A couple of years ago, some Chinese mobile-phone retailers garnered some attention by giving people free porn for the phones they purchased, using the content to show off the handsets' video capabilities. Now, mobile operators are trying a new giveaway: free beer. In one city, China Unicom began offering new subscribers a free 12-pack of beer; its bigger rival China Mobile responded by offering up to two crates per new user. Chinese operators often use these sorts of giveaways to attract users since their prices are controlled by the government, and in a neighboring province to the town with the beer giveaways, they hand out towels, woks, cooking oil and umbrellas, and in another area, they give away washing powder and "a special mosquito repellent gift set." So the next time your local cell phone store says they'll throw in a free car charger if you buy a phone, you know what you can haggle for.

SkiifGeek writes "A team of researchers dedicated to finding means to fully control and interact with the new Apple iPhone claim to have successfully gained an interactive shell on the device. In order to achieve this feat physical access to the phone is required, as it relies on some minor electronics to be created and connected to the phone's serial port. It is believed that general control over the iPhone will be available to the enterprising researchers within a week (after all, it has only just been a week since the iPhone was released), with the promise of enough control to allow for self-propagating code not very far away."

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A company called Steorn's been getting lots of press this week with its claim to have developed a machine that it claims produces "free, clean and constant energy", violating the law of conservation of energy along the way. It hardly seemed newsworthy since it essentially appeared to just be the latest iteration of something cold fusion that promises something radical but constantly fails to deliver. It's hardly surprising, then, to see Steorn postpone its demonstration indefinitely, apparently because excessive heat from TV cameras caused technical problems. Steorn says it will try to find a new date for the demo over the next few weeks, but somehow we doubt the laws of physics or thermodynamics will disappear in that time.

Rafe Needleman: "Twittergram is a lot of fun."

Brian Heys: "TwitterGram could do for podcasting what Twitter did for blogging."

And a Daring Fireball review of nytimesriver.

Thanks!

Previous entertainment industry-led attempts to shut down The Pirate Bay torrent search engine haven't been successful, but the Swedish police are still trying to help out. Consequently, next week, the site will be blocked to anyone from inside the country who tries to visit it -- because it's being added to a list of child-pornography sites that Swedish ISPs block. A Pirate Bay admin writes on his blog that the police say that "if the content is still there next week", they'll add the site to the list -- but they won't specify what the offending content is (never mind the the site doesn't actually host and content on its own). It's highly unlikely it's actual child porn, though of course the entertainment industry has no problem equating file-sharing to child porn. But since the Pirate Bay is nothing more than a search engine, can Google expect to be blocked in Sweden soon? Yahoo? MSN? After all, chances are those sites link to at least one piece of copyrighted content.

chinmay7 writes "There is an excellent selection of articles (and quite a few related scientific papers) in a special edition of Nature magazine on interpretations of the multiverse theory. 'Fifty years ago this month Hugh Everett III published his paper proposing a "relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics" — the idea subsequently described as the 'many worlds' or 'multiverse' interpretation. Its impact on science and culture continues. In celebration, a science fiction special edition of Nature on 5 July 2007 explores the symbiosis of science and sf, as exemplified by Everett's hypothesis, its birth, evolution, champions and opponents, in biology, physics, literature and beyond.'

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There's long been a push from the entertainment industry to make ISPs responsible for policing copyright infringement on their networks. Despite the willingness of some ISPs -- such as AT&T to do this, it's really not a very good idea because it simply shouldn't be an ISP's job to determine what is and isn't infringing material. A recent story out of Australia illustrates what can happen when ISPs aren't protected by safe harbor laws: they do things like delete all their users' multimedia files from web hosting accounts, regardless of whether they're illegal or not. Now, a Belgian court has ruled that ISPs there must block illegal file-sharing on their networks, and has given one provider six months to implement some sort of filtering technology or face daily fines (never mind that that sort of thing never really works). The RIAA's international equivalent, the IFPI is, of course, delighted, and says that since the decision is based on an interpretation of EU copyright law, it could set a precedent across the continent. The group's chairman says it hopes it will do just that "around the world", though last we checked, Belgian court rulings don't apply in many countries, such as the US, which has safe harbor laws -- for the time being, anyway. On another note, is Belgium becoming to internet copyright law what Marshall, Texas is to patent lawsuits? First the ruling that Google can't link to Belgian newspapers, now this.

Otter writes "A unique creature that's been dubbed an 'octosquid' with eight arms and a squid-like mantle, was discovered off Hawaii. The creature, of a previously unknown species, was trapped in the net covering a 3,000 foot-deep intake tube for the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority. From the article: 'The octosquid was pulled to the surface, along with three rattail fish and half a dozen satellite jellyfish, and stayed alive for three days. According to War, the lab usually checks its filters once a month, but this time, it put a plankton net in one of the filters and checked it two weeks later. The pitch-black conditions at 3,000 feet below sea level are unfamiliar to most but riveting to scientists who have had the opportunity to submerge. The sea floor is full of loose sediment, big boulders and rocks, and a lot of mucuslike things floating in the water, which are usually specimens that died at the surface and drifted to the bottom.'"

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Mark Frauenfelder: My friend Joshua Glenn was the founder of one of my favorite zines, The Hermenaut. He edited a new book called Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance, which can be pre-ordered via Amazon. I've read some samples from the book and they're wonderful.

"'Taking Things Seriously' is a wonder cabinet of seventy-five unlikely thingamajigs that have been invested with significance and transformed into totems, talismans, charms, relics, and fetishes: scraps of movie posters scavenged from the streets of New York by Low Life author Luc Sante; the World War I helmet that inoculated social critic Thomas Frank against jingoism; the trash-picked, robot-shaped hairdo machine described by its owner as a chick magnet; the bagel burned by actor Christopher Walken while moonlighting as a short-order cook. The owners of these objects convey their excitement in short, often poignant essays that invite readers to participate in the enjoyable act of interpreting things."

Link

Nothing earth-shaking going on over here today.

This week, eBay announced that it would launch a domestic version of Kijiji, its free classified ads service, which inevitably draws comparisons to Craigslist (25% owned by eBay). The company has a big challenge cut out for itself, particularly considering the loyalty that Craigslist has among its users. But analysts are already excited about Kijiji's potential. In a research note, UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter talked up the potential size of the market and argued that the site could drive usage of PayPal and Skype, as users look for mechanisms to communicate and engage in transactions. Does that sound familiar? It's exactly the same logic behind the Skype acquisition, that usage of it would be boosted by eBay's buyers and sellers. That doesn't seem to have occurred to any significant extent, however. There's nothing wrong with eBay trying to capture a chunk of this market, but any excitement about major profits or synergies seems awfully premature.

rstrohmeyer writes "Over at Maximum PC, we're betting that Linux will pick up unprecedented momentum in the coming year. With phenomenal new distros, swelling international support, and a little extra momentum from Dell, we think Linux is poised to exploit the current atmosphere of doubt surrounding Vista and pick up serious traction in '08. 'For end users here in North America, Linux poses a low barrier to entry. While many still balk at an upgrade to Vista (typically centered around cost and restrictive licensing terms), those who are curious about the open-source alternative will find few of these obstacles. And an increasingly rich array of ready-to-run software (not to mention surprisingly effective utilities that let you run many Windows apps) makes it easy switch ... Ultimately, I'm not predicting that Linux will take over the market next year. Or anytime soon, for that matter. But if there's ever been a time to try out the world's leading free OS, 2008 will be that time. I am predicting that users will switch to Linux in record numbers next year. And many will never look back.'"

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Mark Frauenfelder: PopSci has a fun project that shows you how to dissolve the zinc in a penny, leaving only the thin copper shell. Link

Mark Frauenfelder:
My friend Robyn painted this terrific album cover for his son's band's second album: an E.P. called Cosmic Beats in Outer Space.

It's reminiscent of EC comics and Mad editor Al Feldstein's 1959 painting Moon Arch, one of my favorite spaceman paintings. Link

In June I outlined a problem I was having with the content system for Scripting News. Writing to a folder served by Apache for Windows was a problem, every few saves it would fail, leaving the site unusable until I manually restarted Apache.

A bunch of people suggested the problem would go away if I moved the static site to a different server from the content system. So I tried that a few days ago, but the problem followed.

Then yesterday I tried switching my transfer method from file-writing to FTP, and voila, the problem is gone. Every save (knock wood) seems to make it to the static folder without error. I guess the key is that the FTP server, since it was written by Microsoft, comes into the file system at such a low level that it can always write a file no matter what other apps think about it. I don't know and don't really care, as long as it works, which it does. Whew.

Mark Frauenfelder:
(Click on thumbnails for enlargement) Gary Basemen's first solo show in LA in two years is opening at Billy Shire Fine Arts on July 14, and runs until August 11. He says:

This time I think I am pushing the envelope even more with my little creatures. Basically, ChouChou takes all one’s negative energy and hate away, absorbs it, and excretes it as creamy gooey love.

Link

Lala seems to be having a hard time settling on a business model. The company started off as a Peerflix clone, a site that would facilitate CD swapping among its users. For some reason, the site's initial launch got tons of press, despite the fact that this model had been tried in the past with little success. More recently, the site started offering free music streaming of Warner Music albums as an inducement to purchase downloads from the site. But it looks like that model wasn't working as planned, as the company has already yanked the free streaming, ostensibly due to high bandwidth costs. There may be some truth to that, but the more likely reason is that nobody was buying any music from the site, or at least not as much as hoped. Since the company is great at generating hype, it will undoubtedly reinvent itself again to much fanfare, but little actual success.

trouserless writes with the news that AMD has invested heavily in Transmeta. The power-conscious chip company has been financially ailing of late. AMD is taking payment in stock, binding the two companies (both with suits pending against Intel) together. PC World reports: "Transmeta did secure a few licensing deals, notably in Japan, but it also wracked up heavy losses. In January 2005 the vendor announced job cuts and said it would switch its focus to licensing its power management technology to other companies. Later that year Transmeta agreed to sell its Crusoe chips to Hong Kong company Culturecom Technology Ltd. for $15 million in cash. Last year's deal with AMD, to resell Transmeta chips in Microsoft Corp.'s pay-by-installment PC initiative, raised the vendor's prospects again. But in March Transmeta said it faced delisting from the Nasdaq because its stock price fell below $1 for more than 30 consecutive days."

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