I've always loved the intensity of this scene from Don't Look Back where Bob Dylan tears into journalist Horace Judson who was interviewing the singer for Time magazine.
Link to YouTube

Previously on BB:
• Bob Dylan warns of Cylon invasion Link
• Dr Seuss/Bob Dylan mashup: Dylan Hears a Who Link
• Talk Like Bob Dylan day is May 24 Link
• Cate Blanchett stars as Bob Dylan in upcoming movie Link

As was rumored last month, the NY Times has decided to pull the plug on its TimesSelect paywall service, making all NY Times content from 1987 forward free online (they're also making all of the content from 1851 to 1922 free, but that's already in the public domain). This move comes two years after the paywall was first put in place. At the time, we were one of many who pointed out that this was going to make the NY Times a lot less valuable, and it seems that the business folks at the NY Times finally did the math and came to the same conclusion. They note that subscription growth was slowing (something that was obvious over a year ago) as advertising growth was ramping -- and that they hadn't counted on how many people would be drop-in visitors, coming from other sites. That seems like an odd statement, since it was quite obvious more than two years ago that search engines and other sites tended to drive a tremendous amount of traffic to news sites. Either way, like others before it, the NY Times should be congratulated on doing the right thing, while questioned for what took it so long (or even what made the company make the mistake in the first place).

MojoKid writes "AMD has officially announced their triple-core Phenom multi-core processor offering, suggesting a triple-threat of processors, from dual-cores to triple-cores and native quad-cores coming to market this year. While the term symmetric multi-processing (or SMP) suggests a balanced approach of multiple cores in an even number of engines working together on a single workload, AMD offers that an odd number of processors can slice at that workload just as efficiently. Time will tell how this architecture will scale amongst various multi-threaded applications and real-world usage models. AMD is definitely moving to make use of these quad-cores that don't quite make the cut by testing them fully as triple-cores and realizing some revenue, rather than throwing them away."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The same guy who is fighting Uri Geller over bogus DMCA takedown notices may now need to be fighting the "Creation Science Evangelism Ministries," which has apparently forced a video off YouTube via a DMCA takedown notice. The video, not surprisingly, is critical of the group, but almost certainly does not violate the group's copyrights. The one really interesting thing here, is that the head of the ministry has apparently declared that all of the group's content is in the public domain -- which raises the question of whether or not you can still issue a DMCA takedown notice on content you've declared to be in the public domain?

yogi writes "In a blog post from this Friday past, Google welcomed the ISO decision not to fasttrack OOXML. They also (once again) voiced their public support for the ODF standard. 'Technical standards should be arrived at transparently, openly, and based on technical merit. Google is committed to helping the standards community remain true to this ideal and maintain their independence from any commercial pressure ... Google supports one open document format and calls on industry participants to collaboratively work on ODF. With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others and pass onto future generations.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier today, the news broke that Yahoo was acquiring email and collaboration tools provider Zimbra for $350 million. Some may find this a little odd, since Yahoo just recently (finally) revamped its online email client based on the code it obtained years ago in purchasing Oddpost. However, one reasonable explanation is that this is (yet another) Google-inspired response. Yahoo bought Oddpost soon after Google released Gmail and Yahoo realized its email client was looking woefully dated. More recently, Google's been getting all sorts of attention for its attempts to move further and further into the enterprise with Google Apps -- including pushing Gmail as a solution for enterprise email. Zimbra collaboration offerings were mainly focused on enterprises or organizations that would be rolling out email to many customers (such as ISPs). Yahoo hasn't focused much (if at all) on creating an enterprise-ready solution, so by buying Zimbra, it could be signaling plans to move much more aggressively into the enterprise with enterprise-ready apps. This is definitely a shift from the Terry Semel-run Yahoo that was so focused on being a media company with some technology. Of course, we've all seen acquisitions like this go nowhere, so there are plenty of questions still to be answered about whether or not Yahoo really be more of an enterprise-focused company, but it would appear that it's at least going to try.

Yesterday, former top US central banker Alan Greenspan, a very respected public official, said: "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows -- the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Dale Bumpers, former US Senator from Arkansas, defended President Bill Clinton when he was on trial. He said, memorably: "H.L. Mencken said one time, 'When you hear somebody say, This is not about money, it's about money.' And when you hear somebody say, 'This is not about sex,' it's about sex."

Bumpers might say today: When you hear somebody say the war in Iraq is not about oil, it's about oil.

And Greenspan was absolutely right. Everyone knows that so many US trops and so much US money would not be deployed in Iraq if it weren't in the middle of the oil reserves of the world and if Iraq itself didn't have so much oil. It's ridiculous to argue otherwise. Yet, this admission is causing a major recalc in US political discourse. Had Greenspan said something so obviously true in 2003 or 2004, we might have avoided this national catastrophe. And I think this says more about us, and our desire to be misled, to have our lives simplified, to delegate our intellectual existence.

Yes, our troops are there because of the oil. Don't doubt it.

Postscript: The Bumpers speech is worth watching again, for its eloquence and simplicity. It wasn't so long ago that we rose to this level.

Groklaw Reader writes "Apparently, SCO's lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO's finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what's about to happen to SCO."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Groklaw Reader writes "Apparently, SCO's lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO's finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what's about to happen to SCO."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Susan says: "While at the Austin City Limits music festival this past weekend, I came across a rather terrifying version of Spongebob. Even his frosted gum ball eyes are terrifying, reminiscent of a crawfish. Not two things I like to think of together, crawfish and popsicles! I was hoping you could find some joy in the disturbing frosty treat."

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Popsicle parody ad
• Turtle popsicle reflects pride in workmanship
• Bugs Bunny popsicle
• Tweety Bird popsicle doesn't look like Tweety Bird
• Ice cream patent wars in the 1930s
• Expertly produced Korean red bean ice cream fish
• Ice cream treat resembles heinous murderer
• An exquisite popsicle that puts all other ice cream bars to shame

Foozymandias says:

I couldnt get to my camera in time to record his entrance, but this guy basically comes running in with 4 or 5 cops in tow and says he has been running around trying to get in to ask a question and the cops are going to arrest him for it. They almost do it then but Sen. Kerry says he will answer it. He then answers a previous question someone else asked (I cut that part out because it isnt important to this video) then the guy asks his questions and when he is done all hell breaks lose.

To the cop haters: I have no doubt the cops were going exactly by the book, the problem isnt them, its the book! they were doing their job and looked just as confused as this kid (This isn't something that they deal with often).

As the kid writhes on the ground screaming for mercy, Kerry drones on in his school-principal-on-thorazine style. Link

In the bad old days (or in countries with questionable financial situations) when there were concerns a bank might run out of money, there would be an old-fashioned "bank run," with tons of customers all trying to withdraw their money at once. That could cause all sorts of problems, since most banks work on the theory that such runs won't happen. Thanks to the FDIC, you don't see bank runs in the US these days, but apparently that's not the case in the UK, where concerns over the financial status of the bank Northern Rock led to what certainly looks like an old-fashioned bank run. However, in this modern age, not everyone is lining up on the street to get into their nearest Northern Rock branch. Apparently, the bank's website has experienced the equivalent of a bank run on its servers -- meaning that they've been pretty much unable to handle the traffic, frustrating a number of online account holders who say the terms of service say the only way they can retrieve money is via the online interface. Of course, the fact that many of those account holders can't even reach the site is leading to increased panic among those who fear that the site is down permanently. Apparently, even if the interface is different, an online bank run pretty much mimics the offline one.

Up for auction on eBay is an original copy of the charter and by-laws for Timothy Leary's League of Spiritual Discovery, founded in Millbrook, New York in 1966. With four days left in the auction, the current bid is $250. From the auction listing:

Here, Leary and his cohort outline the structure of a new religious association that identifies LSD, peyote and psilocybin as The Sacraments used to commune with, "evolutionary wisdoms preserved in cellular and molecular structures", and to facilitate the ritual, "to go out of the mind and to come to the senses". Five - 8 1/2" X 11" pages total, with the first four pages stapled top-left, page 5 having come loose about 20 years ago....

I've had this piece since the very early 70's when I bought it from a friend who had just purchased a number of things, here in Berkeley, from Timothy Leary's wife at the time, Rosemary Woodruff, who was raising money for Leary's legal defense fund and support as a fugitive.

Link

alphadogg writes to tell us that next week MIT will be throwing a 20th birthday party for their Kerberos authentication system. In celebration of this milestone they will also be launching a new consortium dedicated to preserving and evolving this standard for years to come. "Kerberos, originally created for MIT's Project Athena, is used mainly by enterprises and MIT's goal is to see the IETF security standard develop into a universal system for single sign-on. [...] 'Kerberos has.... become successful beyond MIT's internal capacity to respond to the world's demands for development, testing and support. So we need a new organizational structure that can accommodate the demand.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As work continues on a new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the bridge was closed over Labor Day weekend to replace a football field-sized section of the bridge's upper deck. The new 6,500 ton, rebar-and-concrete section, built over several months, was literally rolled into place with just a three inch gap on either side. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission created an amazing time-lapse video of the operation.
Link to video, Link to MTC's San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Update page (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

Previously on BB:
• Inside the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Link
• Photos from the top of Bay Bridge Link

The recently-released ad campaign (left half of image) for Tom Ford's new fragrance for men is anything but ambiguous. But what's funniest about this is an oddly similar internet site (at right) hawking "Vulva" perfume with identical product placement.

The name, the ad copy (a "beguiling vaginal scent"), and the url, (smellmeand.com) all scream "hoax." Now that I've seen the Ford ad, though, sheesh, I'm not so sure.

Link to Adrants' blurb about the Ford campaign, and here's the other (NSFW, contains nudity and stuff).

Bonus: Don't miss the super cheesy video on that "Vulva" site, and take a peek at the html keywords in the header if you want to learn a ton of dirty words in Italian, German, and other languages I can't recognize. I don't know what the hell "bacak arasi," "koku," "insankokusu," or "yarak" mean, but I have a feeling they'd make the pope blush. (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

mikesd81 writes "A manager at a GameStop has been suspended for instituting a 'games for grades' policy. 'Brandon Scott says he started a unique new policy in his store to promote good grades in school but now his employer has sent him to detention for speaking out of turn. Scott says he's been suspended by GameStop in the wake of his unconventional "games for grades" policy at an Oak Cliff store.' Apparently, on his own, Scott decided to stop selling video games to any school-age customer unless an adult would vouch for the student's good grades."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have been submitting the latest story on a patent hoarding firm, Premier International Associates, who appears to have absolutely no other business than getting its hands on questionable, overly broad, obvious patents and then suing everyone possible. In this case, the patent is for the basic concept of a playlist, which can be found just about anywhere. So, it should come as little to no surprise that the list of companies sued is quite long, including: Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Viacom, Real, Napster, Samsung, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Sandisk, HP, Acer, Gateway and Yahoo (phew!). That's quite a list, though it's not surprising to see that there are a ton of companies offering software that has a concept so basic and so obvious as a playlist.

However, there is one very interesting point here. Apple is missing from the list. As the folks over at Ars Technica figured out, Premier actually had sued Apple about this same patent back in 2005, but at the same time it was filing all these new patent lawsuits it filed to dismiss the Apple suit, suggesting that Apple most likely paid off the company (perhaps giving it the money needed to suddenly sue every other company in the universe. Apple certainly has a history of doing this. When the company was sued on a rather similar obvious patent on a hierarchical menu-based user interfaces held by Creative, it eventually (after spending some time fighting it) decided to simply pay $100 million to be left alone. Of course, all that did was allow Creative to head out and sue plenty of others. Sound familiar? By settling on these questionable patent claims, all Apple is doing is encouraging more lawsuits of this nature for itself, as well as others.