An anonymous reader writes "A reading of the Justice Department's 2008 budget justification to Congress for the FBI indicates the agency is dedicating about 5.5 percent of its field agents to combating cyber crime, the FBI's stated Number Three priority, The Washington Post reports. Take away the agents dedicated to catching child predators online — a program that accounts for the vast majority of the department's prosecutorial victories — and about 3.6 percent of the FBI's agents are dedicated to cyber crime, the report notes. From the story: 'If the FBI's third most-important priority claims just over 3.5 percent of its active agents, how many agents and FBI resources are dedicated to the remaining Top Ten priorities?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This artwork by infamous Beat author, artist, and firearm enthusiast William S. Burroughs is currently listed for a live auction on eBay. Titled "Eight Bullets," the piece consists of, er, eight bullets. The spent bullets don't appear to be mounted and the work doesn't seem to be signed. It's part of a large Phillips de Pury & Company auction in New York City of items from avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson's loft. Absentee bidding on these bullets starts at $200 and the estimated selling price is $300 to $500. Link to eBay auction, Link to Phillips de Pury lot page

Slashdot is linking to a story supposedly showing that Novell's Linux business has seen amazing growth in the nine months since they signed a controversial patent deal with Microsoft. "The affect on sales year over year, for Novell's first three quarters of our fiscal year, which ends Oct. 31 -- our Linux business was up 243 percent year over year," said Novell exec Justin Steinman. But so far, at least, this growth doesn't appear to be reflected in Novell's financial results. If my math is right, Novell's revenue for "Linux platform products" totaled $32 million in the first three quarters of 2006, while the total for the first three quarters of 2007 is $53 million. That's a healthy 65 percent growth rate, but it's a long ways from 243 percent. (Novell's Open Enterprise Server is also based on a Linux kernel, but revenues from that product line have been flat at about $45 million a quarter, which would make Novell's overall Linux growth rate even smaller). What accounts for the growth we are seeing? Steinman says that customers are beating a path to his door because people want to "pick the Linux that works with Windows." But a more likely explanation is that customers are just redeeming the tens of millions of dollars in vouchers that Novell sold to Microsoft as part of last year's patent deal. Novell says it has gotten $100 million in business through its Microsoft partnership. That's more than twice as much revenue as Novell received from "Linux platform products" for all of 2006, suggesting that almost all the growth we've seen so far is probably a result of customers redeeming those vouchers—and it's not clear whether Microsoft is selling the vouchers at full price or at a steep discount. Maybe we'll finally see spectacular financial growth when Novell releases its its fourth quarter results later this year, but it would have been helpful if Novell or PC World had been clearer about how they're measuring that 243 percent sales increase.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

StCredZero writes "Wild. Fuji has created a photocopier that automatically translates documents from japanese to english. That's pretty nuts. Apparently, the copier can figure out what sections are text, OCR the text, send it to a translation engine, and put the english back into place."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Excellent ad. They picked up the "betrayal" theme from the General Betray Us ad, and addressed the Republican's objections, by directing the betrayal theme at an obvious "Washington politician," Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. It'll be interesting to see how the Republicans vote next time. Not claiming they read my advice, but it's almost exactly what I asked for, and I think it'll work well.

If you like the ad, give MoveOn money to run more ads.

It's been many, many years since the news broke that Charles Simonyi, whose claim to fame was his work on Microsoft's office suite, announced plans for his company, Intentional Software, to make creating applications as easy as creating a PowerPoint presentation. This has resulted in some level of ridicule, as there are still plenty of people who think that the ease of creating PowerPoint presentations is actually a problem that has resulted in poor decision making. However, when put in the context of "situated software", Simonyi's idea starts to make a little bit more sense. The idea is that many individuals don't need a big app that scales, but just need a simple app to do what they specifically need it to do.

Unfortunately, though, over the last few years, Simonyi has seemed a lot more focused on going into space than on what's happening in the market. A ton of companies have entered the space in the intervening years, offering up simple tools for non-programmers to create simple programs to handle the basic tasks that they need. Every time yet another one of these would launch, we'd wonder whatever happened to Simonyi's project? Apparently, it's still going, as Simonyi took part in a conference this week again claiming that its too hard for business people to create applications. That may have been true five years ago when he started, but has he looked around lately? Plenty of such systems have launched. However, the problem hasn't been a lack of tools -- but, a lack of interest from people to actually use those tools on a widespread basis. Perhaps he really has something different up his sleeve, but it would help if there were a bit more evidence that there's a real market for this type of offering.

Stony Stevenson writes "According to a new online survey by Harris Interactive, more than half of IT workers say they've fallen asleep at work, while nearly half of techies also are apparently in the mood for love. Forty-seven percent of tech pros admit they've kissed a co-worker, according to the online survey of 5,700 U.S. workers, including 163 techies. The survey didn't indicate if those work taboos were committed by the same respondents, but in both cases, men were more likely to admit doing both. Forty-nine percent of male techies say they've fallen asleep at work, while only 35 percent of women admitted doing so."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I love Twitter, but there have been a lot of problems, and this is too much. They're taking it down tonight, for two hours, and we're hot on a big story, and it's developing -- on Twitter.

This seems like a bad night for Twitter to go to sleep. (But there probably never is a good night.)

I don't think the Twitter guys really understand how much we're doing with their service.

It's been going down a lot lately. And while other people have been complaining about it losing posts, I had never seen it lose one, until yesterday, and now it's losing them regularly, for me too.

Read the first three words of this post again.

They raised $5 million, it seems now it's time for them to get the bugs out, hire some people who really understand scaling, if necessary re-implement the system from the ground up. Do whatever is needed to make it as reliable as the other tools we depend on. We need Twitter to work. It's not a fun experiment for us, we're using it.

Jack, Ev, Biz, Fred -- please take note.

Postscript: The announcement changed, now they're saying it'll be down on Sunday night. Much better. Thanks!

According to Saul Hansell at the NY Times, Apple intends to break phones that have been unlocked.

But Francine Hardaway and Patrick Scoble both updated this afternoon, and bad things happened. Hardaway's phone was "fried," she needed a new phone, and Scoble lost all his data.

Hardaway: "Trust me, I didn't hack it."

Jeff Clavier: "This effing piece of s..t is bricked."

Robert Scoble, Patrick's dad, updated successfully, and got the new features.

Spaley's iPhone is "a useless piece of crap."

Looks like Josh Bancroft's iPhone was hosed too. I would hold off on the update until we find out what's going wrong.

Sugar Attack: "It wasn't until I saw a friend tweet about the new iPhone firmware upgrade that I realized I could now access the iTunes WiFi store."

Hyena writes "Linux guru Alan Cox is quoted as saying 'chroot is not and never has been a security tool' in a KernelTrap article summarizing a lengthy thread on the Linux Kernel mailing list. The discussion began with a patch attempting to 'fix a security hole' in the Unix chroot command, trying to improve the ability of chroot to contain a process. When it was pointed out that people have been using chroot as a security tool for years, another kernel hacker retorted, 'incompetent people implementing security solutions are a real problem.' A quick search on the terms 'chroot+security' quickly reveals that many people have long thought (wrongly) that chroot's purpose was for improving security."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Klassic Komix Klub Vol 3 -- Johnny Ryan's hideous, sickening, revolting, vile, lewd, obscene, nauseating, puerile, infantile, distasteful, foul, nasty, vomitous, loathsome, offensive, appalling, outrageous, objectionable, shocking, horrifying, scandalous, monstrous, unspeakable, shameful, vile, odious, obnoxious, detestable, hateful, contemptible, despicable, deplorable, and abominable comic book -- is now available!

Klassic Komix Klub #3 —- the spanking-new sequel to Klassic Komix Klub #2, published in Spring 2007 —- is a limited edition comic recently self-published by Johnny. KKK #3 collects 24 highly scatological, not-for-the-squeamish classic literature parody strips into one gorgeous package, wrapped up in a display-worthy three-color letterpress printed (on fancy paper with bright inks) wraparound cover produced by Buenaventura Press. Only 200 copies were produced and we have limited quantities available. Each copy is signed and numbered. Various inks and papers were used, the pic above shows samples of what you might receive. Please note that Johnny's last few parody books sold out extremely fast; also these are not available in stores. Only $10.

Link

Pie & Hammer has a scan of an entrance exam for MIT. Link (Thanks, Lily!)

Recently, we mentioned that Amazon's MP3 Download Store got the DRM-free part right but screwed up on the pricing model -- the real Achilles heel of iTunes. As it turns out there's another angle from which Amazon could go one-up on iTunes: extend the offering across more countries. The moment I heard about the launch, I enthusiastically hit Amazon's MP3 Download Store and eagerly clicked on a "Buy MP3" link only to be greeted with a "We are sorry... We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you."

Wow! What's that again? Geographical restrictions on music? Because I am a citizen of India and not a citizen of a country where the music labels think that DRM-free music should be made downloadable? That's just dumb. Similarly, a long time ago, iTunes informed me that I don't have a "foreign" credit card and hence it won't let me download stuff although I am willing to pay for it. There are more than a few ironies here:

• The music that I am trying to purchase is readily available DRM-free on CDs at a store nearby. So why place an embargo on the digital one?
• I can order stuff from Amazon and have them international-couriered to India, but I can't download a digital file off Amazon because I am in India.

Here's my feedback to Amazon: If you really want to exploit the "long tail" and "short head" economics of online music and be anywhere close to a threat to iTunes, look at creating a world where music is not constrained by borders. You have the clout to do that.

Vinaya.HS is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Vinaya.HS and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

An Austrian provincial judge refused today to declare that Matthew Hiast Pan, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, is a person. Now, animal rights activists intend to take the case to the country's Supreme Court. According to the Association Against Animal Factories, "personhood" is the only way to make sure that Pan, who previously lived in a now-bankrupt shelter, doesn't end up under nasty ownership outside of Austria. From the Associated Press:

The Association Against Animal Factories says it's not trying to get Pan declared a human, but rather a person, which would give some legal status. Otherwise, he is legally a thing.

"The question is: Are chimps things without interests, or persons with interests?" Balluch said.

"A large section of the public does see chimps as beings with interests," he said. "We are looking forward to hear what the high court has to say on this fundamental question."

Link (Thanks, Xeni!)

The kids in my daughter's preschool were asked to describe their current feelings and why they felt that way. I enjoyed their answers, so I took photos and uploaded them to Flickr. Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• "What happens to people when they get old?"
• Tio Nacho soap
• The Farm

Seen here is a Google Earth image of US Navy barracks in Coronado, California. The US Navy has now budgeted $600,000 to cover up the swastika shape through the installation of solar panels and various landscape modifications. They were encouraged to do the modifications by several parties, including US Rep Susan Davis, Anti-Defamation League regional director Morris Casuto, and radio talk show host Dave vonKleist.

Navy officials say the shape of the buildings, designed by local architect John Mock, was not noted until after the groundbreaking in 1967 -- and since it was not visible from the ground, a decision was made not to make any changes...

"I don't ascribe any intentionally evil motives to this," Casuto said, referring to the design. "It just happened. The Navy has been very good about recognizing the problem. The issue is over."

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

pacopico writes "Google has secret plans to put out its own open source software license, according to this story in The Register. Apparently, Google's efforts will center around developing a simplified open source license that makes it easier for developers to stay "within the spirit" of the license in addition to the law. Chris DiBona at Google was asked about the plans but won't budge with details yet. Still, The Register claims that Google's efforts could improve the license proliferation issues facing the OSI."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new scientific study on rats suggests that low to moderate drinking of alcohol may actually improve memory. The researchers at the University of Auckland and Ohio State University studied how giving alcohol to genetically-engineered rats affected a particular neuronal receptor that's essential to memory. From Scientific American:

According to (University of Auckland researcher Maggie) Kalev, it is hard to relate the alcohol the rats consumed to human quantities, but "based on their blood alcohol levels, the 2.5 percent ethanol diet was equivalent to a level of consumption that does not exceed [the] legal driving limit. This may be approximately one to two drinks per day for some people or two to three for others, depending upon their size, metabolism or genetic background..."

Among the normal rats, the animals that consumed moderate amounts of alcohol fared better on both tests compared with the teetotalers. Rats on a heavy alcohol diet did not do well on object recognition (and, in fact, showed signs of neurotoxicity), but they performed better than their normal brethren on the emotional memory task.

"People often drink to 'drown sorrows,'" Kalev says. "Our results suggest that this could actually paradoxically promote traumatic memories and lead to further drinking, contributing to the development of alcoholism."

Link

April writes Ask 37signals:

As a developer, I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of new technologies and languages to learn. I work long hours as it is, and the last thing I feel like doing when I get home is spending more time trying new stuff out at the computer. Do I really have to be the kind of