Xeni Jardin: Jon Lech Johansen, aka "DVD Jon," says,

I’ve found a way to activate a brand new unactivated iPhone without giving any of your money or personal information to AT&T NSA. The iPhone does not have phone capability, but the iPod and WiFi work.

Link to post, which includes download for "Phone Activation Server v1.0" (zip archive).

The point of Johansen's coding exercise, as he explains it, is that there are many potential iPhone purchasers who do not want to enter into a 2-year contract with AT&T, but do want to use the device for WiFi, web, email, video, music, calendar, contact management, and other features -- basically, treat it like a bomb-ass iPod, forget about the phone part.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog and other sites have pointed out that it is also possible to activate iPhone using a prepaid plan with AT&T, then cancel the plan: Link.

UPDATE: In related news, the Washington Post reports that...

Deutsche Telekom's (DTEGn.DE) mobile phone unit T-Mobile clinched a deal to bring Apple Inc's iPhone handset to Germany, according to a report in a German daily.

Without citing sources Rheinische Post said in a preview of a story to be published on Wednesday that T-Mobile is expected to sell the iPhone exclusively with a T-Mobile contract for around 450 euros ($612) starting Nov 1.

Link (thanks, KN!)

Consumer Reports: "With all the attention given to its multimedia features and innovative touch screen, it's almost easy to forget the iPhone is, well, a phone."

Cory Doctorow: Fred Saberhagen, author of the classic Berserker novels, has died at of cancer the age of 77. He was a giant of science fiction. Link (Thanks, Freddie Freelance)

(Photo by Scott Edelman)

rhinokitty writes "Dell recently announced that their Ubuntu systems will be $50 cheaper than similar systems running Vista (Home Basic Edition). This will be a good fork in the road for those people who need a little extra push to take hold of their dreams and run Linux."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We thought it was fairly amusing last month when Advertising Age claimed that Michael Moore's film being available for download online was "every film maker's worst marketing nightmare." After all, there was absolutely no evidence that having a film available to download hurts box office sales since the experience of watching on a computer and watching in a theater is totally different (and not just concerning quality and screen size, but the fact that going out to the movies is a social event). Plus, Moore himself had said in the past that he liked having his movies available for download. After all, remember that the last Star Wars movie was available for download before it came out and it certainly didn't hurt sales. So, it came as no surprise to us to find out that Moore's movie actually did quite well at the box office -- coming in second on a per-theater revenue basis. However, if you want to see a copyright lawyer in denial, check out the quote that News.com got from one when asked whether or not Moore's film being available for download could possibly have helped ticket sales at the box office:

"No, no, no, no," Prager seethed. "This is depressing. We're not seeing a rise in the peer-to-peer influence market. Anything positive they may bring is instantly canceled."

Apparently, the industry is now using the "if we just keep believing we're right, despite the evidence, maybe it will be true" method of dealing with the changing market.

Xeni Jardin:

John Schwartz at the New York Times has a terrific piece out today about one of those "explosives summer camps" Mark blogged about last week. Man, someone sign me up already! Snip from John's feature:

A group of high school students stood at the edge of a limestone quarry last month as three air horn blasts warned that something big was about to go boom. Across the quarry, with a roar and a cloud of dust and smoke, a 50-foot-high wall of rock sloughed away with a shudder and a long crashing fall, and 20,000 tons of rock was suddenly on the ground.

The campers laughed.

“That’s cool!” said Ian Dalton, a student from Camdenton, Mo.

Austin Shoemaker, a student from Macon, Mo., concurred. “It was baad!” he said. “Do it again!”

There aren’t many wholesome explosions in the news these day, but those are what Summer Explosives Camp provides. It is just a louder, and arguably more exciting, version of the kind of summer experiences designed to recruit students to the quieter academic disciplines. The University of Iowa, for example, has a summer program in microbiology; Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., offers a one-week program in robotics; Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, offers Neuroscience Camp, which includes a trip to a cadaver laboratory to see a brain and spinal cord.

But do those programs, whatever their merits, let the participants blow things up? No, they do not. This program, which does, is set up to draw students to a program at the University of Missouri-Rolla engineering school that feeds industries like mining and demolition.

Link (Thanks, John Schwartz! Image: Peter Newcomb for The New York Times)

Previously on BB:

Explosive camp trains demolition kids

Xeni Jardin: If the calculations of this Mexican newspaper are correct, Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim has now beaten both Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to the coveted spot of "world's richest businessman." Link to article in Mexico's Sentido Común (in Spanish), and here's a related story in the UK Guardian (in English).

hdxia writes "Can anybody recommend a good Linux kernel training course? I have had some Linux kernel hacking experience, but would like to further harden and improve my understanding of the kernel. I expect the course would be advanced. You may say that the best method would be to dig into the kernel myself, but I really want to have a chance to discuss and learn all aspects of the kernel with an experienced instructor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lists of the world's richest people can tell you a lot about the changing economic zeitgeist. The rise of gambling executives in the 2006 list was a good indicator of the global appetite for risk and speculation. For many years, the top spot has gone to Bill Gates, whose fortune was based on the ubiquitous desktop computer. But it's being reported today that Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim has passed Gates and taken over the top position. Slim's rise is indicative of a few different trends. The fact that he's not an American is further evidence (as if any were needed) that the US' days as the sole economic powerhouse are numbered, if not gone. And the fact that he's in telecom, wireless specifically, is a reminder that the phone is the central tech item for most of the world. Still, you can't feel too sorry for Mr. Gates. His fortune remains at a comfortable $59.2 billion.

Mark Frauenfelder: Curiouslee says:

The iPhone camera lens is flush with the back of the perfectly flat back of the device making it easy to hold a pocket magnifier loupe in front to convert the camera into a microscope. Here I am using a Radio Shack 15x 3-lens magnifier on a keycap of my Powerbook. An LED flashlight is adding light to the backlit keyboard symbols. Most any kind of loupe or pocket microscope should work. I'll be trying binoculars and spotting scopes too.

I've started a group called iPhone as microscope for anyone who wants to post interesting results.

Link (Via Makezine)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An elderly, non-file-sharing grandmother from East Texas, who had been sued by the RIAA after being displaced by Hurricane Rita, has sought leave to file counterclaims against the RIAA record companies for using unlicensed investigators. In her counterclaims (PDF) Ms. Crain claims that the record companies 'entered into an agreement with a private investigations company to provide investigative services which led to the production of evidence to be used in court against counterclaim plaintiff, including the identification of an IP address on the basis of which counterclaim defendants filed their suit... [They] were at the time of this agreement aware that the aforementioned private investigations company was unlicensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas specifically, and in other states as well... [T]hey agreed between themselves and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign... [T]he private investigations company hired by plaintiffs engaged in one or more overt acts of unlawful private investigation... Such actions constitute civil conspiracy under Texas common law.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While there has been a great deal of discussion (and a few lawsuits) concerning the legality of YouTube hosting infringing videos, one question where we haven't seen very much discussion is the legal liability for people who embed infringing YouTube videos on their sites. One of the great features of YouTube was that each video provided a line of HTML that would allow you to embed the video directly into your site -- exactly as we've done a few times. However, is that act -- of putting the HTML embed code on your site -- copyright infringement if the video is infringing? After all, the actual video is still hosted by YouTube. The person who uploaded it is someone entirely different. All you've done is put a single line of HTML on your page -- but it's not hard to see how some might see that as infringing. In fact, we may have an example of exactly that. Ronald Lewis let us know about a typical cease-and-desist letter he received from a lawyer because he had some blog posts that embedded YouTube videos of musician Michael McDonald. Lewis didn't upload the videos. He's not hosting the videos. He simply put a single line of HTML (provided by YouTube for this specific purpose) on his website, and it would then display the video. There are plenty of other questions raised by this as well, such as whether or not the videos really infringe, why a lawyer would want to stop someone from promoting the music of someone (since it's unlikely that anyone would stop buying music because they saw a video on YouTube). There's also the fact that Lewis claims he's been friends with McDonald for a decade to make the whole situation awkward. But, honestly, the much more interesting (and rarely discussed) question concerns the liability of those who embed infringing videos. My guess is that it won't be long before we start seeing a lot more threats and lawsuits over embedded videos from bloggers who have no idea they're putting themselves at risk simply for putting a line of code into a blog post.

Xeni Jardin:

A friend of BoingBoing wrote in yesterday to bemoan the lack of iPhone-rezzed, alt-girl, cheesecake wallpapers.

"The stuff Playboy released online last Friday is totally lame, I mean YAWN lame, and there's not a lot of good stuff in the right size," he said (paraphrasing a bit here).

"I wish there were some hott 320x480 sets out from Stockroom, or, I don't know, the kind of photography you might see on Nerve."

We're in the wish fulfillment business here at BoingBoing.

I forwarded this guy's email to Brooklyn-based fashion/erotica shooter Clayton James Cubitt, who promptly responded by publishing -- just for us -- this set of images he recently shot of adult star Justine Joli.

Link to photoset, titled "Damaged Doll."

Ms. Joli describes herself as a "stripping, acting, blogging, podcasting, ass-kicking, game-playing, anime-watching, hentai-loving, Comic-Con-attending, 40%-lesbian... geek." She's known for hardcore fare, but Cubitt's set is stylized stuff. I'd define it as artfully adult nudity. Still, NSFW, and for adults only. This set was originally shot to appear in a magazine fashion spread, as I understand it, but was banned or something. Anyway, download and [insert crude "touchscreen" or "one-handed txting" joke here].

I've asked classic fetish photog Steve Diet Goedde (whose work can be found in Stockroom's online galleries, and sometimes on BB) to share a 320 x 480 @ 160dpi set with us too.

(image: Sean Bonner, inset: Justine Joli, shot by Clayton Cubitt).

David Pescovitz: San Francisco musicians The Tatamimats occasionally perform Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety on ukulele. The next show will be this Friday, July 6, at San Francisco's The Knockout. For those unable to attend, YouTube has video documentation of the last performance in November 2006. See this Laughing Squid post for more details.
Link

David Pescovitz: This new bandshell is located in the Panhandle Park in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. It was built from structural steel skinned with 65 car hoods scavenged from mid-size sedans. The stage is made from 60 old hollowed-out French doors and reclaimed lumber. A temporary public installation, the Panhandle Bandshell will be in place through the middle of September. It was a collaborative effort of several Bay Area art and design groups, including Rebar, who in 2005 famously converted metered parking spaces into public parks. (photo by Mike Love)
Link

Previously on BB:
• Rebar's PARK(ing) Day prank in San Francisco Link
• Rebar's prankster life Link

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the best game yet made, according to a list compiled by readers and writers of the lauded British gaming magazine Edge. Their list of the hundred best games ever is top-heavy with Nintendo titles, a full five out of the top ten being released to a Nintendo platform. Obviously, this sort of thing can get contentious, and CNet's Crave blog spoke up quickly with a contrary opinion. "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is truly a masterpiece that should be thought of as one of the greatest games ever created. But to call it the greatest game of all time is a serious misstatement. Unlike Super Mario Bros., Ocarina of Time was released in an era where video games were booming and sales were on the rise. Simply put, everyone was playing video games, and the game was the best of its time. But no other game in history--Ocarina of Time included--was able to save an entire industry from almost guaranteed destruction the way Super Mario Bros. did, and it is for this reason that we should all give ol' Mario and Luigi credit where it's due." Let's hear it, then. What game deserves to top a list of the 100 best games ever made?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CoolBeans writes "Making ethanol is easy. Making enough ethanol to fill every gas tank in a developed country is tricky. The Department of Energy has promised $125 million to the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a team of six national labs and universities that will be run like a startup company. They intend to create new life forms that are optimized for alcohol production. The genes of crops that produce large amounts of cellulose will be tweaked to improve the yield per acre and to increase drought and pest resistance. Microbes that produce sugar from cellulose and ethanol from sugar will be built for speed and efficiency." The article mentions as an aside that earlier this year, "the energy giant BP gave $500 million to Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley lab, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for similar alternative energy research. That gift will fund the Energy Biosciences Institute, which will operate separately from the JBEI." So UC Berkeley and LBL are both participating in two separate energy-biotech research programs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.