Robbo sez,

ThinkFilm is releasing Alex Gibney's documentary "Taxi To The Dark Side" and submitted a poster for MPAA approval which featured a photo of two soldiers leading away a handcuffed and hooded man. The MPAA rejected it as being "not suitable for audiences of all ages".

The hypocrisy of this, in the face of posters for horror/slasher flicks like "Saw" and "Hostel", is astounding. Censorship pure and simple.

The photo used in the proposed poster is derived from an actual photograph which the army also tried to censor. The MPAA has also rejected a one-sheet for Roadside Attractions "The Road To Guantanamo" which featured a hooded man hanging by his wrists from handcuffs.

MPAA message? Torture for entertainment is suitable for all ages. Torture examined in a documentary is not.

ThinkFilm is appealing.

Link

See also:
This Film is Not Rated - must-see doc about MPAA ratings

A reader writes, "The Recording Industry Association of America wants to communicate with TV news audiences. The company I work for just distributed this video package nationwide to TV News Stations. It already aired in Dallas and one network and one major news gathering service have requested tapes. This thing could be all over the news this week. The video you see was preceded by graphics which told stations who paid for the content and named the spokesman. This is how the RIAA and other organizations get their news out in order to influence consumers." Link

The new Monorails just arrived at Disneyland and man, they are h4wt! Be sure to check out the OC Register's gallery of these massive beasts being transported and craned into place.

The first new monorail car in two decades slid onto the Disneyland track on Thursday as the theme park prepares for guests to ride it starting in late February.

Link (Thanks, Justin!)

(Image: New monorail arrives at Disneyland, downsized and cropped, original by Paul Hiffmeyer, Disney)

On Tuesday, we wrote about how the US was paying off the EU, Japan and Canada over a trade dispute around online gambling. The real point was to get these three to back off from putting pressure on the US to abide by free trade agreements, which effectively required the US to allow online gambling as long as it was hosted in other countries. It's quite a shame that these countries basically accepted money to let the US get out of agreements it had made -- and many are beginning to point out how ridiculous the whole situation is, and how it's likely to harm future US trade agreements around the world. All for the sake of preventing people from being able to play a little online poker.

Related to this, bankers and bank lobbyists are trying to explain to US politicians that upcoming rules concerning online gambling are impossible to abide by. As you may recall, back in October, the US approved new legislation that would put the liability on banks to prevent money from being used for online gambling. Beyond the ridiculousness of trying to stop people from gambling online if they choose to do so, this particular law means that banks need to figure out what money is being used for online gambling and try to prevent such uses. How? Politicians don't bother to go that far. Meanwhile, I hear that the gov't continues to make good money from state lotteries...

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Carol Medenhall of Dibble, OK received two tickets: one for allowing her goats to be seen mating in her yard, and another for allowing her goats to be seen relieving themselves in her yard.

City law said it is illegal for any two animals to have sex in public within Dibble city limits.

It's also against law for them to relieve themselves in public even if the animal is fenced in on private land.

Link

In the spirit of the season... oh wait, it's PEACE on Earth, not Peacekeepers...

Anyhoo, here is Hacked Gadgets' list of the best USB-based missile launcher projects out there.

"The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!"

Top 5 Hacked Missile Launchers - Link

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bearer_of_bad_news points us to a C|net article which states that Matthew Szulik is stepping down as the president and chief executive of Red Hat. Szulik is citing family health reasons, and he plans to remain chairman of the board. Red Hat has indicated that his replacement will be former Delta Airlines COO James Whitehurst. Quoting the article: "On a conference call, Szulik said Whitehurst stood 'head and shoulders' above other candidates interviewed in a recruiting process. He was a programmer earlier in his career and runs four versions of Linux at home." We discussed Szulik's ascension to CEO back in 1999.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Non beer drinkers and caffeine fans rejoice: Foamee now has support for coffee. Just follow @ioucoffee on Twitter and follow the same steps that 1600 beer aficionados have followed over the past few weeks.

Send someone an I.O.U. for coffee like so:

@ioucoffee @twitterscreenname for being an amazing human being.

Then keep track of those I.O.U.s (for beer and coffee!) on your people page (here's mine). Send beer. Send coffee. Send good vibes to all the interweb's citizens.

Happy Holidays from your friends at SimpleBits.

I've always been a fan of the idea of a dutch auction IPO -- where the price is set via an auction rather than some investment bankers picking a price based on what they've heard from institutional investors. When bankers just set the price, it tends to lead to companies leaving money on the table, as the banks price the stock too low in order to get the publicity of a first day "pop." While some of that pop is reasonable, the size of some of them suggest that the company threw away many millions of dollars for no good reason. An auction, in theory, solves that by making the price more explicitly set on the market (though, there are some who make compelling arguments about the problems the auction model has as well). For the most part, it was smaller, less well known companies that tried to use Dutch auctions for IPOs -- but the concept got a lot of publicity when Google IPO'd using a Dutch auction. Of course, many investment banks were so freaked out about it that they starting spreading FUD about Google. That didn't work out so well. However, many other companies have still been scared off from using a dutch auction, in some cases probably costing the company millions.

That's why it was nice to see NetSuite become one of the few "hot" companies to also go Dutch auction with its IPO. Yet, with the shares pricing last night and hitting the markets today, there was still a significant first day pop (though, it started the day heading down rather than up). While this definitely worked out well for NetSuite, it does raise some questions about the dutch auction process. It still seems like a much more efficient way to price IPOs than an investment banker picking the price -- but it's pretty clear that there are many other factors that go into how investors actually treat a stock once it hits the market.

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Frank writes -

I connected a Wii Nunchuck controller to an Arduino, which takes the data from the controller's I2C data bus, decodes it, and send the data to the robot with a radio transmitter. Charlie uses a radio receiver to get the data, and it will control the drive servo system and the pan tilt servo system using the data. The Nunchuck has a 3 axis accelerometer, a joystick, and 2 buttons, it is absolutely awesome to use with a RC robot like this.

Wii Nunchuck Controlled Robot - Link.

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jbrodkin writes "IBM has an unconventional take on virtual worlds for business use. Rather than strictly adhering to the laws of physics, IBM is letting its employees hold virtual meetings up in the air and under water. Employees are also being given wacky chores, such as kicking a giant boulder 1,400 kilometers. The virtual world, known as the Metaverse, has been in development for two years. Michael Ackerbauer of IBM says, 'I'd say more people are still finding it a novelty than a business tool. But ... if you build enough tools that they can use, they will come.'" IBM seems to be following a trend of involvement in virtual worlds, which we have previously discussed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some students at Georgia Tech built this sweet print-bot, built on a iRobot iCreate. Love the way the "talc" ink interacts with the pile of the carpet to look like stitchery. Go GT!

The Print-Bot - [via] Link

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Rich Kulawiec writes in to let us know that Sears.com and Kmart.com (owned by Sears) have been inviting visitors to those sites to "join our community." However, rather than joining any actual community, what you appear to be doing is installing spyware that reports on your every move online. It's actually a trick to get you to install Comscore's tracking app. Comscore has been accused in the past of distributing spyware surreptitiously, which the company vehemently denies -- but it's hard to see how this is above board. It's certainly worse than Facebook's Beacon fiasco. What happens is that you are asked if you want to "join the community," and then, without clearly explaining what the software does, Comscore's tracking software is installed. After that, all of your online activities -- including to "secure" sites like banking sites -- is sent directly to Comscore, despite Sears' website insisting that none of the data you share will go to anyone but Sears. As for the "community," it doesn't seem like there is one. The security researcher who signed up for the community says that once the software is installed, there's no obvious indicator that it's installed or running -- and he received no "communications" from the so-called community whatsoever. Basically, it sounds like it's just a trick to get you to install this tracking software while hoping you'll forget about it.

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Ian Lamont writes "A security researcher calling himself porkythepig has published attack code that can supposedly brick most HP and Compaq laptops. The exploit uses an ActiveX control in HP's Software Update. It would 'let an attacker corrupt Windows' kernel files, making the laptop unbootable, or with a little more effort, allow hacks that would result in a PC hijack or malware infection.' The same researcher last week outlined a batch of additional vulnerabilities in HP and Compaq laptops, for which HP later issued patches."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I think I'd be ok with getting punched with these, velvet boxing gloves embroidered with traditional swedish stitches - Link.

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Back in the Friendster era, the deletion of fake accounts (aka Fakesters) is sometimes cited as one of the many causes of Friendster's ultimate fall from grace. Initially, Facebook had not been plagued with such problems, since it originally restricted its users to those with an .edu email address. Now that the restriction has been lifted, fake accounts are starting to stream into Facebook, and with that has come the Facebook fake account police. Just last month, Facebook drew the ire of the blogosphere when they deleted Jon Swift's account for using a pseudonym. And now, on Monday, Facebook disabled British politician Steve Webb's account Monday after receiving complaints that he did not exist. Webb has been a member of Parliament for 10 years, and an active member of Facebook for almost a year, amassing 2,500 friends in that time. Though the mishap was corrected after a few hours, it reminds us of the difficulty of determining true identity in an online world. A cursory search for "Britney Spears" yields at least 20 profiles -- if one of these is the true Britney, it is impossible to tell. Or, perhaps Britney is already on Facebook, but under a pseudonym -- in which case, would she get deleted?

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MAKE editor and publisher Dale Dougherty has had his list of favorite tech and DIY-inspired ads from 2007 posted on Boing Boing.

Here is an end-of-year list of ads that reflect DIY inspiration, a geek sensibility, or simply had a sense of humor tuned to the tech world. There's some irony in this list of somewhat traditional TV ads spots. I saw only one or two of these ads on TV. All of the ads are found on YouTube and I've found most of them because someone sent me a link. So I'll call this a list of: Top Tech Ads Not Necessarily Seen on TV in 2007.

Top tech ads not necessarily seen on TV in 2007 - Link

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Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "NASA has given University of Maryland scientists the green light to fly the Deep Impact probe to Comet Hartley 2. The spacecraft will pass Earth on New Year's Eve at the beginning of a more than two-and-a-half-year journey to Hartley 2. During the first six months of the journey to Hartley 2, they will use the larger of the two telescopes on Deep Impact to search for Earth-sized planets around five stars selected as likely candidates for such planets. Upon arriving at the comet, Deep Impact will conduct an extended flyby of Hartley 2 using all three of the spacecraft's instruments — two telescopes with digital color cameras and an infrared spectrometer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Billosaur writes "ZDNet's Police Blotter bring us the interesting story of a Pennsylvania man who brought his computer into Circuit City to have a DVD burner installed on his computer and wound up being arrested for having child pornography on his hard drive. Circuit City employees discovered the child pornography while perusing Kenneth Sodomsky's hard drive for files to test the burner, then proceeded to call the police, who arrested Sodomsky and confiscated the computer. Sodomsky's lawyer argued in court that the Circuit City techs had no right to go rifling through the hard drive, and the trial court agreed, but prosecutors appealed and the appeals court overturned the lower court's decision, based on the fact that Sodomsky had consented to the installation of the DVD drive."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.