Holy crap, Diesel Sweeties is in newspapers! Though I don’t read it much any more, this is still awesome news. And yeah, R. Stevens is giving out little cards saying “I liked Diesel Sweeties BEFORE it sold out,” but I think my super-awesome, totally out of print Johnny Toaster t-shirt is more than enough proof of my alumni membership.

“Suspicious packages” in Boston turn out to be an advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Governor Deval Patrick calls the whole thing a hoax and is clearly not amused. “It’s not funny,” he says.

Here’s a shot of the supposed “bomb hoax”:

Here are some other things that Boston Police and the FBI may also mistake for a bomb:

Are things really so bad in the United States that you’ll call in anything as a bomb threat? It’s a fucking Lite-Brite sign of a cartoon character giving you the finger.

Though this should give anti-ad-creep activists a nice boost. After all, if you can call in the bomb squad to blow up a Cartoon Network ad, surely the same should apply to other ads as well. “Um, yes, there’s a suspicious package overlooking the Gardiner Expressway… I think that car billboard might explode at any moment!”

Update: Someone who was either involved in creating the ads or else snagged one for himself two weeks ago has detailed pictures on flickr. There’s also a video floating around of two guys doing the install.

In related news, someone’s been arrested. Peter Berdovsky has been charged with one felony charge of placing a hoax device and one charge of disorderly conduct. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is determined to get to the bottom of this:

“We’re not going to let this go without looking at the further roots of how this happened to cause the panic in this city,” Coakley said at a news conference.

Try taking a look at your own police force for a start. Why is it that out of the ten cities in which this campaign was going on (including New York, San Francisco, Atlanta and Seattle), Boston’s the only one to lose its collective shit over this? And then to go one step further and arrest an innocent on felony charges because you screwed up? The video posted by some of the people who placed the devices claimed they were inspired by the Graffiti Research Lab; does this mean you’re a terrorist if you’ve got LED throwies? Though they don’t agree with the motives of the ATHF promotion and have done their bit to distance themselves from the Boston incident, the GRL have some choice words about how it’s all going down:

Interference Inc, welcome to the world of being misunderstood, scapegoated, demonized and wanted by the law. Still want to be a graffiti artist?

My Sarah Shannon post on Angels Twenty is now a news item on the site of her label, Minty Fresh. At this rate I should be able to pull a Pitchfork and break the next Arcade Fire some time in 2076.

“You were wondering about iPhone..Lots of speculation out there. Beyond the fact that Rogers is the only GSM carrier in Canada, we have not issued any statements as to whether or when the iPhone would be available at Rogers.”

Translation: we’re not saying anything, but come on, of course it’ll be us. Resistance is futile.

Microsoft’s iPod competitor, the Zune, was supposed to offer a ton of features previously unavailable in MP3 players. The biggest promise, and one music mavens have been looking forward to for years, was the music sharing feature—the ability to send songs wirelessly to other Zune players. What all-knowing too-cool-for-school hipster wouldn’t jump at the chance to spam their favourite Scandinavian import or Montreal francophone indie band to everyone they knew?

“Beam your beats with wireless Zune to Zune sharing,” the Zune website says. If that was all there was to it, then Microsoft would have a winner on its hands. But any time you include the words “music” and “sharing” in the same sentence, you can expect a subpoena from the RIAA shortly thereafter. Before the record industry was ready to sign off on the Zune marketplace, Microsoft’s iTunes Store competitor, they demanded that certain restrictions be made.

So “Beam your beats” becomes “Beam your beats, but the song expires in three days or after three plays, whichever comes first, even if the song you’re sending is you singing Appalachian folk songs in the shower.” And now it turns out even those restrictions weren’t good enough for some. If indeed about half of the Sony and Universal rosters are covered under the sharing blackout, then the vaunted wireless music sharing feature is a non-starter. Now it’s “Beam your beats, but the song expires quickly, unless we don’t want you to share the song at all, in which case don’t beam anything.” Somehow I don’t think that particular slogan will catch on.

Even though there’s no love lost for the iPod, it’s becoming increasingly clear that between this sort of invasive DRM and Microsoft’s “royalty payment” to Universal for every Zune sold, the Zune is nothing more than a cut-rate trinket, severely hobbled in order to please the RIAA. Only the RIAA and Microsoft could find a way to turn the iPod’s lack of a cool feature to Apple’s advantage.

Wil Wheaton, who was once the bane of my childhood Wesley Crusher (special thanks to my parents for giving me the same first name!), is recapping Star Trek: The Next Generation for TVSquad. In addition to just being generally awesome, Wheaton also touches on one of my pet peeves with various Star Trek episodes:

Data says Ferengi are like traders, and explains this with the most obvious contemporary reference: Yankee traders from 18th century America. This indicates that, in the 24th century, the traditional practice of using 400 year-old comparisons is still in vogue, like when you’re stuck in traffic on the freeway, and you say, “Man, this is just like Vasco de Gama trying to go around the Cape of Good Hope!”

Although I suppose that’s not quite as bad as, say, the cast of Star Trek: Voyager returning to mid-90s Los Angeles. Or the entire run of Galactica 1980.

Ars Technica reports that Canada is considering harsh copyright legislation that could destroy the concept of fair use as we know it. It may also include provisions outlawing the circumvention of digital rights management schemes currently in use to protect digital music and movie downloads.

In short, this is shaping up to be Canada’s version of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If the mere thought of a Canadian DMCA doesn’t chill your spine, consider some of the problems the DMCA has caused. Breaking the copy protection on some major-label albums in order to rip the tracks to put on your MP3 player is illegal under the DMCA, even though that’s arguably a fair use of the product. Copying a DVD for backup purposes? Illegal—because in order to do so you’d need to break the CSS encryption on the DVD.

But what’s worse is that the DMCA represents a way of thinking about copyright and intellectual property that benefits mainly large corporations with huge libraries of backlist content. That way of thinking is the reason why we have debates about the broadcast flag, intended to prevent people from recording television shows to watch later. It’s the reason why the RIAA still thinks ripping MP3s off a CD should be illegal, and continues to sue individuals that download music off the internet. It’s the reason why a travesty like the DIVX content system was created, it’s the reason why Peter Gutmann thinks Windows Vista’s content protection may “constitute the longest suicide note in history,” and it’s the reason why you should be very worried about any talk of trusted computing modules.

And in case you’re at all swayed by the argument that artists somehow aren’t getting paid because of illegal downloads, the artists have something to tell you. In short: DRM stifles innovation, downloads often benefit artists instead of hindering them, and the current model often fucks the artist over anyway. All the DMCA and the pending Canadian legislation do is protect an outdated and arguably broken business model.

The ministers responsible for the legislation: Maxime Bernier of Industry and Bev Oda of Canadian Heritage. Contact information for Bev Oda. Helpful links from Boing Boing, including this very interesting article about a fundraiser for Oda sponsored by the broadcast industry. Guess who the other minister scheduled to appear was?

As advertised.

If you haven’t yet heard (ha), Apple is planning to take the cellular phone market by storm with a new cellphone that promises to do everything you wish your smartphone did now, better than you ever imagined. The basics: they’ve packed a widescreen touchscreen display into the surface of the phone, which is only slightly larger than an iPod 5G. It runs a stripped-down version of OS X, and includes versions of Safari and Dashboard alongside the integrated SMS, e-mail and iPod apps. It’ll set you back $499 for the 4GB version or $599 for the 8GB version, after you factor in the discount from signing up for two years with Cingular. It’s also an exclusive Cingular phone; no Verizon or what-have-you, looks like. Features like a list of incoming voicemails and Google Maps integration are neat little Apple-UI touches.

Okay, so it’s a smarter smart phone. First-day impressions of the iPhone:

(more…)