Comics and animation illustrators know that sometimes, the most efficient way to get a panel or frame just right is to "swipe it" -- copy it from somewhere else where it worked before, then change it to fit. Disney's illustrators are no exception, as this collection of animated GIFs amply demonstrates. As Picasso said, "amateurs plagiarize, artists steal." (He stole that from someone else, of course).
Some other swipes from Boing Boing history:
Batman creator Bob Kane swipe panel
    
|
A British anti-gay group called "Straight Pride UK" sent a press-release to a British blogger, expressing their admiration for Vladimir Putin's anti-gay laws, and the measures taken in African countries to criminalise gay people (Robert Mugabe has threatened to decapitate gay people). Afterwards, they changed their mind about the interview and sent a fraudulent DMCA takedown notice to WordPress.com, the blogger's host. WordPress -- who should have seen that there was no possible copyright violation in the interview -- caved and cooperated in censoring the post.
Hotham says that Nick Steiner, a press officer for the group, said in a document headed 'press release': "Straight Pride support what Russia and Africa is doing, these country have morals and are listening to their majorities."
"These countries are not 'anti-gay' – that is a term always used by the homosexual agenda to play the victim and suppress opinions and views of those against it.
"These countries have passed laws, these laws are to be respected and no other country should interfere with another country's laws or legislation."
When asked who the symbol of straight pride would be, the spokesman expressed more support for Vladimir Putin, whose crackdown on gay rights has been the trigger to a widespread anti-gay campaign in Russia.
WordPress pulls interview with anti-gay group Straight Pride UK 
|
|
spriteleighracism and class
James Taranto reminds us today that Oprah Winfrey isn't Rosa Parks, and that her claims of casually racist treatment at a Zurich shop are lies to cover her privileged mistreatment of the "lowly". After all, Taranto has a deep understanding of what life is like in Switzerland.
It seems there was a language barrier: The clerk's English isn't great, and Winfrey probably doesn't speak Swiss. ... What Winfrey construes as a racial episode is actually a story about class--a wealthy, privileged celebrity aggrieved by a lowly saleswoman's lack of deference.
This was your reminder for the day that some members of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, regardless of their opinions or beliefs, are just plain stupid.
|
|
The publisher John Wiley has lost a court battle over the copying practices of a patent law-firm that had assembled a private library of copies of scientific articles for the purpose of researching patent applications. Initially, Wiley had sued over the use of copies of scientific articles in patent applications, but the US Patent and Trademark Office pre-empted that suit by issuing a directive declaring such copies to be fair use. Wiley switched its legal theory, suing over the assembly of the library, and US Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Keyes ruled (PDF) that this was also fair use, since the USPTO requires lawyers to consult the literature before filing. It's likely that Wiley will appeal to the district court.
“These are not the acts of a ‘chiseler,’” Keyes ruled at the conclusion of a four-part fair-use analysis, noting that the patent lawyers’ use of the work was transformative and did not impinge on the original market for scholarly journals. He also wrote that the lawyers’ copying of the work did not prevent a fair-use finding (an argument that could help Google in its long-running fight over book-scanning).
Judge says patent lawyers have right to science articles under ‘fair use’ [Jeff John Roberts/GigaOm]
(via Techdirt)
(Image: A photocopier-thing, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from torley's photostream) 
|
|
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper? Now, there is a patriotic American. His press release follows.
DNI Clapper Announces Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies
At the direction of the President, I am establishing the Director of National Intelligence Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies to examine our global signals-intelligence collection and surveillance capability.
The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust.
The Review Group will brief its interim findings to the President within 60 days of its establishment, and provide a final report with recommendations no later than Dec. 15, 2013.
James R. Clapper
Director of National Intelligence
From Xeni's article about Clapper:
In testimony he gave in March to the Senate intelligence committee’s Ron Wyden (D-OR), Clapper said the NSA did “not wittingly” collect “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.” More of that exchange is transcribed here. But in a letter released Tuesday, Clapper told Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) his remarks were “clearly erroneous.” He blames the error on the fact he was thinking about a different kind of surveillance ... “I apologize,” Clapper wrote. “While my staff acknowledged the error to Senator Wyden’s staff soon after the hearing, I can now openly correct it because the existence of the metadata program has been declassified.”
|
|
A Flickr group called "The Art of 3D Print Failure" chronicles the beautiful monstrosities that emerge from glitches in 3D prints. In addition to providing aesthetic pleasure, it also serves as a compendium of advice for preventing errors in the future.
When 3D prints go wrong and lessons from failure.
Inspired by a blog post from RichRap, this group is meant as a show and tell of the prints that went wrong.
Add a description of what happened and your thoughts and analysis and hopefully others will comment on how best to avoid the problems in the future.
The Art of 3D Print Failure (via New Aesthetic)
(Image: downsized thumbnail from IMG_0793 by wolf e twain ) 
|
|
The first of the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad aired last night. Read Kevin McFarland's season preview on Boing Boing here, and read his episode recap of "Blood Money" here. Below, a few of the more interesting video and remixes, an animated retelling of one great scene in last night's ep, and a parody from Weird Al Yankovic. Spoilers galore.
Listen to Benjamin Jackson's dope methcore hip-hop remix.
An animated retelling of the Star Trek Pie-Eating Story. (Vulture) 
|
|
|
|
Deep in the forest, at the base of the giant camphor tree, sleeps Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro. He is, according to legend, the "keeper of the film studio". Brazilian artist Giovanna drew this illustration of the mythical Del Toro from the anime classic My Neighbor Totoro.
spriteleighhalf-hour movie remixes
Real porcupine noises sound exactly the way a cartoon porcupine's might—in a word, adorable.
*
How do you measure a year? In 525,6000 minutes, or in a 400,000-piece Lego replica of Hogwarts?
*
The second full theatrical trailer for the upcoming Ender's Game movie is out, starring a lengthy, dramatic voiceover by Colonel Hyrum Graff/Harrison Ford.
*
A selection of photos spanning Queen Elizabeth II's 60-year reign documents some of the monarch's more private moments.
*
Mumford and Sons fans who pressed play on the band's latest music video were surprised to see not the British folk rockers themselves, but banjo-wielding doppelgangers comically played by Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Ed Helms, and Will Forte.
*
These senior citizen residents of the Sun City "active retirement community"—including cheerleaders, competitive swimmers, and recreational lawn bowlers—really know how to live life to the fullest.
*
A teeny-tiny Minnesota town (population: no more than 28) elected a 4-year-old as its mayor...for the second year in a row.
*
The running time for Mean Girls is normally 97 minutes, including dialogue, exposition, incidental music—all those time-consuming things that make a movie. If that's just too much of a commitment, one brave man in a pink polo shirt has condensed the entire movie into a half-hour speed recitation for your hyper-efficient viewing pleasure.
Will Grumpy Catbus give Mei and Satsuki a ride to the hospital? No! My Neighbor Totoro ends differently in Tim Doyle's version, which is entitled "Out of Service."
Link -via Super Punch
Lindsey Stirling and Peter Hollens combine violin and voice to bring us the music and drama of the Star Wars saga. Without a spoken word, you can follow the basic story by recognizing the different themes from the movies. -via Viral Viral Videos
See also: More from Lindsey Stirling.
A wily Russian fellow crossed out the fine-print on an unsolicted credit-card application from Tinkoff Credit Systems in 2008 and wrote in his own terms, giving himself unlimited, interest-free credit and exemption from all fees, with a 3MM ruble fee should the bank change the terms and a 1MM ruble fee should they cancel his card. He crossed out the URL giving the terms and conditions and wrote in his own. And a court has ruled that his changes -- which were blindly accepted by the bank -- are binding. He's now suing them for breach of contract, since they refused to pay him the cancellation fee he'd written in -- he's seeking USD727,000.
Among the amendments in his version of the contract — unlimited credit, 0% APR, no fees, including the stipulation that he “is not obliged to pay any fees and charges imposed by bank tariffs.” Since the contract included a URL for a web page containing the full terms of service, the customer also wrote in a new URL of his own so that the bank couldn’t just say “but these terms are different than what’s published on the site.”
Per the amended terms, every change to these terms would result in a payment of 3 million rubles ($91,000) to the customer, or a cancelation fee of 6 million rubles ($182,000)...
...And so Tinkoff sued the customer. However, the court held that his amendments were binding since the bank accepted them, whether it looked at them or not. The court said the customer only owed the principal balance of around $575.
Perhaps emboldened by this victory, the customer then sued Tinkoff for a whopping $727,000 for its failure to honor the amended agreement and for not paying out the agreed-upon penalty of $182,000 when it canceled his account.
Man Tries To Beat Bank At Its Own Game With Fine Print That Gives Him Unlimited Credit [Chris Morran/Consumerist]
(Image: Fine Print, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from cjsorg's photostream)
|
|
|
|
At a meeting where AOL announced plans to lay off hundreds of workers, there was space for one more in the unemployment queue: Abel Lenz, a creative director, who was sacked by AOL chief Tim Armstrong, live on air, after pulling out his camera
Out, like a dog.‘Abel, put that camera down. You’re fired. Out,’ Armstrong said. After a pause of about five seconds, he then continued the call as though nothing had happened.
Given the longstanding reputation of AOL's corporate culture and work environment, what better illustration of life inside the "sadness factory" could one need?
UPDATE: Say, has anyone ever seen Armstrong in the same room as Scientology's David Miscavige? Similar management styles, I hear.
|
|
Yup, that about sums it up. Have a good Friday, everybody.
spriteleighHere it is
Ladar Levison, the founder of Lavabit, the encrypted email provider apparently used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has abruptly shut the service down, with an oblique open letter saying he shut down rather than "becom[ing] complicit in crimes against the American people," implying that he was being leaned upon by spooks to help spy on his users.
I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.
What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.
This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.
My Fellow Users (Thanks, @dd_toronto) 
|
|
Patent troll Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures-connected Lodsys, one the many faceless companies founded to obscure exactly who shakes down small businesses with vague patents that represent equally-vague post-Microsoft careers, was forced to settle with a victim this week—but not without exercising some grotesque conditions on it. Lodsys controls a patent on in-app purchase buttons, and it will have your money, should your app include a button of interest to it, on pain of lawsuits that are even more expensive to battle than the liver disease you'd end up with should you drink the way one imagines a wealthy patent troll might do at home, at night, in the clawing blender-decanted quiet, when the money just isn't enough anymore.
I was a little confused about why Lodsys wanted to make a donation to charity. I asked my lawyer if it was to make them appear more human. He said it is most likely because if we would have said no to this offer, the judge could have said we were not behaving reasonably. ...
The total costs to my company would have been $190,000. And that’s just for the initial response to this lawsuit. We hadn’t even gotten to court which would have increased that amount into millions. Remember that it only cost Lodsys about $450 to file the lawsuit. This is why small businesses will usually always settle. It’s just not worth it to fight. And even if you could win and get awarded your attorneys fees and costs, which are very rare, you probably won’t see a dime of that money.
Ladies and gentlemen, Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures-connected Lodsys.
|
|
Jesse Brown writes, "Boing Boing readers may remember Rehteah Parsons, the Nova Scotia teen who, in news media shorthand, was driven to suicide last April by cyber bullies. The public's understandable shock and outrage over her death, and the lack of any charges being laid against her abusers* has resulted in Nova Scotia's Bill 61: the Cyber Safety Act. But pre-existing laws could have brought Rehteah justice while she was alive- they just weren't enforced. Rehteah may have been cyber bullied, but more descriptively, she was (allegedly) gang-raped while severely intoxicated and chronically harassed. But the RCMP closed her case without interviewing the four boys accused, despite the existence of photo evidence."
*The RCMP re-opened Rehteah's case under pressure from the Prime Minister. This morning, they finally laid charges against two individuals, assumedly not under Bill 61, which of course did not exist at the time of the incident.
The cops failed to take her rape seriously, as did her school. Her father reports that the mental health institute he sent her to had her strip-searched by male attendants, despite her history of sexual abuse. In her dad's words, "she didn't die of bullying, she died of disappointment". Yet in her memory comes Bill 61, a law that makes "cyber bullying" illegal, and defines it as anything you or your kids say online that could be expected to humiliate a person or harm their self-esteem or emotional well-being. This covers most journalism, I'd guess, as well as at least 60% of everything said on Twitter or Facebook.
If you're merely accused, a judge can issue a Protection Order against you before you have a chance to defend yourself. The cops can seize your computers, you can lose Internet access, you can be gagged from mentioning your accuser online or forbidden to use the Internet entirely. There's much more- the bill encourages parents and school administrators to spy on minors, and it gives police new powers to demand your data from your ISP.
I've written in more detail about the trouble with this abusive bill here.
Nova Scotia’s awful cyber abuse law makes bullies of us all 
|
|
The Missed Connections section of Craiglist is mostly short notes from people hoping to find a date. One man saw it as a chance to publish a short story, albeit fitting for the category.
I saw you on the Manhattan-bound Brooklyn Q train.
I was wearing a blue-striped t-shirt and a pair of maroon pants. You were wearing a vintage red skirt and a smart white blouse. We both wore glasses. I guess we still do.
You got on at DeKalb and sat across from me and we made eye contact, briefly. I fell in love with you a little bit, in that stupid way where you completely make up a fictional version of the person you're looking at and fall in love with that person. But still I think there was something there.
Several times we looked at each other and then looked away. I tried to think of something to say to you -- maybe pretend I didn't know where I was going and ask you for directions or say something nice about your boot-shaped earrings, or just say, "Hot day." It all seemed so stupid.
This beautiful prose takes a turn for the weird shortly after this snippet, and you'll want to read the whole love story. Link -via Uproxx
(Image credit: Gary H. Spielvogel)
Public Resource is being sued for publishing building standards that the public is legally required to follow. These standards were developed by private-sector industry bodies who make millions off of access fees charged to the public. In other words, a large block of American law is privately owned, secret, and accessible only for a fee. Three Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) are suing and they've released a statement to the media explaining why the law should not be free for all.
The SDOs underwrite the substantial costs of developing standards, in whole or in significant part, by relying on revenues from the sales and licensing of their copyrighted standards. This funding model allows SDOs to remain independent of special interests and to develop up-to-date, high quality standards.
An article in the Washington Post's Wonkblog by Lydia DePillis delves more deeply into the issue:
(Thanks, Carl!)There are various pieces of administrative precedent and case law in different courts that support either side. Essentially, though, it’s a question of principle vs. practicality: Code is law, Malamud says, and it’s owned by the public. But good code is also expensive, the standards development groups maintain, and charging for copies is the least bad way to pay for it.
|
|
spriteleighI don't know if this is fact or fiction. This is a Viable Paradise teacher.
Cookie Monster learns a little self-control when it comes to cookies! We learn about his new skill in a parody of the song "I Love It" by Icona Pop. Waiting just makes the cookie taste better later! Self-regulation is part of Sesame Street's curriculum this year, when the show's 44th season begins September 16th. -via Viral Viral Videos
Got food on the brain? If you see tasty treats everywhere, then you might enjoy the altered movie posters at the blog Snack to the Future.
Link -via Foodiggity
The new video for Califone's "Stitches," the title track from their forthcoming album, generates itself from images and Gifs culled from a selection of Tumblrs. The band is a collaboration with filmmaker Braden King and programmer Jeff Garneau. The new album, Stitches, will be released September 3.
Watch the video here: Califone. Stitches.
Background about its creation is available at their record label Dead Oceans' blog.
|
|
(
(