gihan_ripper writes "Perhaps the ultimate nerd acquisition, the flying car, is to go on sale in a few months. Speaking to the BBC, the inventor Dr Paul Moller described his creation, dubbed the Flying Saucer, as a VTOL aircraft designed to hover at 10 ft. above the ground. The flying saucer has eight engines and is expected to sell for $90,000. Dr Moller expects to produce a successor within six years, a 'Skycar' capable of a climb rate of 6000 ft./min. and an airspeed of 400 mph."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The MPAA has been pushing the courts to force TorrentSpy to spy on its users -- something TorrentSpy refuses to do, noting that it would break their own privacy policy and is simply ethically questionable. It should come as no surprise, of course, that the MPAA has no such qualms. In fact, it came out today that the MPAA had, in fact, been snooping through TorrentSpy's executives' emails. So, which organization looks more ethically challenged? This stems from a case TorrentSpy filed last year, after finding out that a former co-worker gave the MPAA access to TorrentSpy emails. While a court has found that the MPAA's actions did not violate wiretap laws, it's still pretty questionable. What appears to have happened, is that a former TorrentSpy employee who had access to the company's email system set it up so all executives' emails also forwarded to a gmail account he owned. He then sold access to that gmail account to people at the MPAA. Clearly, the MPAA knew that the TorrentSpy execs thought these emails were private, and yet they still eagerly paid up for access to them, which is really sleazy. TorrentSpy is appealing the case, but they'd probably have a much stronger case against the former employee who set up the email forwarding system in the first place.

Stephen says:

The first exhibit of artwork by the insanely great cartoonist Basil Wolverton is taking place at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. The opening reception is scheduled to take place on September 1st and the show runs through November 11th.

The Original Art of Basil Wolverton
from the Collection of Glenn Bray
September 1 - November 11, 2007
Opening Reception: September 1, 7-10 p.m.
Grand Central Art Center
125 N. Broadway,
Santa Ana, CA 92701
General Phone: 714.567.7233

In honor of the exhibit, I'm posting an article Wolverton wrote in 1947 for the Daily Oregonian on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive blog. It's titled "Acoustics in the Comics" and it deals with Wolverton's struggles to find just the right sound-word to describe such cartoony situations as a person skidding on a stove with bare feet or a beaver biting into a wooden leg.

Acoustics in the Comics by Basil Wolverton

You can also find a complete Powerhouse Pepper story by Wolverton here.

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Lotsa Basil Wolverton links on Boing Boing here.

ancientribe writes "Researchers have discovered the Storm Trojan nestled in hundreds of blog sites in Google's Blogger network, according to an article in Dark Reading. And this isn't simple comment spam, but actual blogs that post spam, and now, Storm executable files. A researcher who's been tracking the Storm-infested blog sites says he's working with Google to clean up this latest appearance of Storm."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft and Eolas have been involved in a patent infringement lawsuit for many years. Eolas claims a patent on the concept of embedding other applications within browsers -- basically for the concept of plugins. This patent was questioned by many people who note that plugins are a pretty common concept and it hardly seems reasonable to give a monopoly over that idea to one company. In fact, none other than web inventor Tim Berners-Lee showed prior art for browser plugins, and the Patent Office suddenly started saying that it may have made a mistake in granting Eolas the patent. Unfortunately, due to the ridiculously complicated process to get the USPTO to review a patent, it was eventually ruled that the patent could be valid. However, it recently had agreed to review the patent again.

Of course, as we've learned time and time again, since this process is so long, and the risk of losing gets costlier and costlier the longer you wait, it appears Microsoft has given up invalidating this highly questionable patent and has simply paid off Eolas in a settlement. The amount isn't defined, but Eolas is gleefully telling its shareholders to expect a dividend shortly. Once again, this highlights nearly everything wrong with the patent system and why it needs to be changed. A very broad and vague concept with plenty of prior art gets patented by a small firm that doesn't actually do anything. Then it holds up a large company that is actually offering a product to the market, and forces them to change their product, taking away functionality, while trying to collect hundreds of millions of dollars that could have gone towards further innovation. On top of that, it highlights how difficult, slow and convoluted the patent review process is that makes it so difficult to actually contest these questionable patents. In the end, it's often just cheaper to pay up, diverting money from actual innovation into the legal system. What a shame.

thefickler writes "The blogosphere has hit the mainstream, according to a new survey, which reveals that 80% of Americans know what a blog is, 50% regularly visit blogs, and 8% publish their own blog. The survey also reveals that more women than men are bloggers, with 20% of American women who have visited blogs having their own versus 14% of men."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There is little doubt that instant messaging has become a tool in many employees' arsenal, with one estimate saying it's used in some manner by 85% of all businesses. To some extent, though, employees and their employers are still trying to figure out the best way to integrate IM in the workplace. There are several companies selling enterprise-focused IM systems, but for the most part, corporate IM use still relies on the same consumer-focused services used by teenagers and web surfers everywhere. This would seem to indicate that there's still a lot of potential in the market for IM services with features geared towards the corporate environment, whether they're enhanced security or compliance features, or different communications functions. To that end, Microsoft has announced that it's buying Parlano, which makes enterprise group chat software, and says it will integrate it into its Office Communications Server and Office Communicator. There's little doubt that there's room for a lot of features to be added for enterprise users, but the big question -- particularly for SMEs -- is whether they're worth paying for. One of the key factors in helping IM spread through the enterprise is the fact that there's a wide range of providers offering "good enough" solutions for free. Bundling the functionality in with other software, as Microsoft plans to do, is one way to try and compete with this, and reflect's Microsoft's strategic view that the emerging software as a service model in the enterprise market is bunk. Of course, the company says that because it's the complete antithesis of its own strategy, requiring huge amounts of installed software with expensive licenses. But with the growth in low-cost, or even free office software, the outlook for most paid IM solutions looks pretty cloudy. While enterprises might see the benefit in paying for software like Microsoft Office over less fully-featured free solutions, the idea that IM isn't so mission-critical (despite its widespread use) will help ensure the ongoing popularity of free IM systems.

Electron Barrage writes "Longtime JPL scientists, many of whom do not work on classified materials, including rover drivers and Apollo veterans, sued NASA, Caltech, and the Department of Commerce today to fight highly invasive background checks, which include financial information, any and all retail business transactions, and even sexual orientation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our pal Iowahawk took a bunch of photos of his father's collection of scary-looking old farming implements. (Above: "Pity the poor apple skinned alive by the fiendish cast iron Kleen Kutter.")

After 42 years farming a handsome little square mile of western Iowa, my old man hung up his clodhoppers a few years ago for a well-deserved rest. Like a lot of retirees, Hawkdad decided to take up collecting, with a focus on primative farm equipment and toys. Since then he has amassed an impressive collection of unique agricultural objects; unusual hand tools, planter lids and tractor seats, turn-of-the-century advertising signage, antique toy tractors and horses. It's all interesting, but some of it is "interesting" in the same way an H.R. Giger painting is interesting: cool, mechanical, but indescribably creepy. Hooterville steampunk meets the Tower of London. Rather than try to describe it, here are some pictures I took during a recent visit.

Link

Here are some interesting signs I came across on a recent visit to my home state of Colorado. Link

OObject has a great roundup of insanely complicated wristwatches, including this Vulcania. I am such a sucker for proliferating dials. Link (via EvHead)

slyyy writes "The Universtiy of Rochester has discovered the complete genome of a bacterial parasite inside the genome of the host species. This opens the possibility of exchanging DNA between unrelated species and changing our understanding of the evolutionary process. From the article: 'Before this study, geneticists knew of examples where genes from a parasite had crossed into the host, but such an event was considered a rare anomaly except in very simple organisms. Bacterial DNA is very conspicuous in its structure, so if scientists sequencing a nematode genome, for example, come across bacterial DNA, they would likely discard it, reasonably assuming that it was merely contamination--perhaps a bit of bacteria in the gut of the animal, or on its skin. But those genes may not be contamination. They may very well be in the host's own genome. This is exactly what happened with the original sequencing of the genome of the anannassae fruitfly--the huge Wolbachia insert was discarded from the final assembly, despite the fact that it is part of the fly's genome.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ben S. was the first of many folks to submit to us this incredible story of Viacom's latest ridiculous claim of copyright infringement. As you're most likely aware by this point, Viacom is in the middle of a nasty $2 billion lawsuit with Google over what it alleges are videos that infringe on Viacom's copyright appearing on YouTube. Of course, in making those claims, Viacom has been known to be a bit too aggressive in taking down videos -- including some that clearly did not violate Viacom's copyright. This latest case, however, may be the most ridiculous.

VH1 is a Viacom property that has a popular TV show called "Web Junk 2.0." It basically just takes the more popular/funny/stupid clips that show up on YouTube every week and shows them on TV along with some goofy commentary from the show's host. I'd always wondered if Viacom compensated the owners of those videos -- especially given the company's position about YouTube. It turns out that neither Viacom nor VH1 compensate the video owners, or even ask their permission. It just assumes that it can use them. Most turn out to be perfectly happy (not surprisingly) to get this sort of free publicity. One guy thought it was so cool that he recorded the clip of Web Junk that featured his own video and posted that on YouTube so he could blog about it. And, in an incredibly ironic move, Viacom sent a takedown notice to YouTube forcing it offline. Just to make it clear: Viacom used this guy's work without permission and put it on TV. The guy then takes Viacom's video of his video and puts it online... and Viacom freaks out claiming copyright infringement. Effectively, Viacom is claiming that it's infringement of Viacom's copyright to display an example of Viacom infringing on copyright.

The SF Gate Culture Blog is reporting that a male participant at Burning Man has been found dead of an apparent suicide, hanging from poles inside a two-story-high tent. The name of the deceased has not been released. His friends say they thought he was doing an art piece, and the body was hanging, dead, for two hours before others realized what had happened. Link. (Thanks, Scott Beale)

BB pal Michael W. Dean recently reminded us of the work of K Foundation, the UK anarcho-prankster duo who set about to become ginormous pop stars in the 1980s, and did just that as The KLF.

In 1988, members Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty self-published a book ("The Manual") with step-by-step instructions on how to do the same: PDF Link to a copy of "The Manual."

Here's a snip from the Wikipedia entry for KLF:

From the outset, they adopted the philosophy espoused by esoteric novels The Illuminatus! Trilogy, gaining notoriety for various anarchic situationist manifestations, including the defacement of billboard adverts, the posting of prominent cryptic advertisements in NME magazine and the mainstream press, and highly distinctive and unusual performances on Top of the Pops. Their most notorious performance was at the February 1992 BRIT Awards, where they fired machine gun blanks into the audience and dumped a dead sheep at the aftershow party. This performance announced The KLF's departure from the music business, and in May 1992 the duo deleted their entire back catalogue.

With profits earned from KLF, Drummond and Cauty created the K Foundation, with a mission to subvert the contemporary art world.

Among the hijinks that ensued: an alternative art award for the worst artist of the year, and burning a million British pounds in cash (about $1.8 million US at the time), which represented nearly all of their pop star earnings.

The odd process leading up to that torching, and the burn itself -- which took place on a Scottish island in the summer of 1994 -- are documented in the film K Foundation Burn a Million Quid.

You can watch that on the youtubes, in five parts, starting here: Video Link.

A Swedish site called Our Childrens Gorilla is selling these handmade Portuguese Pac-Man rugs for SK15,000 -- but don't let the big number scare you, that's only 3.27623 gold ounces at today's exchange rate. Link (via OhGizmo)

On Shaenon K. Garrity's LiveJournal, a spot-on-brilliant Edward Gorey/Star Trek tribute -- "The Trouble With Tribble: A Television Adaptation by Edward Gorey." Link (via JWZ's LiveJournal)