David Pescovitz: From artist Le Gentil Garçon:

"PacMan’s skeleton, conceived by Le Gentil Garçon, in collaboration with François Escuilié, palaeontologist, from the comparative observation of human and various predatory animal skulls. 2004, Resin, diameter: 65 cm."

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

Previously on BB:
• Cartoon character skeletons Link
• Artificial cartoon-character skeletons Link

For many years, we've been discussing that ads are content and that content are ads -- and thinking that the two are somehow separate limits your business model options. A few weeks back, at the Mesh Conference, someone asked the panel I was on how advertising would evolve on YouTube. Specifically, they seemed to want to know if there would be preroll or postroll ads to monetize YouTube. My response was that's the wrong way of thinking about it. Most of the content on YouTube is an advertisement in some form -- whether on purpose or not. It could be an ad for the person in the video or the maker of the video. Or, it could be an advertisement for something else. Take, for example, the case of the now quite famous Dove ad. They created video ad and tossed it up on YouTube where it's received tremendous attention. The whole thing cost Dove about $50,000 and got them a ridiculous amount of exposure. Dove isn't complaining that people are viewing their "content" for free online. They're recognizing that it helps to sell other products.

Xeni Jardin:

Giant clothes-free pole dancer crop circle frightens prudish people on planes. Link.

Naked 19-year-old mobile blowjob receiver cited for "drinking and 'embracing' while driving." The pull quote: "'You are not supposed to be hugging or kissing while driving,' [officer] Merrill said. 'It’s so distracting.'" Link.

Extreme tax resisters in New Hampshire holed up in "Waco-like" situation. Link.

Scary lady rips off her ex-boyfriend's testicle, tries to eat it, then later -- can't remember it. Link.

50-ton whale killed in Alaska last month had 130-year-old weapon embedded in its blubber. Link.

Outgoing British PM Tony Blair wants new regulation, monitoring, enforcement, censorship system for online journalism -- hey, just like China. Link.

This rare and ancient purple frog is simultaneously icky and beautiful. (Image below, Kalyan Varma) Link to what may be some of the only photos ever taken of this little fella. The pull quote: "It feels like a big bag of jelly when you hold it in your hand and I must say, its a very strong frog."

(thanks, kevin, jason, kevin, big fez, Noella)

Xeni Jardin: Two separate stories, one troublesome trend. First -- YouTube / Google announces plans to test a filtering system -- "digital fingerprinting" -- with the intent to block copyrighted content (WSJ, AP, Time).

Today, news that AT&T plans to do effectively the same to their phone and data subscribers (Wired, LA Times). Snip:

"The risk AT&T faces is fighting the last war by spending money and energy plugging an old hole in the wall when new ones are breaking out," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. The San Francisco digital-rights organization has sued AT&T, alleging it illegally released customers' phone data to the federal government.

Technology is putting unlimited copying power in the hands of consumers, Von Lohmann said, so the answer to piracy can't be trying to stop them from making copies.

"The answer should be to figure out how to turn them into paying customers," he said.

AT&T says that now that it's in the cable TV business, its interests are "more closely aligned with Hollywood", and as such, it plans to begin filtering traffic for copyrighted material that's being illegally shared. The inanity of the move is obvious, mostly because these sorts of things never work, but also because it's not particularly clear why the company would want to do something that will do little more than annoy its customers. The problem isn't so much that it will stop piracy, but that it will create all sorts of false positives and block all kinds of non-infringing uses. For instance, CBS now makes its copyrighted content available from a wide range of sites other than its own. To a system looking for copyrighted content, will legitimate traffic from Joost or AOL look any different than infringing streams from other sites? How will it know which YouTube videos have been authorized by their owners, and which are "illegal"? The likely answer is that it won't -- and if AT&T's in bed with the MPAA and RIAA, it won't likely care, either, since they continually try to undermine fair use.

Furthermore, it's worth wondering, what's the business case here? Did AT&T's new friends in Hollywood threaten it with a lawsuit, or promise it a better price on content? There must be some reason that the company would decide to go to the trouble and expense of implementing some fingerprinting and filtering system, then throwing more money at it in a futile attempt to make it work, pissing off their paying customers all the while. Whatever the motivation, the company's opening up a giant can of worms with significant legal and privacy implications. Perhaps if nothing else, this illustrates the point that pro-net neutrality groups don't need to make things up about AT&T and its executives; they do plenty of egregious things on their own. It also underlines that the issue of net neutrality is one of competition. If there was real competition in the broadband market, AT&T could never get away with a move like this, as it's basically a reason for customers to change providers. But given the lack of a truly competitive market, it can, and it will.

Mark Frauenfelder: Ben Smith went to a garage sale and picked up a grocery bag full of Silver Age comics (and some Zaps, too). I'm so envious I could kill him. At least he was kind enough to scan some of his favorite ads from the pages. All of them bring back memories. Did anyone buy this Polaris Nuclear sub for $6.98? If you did, add a comment to Ben's Flickr site. Better yet, if you still have your sub, take a photo and send it to me.

If you like old comic book ads, I highly recommend the book Hey Skinny!, which is out of print. Used copies are for sale at Amazon for $6.67 and up.

Link

There is certainly plenty to complain about concerning Congress' latest attempt at patent reform, but as expected the powerful "patent lobby" is making sure that any discussion is pretty much dead in the water. They've convinced Congress to delay the bill while complaining about the few good points in the bill, while ignoring many of the other bad points. Even worse, however, is the suggestion that tech companies should just give up trying to reform patent law. That seems to be the suggestion coming from a Canadian columnist who notes that, despite bad patents and bad patent law costing firms millions of dollars, the patent lobby is just too strong, and we're all better off sucking it up and living with an innovation-stifling, money-wasting system instead. The suggestion is basically that fighting against the patent lobby is really expensive, so everyone should just stop and play the patent game. Of course, this ignores the tremendous costs and lost opportunities that will only help other nations out-innovate local economies.

David Pescovitz: My Institute for the Future colleague Jamais Cascio just got hearing aids. He's written an interesting essay on his experience so far, and also riffs on technology for human augmentation and enhancement. It's titled "The Accidental Cyborg." From the essay:

These aren't just dumb amplifiers; they're little digital signal processors, small enough to fit into the ear canal, and smart enough to know when to boost the input and when to leave it alone. They're programmable, too (sadly, not by the end-user -- programming requires an acoustic enclosure, not just a computer connection). And here's where therapeutic augmentation starts to fuzz into enhancement: one of the program modes I'm considering would give me far better than normal hearing, allowing me to pick up distant conversations like I was standing right there...

I expect that, over the next decade, hearing aid technologies will have improved enough that most of the drawbacks will have been rectified, and I'll have access to hearing capabilities better than ever before; over that same time, we may see biomedical advances that can fix deficient hearing, restoring perfectly functional natural hearing. Augmentation for therapy slides inexorably into augmentation for enhancement. Should I give up my better-than-human hearing to go back to a "natural" state?

Link

Previously on BB:
• Simians, Cyborgs, and Gareth Brawnyn Link
• Musician requests truly badass bone conduction hearing aid Link
• Hearing aid museum Link
• Deaf hacker rewrites implant-firmware Link

Over the last few years, there have been a number of questions about whether eBay and Google were on a collision path. The two appear to be in separate businesses, but there is definitely some overlap. At the same time, however, the two were partners. eBay has consistently been one of the biggest advertisers on Google. In fact, there were rumors that key reason that eBay bought Shopping.com was because Shopping.com's AdWords bids kept pushing eBay's AdWords bids higher. By taking out Shopping.com, eBay would then be able to spend a lot less money on Google ads.

As the competition has become more direct, however, things may get particularly interesting. A year ago, Google announced its Google Checkout offering, which was somewhat competitive with eBay's PayPal (at least for merchants). This was worrisome enough that eBay banned Google checkout from its site. This past Monday, Google announced a somewhat childish plan to hold a protest meeting outside eBay's own conference. Apparently, eBay has responded in a big way: by removing all their US ads from Google. Publicly, eBay insists it's just an experiment with ad dollar allocation -- but many believe it's a direct response to Google's "protest." Considering how much money eBay puts into Google's bank account, this isn't a small deal. This is a warning shot from eBay to Google that becoming too directly competitive could mean that one of Google's top ad buyers will move somewhere else. If it's true and if eBay can really resist advertising through Google, this could have a huge impact on Google -- not just in the loss of so many ads, but also in driving down the cost auction price on ads where eBay has been an active bidder. This is a case where eBay may actually be in the power seat against Google and could cause Google a lot of pain. Update: As noted in the comments, Google has backed down and cancelled the protest. Looks like eBay has a bit of pull...

Xeni Jardin: I just spoke to a friend in Guatemala who says there's just been a very large seismic event -- at or over 7.2, is what local news says. No official reports of injury or damage, and no report from Guatemala's institute of Seismology. I'm hearing it was centered near the southern coastal area of Escuintla, 70 miles away from the capital, Guatemala City -- and that the quake was very deep, but they're not expecting tsunamis.

I spent the better part of the last month working on a documentary series in Guatemala. The area where this quake hit was heavily waterlogged from intense rains over the last few weeks, there was flooding and some small mudslides... I wonder if there will be reports of further damage of that kind, it's possible that a quake this strong would dislodge wet soil.

I've spoken to a number of people on the phone since the quake hit, and it was felt in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala City, and as far north as some of the small indigenous towns in the upper part of the department of Sololá.

The quake just happened within the past hour.

Update: Reuters says 6.8: Link (in Spanish). Ah, here's a CNN report (thanks, Seth Rosner). The quake hit at 3:29PM ET, 1:29PM Guatemala Time. People felt it as far away as Mexico and the capital city in El Salvador, and the activity even registered on seismographs 1,800 miles away (!) on Midway Island.

Early reports indicated some homes were damaged and people may be missing, journalist Patzy Vazquez told CNN en Español. Torrential rains have made telephone communication difficult, hampering efforts of rescuers trying to reach the region. The USGS has received no confirmed reports of damage or casualties, and no immediate reports of aftershocks, the agency's Rafael Abreu told CNN. As a precaution, authorities were evacuating high-rise buildings and homes that might be vulnerable to damage if there were any aftershocks.

(map image ganked from cnn.com)

David Pescovitz: I dig The Cosmoboy, "a red reversible whipcord vest jacket" by Pierre Cardin. Just $250... in 1967.
Link

UPDATE: BB reader Neil says, "The Cosmoboy jacket immediately reminded me of Captain Scarlet, the follow-up to Thunderbirds which came out in 1967. The jacket is identical to the Spectrum uniform." Link

Groups of patients advocating for more research on specific diseases are nothing new. But thanks to the internet, these groups are rapidly growing in clout. Not only are they able to push for more research on a given disease, but they are able to do things like share information with members and raise funds together. They're also taking a proactive role in medical innovation, as patients can coordinate ad-hoc drug trials among themselves (e.g. everyone keeps track of their side effects and shares them with each other) or find individuals for studies in need of volunteers. One of the things the internet is great at is lowering the costs of coordination among widely dispersed groups. Projects like Wikipedia are an obvious example of this phenomenon, but as this story demonstrates, online coordination can also serve an offline purpose. And it often does; even sites like Facebook and MySpace tangibly help young people, ahem, "hook up". More professional networks are there to help people land jobs or fill vacancies. A site for film photography enthusiasts helped establish an actual factory for making a certain kind of film that had gone out of production. In addition to the obvious connection between these examples, they also underline the point that the "information economy" isn't about selling information, but about using it to create value in other things.

Xeni Jardin:

A number of tech firms, nonprofits, universities, and others (huh, even Starbucks) are teaming up in the Climate Savers Computing Initiative -- a consortium formed to improve energy efficiency in computing. Announcement on the Google Blog here, press release here.

Started by Google and Intel, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative brings together industry, consumers, government, and conservation organizations to significantly increase the energy efficiency of computers and servers. Believe it or not, the average desktop PC wastes over half the power delivered to it! Servers are slightly more efficient but still squander about one-third of the power consumed. This wasted electricity unnecessarily increases the cost to power computers and also increases the emissions of greenhouse gases. Improving the energy efficiency of computers is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce electricity consumption and the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Through more efficient design optimized for power consumption alongside speed, capacity and cost, together with use of power-saving technologies, the electricity required to power computers can be significantly reduced while at the same time increasing their computing capabilities. As participants in this program, computer and component manufacturers commit to produce products that meet specified power-efficiency targets, and corporate participants commit to purchase power-efficient computing products.

Much talk around the blog'n'newsosphere today: SJ Merc, NYT, Ars Technica, AP, and elsewhere. (Thanks, Nate Tyler!)

It's been pretty obvious from the outset that the next generation of DVD formats were doomed to failure without significant changes. What wasn't for consumers to like? Two competing standards, but both featuring restrictive copy protection (though it's really proving typically ineffective) and high prices. Given the fact that standard DVD players deliver good enough picture quality for many people (even if they have an HD television) and both players and content are readily and cheaply available, it's hardly surprising that Toshiba has sliced its sales forecast for HD DVD players, even as HDTV sales remain strong. The company brags that it's got a 60 percent share of the North American market for next-generation DVD players, which is nice and all, but adds that now expects to only sell 1 million of them in the region this year, down from earlier predictions of 1.8 million in calendar 2007, and 3 million in the fiscal year ending in March 2008. The company's trying to flog an unattractive product using a seriously flawed strategy, and until it delivers some changes, sales aren't going to pick up.

If you wanted to get a truly accurate picture of an individual's creditworthiness, you'd want to include factors like salary, past payment history, career risk, health risk, family situation and so on. But for the most part, the lending market operates on the assumption that a single numerical score, the FICO score, can adequately synthesize all of the relevant data into a useful indicator for lenders. However, the recent breakdown of the subprime mortgage market has some market participants wondering whether the FICO score is becoming irrelevant. Certainly, it did an inadequate job of anticipating default rates among borrowers on the low end of the spectrum. Critics are also pointing out that the system has only been used by mortgage lenders since the 90s, during which housing prices have steadily grown along with the economy. Thus, the system hasn't been tested during a period of slumping housing prices and significant economic weakness. Already, we've seen new services spring up that try to give more detailed information on the reliability of a borrower or renter, in an attempt to break the stranglehold on the market held by the credit reporting agencies. If banks and other lenders continue to grow dissatisfied by the FICO system, it's likely that more alternative institutions will emerge.