He's certainly not the first such case, but spammer Eddie Davidson has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for both tax evasion and falsifying email headers. Some other sentences have been even longer. However, it makes you wonder how much of an impact these sentences are having on the spam community. Are spammers getting more cautious and going underground now that jail sentences are being handed out? Has the whole spam effort shifted offshore where it's harder to track them down? One thing that doesn't seem to be happening is any noticeable reduction in spam.

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I had a chance meeting with some people today who wanted to talk about bringing fiber to Berkeley. There's an idea that it could be done in a very Berkeley way, which is to say, the city owns it, and the service providers can tap in, but they don't get to dictate terms, as we know many of them like to do. I don't know how exactly I got enlisted, but I guess we've got enough Internet celebs in Berkeley to maybe get this done right, politically. Not sure what comes next, but it sure is interesting.

Speaking of Berkeley celebs, I tentatively have a podcast interview with George Lakoff tomorrow.

Dorkz brings news of a class-action settlement from Creative Labs over the capacity of their HDD MP3 players. Evidently they calculated drive capacity in base-10 (1,000,000,000 bytes per GB) instead of base-2 (1,073,741,824 bytes per GB). The representative plaintiff is entitled to $5,000, and everyone else who bought one of the HDD MP3 players in the past several years gets a 50% discount on a new 1GB player[PDF]. They can also opt for a 20% discount on anything ordered from Creative's online store. Creative has made available all of the necessary legal forms. Seagate lost a similar lawsuit late last year.

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It's been hard to get through to Twitter today.

Calls through the API fail.

Most accesses to the site get an internal server error.

Nothing about it on the Twitter blog.

Oy.

T-Mobile was the one national US mobile operator who really didn't have much of a strategy when it came to upgrading its network. While Sprint, Verizon and AT&T all were working on 3G options, T-Mobile kind of sat around twiddling its thumbs. Then it finally realized that it was way behind and made an effort to catch up. Years after everyone else got around to launching stuff (and as they're all now setting plans for their 4G options), T-Mobile is finally launching its 3G wireless service. But in a move that makes absolutely no sense, it's only for voice -- not for data. If it's only for voice... there's no reason to move to 3G. The very purpose of the 3G mobile network was to enable higher bandwidth for data. This is like building an entire highway next to a perfectly good bike trail... and then saying the highway is only for bicycles. Why bother?

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superglaze writes "Halfway through the two-month window of opportunity during which OOXML's ISO standardization can be derailed by a formal objection from a national standards body, the UK Unix Users Group is trying to force the British Standards Institution to do just that. According to the Unix Users Group, the BSI used a flawed decision-making process when they chose to approve OOXML in the ISO vote. 'The UKUUG is also folding in many other complaints about Office Open XML (OOXML), such as unresolved patent issues and a lack of completion in the specification's documentation, and is calling for the High Court of Justice to force a judicial review of the BSI's decision.' This is not the first time a country's ISO vote has been challenged."

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Joi Ito tells Boing Boing about an online game by human rights organization Breakthrough, called ICED ("I Can End Deportation"). The object of the game is to become a US Citizen. Joi says,

It's a game for kids teaching them about their rights and trying to stop abusive anti-due-process stuff the INS is doing. It's a amazing story and a great site.

From the website...

ICED puts you in the shoes of an immigrant to illustrate how unfair immigration laws deny due process and violate human rights. These laws affect all immigrants: legal residents, those fleeing persecution, students and undocumented people.

Regular Boing Boing denizens may recall Gabe Delahaye from a Boing Boing tv episode or two in which he and Max Silvestri lampooned late-night infomercials about "how to achieve the dream life of your dreams using the internet." Gabe is now producing internet funnynuggets for videogum, and in this episode, he takes on the dance-war/vlog-vs-vlog/troll-vs-troll activity that clogs so much of YouTube. I LOLled. Video Link. To fully appreciate the scope of this work, I recommend that you first watch Sexman's My Jumper Review. Warning, though, spoilers ahead!

Previously on Bing Bong:

Gabe and Max answer Bing Boing readers.

Internet Cookies/Internet... Thing

Stefan Jones says: "In an interview on the Trinity Broadcasting System, Expelled star and game show host Ben Stein lets it all out."

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Stefan continues: "This rhetoric should be familiar to anyone who has read the 'The Wedge Strategy', a product of the Intelligent Design-advocating think tank The Discovery Institute. Yeah, sure thing Ben. Before The Origin of Species was published, there weren't any massacres, pogroms, slavery, forced conversions or torture. Especially by people with religious beliefs." Link

Who knew eBay was such a repository of avant garde art criticism? Steven (known to previous fine art collectors, or, bidders, whatever as an "A+++ Ebayer") writes about his, erm, nut:

I don't know why I stopped at this particular cashew as I was eating my Trader Joe's sweet, savory & tart trail mix, but as an artist the unexplainable happens often. My body is a vessel of creation and expression in tune with everything around me, including what you would see as "just another cashew"

No, something about the shape of this particular cashew reflects the shape of our society. As the artist, I have split and re-glued the cashew as an expression of the “cracks” that have been “glued” in modern life. It is a complete work of art in every way. Famed art critic Richard Barokavov had this to say about the piece:

“Steven’s ‘Trader Joe’s Cashew #4’ is such a complete and absolute brutally dissecting view of the industrial conflict between capitalism and modernism that is is hard for even the most verbose of critics to add too. Regardless of Steven’s relation to me as a colleague and studiomate, the intense complexity I feel for this work is also complete and absolute.”

Again, I don’t expect most to fully understand the complexity of the form but as you can see it is quite powerful.

Link, he wants like half a mil for it. (via Sean Bonner)

In the latest of many arguments about the various rights and payments companies need to pay for streaming music online, a district court has ruled that AOL, Yahoo and RealNetworks most likely owe millions to ASCAP for songs that they streamed to users between 2002 and today (and continuing on to 2009). This has nothing to do with the record labels -- ASCAP represents the songwriters -- but is yet another extraneous "license" where the terms are hardly clear, but basically serve to make it more difficult for anyone to play music. It was never in question that these sites would need to pay some kind of royalty -- the question was how much. The odd part of this ruling, though, is that the rate set by the judge is likely to be higher than the rate that traditional terrestrial radio pays. If there ever were a formula for making companies less interested in streaming music online -- this might be it. Of course, it's quite likely that this ruling will be appealed, so it's far from over.

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longacre writes "With the official entry period for the $10 million Automotive X-Prize contest just around the corner, Popular Mechanics offers a preview of the most promising entries. Among the 100-mpg vehicles that Detroit (and Japan) have claimed impossible to build comes a hybrid designed by a class of inner-city high school students in West Philadelphia. Also displayed is a futuristic-looking electric model with a range of 300 miles. We discussed the beginning of this contest earlier this year."

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I love reading about little changes that make a big difference. The airline industry seems to be a great example.

This article talks about how American Airlines made some small changes to save a lot of fuel:

For instance, pilots were instructed to taxi around the airport with only one engine turned on, a measure that would save about $4 million a year…

And today I saw an article about how airlines are starting to fly slower to save fuel. JetBlue has been flying slower for two years (JetBlue adds an average of just under two minutes to each flight, and saves about $13.6 million a year in jet fuel). Southwest and Northwest are experimenting with it now:

Southwest Airlines started flying slower about two months ago, and projects it will save $42 million in fuel this year by extending each flight by one to three minutes… On one Northwest Airlines flight from Paris to Minneapolis earlier this week alone, flying slower saved 162 gallons of fuel, saving the airline $535. It added eight minutes to the flight, extending it to eight hours, 58 minutes.

It’s a good reminder that while big changes can have a big impact (like American Airlines grounding some of their Super 80 gas guzzlers), sometimes little tweaks (like flying slower) can have a big impact too. Always keep an eye out for the little things. There’s usually a lot of low hanging fruit.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Pro-IP Act has passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously, thanks to the support of committee chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). We've discussed this before — it's the same bill which would create copyright cops with the power to seize computers, when powers like that have been systematically abused in other areas. But, apparently, they think the bill is just wonderful now, simply because they cut the provision that would've increased statutory damages while keeping the rest. This is the same bill that William Patry called the 'most outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.'" While we're on the subject of intellectual property, Canadian law professor Michael Geist gave a talk on Monday about 'copyright myths.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My passwords are so confidential I’m going to write them down on this notepad that says TOP SECRET PASSWORDS. I mean it – these passwords need to be kept SECURE and PRIVATE, so I’m going to WRITE THEM DOWN and label them “My Passwords for all my things that are online.” That will be the best way to keep them safe.

Seriously, don’t buy this.

Last month yet another court ruled that border patrol guards could search the data on mobile phones and laptops without any probably cause. This was troubling for a variety of reasons, since it basically gives them access to all sorts of things that one would have a normal expectation of privacy over. It's quite different than, say, a stack of papers you have brought with you while traveling overseas. In those cases, you made the proactive decision to take those files with you. Yet, since your computer stores everything, you're exposing much more, and doing it without making the proactive decision to bring those files with you. It's also not clear how this applies to network drives. For example, I store some files on a network drive that appears as just another drive off of my laptop, even though it's not in the laptop itself. Can a customs agent start searching that drive as well? This raises some serious concerns, and the EFF is now demanding some Congressional oversight concerning how these laptop and mobile device searches take place, even suggesting that laws be put in place to prevent the abuse of power by customs agents.

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An anonymous reader points out an article which says that "Purdue University says it will only need one day to install the largest supercomputer on a Big Ten campus. The so-called 'electronic barn-raising' will take place May 5 and involved more than 200 employees. The computer will be about the size of a semi trailer. Vice President for Information Technology at Purdue Gerry McCartney says it will be built in a single day to keep science and engineering researchers from facing a lengthy downtime." Another anonymous reader adds "To generate interest on campus, the organizers created a spoof movie trailer called 'Installation Day.'"

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