What did G20 protesters get arrested for? Blowing bubbles

Officer Hardass seems to have missed the point of why he was working the G20 protests in Toronto recently. Note how the officer next to him tried to make cute conversation, but he wasn’t having any of that. About halfway through the video, they showed the officer arresting her. Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow made a good point here: “If the goal of the police at the G20 was to act pissy and escalate minor incidents into major ones in order to assert their authority, mission accomplished. If, on the other hand, their mission was to de-escalate, keep the peace, find rapport, and celebrate the democratic right to protest, this officer is an abject, total failure.” source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

It really feels like the second coming of the CD-ROM ‘revolution’ in which ‘content’ people proclaimed that they were going to remake media by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products.
Boing Boing blogger Cory Doctorow • Discussing why he hates the iPad so much. He notes a number of reasons, but the biggest is that it’s a machine that’s not designed to be tinkered with, and invokes the “Maker’s Manifesto” in his argument: “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.” Don’t think he speaks for Boing Boing with this argument, by the way. Fellow Boing Boinger Xeni Jardin reviewed the device and gave it the headline, “Apple’s iPad is a touch of genius.” So, if anything, Doctorow (who’s anti-copyright, pro Creative Commons) provides the site some balance. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Basically, CBS has decided that it could cost too much to pay a lawyer to figure out if they can release these films – or even turn them over to Benny’s fans and family for release – and so it has decided to simply abandon them, sealing them back up in the vault forever.
Boing Boing blogger Cory Doctorow • Regarding CBS’ decision to block the release of a set of old Jack Benny masters to the late comic’s fan club, for purposes of remastering. The network blocked the decision despite the footage being public domain, the fan club getting consent from Benny’s family, promising to pay for the remastering themselves, and being genuinely good-intentioned. These 25 episodes were thought lost forever. Now they’ll be locked away in some vault instead. Lame. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Now we found someone who was made to believe he could kill people with an )#&hole bomb, and so it follows that the TSA will have to ban – or at least inspect – our #(^holes.
BoingBoing blogger Cory Doctorow • Discussing the hilarious/scary/sad/disturbing (choose one) revelation that some guy was caught with a bomb in his posterior attempting to kill a Saudi prince. Considering the way that the Transportation and Security Administration has handled similar incidents, Doctorow notes, it would follow that airport security would require anal cavity search for everyone. He’s not alone. Computer security expert Bruce Schneier, in a post titled “@I^ bomber,” makes this hilarious/scary/sad/disturbing (choose one) observation: “For years, I have made the joke about Richard Reid: ‘Just be glad that he wasn’t the underwear bomber.’ Now, sadly, we have an example of one.” • source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Jul 2010 12:36