applicable federal and local laws. As it is our obligation to protect our intellectual property rights, we must request that you cease all use of BoringBoring or any confusingly similar properties in connection with your website or otherwise, and that you refrain from registering any confusingly similar domains in the future.
We trust that you understand Mr. Doctorow and BoingBoing's concern over the infringement of their rights and that you will fully cooperate with us and confirm your compliance with our requests within 5 days of your receipt of this letter.
The foregoing is without waiver of any and all rights of Cory Doctorow or BoingBoing, all of which are expressly reserved herein.
I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the above is accurate, that Mr. Doctorow and BoingBoing are the intellectual property (copyright) owners of our material and that I am authorized to act on behalf of Mr. Doctorow and BoingBoing.
Very truly yours,
Fred von Lohmann
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Link

posted by ~~Cory Doctorow~~ Chris James at 3:10:32 PM permalink | blogs' comments

Watch Paint Dry

What's more boring than watching lights turn on and off? Watching paint dry, of course, and that's what 2001 Turner Prize winner Martin Creed wants you to do as part of his latest entry in the prestigious British art competition. "Work No. 413: Watching Paint Dry" will be displayed at London's Tate Modern beginning April 1. Every day, Creed will paint the exhibition room in Wilko's "Lucid Morning," and gallery patrons will be invited to experience the artwork as it evolves over the next three hours into its final form. If you can't make it to London to see Creed's latest masterpiece for yourself, you can watch this time-lapse video instead. Link (Thanks, Deborah!)

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 11:26:32 AM permalink | blogs' comments

State of the Blogosphere: Increase in post volume mostly Josh Marshall on Social f#@king Security

As we drilled a little deeper into David Sifry's excellent State of the Blogosphere report, we discovered that the numbers aren't as encouraging as we first thought. While Sifry found that Technorati is logging about 500,000 posts a day compared to just 400,000 per day in October 2004, almost all those new posts -- about 90,000 a day -- are Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall going on and on about Social Security. Of those, about 10 are about policy while the remainder are devoted to political maneuvering and personal minutiae about congressmen no one's ever heard of. The remainder of the sphere-wide posting gains, meanwhile, were primarily devoted to "Friday Cat Blogging." Link (Thanks, Jim!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:14:27 AM permalink | blogs' comments

HOWTO: De-everybody Boring Boring

Jason Gill says, "Someone has posted a script for GreaseMonkey (a Firefox extension that lets you add your own Javascript code to any website, to remove ads or add features) that automatically removes every post when viewing Boring Boring." We wish we had thought of that. (Thanks, Francis!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 11:07:42 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Introducing the Hipster PDF

First Merlin Mann introduced us all to the Hipster PDA. Now Boring Boring reader Jimboni tells us about his system for making Hipster PDFs (complete with a Flickr photoset of his setup.) Jimboni explains:

After looking for a better way to handle documents -- rather than keeping them in digital form, where they can be modified and secured -- I finally hit upon the perfect solution: The Hipster PDF. It's cheap; it doesn't use electricity; pens and mechanical pencils -- and other tools for marking on paper -- are readily available; and my Hipster PDF-maker is only twice the size of my cellphone. (You should see the ones they have in Japan.)
True, you can't really email, edit, import, export, backup or revise Hipster PDFs -- and if you spill coffee on them or leave them near the shower they turn to pulp -- but the novelty of my system is handy for bridging the awkward silences that inevitably occur when I brag at parties that I haven't owned a TV in seven years.

Link (Thanks, Jimboni!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:01:03 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Cory's DRM talk translated back into English

With all those different versions of Cory's DRM talk on the Web, Boring Boring reader F.J. was getting confused -- so he translated it from Italian into French, remembered he didn't speak French, then translated it back into English. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:53:07 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Take your knitting needles on a plane

Math geek knitting alert! Boring Boring reader Rose has concocted a pattern for knitting a representation of two-dimensional space. She writes, "I started out trying to knit four-dimensional space, and that was really confusing, so I decided to start with something less ambitious. These samples are just a proof-of-concept; the real one shouldn't have the border, since it will be infinite. (I figure I'll start on it next week.)" Photos are here, and if you want to make your own, here's the pattern:

row 1: knit across row
row 2: purl across row
repeat these two rows

Link

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:43:22 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Watch 10 years of PBS pledge drives, without the interesting programs

A reader writes, "I just uploaded a torrent of ten years of PBS pledge drives from here in New York -- uninterrupted, without all those lame specials about Broadway and the Civil War in between. Thought readers who like their TV patter program-free might be interested. I hope to have my audio archive -- over a hundred hours -- of Cory Flintoff begging for money up soon." Link (Thanks, Sasha!)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:12:56 AM permalink | blogs' comments

World of Bookkeeping

Like so many others, we've been waiting patiently for Blizzard Entertainment's follow-up to its smash hit MMORPG World of Warcraft. For those who prefer a more cerebral challenge than swords and sorcery can offer, Blizzard has just released the first business-oriented MMORPG, World of Bookkeeping. Player classes include Accountant, Bank Officer, Insurance Claims Adjuster, Chief Financial Officer, Compliance Officer, IRS Agent, Justice Department Attorney, and SEC Goon.

As in World of Warcraft, you can play solo or join others of the same faction (Corporate vs. Government) to fulfill quests such as Sarbanes-Oxley Document Archiving, Offshore Bank Account Investigation, and Market-Timing the Internet Stock. Hang out with the Boring Boring team on server Shadow Council, where you can find us logged in as Apathetica the Accountant or Vapidious the IRS Agent. Link (Thanks, Debby!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:22:36 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Ingenious wallmod allows items to be stored on vertical surfaces

This guy (warning: site has no pop-ups) modded the wall over his bed with several shelves -- three, to be exact. The lack of visible shelf brackets is very futuristic (although brackets can give a shelf a cool steampunky look). If you want to try it yourself, step-by-step instructions are here. Sweet! Link (Thanks, Francis!)

posted by Xeni Jardin at 10:04:23 AM permalink | blogs' comments

CliffsNotes nastygrams StudiousGirls

Can you believe this? StudiousGirls founder Sean says: "I got an email this morning from the law firm that represents Nintendo. They are claiming that the member BronteBunny listing Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall as her favorite study guides in her profile is an infringement on CliffsNotes' intellectual property. I enjoy a cold glass of water on a hot day. Do you think hydrogen and oxygen are going to sue me for posting that?"

Pretty ridiculous. Even though CliffsNotes holds the copyright to the titles Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, their claim that people can't so much as mention them on the Web is laughable. And stifling to discourse. I mean, what if someone wanted to publish a critique and commentary on their study guides? (Ed. note: StudiousGirls is a sponsor of Boring Boring.) (Thanks, Sean!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 08:13:27 AM permalink | blogs' comments

WEB ZEN: Lame Search Engine Zen

Scrub the Web
OneKey
Splut
Questfinder
Jayde
Gimpsy
Gigablast
Aeiwi
All of Finland
Teoma
Sootle

posted by David Pescovitz at 07:12:51 AM permalink | blogs' comments

Turn any word into letters

Sipp Rivers says, "Like Wil Wheaton, when I was a kid I too loved putting letters together to make words. So I was excited to find this neat application. You can enter any words you like -- via a standard keyboard -- and the words will be displayed as letters. It's very cool." (Thanks, Sipp!)

posted by David Pescovitz at 10:37:16 AM permalink | blogs' comments

At last, an alternative to Firefox!

Chris James sez, "I got so tired of all the updates, lame plug-ins and the W3C evangelism of the Mozilla crowd that I've been looking around for an alternative to Firefox for quite some time. Finally, I've settled on a great free app called Internet Explorer -- and it looks like I'm not alone. According to my site stats, Explorer is running neck and neck with Firefox for marketshare. It's about time somebody gave those thugs at the Mozilla Foundation some competition." Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 05:07:12 AM permalink | blogs' comments