I like these. I almost bought the Hancock tower when I visited it last week but I decided to save my money in hopes that they'd have the CN Tower for sale on the web. Unfortunately they don't, but maybe soon?

Lego Sky Scrapers

The consumer electronics business, once the playground of large companies, has seen scrappy entrepreneurs charge in. But while the bar to becoming a hardware entrepreneur is lower than ever, it’s still not a gimme.

For Hardware Entrepreneurs, Getting From Idea to Reality Isn’t Easy | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Shortly after Threat Level reported this week that Yahoo had blocked the FOIA release of its law enforcement and intelligence price list, someone provided a copy of the company’s spying guide to the whistleblower site Cryptome.

The 17-page guide describes Yahoo’s data retention policies and the surveillance capabilities it can provide law enforcement, with a pricing list for these services. Cryptome also published lawful data-interception guides for Cox Communications, SBC, Cingular, Nextel, GTE and other telecoms and service providers.

But of all those companies, it appears to be Yahoo’s lawyers alone who have issued a DMCA takedown notice to Cryptome demanding the document be removed. Yahoo claims that publication of the document is a copyright violation, and gave Cryptome owner John Young a Thursday deadline for removing the document. So far, Young has refused.

Young:

I cannot find at the Copyright Office a grant of copyright for the Yahoo spying document hosted on Cryptome. To assure readers Yahoo’s copyright claim is valid and not another hoary bluff without substantiation so common under DMCA bombast please send a copy of the copyright grant for publication on Cryptome.

Until Yahoo provides proof of copyright, the document will remain available to the public for it provides information that is in the public interest about Yahoo’s contradictory privacy policy and should remain a topic of public debate on ISP unacknowledged spying complicity with officials for lucrative fees.

From the thread:

Yahoo claims that a copyright notice is not necessary for works created after March 1 1989. If that is true, then Yahoo is in violation of the copyrights of its users by selling their works created after March 1, 1989 without their knowledge or consent. Opps! They out smarted themselves. I think Yahoo is in for a big can of whoop ass!

Yahoo Issues Takedown Notice for Spying Price List | Threat Level | Wired.com

A Strange Old Tool . . . . Do you know what it is?

Here is a hint: It is a Washington D.C. favorite!

Wow

Blowing Smoke | The Big Picture

leet

ASCII art from 1934 Boing Boing

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now , a radio and television show aired by public and college broadcasters across North America, was entering Canada around 6 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday evening, set to speak at the Vancouver Public Library in an event co-ordinated by a campus radio station at Simon Fraser University.

“When I handed our passports over the border guard, they told us to pull over. We had to go over to the border facility. And they started asking me questions about what I was going to be speaking about. I was totally taken aback. They wanted to see my notes,” Ms. Goodman told the Globe Thursday, recalling the encounter...

She claimed the officer persisted in questioning her about Vancouver's upcoming Games...

They began to search her notes and computers and those of her two colleagues, Ms. Goodman alleged. They then photographed the journalist and gave her a stipulation to leave the country by Friday night. They were delayed over an hour...

“There's supposed to be a separation between the state and the press. The fact that the state was going through my documents, that they were rifling through notes, that they were asking me what I was planning to speak about, is a very serious issue,” she said.

“If journalists fear they will be…monitored, it's more difficult for the public to get information. And information is the currency of a democracy.”

For several years the ACLU has been fighting a U.S. policy that empowers CBP to exclude foreign nationals for ideological reasons. As the US has failed to take the right position on this issue, we cannot be terribly offended when our allies take a similar position to our own. Even when it includes potentially excluding our journalists from their countries...

This case also highlights the risk of allowing suspicionless border searches of laptops. These laptops were not searched for child pornography. They were searched in order to determine what the journalists planned to speak about. As U.S. policy provides for ideological exclusion of foreign nationals, it is reasonable to expect that laptops of foreign nationals might be inspected to determine their thoughts and views. This puts the term "politically correct" in a whole new light.

U.S. journalist says she was delayed at Canadian border, questioned about speech - The Globe and Mail

MARTINSVILLE, Ohio — With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children.

Well, thats one way to fix America's obesity problem...

The Safety Net - Across U.S., Food Stamp Use Soars and Stigma Fades - Series - NYTimes.com

I just know some arrogant asshole looked at the bar graph and said, “pie charts look better on TV.” Reply, “Good idea boss.”

lol

Fox News (Chicago) Makes the Best. Pie Chart. Ever. | The Big Picture

Several weeks ago, the family of information studies professor Phil Agre reported him missing, saying that they had not heard from him in over a year.

I regularly read Agre's Red Rock Eater News Service around the turn of the decade. I've also seen Agre speak a conference. He was very interesting - a real heavyweight. I know I've gone digging around on the Internet in recent years to see what the guy has been up to and come up with nothing. In fact I may have done this in the past year...

The Mysterious Disappearance Of Phil Agre - All Tech Considered - Technology News And Culture Blog : NPR

Social networking sites are among many new tools law enforcement has adopted to find underage drinkers, said La Crosse police officer Al Iverson, who works in alcohol compliance and education...

Iverson pointed out the students still were caught in an illegal act, one they felt comfortable and confident enough about to put photos of on the Internet. Posting those photos, he added, helps glamorize alcohol consumption and binge drinking.

Someone else posted photos on a Facebook site of UW-L sophomores Brianna Niesen and Cassie Stenholt holding beer, but they still ended up in court Wednesday pleading no contest and getting fined.

“I feel like it is a breach of privacy,” Stenholt said. “You feel like you should be able to trust cops.”

The police are reading your blog.