As explained by Mike "Mish" Shedlock one of the smartest and most iconoclastic financial analysts writing on the economy:

"To stimulate lending, the bailout plan will attempt to recapitalize banks. The method of recapitalization is best described as robbing Taxpayer Pete to pay Wall Street Paul. In essence, money is taken from the poor (via taxes, printing, and weakening of the dollar) and given to the wealthy so the wealthy supposedly will have enough money to lend back (at interest) to those who have just been robbed.

Unfortunately, no matter what seat of the pants strategies they come up with, I can guarantee in advance that the unforeseen consequences of whatever decisions they make, simply will not be any good. Besides, it is axiomatic that plans to rob Peter to pay Paul, can never really work in the first place, regardless of how much time is spent crafting them."

For some of the finest discussion you can read anywhere about the economy -- if you really want to know what's going on, forget about MSNBC and Jim Cramer and all those idiots -- look no further than Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis.

I read him daily. If I had to make a choice between "Mish" and The Wall Street Journal, quite honestly, I'd take "Mish"!

(Richard Metzger is guest blogger.)

A year ago, we were fairly shocked at an interview with Universal Music CEO Doug Morris. The guy gleefully explained how clueless he was about technology, and said that he didn't even know enough to hire people who could properly guide him to understanding how technology was impacting the music industry. Furthermore, he displayed an ignorance of basic economics and basic finance at the same time by insisting that any sort of promotion that might pay back tenfold at a later date was bad business because it meant someone was "taking advantage of you." Yes, apparently, the idea of spending a dollar today to make back ten next year makes no sense to the CEO of a large company. We wondered how Universal's shareholders could possibly let someone so gleefully clueless continue to run the company.

Apparently, he's still at it, and still not afraid to open his mouth and expose his ignorance. In Morris' latest interview he insists that the company doesn't believe in promotions, but wants to get paid for every single use of its music:

"We don't look at anything as promotion. Take a look at MTV. It turned out to be a disaster for us. We sold some records, but they built this huge company and we gave them our (music) for nothing, and what did we get?"

If this sounds familiar, it's probably because fellow big record label boss, Edgar Bronfman recently used the same fallacious logic in claiming that video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band were getting all the benefits from Warner Music's bands, without giving anything in return. In both cases, you have content providers who are significantly overvaluing the content, while significantly undervaluing the way that content is used. In this case, notice that Morris is admitting that MTV actually did help Universal sell more records. So what's the "disaster"? It's that another company, MTV, also got big. As we recently explained, this psychological phenomenon is seen throughout the big record labels. They care less about their own absolute success than they do about their relative success compared to others. They would prefer that they actually bring in less money for shareholders, as long as it means other companies do even worse.

I guess I can understand that, as a record label boss, you might overvalue the content, but to insist that there's no value in promotions -- even when there's increasing economic evidence that such promotions can greatly expand your market (at a time when your old strategy has resulted in a rapidly diminishing market) screams of corporate malfeasance. It makes you wonder what Universal Music's parent company, Vivendi is thinking. Are Morris' bosses just so impressed with the fact that Morris once wrote the song "Sweet Talk Guy" that they let him sweet talk them into letting him continue to run the company into the ground?

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Whiteox writes "The Australian Prime Minister's plan to equip high schools with 'one laptop per child' may go open source. Kevin Rudd's $56 million digital revolution will include 'laptops [that will] run on an open source operating system with a suite of open source applications like those packaged under Edubuntu. This would include Open Office for productivity software, Gimp for picture editing and the Firefox internet browser.' So far this has been considered for New South Wales and I think other states may follow."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mr. Zhu, a Chinese scrap metal business owner and big Transformers fan built his own towering bot-sculptures using car and other vehicular parts - The Transformers of Zhejiang Province

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Last night I saw Doctor Atomic an opera about building the first nuke. I think we'll see more and more "technology" storied from history hit plays, operas, broadway musicals - they're filled with interesting characters, struggle, conflict, love and all the things you need for a great story. Doctor Atomic by composer John Adams is about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb. The opera takes place in 1945 in New Mexico during what was called the Manhattan project.

So how was it? Good, probably not for everyone - but if you're science minded and enjoy other ways of presenting a historic and technological event you'll probably like this. You rarely get to hear people singing about plutonium. I really like that The Met is having a science based opera, I suspect in the future we'll see other historical events in technology be presented in ways like this too.

More:
Photo gallery @ The Met.
HD listings (operas now available in HD).
MetPlayer (Oct 22).

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smooth wombat writes "An international spam ring with ties to Australia, New Zealand, China, India, and the US is in the process of being shut down. Finances of members in the US are being frozen using the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 while the FBI is pursuing criminal charges. The group sent spam advertising male enhancement herbs and other items using a botnet estimated at 35,000 computers, and able to send 10 billion emails per day. The Federal Trade Commission monitored the group's finances and found that they had cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While mucking about on the most excellent BEAM Wiki, I bumped into this fascinating proto-BEAM bot from 1912(!). I was certainly familiar with W. Grey Walter's pioneering work in the 1940s, but not this much earlier light-seeking analog robot.

Seleno, The Electric Dog

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Flickr member Dr. photon made some excellent deep space exploration gear for use in a short film - check out more pics in his photoset.

More:
Satellite from a space suit

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Nice how-to on making an e-paper clock from Esquire magazine from Ian @ Hack a Day... he writes -

If you’ve never heard about electronic paper, crawl out from under that rock and read up on the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle. E-paper is a flexible display made of color-changing beads that mimic ink-on-paper for easy daylight reading. The revolutionary thing about e-paper is that after it’s set, it stays that way without additional power.

This sounds great in theory, but Esquire’s cover is the first time everybody can afford to hack an e-paper display. We took the cover into the Hack a Day lab to document, test, and hack. In the end, we recycled it into something useful that anyone can build. We’ve got all the details on how the display works and what it takes to use it in your own projects...

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Bill LeMaster, a 44-year-old retired Air Force technician living in Montgomery, Ala., enjoys a great many hobbies, ranging from arts to electronics. He also enjoys his family, his most beloved passion. Although, if you ask his wife, she’d probably say collecting hobbies is his biggest passion.

Last Halloween, when he heard his grandkids were dressing up as Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm from the Flintstones, LeMaster volunteered to build them the Flintstone car to perfectly complete the look (and to make sure he got to join in the fun). “I just wanted my grandkids to have the most awesome costume in Montgomery,” he recalls.

He started the build six weeks before Halloween, allowing himself plenty of time to get the project rock solid. Once the car was done, the kids were all set to shuffle their feet down the street — Yabba-Dabba-Doo! His grandkids were happy, the neighbors were amazed, and LeMaster was satisfied with the outcome of the project.

People continue to ask him where he bought the car and if he’ll bring it out of the house.

In response, LeMaster has posted a how-to, comprised of step-by-step instructions on making your own Flintstone car, on the Instructables website.

“I originally documented the construction to simply capture the memories of the build, but it just so happened that I came across Instructables shortly after I started so I decided to enter the contest. I figured people might be interested in some of the techniques I came up with,” he explains.

LeMaster says it took him about three weeks to build the car, with most of the work done on Saturdays. The bulk of the material he used was scrap wood that he found lying around the house. Swim noodles and bondo glass both helped in the construction.

All in all, the project cost him about $100, and LeMaster says it was worth every penny. “This was nothing compared to the priceless expressions on my grandkids’ faces when they saw the car.” —Ed Troxell, MAKE 14 - page 22.

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I swear to God this is the last gravestone DIY link I will post this year. But here is a even cheaper version of making gravestones for all you Halloween peeps out there. This is from our fiends at Scooby's Boo House and involves making them out of....you guessed it....16 inch tall kickboards. So raid your pool box and get started here. Thanks to Rob from the Haunted Report for pointing this out.

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We've talked for years about the danger any media makes in focusing on setting up a paywall. In an age where openness and the ability to get others to spread and promote the content for you is often a key barometer of success, locking yourself up behind a paywall takes you out of the wider conversation, and by its very nature, decreases your overall ability to influence. The LA Times has an article noticing that this seems to be exactly what's happened with Howard Stern, who famously made the jump from terrestrial radio to satellite radio -- and in doing so, appears to have lost a large percentage of his audience, and with it much of his influence. Of course, he was paid handsomely for doing so, but Sirius almost certainly expected Stern to bring a larger percentage of his audience with him. Yet, as the article notes, Stern's waning influence due to the switch means that even he's having trouble getting the level of celebrity that he used to command to even bother coming on his show. Amusingly, the article also notes that the very reason why Stern claimed he was moving to satellite -- his troubles with the FCC -- may be contributing to his lack of influence with the new show. In the past, every time Stern got in trouble with the FCC, it boosted ratings, giving him plenty of free publicity. Without that foil, he loses much of the free publicity. Such is life behind the paywall, apparently.

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zogger writes in his journal, "The guy who put together the concept of geographical location combined with cheap transportation leading to 'like trades with like' and the rise of superindustrial trading blocs has won the Nobel economics science prize. He's a bigtime critic of a lot of this administration's policies, and is unabashedly an FDR-economy styled fella. Here is his blog at the NYTimes." Reader yoyoq adds that Krugman's career choice was inspired by reading Asimov's Foundation series at a young age.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new user interface for bit.ly was deployed last night.

Two disclaimers: 1. I am part owner of bit.ly. 2. I participated in the initial design of the product and this redesign. They surprised me by making the new implementation public, so I made my comments public.

1. Only error messages should be red. Confirmation messages should be green or black. Prefer green.

2. I'm still using the old bookmarklet. It should work the same as it used to. Shorten the url parameter and put it in the Twitter box. This violates Rule #1 -- no breakage.

3. When you ask the user for a new password you must always ask for the password to be confirmed. This is not necessary when you ask the user for a password to another service, e.g. Twitter, because you can confirm (and do) confirm the password with the other service.

4. Why are there two bookmarklets? What's the difference betw the two? The description is very vague and cryptic. Much better just to have one bookmarklet to start.

5. There must be a place to leave a comment. Strongly suggest using Disqus. I want to be able to see the comments other users provide.

6. Since I can post to Twitter from bit.ly, which of course is good, I want the posts to show up in my "Recent" list. I also want an RSS 2.0 feed of all the items I post to Twitter.

7. The new tagline, Shorten and share your long urls, is very good.

8. On the whole I am pleased with the new design.

My friend Josh Rubin has gone from hunting cool things to making them: he's launched a new set of gloves called the "Freehands" with flip-back fingers that make it possible to use your gadgets without taking off your gloves. Magnets in the fingertips match to others above the knuckles to keep the fingertips back out of the way. This may seem a bit superfluous to those of you who drive cars to work, but for city folk it solves a common problem. It's a pain in the ass to have to strip off your gloves and hold them in your teeth or pocket just to dial a phone number or change a song. There are three different versions: a leather set for $40; a stretchy nylon and micro-fleece set for $30; and a basic fleece pair for $20. Freehands gadget gloves product page [Freehands.com]

My friend Josh Rubin has gone from hunting cool things to making them: he's launched a new set of gloves called the "Freehands" with flip-back fingers that make it possible to use your gadgets without taking off your gloves. Magnets in the fingertips match to others above the knuckles to keep the fingertips back out of the way. This may seem a bit superfluous to those of you who drive cars to work, but for city folk it solves a common problem. It's a pain in the ass to have to strip off your gloves and hold them in your teeth or pocket just to dial a phone number or change a song. There are three different versions: a leather set for $40; a stretchy nylon and micro-fleece set for $30; and a basic fleece pair for $20. Freehands gadget gloves product page [Freehands.com]

This busker from Bath, England built his own bandmate, a mechanical guitar player, strummed and fretted by foot-control. An elegant solution for sure … but who's gonna take turns driving the van?

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Ponca City, We love you writes "Legendary Blue Grass musician Eddie Adcock has undergone brain surgery to treat a hand tremor, playing his banjo throughout to test the success of the procedure. Adcock suffers from essential tremor, a condition where there is a continuing deterioration in areas of the brain that control movement causing a tremor that usually appears when the person tries to act or move. Deep brain stimulation can be used to treat the movement difficulties of both Parkinson's and essential tremor by sinking an electrode into the thalamus, a deep brain area that is part of the motor loop — a circuit that helps coordinate movement. Surgeons placed electrodes in Adcock's brain and fitted a pacemaker in his chest, which delivers a small current that shuts down the region of his brain causing the tremors. The most sensible thing to do was to tweak the system while Adcock was playing the banjo to optimize the effect for the thing that's most important to him."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today on Boing Boing Gadgets, the timestream temporarily spat us all out of Infomercia, and so we did as we usually do. We ridiculed the photoshop disasters of Lexar and puked in our mouths a little about e-mail notification lamps. Beschizza considered buying a rug covered in roadkill and lusted after Nokia's WiMax tablet. We chuckled over cornflakes at XKCD's oh-so-true take on piracy, and our mouths watered when we considered a cotton candy machine that could make a spool of fluff out of any hard candy. Engadget was declared the blog partner of CES, prompting a WTF from Joel. Brownlee marveled at an HDTV easel and channeled Robert E. Howard as he wrote about a cell phone stand. A 1942 Philco Radio was converted into a swank Mini Mac jukebox and a dubious device claims to be able to carve your CDs into perfect circles for better music. Oh, and yeah: Apple announced some new MacBooks. Link

Barence writes "Asus has launched an Eee-branded 15.6" touchscreen desktop PC as a budget rival to HP's TouchSmart. Available for pre-order now on Play.com for £399.99 ($749), it shares much of the same specification as the Eee PC, but with a larger 160-GB hard disk. Interestingly, it's listed as coming with XP installed, so we'd guess Asus will be using some sort of proprietary touchscreen interface — yet the image on the site clearly shows Linux on the screen, which may be a better bet for an easy-to-use touch system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The EU has now followed the US and Australia in coming up with plans to ban incandescent lightbulbs in favor of more efficient bulbs, such as compact fluorescent bulbs or LED-based lighting. I understand why these bans are being put in place. The incandescent bulbs are inefficient and wasteful, and the thinking is that forcing the move to CFLs or other types of bulbs will be good for the environment.

However, this doesn't take into account the unintended consequences of this move. Already, there's been a big push to move people to CFLs, and that's created a situation where the makers of CFLs have worked hard to improve the quality of the bulbs (a big complaint) as well as add in features that used to not be found in CFLs, such as dimming. It's also pushed the makers of CFLs to find efficiencies by which they can make the bulbs cheaper. They're doing this because they know they need to compete with incandescent bulbs -- and in many cases it's working.

Yet, banning incandescents from the market place means that the makers of CFLs now have a lot less competition. They don't have to work as hard to make the lights better. They don't have to work as hard to make them more efficient and cheaper. They've basically been given a gift that means they can slow down the process of making those bulbs that much better for the environment. That seems like a mistake.

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No, it's not an old Captain Beefheart song. Spider cakes are cool, creepy, crawly desserts, easily made with cup cakes and some Pocky.

Details at Not Martha. [Via Boing Boing]

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Augusto writes "Just 10 days ago, 130M Brazilian voters were turned into users of one of the largest Linux deployments worldwide: the 400,000 electoral sections in all of the 5,563 Brazilian municipalities were running electronic voting machines, and the Linux kernel was running in all of them. These voting machines have been used in Brazil since 1996, and are rugged, self-contained, low-spec PCs. We've discussed the technical details of this Linux deployment and implementation elsewhere, but I thought it would be interesting to show some pictures (and a movie) of Linux booting on these voting machines. So I asked for official permission and thus was helped by a technician while I took some quick pictures and made a small movie showing the boot process, where you can actually read the kernel messages."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thanks to Scott Beale from Laughing Squid, here's a look at Maker Faire Austin 2007:

How will last year compare to this weekend's insanity? Tons more Makers, awesome new projects, fighting robots, better food... basically, even more spectacular:) Get your tickets now!

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John Edgar Park, the host of the forthcoming Make: television, used to work at White Wolf Game Studio. He posed for the painting of Greger Anderssen - Prince of Stockholm for the Vampire: The Eternal Struggle card game. I think we should convince him to do his hair, eyebrows, and facial hair like this for the show. Make: TV could be hosted by one of those bumbling ghouls in overwrought make-up who used to host late-night TV creature features in the '60s and '70s.

Greger Anderssen - Prince of Stockholm

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Today is a big day on the gadget sites, new Apple MacBooks - the cool thing (I think) is Apple showed videos of how their new laptops are made from carving them out of sheets of aluminum - how things are made (and why) is becoming more important and the lead story once everything else was commodified in the industry. There's great coverage on Engadget and Gizmodo.

Update: Wow, the video about the "making of" is incredible!

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Wiini recommends a blog posting exploring Flash cookies, a little-known threat to privacy, and how you can get control of them. 98% of browsers have Macromedia Flash Player installed, and the cookies it enables have some interesting properties. They have no expiration date; they store 100 KB of data by default, with an unlimited maximum; they can't be deleted by your browser; and they send previous visit information and history, by default, without your permission. I was amazed at some of the sites, not visited in a year or more, that still had Flash cookies on my machine. Here's the user-unfriendly GUI for deleting them, one at a time, each one requiring confirmation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David sez, "Three guys won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but there was a fourth scientist who did critical work but now makes $10/hr in a Toyota dealership! Despite the star system, science is a team sport, except that sometimes a team player contributes long after he's been sent to the minors."

But instead of focusing on his hard luck, Prasher said he is happy for his former colleagues. While it was perfectly within his rights not to share the cloned gene with others, Prasher said he felt an obligation to give his research a chance to turn into something significant, even if he was no longer a part of it.

"When you're using public funds, I personally believe you have an obligation to share," Prasher said. "I put my heart and soul into it, but if I kept that stuff, it wasn't gonna go anyplace."

David Mark Welch, assistant scientist of evolutionary biology at MBL, said this sort of situation is a natural byproduct of working in an industry where competition for grant money can be intense. Some grants have 100 applications but will only fund 10 requests, Welch said. That means competition — even from fellow colleagues at the same institution — can be fierce and scientists often feel the need to keep all unpublished research a secret.

Welch praised Prasher's actions and said many researchers are finding it easier to obtain larger grants if they collaborate instead of alienate. "You have to put aside any sort of personal desires to be better than everyone else because if your grant isn't funded, you're in trouble," he said.

Shuttle driver reflects on Nobel snub (Thanks, David!)

Over at Laughing Squid, guestblogger Doctor Popular posted a video he shot of accordionist and experimental musician Mark Growden playing a haunting tune on a set of handlebars. Mark Growden plays the handlebars

US courts have recognized, reasonably, that an image search engine like Google's is not infringing on copyrights when it displays thumbnail images as a result of a search. However, it appears that German courts are not quite so understanding. Two new rulings in Germany say that thumbnail images are, in fact, copyright infringement. The German court's reasoning was: "It doesn't matter that thumbnails are much smaller than original pictures and are displayed in a lower resolution. By using photos in thumbnails, no new work is created." While I'm certainly not as familiar with German copyright law as I am with American copyright law, this statement still doesn't make that much sense.

The purpose of copyright law shouldn't just be concerned with whether or not a new work is created, but the purpose of what's being done. So it's difficult to see, for example, how a thumbnail that links to the original can possibly do any harm. If the "artist" behind an image doesn't want it found in Google, don't put it online. If the complaint is that someone else put the image on Google allowing it to be indexed, that's not Google's fault, but whoever put it online. Suing Google makes little sense -- and a judge finding against Google makes even less sense. Google has made it clear it intends to appeal, but it's troubling that a court would rule this way in the first place. It suggests, at the very least, a less than complete understanding of how an image search engine works. It also should raise questions about whether or not this ruling effectively makes any sort of inline hotlinking of images copyright violations as well.

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A Homeland Security Committee investigation has found that the TSA was negligent in keeping track of former officers' uniforms and badges, so that an unknown number are now floating around, ready to be worn by anyone who wants to impersonate a TSA officer in order to bring a 3.1 ounce tube of toothpaste into a major US airport, thus causing every plane in the sky to crash simultaneously.

Investigators found numerous cases in which former employees retained their passes long after they had left the agency.

The investigation also found that TSA uniforms were frequently not collected when employees left or were transferred.

People using improper badges, IDs or uniforms — particularly in combination — "could significantly increase an airport's vulnerability to unauthorized access and, potentially, a wide variety of terrorist and criminal acts," the report said.

Report slams TSA failure to track security passes (via Making Light)

Steve Jobs just got through announcing new MacBook lines in Cupertino. The MacBook, the Pro, and the Air all got revved. The old line of plastic-body MacBooks drops in price by $100, to $999. The new MacBooks have a metal body and multi-touch trackpad, just like the new Pros. The Pro features two NVidia graphics chips. Quoting Jobs: "With the 9400M, you get 5 hours of battery life, with the 9600M GT you get four hours of battery life. You choose." In summary: "We're building both [MacBook and Pro] in a whole new way. From a slab of aluminum to a notebook. New graphics. New trackpad, the best we've ever built. And LED-backlit displays that are far brighter, instant on, far more environmentally responsible." They are shipping today and should be in stores tomorrow. Oh, and one more thing: Steve's blood pressure is 110/70.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When he was 19, David Savage lost his hand in a machine accident. Thirty-five years later, he had a replacement hand installed. Amazingly, the same region that controlled his hand when he had one kicked right back into gear to deal with his new appendage. This surprised scientists because other research has shown that once a limb is gone, the associated brain region quickly picks up other duties. From Science News:

When Savage had both hands, part of his right brain responded to his left hand, and a corresponding part of his left brain responded to his right hand. After the amputation, that same part of his left brain would have been sensory-deprived and thus ready to adopt duties of adjacent sensory areas, such as those for the right arm and possibly his face.

Much animal and human research has documented that such neural reorganization begins within hours of limb loss or debilitation...

“It’s remarkable that an original neural pathway for the hand can be reinstated after years and years,” (Vanderbilt University neuroscientist Jon) Kaas says.

New Hand, Same Brain Map

Jean Shin's TEXTile via NOTCOT.

22,528 recycled computer keycaps and 192 custom keycaps, fabric, customized active keyboard and interactive software, video projection and painted aluminum armatures. In this interactive sculpture, thousands of recycled keyboard keys are embedded into a continuous textile. The keys spell out a line-by-line transcript of the email correspondence between the artist and fabricators regarding the creation of the artwork. As a result, the sculpture documents its own making. Viewers can also type their own messages on the active keys amid the first three rows of emails. These new messages are then projected onto the opposite end of the fabric, thereby continuing the virtual dialogue. The project speaks to the pervasiveness of email in our lives while commenting on the fact that, despite the modern technology of virtual communication, our written language is linked to the tactile sensation of moving our fingers over an outmoded typewriter system.

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First accept as given -- my server must be, at least for now, a Windows machine. Most of the server-side software I depend on is written in either Frontier or the OPML Editor, which are not reliably running, as a server, on any other OS, as far as I'm concerned. I know some people use the Mac versions as servers, but I don't have the time or patience to carefully redeploy everything one step at a time looking for incompatibilities.

I am basically happy with the service provider I use, they're certainly not the cheapest, but they're reliable. But last year they got acquired. And they keep sending me emails saying they're running specials, and the prices keep going down, and that only means one thing to me -- I should be worried.

If I were to look at my vulnerabilities, from an online perspective, my guess this is the weakest point. If they were to fail, I'd have a big problem. I'm making sure my backups are good, my backup process was pretty flaky. But it would still be a major dislocation and a huge pain in the ass if I had to switch to a new ISP without the old one on the air and available to copy stuff from. I'm trying to do that as much as possible in advance.

So when Amazon announced that they were going to offer EC2 with Windows -- I was practically elated. As soon as it's available I will switch to that. I sent an email to Ray Ozzie thanking him for this, along with Werner Vogels at Amazon, but Ray responded saying that what Amazon was offering and what Microsoft would offer are two separate things. Now I'm really confused!

All I know is that this service is very much needed, at least by this developer, and it can't come too soon. Whoever provides it first is likely to get my business and attention (and they might not want the attention, btw, that seems to be Microsoft's approach).

BTW, one of the reasons I want to accumulate Asuses is that I feel intuitively they would make good servers running at the house. If neither Amazon or Microsoft's services are usable (it's conceivable they limit Windows in some way), my fallback is to get a T1 line for the house and centralize my entire presence. If the power goes out, or the house burns down, so be it. At least there would be one less thing to fail, to worry about.

But outsourcing the cloud is much more sensible. Let's hope Amazon and/or Microsoft will open their services very very soon, there might be a Depression coming, so stability is something many of us will be looking for.

Researcher are developing technology to translate thought into messages that can be wirelessly delivered. Funded by the US military ('natch), the aim is "synthetic telepathy," using EEG signals monitored non-invasively to communicate by brainpower alone. Apparently, this research goes back to the 1960s when a scientist used EEG to communicate in Morse code. Now though, the scientist are using brain scans to better understand how to detect and identify the brain signals. From MSNBC:

The Army grant to researchers at University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland has two objectives. The first is to compose a message using, as (UC Irvine professor Mike) D'Zmura puts it, "that little voice in your head."

The second part is to send that message to a particular individual or object (like a radio), also just with the power of thought. Once the message reaches the recipient, it could be read as text or as a voice mail...

Mapping the brain's response to most of the English language is a large task, and D'Zmura says that it will be 15-20 years before thought-based communication is reality.

Synthetic telepathy

It's October and I still love my Asus Eee PC 901, purchased in July. I use it all the time. It turned my 17-inch MacBook Pro into a desktop, podcast downloader and Hillside Club video projector. When I leave the house, even to cross the country, the only computer I take with me is the Eee.

The Great Depression 2.0 has yet to be felt here, except on paper in my brokerage statement, but I sold almost all my stock in January, fearing the meltdown that eventually came, so it's not as bad for me as for others. I didn't get a wacky mortgage, mine is fixed-rate, at a rather high rate for now but I'm too lazy to refinance. My luck has been pretty good, why tempt fate?

So I would make an impulse purchase of an Apple product if they had one I wanted, even a little, and don't already have. But today's announcements, if the rumors prove true, just don't do it for me. I'd much rather buy a new Asus or MSI Wind, perhaps one with a built-in EVDO modem and a real hard disk. Maybe a teeeny bit bigger so it could have a slightly more comfortable keyboard. But I wouldn't sacrifice battery life for any of that. That, and the incredible convenience of it, size and weight-wise, is what I value most. I also love the intelligence of the product, its got the perfect arrangement of ports and slots. It's as if it were designed by someone who not only used a netbook, but took the time to understand it.

These are the qualities I admire in Apple products, but they haven't been willing so far to make a product that sells in the $400 price range and has the sensibilities of the netbooks. Until they do, it's hard to imagine that I'll buy a new Mac anytime soon.

Update: I just watched the video brochure for Apple's new MacBook. It's amazing how they get people to care about the manufacturing process -- even though the product is missing the excitement in today's laptop market. Imagine if Apple had decided to make a MacBook that was priced like an iPod. That's what Asus is doing.

Dekortage writes "According to the latest ComScore rankings, YouTube's search traffic for August surpassed Yahoo's. The latter dropped roughly 5% in traffic from July. Among other things, this means that Google now owns both of the top two search engines. AdAge further speculates on Google's experimental 'promoted videos' cost-per-click advertising on YouTube, suggesting the obvious: more money."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Why do we gossip? Apparently, the trait evolved as an important way to bond small groups together. In recent years, evolutionary psychologists have began studying gossip, first to define what it is (and isn't) and then to explore why it evolved. The new issue of Scientific American Mind surveys the latest science of gossip. From SciAm Mind:

Why does private information about other people represent such an irresistible temptation for us? In his book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Harvard University Press, 1996), psychologist Robin Dunbar of the University of Liverpool in England suggested that gossip is a mechanism for bonding social groups together, analogous to the grooming that is found in primate groups. Sarah R. Wert, now at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Peter Salovey of Yale University have proposed that gossip is one of the best tools that we have for comparing ourselves socially with others...

The aspect of gossip that is most troubling is that in its rawest form it is a strategy used by individuals to further their own reputations and selfish interests at the expense of others. This nasty side of gossip usually overshadows the more benign ways in which it functions in society. After all, sharing gossip with another person is a sign of deep trust because you are clearly signaling that you believe that this person will not use this sensitive information in a way that will have negative consequences for you; shared secrets also have a way of bonding people together. An individual who is not included in the office gossip network is obviously an outsider who is not trusted or accepted by the group.

There is ample evidence that when it is controlled, gossip can indeed be a positive force in the life of a group. In a review of the literature published in 2004, Roy F. Baumeister of Florida State University and his colleagues concluded that gossip can be a way of learning the unwritten rules of social groups and cultures by resolving ambiguity about group norms. Gossip is also an efficient way of reminding group members about the importance of the group’s norms and values; it can be a deterrent to deviance and a tool for punishing those who transgress.

Science of Gossip, Buy Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)

Previously on BB:
• Psychology of rumors

Cyberpunk science fiction pioneer William Gibson has lent his name to some very cool bags and jackets (and sneakers). The products are a joint effort of two Japanese firms, bag company Porter, and Buzz Rickson, remakers of vintage military clothing. The William Gibson Collection from Buzz Rickson includes a black M-65 field jacket, N-3 flying jacket, and N-1 deck jacket. Buzz Rickson jackets (scroll down for Gibson Collection items), Porter bag info (Cool Hunting)

UPDATE: In the comments, Doctor Popular points out that Self Edge in San Francisco has the bags and sneakers for sale and are hosting a party with Gibson in person on 11/9.

This is impressive, and somewhat unexpected. It's rather rare to see politicians (other than maginal ones, at least) showing any sort of recognition of fair use. It's certainly not an issue you'd expect to see raised by a presidential candidate (of either party). However, John McCain's campaign has sent a letter to YouTube complaining about the site's unwillingness to consider fair use in videos before taking them down. You can read the whole letter at that link or below (if you're not reading via a feed):

The letter basically notes that YouTube seems a bit too fast on the trigger in pulling down content based on DMCA takedown notices, in part parroting the some of the recent ruling where a judge said that those sending DMCA notices need to at least take fair use into consideration. Of course, that was directed at the sender of the DMCA takedown notice, not the recipient, as in this case. I'm sure the McCain campaign recognizes that YouTube is completely within its legal rights to automatically pull down the content, but in sending this letter the campaign is suggesting that, specific to videos put up by either political campaign (the letter cc's the Obama campaign), that YouTube take into account fair use.

The letter is addressed to YouTube's founder, Chad Hurley, as well as Google's Senior Copyright Counsel, William Patry (who we've talked about and quoted here many times) and Zahavah Levine, who is General Counsel for YouTube, who I've met and spoken with in the past. Both Patry and Levine are well aware of the legal issues here (probably better than just about anyone else), so it will be quite interesting to see how they respond. The real issue here has almost nothing to do with Google/YouTube -- but with the way the DMCA itself is structured. Since it provides clear safe harbor for a recipient of a takedown notice if they take down the content, it's a reasonable business decision to simply take down the content and then follow the proper procedures for letting the uploader file a response notice.

While it certainly would be nice for YouTube to take into account fair use before deciding whether or not to pull down the content, the real problem is with the law itself, and the incentives it puts in place for any recipient of such a letter. If the McCain (or Obama) campaign were really concerned with that, they should not just ask for this special exception to YouTube's official policies, but should promise to push for a change to the DMCA that makes an explicit point that recipients of such takedown notices shall retain their safe harbor protections even if they refuse to take down content, if they have a reasonable belief that the content in question is being used in accordance with fair use rules.

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This year's Blizzcon saw 15,000 gamers descend from 27 different countries to take part in two days of discussions, tournaments, and sneak peaks at upcoming releases. Several big announcements were scattered among a raft of new details about Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and Wrath of the Lich King. The new information went a long way toward drumming up interest for what already appear to be worthy successors to old favorites. Read on for more.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our delightfully demented partner Joel pointed me to a page of limited edition prints of highlariously violent cartoon art. They're £35.00 each.
Violent cartoon prints

Nothing butches up your wounds like an official duct tape band-aid. Nexcare Duct Tape Bandage One Size (via Red Ferret)

kirkmacdonald writes "I work as an analyst in a small call center. There are about 200 on phone agents, but half of them work from home. About a month ago I submitted a Project Charter to create an online Community for the agents. The basic premise was something approaching the combination of a wiki application and a standard forum (phpbb and the like). We already have an online knowledge base for company policies, training and system documentation. This community environment would be intended to simulate being able to talk shop with the person next to you, along with the lunchroom and water cooler. The Charter was well received but there were questions from upper management about how using this type of environment could affect the call center metrics (average handle time, after call wrap up, etc). Can anyone comment on other companies that have online communities for their staff? How did they mitigate productivity risks?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month, Bruce Schneier and I announced a public cryptographic challenge: help figure out how to create ciphers and other privacy applications for my code-wheel wedding rings, designed by Bruce and created by Isabel Rucker.

Out of the submissions, there were a couple dozen that were really strong contenders, and Bruce picked two to receive the winner and runner-up prize.

Congrats to Chris Smith for taking first place with The Fidget Protocol and to Philippe Teuwen for taking runner-up with his wedding-ring polyalphabetic substitution cipher.

My wife and I will take great pleasure in using both ciphers to communicate in private!

Thanks, guys -- your prizes are in the mail (and thanks to everyone who contributed suggestions to this!).

Seok-Hyung Bae, Ravin Balakrishnan, and Karan Singh, "ILoveSketch: As-natural-as-possible sketching system for creating 3D curve models," (To appear) ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2008 (Monterey, CA, USA, October 19-22, 2008) [pdf] via NOTCOT.

A 3D curve sketching system that captures some of the affordances of pen and paper for professional designers, allowing them to iterate directly on concept 3D curve models. The system coherently integrates existing techniques of sketch-based interaction with a number of novel and enhanced features. Novel contributions of the system include automatic view rotation to improve curve sketchability, an axis widget for sketch surface selection, and implicitly inferred changes between sketching techniques. We also improve on a number of existing ideas such as a virtual sketchbook, simplified 2D and 3D view navigation, multi-stroke NURBS curve creation, and a cohesive gesture vocabulary.

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I've just come back from Tokyo, where, as ever, I found time to visit Tokyo Disneysea, the most elaborate and beautiful constructed environment I've ever seen. While there, I found three remarkable Disney jazz albums that have knocked my socks off by combining classic Disney standards with novel, artful interpretations from a diverse and talented collection of artists.

First off, Bossa Disney Carioca, which has the worst cover and the best music of all three. These cool Brazilian covers reveal the pure, breathy dreamlike character in Disney's best music, especially Saigenji's "When You Wish Upon a Star" and Maucha Adnet's "Sonhar E Desejar" ("A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes"). Every track on this disc made me smile and sing along.

Next up, the altogether more challenging Modal Jazz Loves Disney, a more free-form approach to the canon. These are a little spottier, but when they score, they score big, as with the Helge Lien Trio's cover of the sinister, slinky overture from The Jungle Book, and LTC's sprinkly Baby Mine.

Disney's Jazz Album: Big Band & Swing is the least interesting of the three, but that's mostly because so much of it is drawn from common issues like Disney Songs the Satchmo Way and original soundtrack recordings of tracks like Peggy Lee's smoky He's a Tramp. But this disc does have some standout rarities that were new to me, like the cover of Heigh Ho from Mary Martin and Tutti Camarata and His Orchestra, as well as their cover of Bibbidi Bobbidy Boo.

Bossa Disney Carioca on Amazon Japan, Modal Jazz Loves Disney on Amazon Japan, Disney's Jazz Album: Big Band & Swing on Amazon

See also: Bossa Nova greats cover Disney songs

The Animated Ghost kit is a great way to learn more about electronics and soldering. It's really easy to put together and the end result is a great addition to your Halloween decorations. Let's get started.

The things you need:

• Animated Ghost Kit - Available in the Maker SHED
• Soldering Iron
• File
• Rosin core solder

The things you don't need, but are great to have:

• Arms of Assistance - Make you own
• Fume extractor - Make your own

Step 1 : Take inventory

Spread out all the parts and take a look through the instructions. It's always a good idea to check out all the steps prior to starting.

Step 2 : Add the resistors

I added all the resistors at once. The board is so big, you can really add a lot of parts and solder them all at once.

Now that's a dirty soldering iron! Remember to wipe your soldering iron often.

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Snip from a blog post by Hjörtur Smárason, a marketing consultant in Iceland.

It feels surreal to drive the streets of downtown Reykjavik. The banks are lit up and people are working there. The logos are still outside the houses. The ads are still running saying how wonderful and trustworthy the banks are. Range Rovers and BMWs are still filling the streets and the parking lots. Bankers in their suit walk the streets with heavy eye brows. There’s a strange silence.

It’s like we know the system is broken, we know it’s gone, but we can’t see it. We can’t tell what’s real, what’s still there, and what are just the ghosts of yesterday, when Iceland was one of the richest countries in the world. A pale reflection of the golden age in Icelandic economy which is now going up in flames. Where’s the smoke?

The world is treating us like we’re dead. Bank accounts frozen. No business without cash payments in advance. No currency can be bought. The stock market is closed (not that I have anything left there). Imports have stopped because of closed currency markets and diapers, flour, sugar and other neccesities are selling out in the shops.

Surreal Rekyavik (Thanks, @pistachio)

If so, read this plea from Andrew Baron.

His father is dying and desperately needs a drug.

Thanks to TC for pushing this.

I don't know whose arm this is with the fawesome Hello Kitty/Boba Fett tatt (Hello Fett? Boba Kitty?), but they've got my vote. Hello Kitty Boba Fett Tattoo (Thanks, Davis!)

MoonUnit writes "Technology Review has an interesting article about the way CAPTCHAS are fueling AI research. Following recent news about various textual CAPTCHAs being cracked, the article notes that a researcher at Palo Alto Research Center has now found a way crack photo-based CAPTCHAs too. Most approaches are based on statistical learning, however, so Luis von Ahn (one of the inventors of the CAPTCHA) says it is usually possible to make a CAPTCHA more difficult to break by making a few simple changes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the years, I've certainly had my fair share of bad experiences with both UPS and FedEx, but for me, personally, no delivery company has been worse on a regular basis than DHL. Almost every time I've had to deal with the company the experience has been somewhere between bad and ridiculous -- and I've heard similar stories from friends as well, from undelivered packages, to crushed packages -- even to a story of a phone shipped via DHL that arrived with the box torn open and the phone missing. It appears that we individuals aren't alone in our annoyances with DHL. Microsoft is now suing the company for how it dealt with a shipment of Xboxes that were on a train that derailed. Consider this a scaled up version of the old "crushed box" delivery that you or I might be used to. Apparently, the train had six containers full of Xboxes that were damaged -- with DHL refusing to pay for the damages or missing Xboxes that didn't make the rest of the journey.

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Grimsqueaker put together an Instructable for this Death Eater mask. He also linked to a gallery of Death Eater art - lots of great, creepy stuff!

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BigTimOBrien writes "Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, talks about the day-to-day operations of 37signals. How does the company work, and what are the guiding principles behind the design of Basecamp and Campfire? He talks about the importance of avoiding interruptions and the relative unimportance of both physical space and mandatory meetings."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This amazing Bat-mobile car mod by Mark Shields was built using high density foam, glossy black paint, fiberglass, and a vintage 1978 corvette. The result is a replica of the Bat-mobile from the 1989 film by Tim Burton.

'78 Corvette Turned into a DIY Batmobile by Mark Shields

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An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Mike Nash came forward today in a blog post on the Windows Vista Blog and revealed the official name for Windows Code Name '7' as simply 'Windows 7.' The reasoning, by Mr. Nash, is that Windows 7 is 'the seventh release of Windows.' As much wonderful sense as this makes on first glance, it seems as if Microsoft's marketing teams pulled this number out of thin air: the Windows 7 kernel is version 6.1, and there's no way Windows 7 adds up as the seventh release of Windows anyway."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apparently, having our elected politicians completely lie to the President, combined with various business groups using totally made up numbers about the so-called "costs" of piracy was enough to convince President Bush to sign the ProIP bill into law, and accept the addition of a "Copyright Czar" position to the White House. It also strengthened copyright laws, yet again, despite little evidence they needed any strengthening. This law is nothing more than a weak attempt to prop up some struggling businesses who made the mistake of clinging to an obsolete business model far too long. All it will actually serve to do is to limit more creative forms of expression and much more innovative business models from being allowed to thrive.

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?French/Swiss artist Guillaume Reymon who created the amazing human "Pong", "Space Invaders", "Tetris", and "Pole Position" animations in large auditoriums with hundreds of people participating, has taken his craft to the streets with his latest take on "Transformers". The piece brings together many diferent vehicles in perfect choreography to create a giant robot when seen from above. Check out the video below to see how it was built.

Transformers, via Neatorama

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Not Martha's got the recipe for brewing up these dome-cake spiders with spindly Pocky legs -- now that's Hallowe'en fun! Little known fact: cakes in the shapes of insects arachnids have no calories. Spider Cakes (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Dutch sculptor Ron Van Der Ende makes incredible wood sculptures that take the form of everything from everyday electronics to speaker cabinets and even a replica of the Apollo 15 spaceship. Probably the most amazing is a replica he built of an Akai-VT100 (open reel portable video recorder). Check out the link for all the builds.

Ron Van Der Ende Wood Sculptures

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Ed sent us a link to this amazing retro-looking gas powered bicycle. It gets 120+ mpg and does 40 mph. [Thanks Ed]

The frame is from a '90s vintage Huffy cruiser I got at a flea market for $25.00. The front fork is a reproduction Schwinn style springer. I fabricated "leaf springs" for the look, but their only function is as fenders. The wheels are from Husky- very heavy duty with thick steel and 11 ga spokes. It has a high quality coatser brake, but it also has calipers front and rear which is what I generally use for braking. The tires are all-white vintage style from Kenda.

More about Retro gas powered bike

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Larry Lessig has a fantastic op-ed essay in the Wall Street Journal that tries to defend "remix culture" from draconian copyright laws that have made it illegal to build new creative works on the works of others. Not surprisingly, he makes some important points:

This war must end. It is time we recognize that we can't kill this creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using these tools to create, or make them passive. We can only drive it underground, or make them "pirates." And the question we as a society must focus on is whether this is any good. Our kids live in an age of prohibition, where more and more of what seems to them to be ordinary behavior is against the law. They recognize it as against the law. They see themselves as "criminals." They begin to get used to the idea.

That recognition is corrosive. It is corrupting of the very idea of the rule of law. And when we reckon the cost of this corruption, any losses of the content industry pale in comparison.

Copyright law must be changed.

It's definitely worth reading, and then considering the five suggestions he puts forth for how copyright can be fixed, though I disagree with him on whether or not his suggestions would actually work. I think they would significantly improve things from the way they are today, but Lessig still seems to think that there's a way to "thread the needle" by distinguishing between commercial works and non-commercial works. The more I look, the less possible I think it is to distinguish between the two in any meaningful way.

Furthermore, Lessig's solutions are focused very much on trying to "balance" the rights of amateur creative types with professional creative types. However, I think if you look at the economics and historical record, there's no need to create "balance." If content creators started adapting new business models, both can succeed tremendously, without having to worry about any kind of balance. A true solution suits both sides perfectly, benefiting both, without either side having to "balance" with the other.

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This instructable uses parts from a hardware store and an Arduino to make a motion activated spider. Looks like a fun project to scare the neighborhood kiddies.

I wanted to create a motion-activated spider to put on my door for Halloween. It drops down when visitors approach the entryway, activates a spot light to draw their attention to the spider, gives them a scare, then automatically retracts and resets itself, waiting to prey upon its next victim.

More about DIY: Motion Activated Halloween Spider

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Did I forget to mention the fighting robots at Maker Faire? This is going to be a great event! There are going to be over 27 robots fighting in the first ever Texas competition. Don't miss this event, it's going to be great!

Maker Faire announces the RoboGames Texas Cup event to be held on October 18th and 19th at the second annual Austin Maker Faire at the Travis County Expo Center in Austin, TX. The monstrous homemade robots, which range in weight from 30 to 340lbs, will be coming from all over the nation and beyond to compete for the title of champion in the first ever Texas competition. Over 27 bots will battle for a Texas Cup in the Featherweight, Lightweight, Middleweight, Heavyweight and Super Heavyweight divisions. With over 25 fights per day, audiences will witness a bevy of pneumatic flippers, flame throwers, spinning blades of death and high-powered body slammers.

Check out the Complete Schedule of Fighting Robots at Maker Faire

More:

More about Maker Faire Austin 2008

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Paho Mann's Junk Drawers-

I have photographed Junk Drawers and Medicine Cabinets on and off since 2000. My work explores the persistent mark of individuality in a culture that brands, packages, and relentlessly promotes conformity. Even among those who attempt to fit into society, there is an amazing wealth of information each individual reveals in near-privacy, spaces such as junk-drawers and medicine cabinets. The near-private nature of these spaces force the viewer to contend with the natural desire of humans to collect, categorize, and by doing so, manage to give clues about their personality and identity.

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Earlier this year, we wrote about how the Norwegian Consumer Council, an independent organization financed by the Norwegian government, was telling people not to sign letters the recording industry was demanding ISPs send to users, which would put liability for file sharing on those users without any sort of due process. Now the NCC is back suggesting a special independent committee to handle copyright infringement cases. From what's written, it sounds like it would act as a separate process for copyright holders to bring charges of copyright infringement, that avoids an expensive and overcrowded court systems, while still allowing individuals due process and a guarantee of other basic rights. The NCC proposes that this is a much better solution than, say, cutting off accused file sharers with no due process.

The idea definitely sounds a lot better than what's out there now -- but there could be unintended consequences as well. Here in the US, for example, we set up a special Federal Appeals court for patent lawsuits (CAFC), because of complaints about patent lawsuits clogging up courts where judges knew little about patent law, leading to bad outcomes. However, what happened was that CAFC became dominated by former patent attorneys (if not in numbers, in terms of influence) who significantly shifted the scope of patent law towards patent holders. In setting up a special court or arbitration system to deal with copyright infringement, there's a risk that it, too, could become dominated by interests focused solely on strengthening copyright law. While I definitely think it's a more interesting and productive proposal than most others out there, it's worth wondering if there would be unintended consequences. It still seems like the better long-term solution is for copyright holder to simply start embracing better business models.

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Here's a cool way of drawing, gives an eerie deteriorating feeling to these electrical systems, via Cool Hunting:

One of the highlights of the London Design Festival wasn't a big name or flashy product, it was a low-key installation from a young design graduate placed in a corner of Tent London. Easy to miss perhaps, but once seen it had people transfixed by its graphic beauty. Debbie Smyth was selected as one of the most promising graduates of 2008 for the Dezeen Talent Zone.

Her installation Pins & Threads uses, as the title suggests, sewing pins and black thread to draw a series of electricity pylons across several canvas panels. The technique transforms ordinary structures — often thought of as ugly blots on the landscape — into beautifully minimal graphic drawings, which are at once 2D and 3D, anchored to their panels but also floating in space.

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Plenty of folks have pointed this out for years, but newspapers that try to lock up their back archives and charge for viewing those articles are very likely hurting their bottom line more than helping it. That's because those archives are a treasure trove of info that people would be interested in finding via a search engine -- but they almost never want to pay for it. For many years, the NY Times tried locking up its archives and charging to read stories, but eventually did the math and realized it made a lot more sense to put all its archives online for free, and make money off the ads. Since removing the barriers, the NY Times has seen its traffic spike significantly, and its archives have become a significant portion of the overall site's traffic.

However, some newspapers still can't see the forest for the trees, and think that the answer is to charge high prices to view old articles. That most likely just gets people to look elsewhere, and diminishes ad revenue as well. Parker Mason has written an open letter to the Toronto Globe & Mail decrying its continued practice of charging $5 for access to a single archived article (for just 30 days of access). It's a good read, and I'm guessing that folks like Mathew Ingram, who works at The Globe, have been pushing for changes to the paper's policy, but until then, the company seems to be hurting itself. Mason's letter is well worth reading, but here's a snippet:

But then you go and do something like trying to charge me $4.95 for a newspaper article that I've already paid for and read, and this hurts me (telling me that this content will only be available for 30 days only adds insult to injury).

Your greatest asset is the thousands and thousands of pages of information and news stories that you have in your archives. People want to view this content, and just as they have endured advertising in your print publications, they'll endure the same kind of advertising on your website.

I understand your thinking when it comes to locking up this content behind a pay wall: it is valuable information, so people will pay to see it.

The problem is, you are only half-right. It is valuable information, but only when it is easy to access. In the age of Google, people will quickly move on and find the information elsewhere, somewhere where it easier to get at.

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Last August, I travelled to Springfield, Mass for 3PiCon, a science fiction convention where I was co-guest of honor with Randall "XKCD" Munroe. We did some fun programming items together, but the best was the last day's event, a panel called "My Day at Work." In honor of Randall's comics, I attended in red cape and goggles, natch, and we had a rollicking time. Karl Wagner caught it on video (the audio's a little poor, but you can hear it), and it's been a hoot to re-live it this morning. 3Pi-Con - My Day At Work - Cory Doctorow & Randall Munroe (Thanks, Karl!)

Ridley Scott has acquired the film-rights to Joe Haldeman's magnificent, Hugo-award-winning classic science fiction novel, The Forever War. This is one of the great anti-war novels of all time. As I wrote about it in 2003, "I picked up a copy of Joe Haldeman's classic novel The Forever War last night as a gift for a friend, but I'm going to keep it. I got to re-reading it last night (for the first time in nearly 20 years) and couldn't put it down. Haldeman wrote this novel after returning from his tour of duty in Vietnam, and the book made the rounds, getting turned down by publisher after publisher, by editors who recognized the book's merit but questioned the political savvy of publishing a war-novel. Eventually, Joe rewrote one section of the book, softening it, and finally, the book saw print, becoming an instant classic. The new, author's preferred edition restores the original text, and is absolutely timely and engrossing."

Fox 2000 has acquired rights to Joe Haldeman’s 1974 novel "The Forever War," and Ridley Scott is planning to make it into his first science fiction film since he delivered back-to-back classics with "Blade Runner" and "Alien."

Scott intended to follow those films with "The Forever War," but rights complications delayed his plans for more than two decades.

The film will be produced by Scott Free. Vince Gerardis and Ralph Vicinanza will exec produce. Their company, Created By, reps Haldeman and spent the last decade trying to get back the rights.

"I first pursued ‘Forever War’ 25 years ago, and the book has only grown more timely and relevant since," Scott told Daily Variety. "It’s a science-fiction epic, a bit of ‘The Odyssey’ by way of ‘Blade Runner,’ built upon a brilliant, disorienting premise."

Ridley Scott takes on 'Forever War', The Forever War on Amazon (Thanks, Mitch!)

Tavie sez, "In honor of an event called 'Wonder Woman Day,' this website shows a gallery of depictions of Wonder Woman by a host of different artists. I dunno from Wonder Woman, really - I never watched the show or read the comic, and the sum total of my connection to that character is a hazy memory of some Wonder Woman underoos I was fond of as a tot. I clicked the link from Elfquest.com, since Wendy Pini contributed a piece for the silent auction (it benefits domestic violence shelters) and, I gots to say, there's something sort of awesome about seeing so many different takes on the same character." GREAT HERA! WONDER WOMAN DAY III (Thanks, Tavie!)

Via seesmiccafe: "The former Monty Python star shares his unsparing thoughts and views about GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin." Video Link.

A bike-tastic opportunity for anyone who's in Austin for Maker Faire already: come escort Austin Bike Zoo's bike snake! We'll be riding from the Ihop on Koenig Lane by I-35 to Travis County Expo Center at 11pm, Tuesday. If you'd like to ride along side the snake, just bring your night riding lights, bicycle, and a sense of adventure! The ride should take about 2 hours; you can then ride back to your place of residence from there or stuff into a car with us for a lift back to Ihop. Hope to see you there!

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Matt Mets made this cat-leidoscope out of three wall mirrors from IKEA and used it to take pictures of his cat. I can't think of a better way to spend a Monday evening.

More:

• DIY kaleidoscope
  
• Kaleidoscope your photos
  
• DIY Camera kaleidoscope
  
• HOW TO - Make your own kaleidoscope
  
• Simple Laser Kaleidoscope

From the pages of MAKE:

Recycled Kaleidoscope MAKE: 14: Optics, Page 57 - Subscribers--read this article now in your digital edition Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Imaging | Digg this!

As we eagerly await the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruling in the Bilski case -- which could greatly cut back on the ability of the US Patent Office to grant software and business model patents, it looks Europe may be moving in the opposite direction. We had earlier reported on a ruling in the UK which said that the UK Patent Office had gone too far in tossing out a Symbian patent application because it was software. Now, a UK appeals court has agreed with the earlier ruling, effectively saying that Symbian can, in fact, patent software in the UK, despite earlier policies that did not allow software patents.

The reasoning behind the ruling is a little odd, as it seems mostly based on aligning UK patent rules with the rest of Europe's. However, that doesn't mean that the ruling actually makes sense or does anything towards promoting innovation (and, plenty of recent studies show quite clearly that software patents appear to do exactly the opposite). This is definitely bad news for the software industry in the UK, which will now find more tollbooths to deal with, and more patent thickets to pick through. Money is going to be wasted going after legal fights, rather than on research, development and actually serving customers.

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This week:
Cochae - Origami Hackers, Man Builds Railway Around His House, Shibuya Handmade Arts Festival, Edible Speaker and Microphone, Korobe-Kun Toilet Paper Dispenser, Pipe-Crawling Robot, Draw Your Own Numbers - Tegaki Clock, Face Detection in Processing, Musclesuit, LEGO Mindstorms Roly Poly, and DApendulum.

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Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we were Infomercia, a sinister consumer paradise ruled by Minimac, the Ministry of Machines. A fun fiction-based blogsperiment that continues Wednesday, we turned the day's real-life gadget news into the propaganda missives from an alternate Earth—until someone came along to put a spanner in the works. At 6 a.m. on the dot, shoppers awoke to the reveille, and the ministry embarked on another "normal" day. Minister Inspiron Touchpreaux urged a stinky ethernet-equipped deodorant dock on you, awarded the Tomy Robo-Q toy robot a staggering 18 puppies out of 20, and pitied those who recycle carboard boxes. Minister Thank Brando saw Lord British off to space, upgraded your stereo to the TW-Acustic Raven record player, and reported that Inflatable Puncture-Proof Pegasus Pleasure Plates are coming soon! Minister Cray Pippin Wang saw the Sony-Ericsson XPERIA X1 unboxed by the enemy and denied that hi-res photos of the new MacBook were a leak. The workings of the ministry were rudely interrupted by a mysterious glitch in the system containing a secret message. Undeterred, the ministers hailed Motorola's Krave cell phone; a bizarre bloggin robot; the Olo iPhone companion; and even found time to bring the makers of unauthorized Tetris costumes to justice. At midday, however, the interloper, a time-traveler by the name of Marvin, announced himself, cracking Minimac's system and opening comments. Minister Pippin Wang hurried to respond with a heartfelt letter to the citizenry. News of a ban on GPS in Egypt and another huggable Elmo doll were no use. Minimac's ministers found themselves disengaged from the propaganda machine and Marvin finally revealed his revolutionary colors. The story continues Wednesday, when we'll find out what the three ministers make of their new-found freedom—and of their strange visitor. Boing Boing Gadgets — Introduction and comment thread

Robyn Miller, a permaguest blogger at Dinosaurs and Robots, took this photo of an old station wagon stuffed to the gills with garbage. He then went looking for more of the same on Flickr and posted five other examples of trash cars. I imagine you could sift through the junk in each car and piece together an interesting, albeit sad, life story of its owner.

Trash Cars

People sure do love xkcd. I saw the latest comic last night, thinking it was amusing, but I've never been this deluged with submissions from people saying that we absolutely need to post it here. Either way, it does make the universal point about why you shouldn't buy anything that includes DRM. Since any change to the DRM (such as shutting down DRM servers) means you'll probably need to break the law to actually keep using the content you thought you "bought," at some point, people realize they're going to be considered a criminal either way and just vote to pirate stuff in the first place:

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After I posted that cover of a 1925 issue of The Plymouth Rock Monthly, a few people asked for a photo of my chicks.

I bought six chicks from mypetchicken.com, which ships them by mail. They cost $2 each, plus an extra .50 each to ensure they are hens, plus a big shipping fee.

The post office called me on my cell phone when they arrived. I was in Illinois at the time, so I called my wife and she went down to pick them up. They were in a little straw nest packed in a small cardboard box.

The chicks are now over two weeks old, and much bigger than the one shown in this photo. They're a little skittish when someone reaches in and grabs at them, but they calm down quickly and are very sweet. Once they get big enough, they'll go here.

Feral House has published the The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush by Congressman Dennis Kucinich and is offering it as a bound book and a free PDF.

Feral House offers this important and urgent publication of Dennis Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment this election season in two formats: an offset-printed paperback book available for the cost of $12 and a free downloadable PDF available below.

David Swanson’s additional article explains how the Impeachment process is possible and necessary even after the guilty perp leaves office, and how they can be used for prosecution of crimes. Those wishing to purchase over ten copies of the printed book can obtain them at discount from Feral House directly. Please contact info@feralhouse.com for costs.

The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush by Congressman Dennis Kucinich

One of the many wonderful things about editing The Best of Instructables was getting to delve deeper into the content on the site and getting to know (or at least the work of) some of the characters that make Instructables their virtual workshop. One such person is Tim Anderson (who I mainly knew of from his excellent Heirloom Technology column and other work in MAKE). Tim has done over 150 Instructables, and a number of them appear in the book, including one on how to get a free yacht! Seriously.

Like me, Tim has a "thing" for collecting tool tips and tricks and has posted dozens of "handy tricks" round-ups ("50 Handy Tricks," "40 More Handy Tricks," "Island Handy Tricks," "Handy Bike Mods and Projects," "Handy Tricks From Guatemala," the list goes on). Here are just a few entries (from "40 More Handy Tricks"). Search on "handy tricks" to see them all.

Cop Repellant - Taillight Repair Tape I believe in minimum consumption. So my vehicle is old and rusty. That's not as common as it used to be. In fact I can cross the country and not see a car as decrepit as my own. That makes me Catnip for cops. Or Copnip or something.

Now that they've got the BIG LIST, cops everywhere are looking for excuses to pull people over. Maybe they can catch an actual criminal just by checking your name against the list.

Immigrants named "Andrew's Son" flooded through Ellis Island at one time. We Tim Andersons all look the same although we aren't related. At any time there are lots of arrest warrants out for one of us. So whenever I get pulled over it takes forever. And then the cop is really disappointed that I'm not the bail jumping sex offender from Ohio or the deadbeat dad from Indiana. The good thing is after poring through the catalog of Tims gone berserk, they often feel less excited about the fixit ticket they would otherwise write me, and they sometimes let me go with a warning and a disappointed look.

The last time I got pulled over for cracked taillight lenses, I put patches of red "taillight repair tape" on them. Ever since I put the red tape on, No more random stops.
It sends a secret message to the police: "this guy got pulled over recently and they couldn't bust him for anything real."

Stuffed Animal Vs Bungie Scars
This stuffed animal has been stuffed under a bungie cord to keep it from marking the hood. Seen on Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA.

Water Bottle Microphone Stand
I couldn't find my mike stand and needed to type while talking, so I tied my mike to a water bottle with a jumper cable. It works so well I'm still using it that way.

Improve Electrical Contact with a Hammer
This extension cord wasn't making good contact when I plugged things into it. So I hit it on the side with a hammer to bend the contacts together a little bit. Now it works fine. I can feel it gripping when I plug something into it. This method works with sockets made of plastic that's not too hard.

Light Dimmer Speed Control for Dremel Tool
Mike O'hara of Potenco, Inc. modified his fixed-speed Dremel tool. He bought a Litton in-line light dimmer control and spliced it into the exension cord of his Dremel tool.
ta-da! Speed control. When shopping for dimmers for this sort of thing, look for the ones that say they can handle inductive loads, such as motors.

40 More Handy Tricks

More:

• Misc tool tips
• The Best of Instructables hot off presses!

From the Maker Shed:


The Best of Instructables is available in the Maker Shed at a pre-release price of $29.99. We also have a landing page where we'll be putting up material related to the book. And Eric J. Wilhelm himself will be guest blogging here soon in celebration of the book's release. So stay tuned...

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