NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a San Antonio, Texas case, Maverick v. Harper, in which a young woman was accused of having committed copyright infringement at the age of 16, the Judge denied the RIAA's summary judgment motion this summer, saying there were factual issues as to whether the defendant qualified for the 'innocent infringement' defense. He offered the record companies a way out, however, saying he would grant them a judgment if they agreed to take only $200 — as opposed to the $9,250 they sought from Jammie Thomas or the $750 they usually seek — per infringed recording. We have recently learned that, after the Judge denied the RIAA's reconsideration motion and scheduled a trial date, the RIAA filed papers agreeing to take the $200-per-recording amount. While $200 is still about 600 times the amount of the actual damages, it's better than paying 26,000 times the actual damages, which is what the RIAA tried to squeeze out of Ms. Thomas." This is a reversal of the RIAA's rejection of the $200 award per song last month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a San Antonio, Texas case, Maverick v. Harper, in which a young woman was accused of having committed copyright infringement at the age of 16, the Judge denied the RIAA's summary judgment motion this summer, saying there were factual issues as to whether the defendant qualified for the 'innocent infringement' defense. He offered the record companies a way out, however, saying he would grant them a judgment if they agreed to take only $200 — as opposed to the $9,250 they sought from Jammie Thomas or the $750 they usually seek — per infringed recording. We have recently learned that, after the Judge denied the RIAA's reconsideration motion and scheduled a trial date, the RIAA filed papers agreeing to take the $200-per-recording amount. While $200 is still about 600 times the amount of the actual damages, it's better than paying 26,000 times the actual damages, which is what the RIAA tried to squeeze out of Ms. Thomas." This is a reversal of the RIAA's rejection of the $200 award per song last month.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Remember how we couldn't figure out who would ever buy some new software that would stop calls from reaching mobile phones that were in motion? The (weak) idea behind the software is that it prevents drivers from accepting phone calls. Of course, it seems cheaper and more effective to just ignore your phone while driving -- or if that's too difficult, to just turn it off while driving. So it seemed difficult to believe that anyone would actually pay for such software.

Except we didn't count on one thing: car insurance companies.

Apparently Nationwide Insurance will (seriously) give drivers a discount on their insurance for buying the software. So, effectively, this is just a slightly indirect transfer from a gullible insurance company to a software company, but probably won't do much to actually stop people from yakking while driving. It's admirable to try to decrease dangerous driving habits, but this software is a gimmick, not a real safety technique.

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Fallen Andy points out an article in The Atlantic written by Jeffrey Goldberg. He and Bruce Schneier teamed up to put the TSA's policies to the test at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. They found plenty of evidence for security theater, and rather less for actual security. Quoting: "'The whole system is designed to catch stupid terrorists,' Schneier told me. ... As I stood in the bathroom, ripping up boarding passes, waiting for the social network of male bathroom users to report my suspicious behavior, I decided to make myself as nervous as possible. I would try to pass through security with no ID, a fake boarding pass, and an Osama bin Laden T-shirt under my coat. I splashed water on my face to mimic sweat, put on a coat (it was a summer day), hid my driver's license, and approached security with a bogus boarding pass that Schneier had made for me. ... 'All right, you can go,' [an airport security supervisor] said, pointing me to the X-ray line. 'But let this be a lesson for you.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Technologizer writes "Some folks are outraged over the lack of FireWire in the new MacBook released this week. But Apple wouldn't be Apple if it didn't move faster than any other computer company to kill technologies that may be past their prime. And history usually validates its decisions. We've posted a decade's worth of examples that prove the point."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Above are some are the hacked Maker's Notebook we have on display at Maker Faire Austin. The top one has a computer keyboard membrane on the cover and uses the membrane's ribbon connector as a latch closure. The magnetic catch and metal strip can be seen in the second image. The third image is Marc de Vinck's Notebook with an embedded cellphone screen, displaying a library of all of the Maker's Notebook stickers (for when you can't decide WHICH sticker you want on your cover). Can you figure out which is the virtual sticker? The last one is the steampunk'd Maker's Notebook, de rigueur for airship captain's everywhere. (Pardon the crude phonecam pics.)

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Above are some are the hacked Maker's Notebook we have on display at Maker Faire Austin. The top one has a computer keyboard membrane on the cover and uses the membrane's ribbon connector as a latch closure. The magnetic catch and metal strip can be seen in the second image. The third image is Marc de Vinck's Notebook with an embedded cellphone screen, displaying a library of all of the Maker's Notebook stickers (for when you can't decide WHICH sticker you want on your cover). Can you figure out which is the virtual sticker? The last one is the steampunk'd Maker's Notebook, de rigueur for airship captain's everywhere. (Pardon the crude phonecam pics.)

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Austin Children's Museum is hosting some great kid activities at Maker Faire. You can make kites, penny parachutes, experiment with chemistry, and see local kids show off their inventions and creations. They'll be blogging from Maker Faire over the weekend; check it out!

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Austin Children's Museum is hosting some great kid activities at Maker Faire. You can make kites, penny parachutes, experiment with chemistry, and see local kids show off their inventions and creations. They'll be blogging from Maker Faire over the weekend; check it out!

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doomsdaywire writes "Buckypaper isn't exactly news to anyone here. However, this article quotes Ben Wang, director of Florida State's High-Performance Materials Institute, saying, 'Our plan is perhaps in the next 12 months we'll begin maybe to have some commercial products.' The article continues: '"If this thing goes into production, this very well could be a very, very game-changing or revolutionary technology to the aerospace business," said Les Kramer, chief technologist for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, which is helping fund the Florida State research. ... The long-range goal is to build planes, automobiles and other things with buckypaper composites. The military also is looking at it for use in armor plating and stealth technology.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

doomsdaywire writes "Buckypaper isn't exactly news to anyone here. However, this article quotes Ben Wang, director of Florida State's High-Performance Materials Institute, saying, 'Our plan is perhaps in the next 12 months we'll begin maybe to have some commercial products.' The article continues: '"If this thing goes into production, this very well could be a very, very game-changing or revolutionary technology to the aerospace business," said Les Kramer, chief technologist for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, which is helping fund the Florida State research. ... The long-range goal is to build planes, automobiles and other things with buckypaper composites. The military also is looking at it for use in armor plating and stealth technology.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From now until the awesomeness that is Maker Faire Austin, I'll be highlighting projects that you can find at Travis County Fairgrounds on 10/18-19. Tickets here; see you there!

You won't just be doing this with your schedule to see all the projects this weekend, but also with homemade juggling clubs! From juggler.org :

Learn how to make three great juggling clubs for less than eight bucks. Then make three balls for mere pennies! There will be free juggling lessons and demonstrations throughout the day.

We will also be excited to debut the results of our experiments with EL wire to make cheap glow props!

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We recently noted that some articles were appearing in the UK about a plan by the government to track all phone calls, emails and internet surfing histories in that country in a giant database. The whole thing sounded so extreme we even doubted it was true. However, it appears to be based in fact, as the government is outlining the details of the plan, while at the same time agreeing to delay introducing it for at least year, in order to hear from the public (or, perhaps, to hope that public dislike of this proposal dies down enough that it can be introduced quietly). The backers of the plan stress that all they want is the data about the communications, rather than the communications themselves. So, that would mean they're interested in who called whom, not what was said, and who emailed whom, not what was written. That may be small comfort to some, but it still seems like a huge privacy violation, and the database is almost certainly to be abused and misused by those who have access to it.

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GovIT Geek writes to tell us that, despite known security issues, the IRS has decided to roll out two new applications for tax processing systems. "The [IRS inspector general] concluded in a September annual audit that security weaknesses in the agency's updated tax processing systems could enable malicious intruders to gain unauthorized access to taxpayer information and prevent the IRS from recovering applications during an emergency. The Customer Account Data Engine is a tax processing tool being deployed in phases to replace the existing repositories of taxpayer information, while the Account Management Services systems aim to provide employees with faster and better access to taxpayer account data."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The call of ktulu writes "Good things come to those who wait. After eight months of work the relatively new project BSDanywhere has announced its first final release 4.3. BSDanywhere is a bootable Live-CD image based on OpenBSD. It consists of the entire OpenBSD base system (without compiler) plus enlightenment desktop, an unrepresentative collection of software, automatic hardware detection and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices as well as other peripherals. Give it a spin."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The call of ktulu writes "Good things come to those who wait. After eight months of work the relatively new project BSDanywhere has announced its first final release 4.3. BSDanywhere is a bootable Live-CD image based on OpenBSD. It consists of the entire OpenBSD base system (without compiler) plus enlightenment desktop, an unrepresentative collection of software, automatic hardware detection and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices as well as other peripherals. Give it a spin."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've noted in the past that the Performance Rights Society (PRS), which is in charge of collecting performance rights royalties throughout the UK, has basically been pushing the boundaries of the definition of a "public performance" -- and it's reaching the point where if anyone else hears the music you're playing, you may owe PRS a royalty. For example, they first went after car repair shops where mechanics in the garage area were apparently listening to personal radios loud enough for customers in the shop to hear. Then, they went after police stations that had personal radios playing loud enough for others to hear.

The latest in its effort to look about as obnoxious as possible is to (seriously) go after a non-profit children's community center for using a TV, radio and CD player to keep kids entertained. As the folks who run the community center note, they already have a TV license, and have purchased the CDs legally. Yet, PRS wants them to pay again -- and not a small sum, either. It'll be another £3,000 to actually use these products that were legally purchased. It's almost as if the folks on the "royalties" side of the music business want to look as evil as is humanly possible.

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Several readers have pointed out that Sony's much-awaited LittleBigPlanet has hit a snag and will be delayed worldwide. The delay came after it was discovered that a song licensed for use in the soundtrack contained audio samples from the Qur'an. All advanced copies sent to retailers for the target release of October 21 in North America, 22 in PAL territories, and 24 in the UK and Ireland, have been recalled. "The post, by user 'Solid08', indicates of the specific references in the composition: 'In the 18th second: "kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: "Every soul shall have the taste of death' ... almost immediately after, in the 27th second: "kollo man alaiha fan", literally: "All that is on earth will perish."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several readers have pointed out that Sony's much-awaited LittleBigPlanet has hit a snag and will be delayed worldwide. The delay came after it was discovered that a song licensed for use in the soundtrack contained audio samples from the Qur'an. All advanced copies sent to retailers for the target release of October 21 in North America, 22 in PAL territories, and 24 in the UK and Ireland, have been recalled. "The post, by user 'Solid08', indicates of the specific references in the composition: 'In the 18th second: "kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: "Every soul shall have the taste of death' ... almost immediately after, in the 27th second: "kollo man alaiha fan", literally: "All that is on earth will perish."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Several readers have pointed out that Sony's much-awaited LittleBigPlanet has hit a snag and will be delayed worldwide. The delay came after it was discovered that a song licensed for use in the soundtrack contained audio samples from the Qur'an. All advanced copies sent to retailers for the target release of October 21 in North America, 22 in PAL territories, and 24 in the UK and Ireland, have been recalled. "The post, by user 'Solid08', indicates of the specific references in the composition: 'In the 18th second: "kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: "Every soul shall have the taste of death' ... almost immediately after, in the 27th second: "kollo man alaiha fan", literally: "All that is on earth will perish."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This DIY project is perfect for making it look like a bottomless pit in at your Halloween party or Yard Haunted House. Check out what the author says below:

During the day you can't see into it as it has to be darker outside the drum than inside. I drilled a 3" hole in the side of the drum and strapped a 25 watt red light bulb to the side. I used strapping tape to hold the light on strictly because I was too lazy to look for another way to do it in a hurry. At night the red light lit it up just enough that folks were attracted over to that side of the yard to see what the eerie red glow coming out of the ground was.

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Nick writes about what a huge success the first MAKE: Princeton meeting was:

I am happy to announce that the first meeting of MAKE:Princeton was an incredible success! Perhaps 10 people showed up from as far away as Jackson, Ewing and New Brunswick, New Jersey, and even Yardley, PA!. Several people brought projects for show and tell. Bill showed us his HF Start for his Tig Welder. He effectively turned a $200 welder into a $1000 welder. Jon showed us his new USB RFID reader. He toyed around with all sorts of ideas, even crazy user interfaces build around RFID dice. I showed off my alarm clock, and Ian was kind enough to show us the diy Jukebox and arcade game that he built with his brother. Each of these has an embedded computer and incredible craftsmanship. He said he engineered the arcade game so it could be disassembled and transported in a car.

The next meeting will be in two weeks. Same bat time, same bat channel.

More:

MAKE: Princeton

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Mike writes "The title says it all — The EFF is suing to have the unconstitutional telecom immunity overturned. 'In a brief filed in the US District Court [PDF] in San Francisco, the EFF argues that the flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA) violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law. [...] "We have overwhelming record evidence that the domestic spying program is operating far outside the bounds of the law," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Intelligence agencies, telecoms, and the Administration want to sweep this case under the rug, but the Constitution won't permit it."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike writes "The title says it all — The EFF is suing to have the unconstitutional telecom immunity overturned. 'In a brief filed in the US District Court [PDF] in San Francisco, the EFF argues that the flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA) violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law. [...] "We have overwhelming record evidence that the domestic spying program is operating far outside the bounds of the law," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Intelligence agencies, telecoms, and the Administration want to sweep this case under the rug, but the Constitution won't permit it."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike writes "The title says it all — The EFF is suing to have the unconstitutional telecom immunity overturned. 'In a brief filed in the U.S. District Court [PDF] in San Francisco, EFF argues that the flawed FISA Amendments Act (FAA) violates the federal government's separation of powers as established in the Constitution and robs innocent telecom customers of their rights without due process of law. [...] "We have overwhelming record evidence that the domestic spying program is operating far outside the bounds of the law," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Intelligence agencies, telecoms, and the Administration want to sweep this case under the rug, but the Constitution won't permit it."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has apparently banned advertisements for online gambling operations in the UK for years. Even though online gambling is legal in the UK, there were strict rules on advertising that Google didn't want to have to deal with. However, those rules have now been relaxed, so Google is now starting to accept those ads again... and are being attacked by a variety of different groups, including the Church of England, claiming that the global financial crisis could be made worse if Google drives people to gamble.

Can we take a break here and inject a little common sense into the discussion? Google is not the guilty party here.

An ad on Google is not going to drive someone to gamble. If someone wants to do some online gambling, they'll find a way to do it. If they do a search on online gambling, they'll find plenty of sites in the organic results, let alone the paid spots. And it means they sought it out. This isn't to deny that some people have a problem with being unable to moderate their gambling, but to blame it on Google ads is simply grandstanding over something that has no impact on the issue.

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Talented photographer (and coder!) Dave Bullock took a series of magnificent images of "Industrial Landscapes." Archival 13" x 19" and 17" x 22" prints are also available. Industrial Landscapes

Vern sez, "I've been a fan of both the Polynesian tiki scene, and the bubblegum music scene, which often featured studio musicians providing the music for a cartoon band. Those two worlds intersect with a new set of mugs from Tiki Farm - Rigor Morty and the Dirt Nappers. I just received my set, in time for Halloween, and they are sweet. The tallest mug is 9 inches tall. As the Tiki Farm website says - pour yourself a zombie .... in a zombie!"

I love Tiki Farm mugs in general, but this is the very best set I've ever seen. Wow!

Rigor Marty and the Dirt Nappers! (Thanks, Vern!)

An anonymous reader writes "Today Mozilla released development builds of its next mobile browser, Fennec 1.0 Alpha 1. 'The last eight milestones were building up to getting a stable browser with an easy to use interface. We really want to get Fennec in front of as many people as possible and get feedback.' To that end, Fennec has been made available for the desktop on Windows, Mac and Linux."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Today Mozilla released development builds of its next mobile browser, Fennec 1.0 Alpha 1. 'The last eight milestones were building up to getting a stable browser with an easy to use interface. We really want to get Fennec in front of as many people as possible and get feedback.' To that end, Fennec has been made available for the desktop on Windows, Mac and Linux."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Today Mozilla released development builds of its next mobile browser, Fennec 1.0 Alpha 1. 'The last eight milestones were building up to getting a stable browser with an easy to use interface. We really want to get Fennec in front of as many people as possible and get feedback' To that end, Fennec has been made available for the desktop on Windows, Mac and Linux."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Butterflies, wah-wah pedals, and one-eyed yeti, ahoy! The Boing Boing tv crew is proud to return to the work of one of our favorite multi-media savants, Bill Barminski of Walter Robot Studios. The filmmaker, composer, illustrator and animator shares this new video work, a hypnotic flight of fancy for his music project, the Subatomic Nixons. Enjoy the "Hazy Day," and happy weekend, everyone. Special thanks to Barminski and Christopher Louie, and all of the Walter Robot team. Here are previous BBtv episodes featuring their work.

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Link to Boing Boing tv blog post with instructions on how to subscribe to the BBtv daily video podcast. Direct MP4 Link.

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Ernest Hemingway's micro-story, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn," is one of my favorite examples of how less is sometimes more. Sometimes a few sentences say it all; you don't always need a hundred pages to convey an idea. Most of the mail I get is brief and to the point. Others are just brief. To be honest, I appreciate the short crazy email more than the long rants, and they can be just as funny. Read below for this week's mail snippets.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In these tough times I think Halloween is going to be even bigger. Why? Because so much of Halloween fun is DIY magic. From the pumpkin carving to making your trash can into a monster.

So why not earn some extra cash for your work? Check out the User Generated Contest that FEARnet is running around haunting your house. The prize is 25,000 dollars and an appearance on Good Morning America.

Of course don't forget about the mother of all DIY Halloween contests our own! We want to see what delightfully frightful items you've made and we have dozens of awesome prizes to give away! You can enter an Instructable, photos, or video, just make it amazing and it will be eligible to win in one of our six categories: Hack-o-Lantern, Costume, Gadgets and Gizmos, Decorations, Food, and Green, or our Photo and Video categories!

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Another day, another crazy ridiculous copyright lawsuit. A mathematician who focused on creating more accurate maps that designated actual neighborhoods, rather than just zipcode-based neighborhoods, is being sued by a company called Maponics, who claim it owns the copyright on the neighborhood boundaries the mathematician created. Seriously. The mathematician, Bernt Wahl, developed some neighborhood maps for a company a few years back, and that company sold the copyrights on those maps to Maponics. But Wahl has kept creating new maps, and gives them away free to researchers. After all, they're maps. It's basically factual information, and Wahl considers his neighborhood boundary definitions to be public domain. But Maponics is basically telling Wahl he can no longer make any more maps, and only it can sell his neighborhood maps. Yet another example where copyright is clearly being used to stifle, rather than encourage, creativity.

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Researchers claim that the Bee Gees 1977 tune "Stayin' Alive" is a great track to pace yourself when doing CPR. The song's tempo is 103 beats per minute, very close to the 100 chest compressions per minute recommended by the American Heart Association. For the last two years, the AHA has been suggesting trainees practice to the song. University of Illinois physician David Matlock conducted a study on the use of the song in CPR training and will present his results at the American College of Emergency Physicians conference in a couple weeks. Seems like the AHA should hire a DJ to make a lifesaver mix. From the AP:

Dr. Matthew Gilbert, a 28-year-old medical resident, was among participants in the University of Illinois study this past spring. Since then, he said, he has revived real patients by keeping the song in his head while doing CPR.

Gilbert said he was surprised the song worked as well as it did.

"I was a little worried because I've been told that I have a complete lack of rhythm," he said. Also, Gilbert said he's not really a disco fan.

He does happen to like a certain Queen song with a similar beat.

"I heard a rumor that 'Another One Bites the Dust' works also, but it didn't seem quite as appropriate," Gilbert said.

"Stayin' Alive" has near-perfect rhythm to help jump-start heart

BBCWatcher writes "When Sun released Solaris to the open source community in the form of OpenSolaris, would anyone have guessed that it would soon wind up running on IBM System z mainframes? Amazingly, that milestone has now been achieved. Sine Nomine Associates is making its first release of OpenSolaris for System z available for free and public download. Source code is also available. OpenSolaris for System z requires a System z9 or z10 mainframe and z/VM, the hypervisor that's nearly universal to mainframe Linux installations. (The free, limited term z/VM Evaluation Edition is available for z10 machines.) Like Linux, OpenSolaris will run on reduced price IFL processors."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meat After Meat Joy is a meat-themed group art exhibition that just opened at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York City. The show features photographs, sculpture, and multimedia pieces that use, or comment on, "raw meat, the concept of meat, its symbolism and viscera." Seen here, Zhang Huan's "My New York" (Performance Whitney Biennial, 2002). From the show description:

Meat After Meat Joy brings together the work of contemporary artists who use meat in their work... in order to investigate the paradoxical relationship meat has to the body. Meat combines flesh, skin, muscle, organs, blood - each with its own relationship to the body, yet meat's only reference to the body is as a once-upon-a-time living biological thing. By putting these artists together, the exhibition seeks to investigate the uncanny effect meat as a medium is for artist and viewer. This is not a show about meat as spectacle but about meat as signification, precisely because meat does not signify (a body) but its very annihilation...

Meat After Meat Joy

New laws that took effect in Nevada on Oct. 1 and will kick in on Jan. 1 in Massachusetts may effectively mandate encryption for companies' hard drives, portable devices, and data transmissions. The laws will be binding on any organization that maintains personal information about residents of the two states. (Washington and Michigan are considering similar legislation.) Nevada's law deals mostly with transmitted information and Massachusetts's emphasizes stored information. Between them the two laws should put more of a dent into lax security practices than widespread laws requiring customer notification of data breaches have done. (Such laws are on the books in 40 states and by one estimate have reduced identity theft by 2%.) Here are a couple of legal takes on the impact of the new laws.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've already covered NY AG Andrew Cuomo's ridiculous crusade to get ISPs to censor content in a misguided attempt to stop child porn. Obviously, stopping child porn is a good goal, but Cuomo's approach actually makes the problem worse and sets a dangerous precedent. First, rather than actually tackling the root of the problem, Cuomo simply demanded that ISPs block any site that he and a group he supports consider to be child porn. Of course, they have no legal requirement to block them (section 230 of the CDA was written to make it clear that ISPs are not at all liable here), but Cuomo got around that by promising to shame publicly any ISP that didn't implement his plan. This is the lowest of the low of political tricks, and it would simply be lying. An ISP may be quite committed to stomping out child porn, and could recognize that Cuomo's tactics actually make the problem worse, by not targeting the actual pornographers -- and Cuomo would still publicly splash their names across the news as not wanting to stop child porn.

In fact, a recent look at the details of Cuomo's highly publicized campaign found that Cuomo clearly exaggerated the extent of the problem for political benefit, forcing ISPs to block all of Usenet, despite 99.9997% of the 3.7 billion available Usenet articles being perfectly legitimate content. But that's not stopping Cuomo. In fact, he's going even further.

He's been sending ISPs a presentation from a company called Brilliant Digital that's offering a "deep packet inspection" system that could scan every file sent across an ISP's network and try to determine if it was child porn. Yes, Cuomo is suggesting that ISPs spy on every single file sent over their network now, 4th Amendment be damned. Brilliant Digital even claims that its system can trick users into sending files unencrypted, so even those who send encrypted traffic could be spied upon. Cuomo claims that he's not endorsing the product, but just thought ISPs would be interested in looking into it. Yet, given his heavy handed tactics earlier in this effort, it's pretty clear what message he's sending.

But why Brilliant Digital? If the name sounds familiar, it's because the company has an extremely sketchy past that has been touched on before. It was, effectively, one of the first surreptitious "adware" installs, back in the day, when it tried to secretly distribute a "legit" P2P file sharing system that would sit on top of the popular Kazaa and give you the option of paying for songs rather than just straight file sharing them. The software was downloaded and secretly installed on one million computers, before it was revealed.

This is the company our politicians want spying on every packet sent across the internet?

Not only that, but Brilliant Digital is also (of course) rather aggressive on the patent front, suing Streamcast for daring to make use of a hash system for trying to identify music tracks being shared over a P2P network. So we have an Australian spyware company that wants to scan every bit of traffic and identify it (even if it's encrypted), and it's being pushed by a US politician who has a history of trying to publicly shame companies into doing his bidding, even if it involves lying about them. And, the whole damn thing almost certainly violates the 4th Amendment.

Last week, we wrote about Paul Ohm's suggestion that we should create a stronger privacy law that outlawed deep packet inspection, as that would pretty much stop any attempt to break net neutrality without requiring special net neutrality laws. It's worth noting that such a law would also have the added benefit of making it doubly clear to Cuomo that such a program is quite illegal.

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"She Without Arm, He Without Leg" is a ballet performed by Chinese dancers Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei who are both amputees. Videos of their elegant performance and interviews with the pair are available on YouTube. Amputee ballet (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

Cholla is a horse whose painting seen here, "The Big Red Buck", will be exhibited at the 3rd International Art Prize Arte Laguna opening tomorrow in Mogliano Veneto, Italy. You can see more of the Reno, Nevada artist's work on his Web site, "Artist Is A Horse." All of the paintings reproduced on the site have a "copyright Cholla" watermark. Prints of The Big Red Buck are also available with a portion of the proceeds going to the Virginia Range Wildlife Protection Agency. From the Associated Press:

Renee Chambers, Cholla's owner and assistant, says his international acclaim proves his artistic talents.

"Yes, it's a novelty that a horse can paint," she said. "But it's not about novelty anymore. It's about his validation as an artist."

Cholla's painting career began by accident, Chambers said. He'd follow her around when she'd paint the corral each year, and one day her husband quipped, "You should get that horse to paint the fence."

Chambers instead tacked a piece of paper to a railing, bought some watercolors, mixed them up, and handed a brush to Cholla, who gripped it in his teeth and stroked the paper.

"He's been painting ever since," she said.

Horse takes up painting, has works exhibited

Previously on BB:
• Elephant artists
• Elephant paints an elephant

Make a gory Hollywood-style bloody knife wound with spine tingling results!

Thanks go to Zack Stern for the original article in Make: Halloween.
To download Blood Spurting Knife Wound MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

Pick up your copy of the Make Special Edition: Halloween at the Maker Shed.
Over 40 projects for the holiday that's made for makers. From the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects.

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Mckeephoto put together an Instructable for attaching these skeletons to your house - I'd love to see them animated, or a whole swarm of them!

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Looks like there's a good time to be had for Madison, Wisconsin area benders this Halloween. [via GetLoFi]

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CWmike writes "Apple customers, unhappy that the company dropped FireWire from its new MacBook (not the Pro), are venting their frustrations on the company's support forum in hundreds of messages. Within minutes of Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapping up a launch event in Cupertino, Calif., users started several threads to vent overt the omission. 'Apple really screwed up with no FireWire port,' said Russ Tolman, who inaugurated a thread that by Thursday has collected more than 300 messages and been viewed over 8,000 times. 'No MacBook with [FireWire] — no new MacBook for me,' added Simon Meyer in a message posted yesterday. Several mentioned that FireWire's disappearance means that the new MacBooks could not be connected to other Macs using Target Disk Mode, and one noted that iMovie will have no way to connect to new MacBooks. Others pointed out that the previous-generation MacBook, which Apple is still selling at a reduced price of $999, includes a FireWire port. Apple introduced FireWire into its product lines in 1999 and championed the standard."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AliasMarlowe writes "Stanley Miller performed the famous experiments in the 1950s showing that amino acids and other building blocks for biomolecules could be produced by passing lightning through a mix of simple hydrocarbons, water vapor, and ammonia (thought at the time to approximate the Earth's early atmosphere). Other experiments approximated the environment around volcanic eruptions, but those results were not published. Following his death last year, a former student discovered the materials from those experiments, in labelled vials. Analysis of this material indicates that the conditions around volcanic eruptions (still thought to be representative of such events in the early Earth) resulted in a higher yield of amino acids than the simple lightning experiments, and resulted in a greater variety of amino acids." Pharyngula has a discussion of the Science paper, including a graph of the amino acids produced.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Try out this gory, spine tingling effect that is so realistic it will make people scream!

Thanks go to Zack Stern for the original article in Make: Halloween
View the PDF

Pick up your copy of the Make Special Edition: Halloween at the Maker Shed.
Over 40 projects for the holiday that's made for makers. From the craftiest costumes to amazing animated props and the latest in computer-controlled haunted house effects.

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From now until the awesomeness that is Maker Faire Austin, I'll be highlighting projects that you can find at Travis County Fairgrounds on 10/18-19. Tickets here; see you there!

NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program will be showcasing their Yahoo photo-uploading geo-tagging bikes and talking shop about their other projects at Maker Faire Austin. Check out their other work here, and be sure to come see them (plus hundreds of other Makers) starting tomorrow in Austin!

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From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

Flickr member Unity Gain writes -

A ridiculously gut crushing distortion circuit packed into a pleasantly aromatic oregano spice jar. The best smelling distortion found anywhere.

This would likely sound great with a nice Basil chorus after it - Oregano Distortion

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Here's an awesome Parenthack: mash a banana in the peel, rip off one end and squirt it into your kid's gob like icing -- a no-spoon meal!

Throw a whole banana into your diaper bag before heading out the door. When it's time to eat, mash up the banana before peeling it - just squishing it a bit with your fingers does the trick. Then, peel open a small hole at the end (not the end with the longer stem). Squeeze the mashed banana into the baby's mouth like you're icing a cake. Voila - no spoon necessary, and almost no mess.

How to turn a whole banana into a no-mess baby meal (no spoon required)

In this era where everyone wants to "own" unownable ideas and concepts, is it any wonder that there's more and more talk about the idea of extending copyright to other things? We've already discussed how the fashion industry has been agitating for special new "copyrights" despite the fact that their industry is thriving, in part because of the lack of protectionism in the industry. In fact, research suggests that adding such protectionism would significantly harm the industry, by slowing down innovation, decreasing competition and output.

A second area where we've seen stories similar to this is in the food industry. While we just wrote about the ridiculous story of Lebanon wanting official "food copyright" on hummus, falafel and other middle eastern treats, there are some chefs who take the idea of recipe ownership quite seriously. As it stands today, a recipe is not copyrightable -- though the description of how to cook the recipe could be. The list of ingredients, however, is factual.

But chefs are increasingly trying to somehow guard what makes them unique. We've already seen stories of restaurant owners suing former employees for opening up similar restaurants, but it's not clear what's illegal about that at all. If you think you can do a better job than your boss, then splitting off and forming a competitor is how innovation happens. Just look at the history of Silicon Valley, and you see this repeated time and time again. The traitorous eight famously quit Shockley Semiconductor to form Fairchild Semiconductor, because they didn't like how Shockley ran his company (as well as his decision that silicon wasn't worth pursuing). Without that we wouldn't have "Silicon" Valley. And, of course, from people leaving Fairchild, Intel was born.

But, for folks not in the tech industry, apparently these sorts of splits still seem controversial. My friend Tom sent over an article in The Atlantic about battles over bread recipes and bakeries in New York. Apparently, two partners at a bakery split up, and the author of the article expresses some concern over the "ownership" of the bakery's distinctive bread recipes. The article also notes a similar split between the partners of the famous Magnolia cup cake shop in New York, leading one to form a competitor with a similar recipe. Amongst these battles, though, there is one part regarding the bread makers that seems questionable and fraudulent (which happened separately from the ownership split). One of the bread distributors hired on some of the original bakery's employees and started baking its own bread, but used the name and logo of the original bakery, and then delivered the bread to restaurants without letting them know that it wasn't from the actual bakery. That's outright fraud.

But the good news in this story is that while it appears the "divorce" between bakery owners wasn't that pleasant, and the original owner isn't thrilled that there's a competitor in the space, he does seem to realize that there are better ways to go about dealing with the issue than trying to "protect" his bread (especially since his recipes are based on old Roman recipes). He actually notes that the bigger challenge is increasing the size of the "craft bread" market and taking away business from the big industrial bread makers. It's not about protectionism of a tiny market, it's about increasing the overall pie of the market he's in -- and that may even mean teaming up with his former partner with whom he split, noting that he's looking to form a Craft Bread Association, and will ask his former partner to be the first member. How refreshing.

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Gwaihir the Windlord writes "Not only is the Great Firewall of China back up and running, but now if you visit an Internet cafe, your photo will be taken and your identity card scanned. And the friendly officers of the Cultural Law Enforcement Taskforce make those details, entered into a city-wide database, available at any other cafe. So much for the new levels of openness and transparency that the Olympics were supposed to usher in."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This little board is called "Geta" and is a minimal Arduino-based board that uses an oscillator built in the shape of a wooden sandal.

Sandal via Arduino Blog

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From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

Dan re-envisioned a guitar as a very original project enclosure -

This is my very first electric guitar which was recently re-born to be a weird sound generator (www.musicfromouterspace.com) with a hand-made motherboard pick guard. Also affectionately known as the Fender Bender.

Wow - well done and a very bold move - nice addition of those pushbutton switches to the fretboard. The Fender Bender #1

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tjstork writes "Tesla Motors, the darling of technorati for its high performance electric car, may be about to go belly up. Venture capital is cut off, layoffs are under way, and construction plans are being stretched out. Elon Musk has ousted the CEO and taken the reins, blaming the global credit crunch."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These trash bin conversions by british artist Oliver Bishop-Young range in everything from a swimming pool, to ping pong table, to fake lawn, to talk show set, to instant garden. Check out the link for pictures of all of these inventive ways to turn the eyesore in your neighborhood into a work of art.

Skip Conversions

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narramissic writes "A two-year undercover FBI sting operation targeting online 'carder' forums hosted on the DarkMarket.ws Web site has netted 56 arrests and prevented about $70 million in fraud losses, the FBI said Thursday. DarkMarket.ws was widely used by online scammers to buy and sell stolen credit card numbers, other financial information, and even the devices used to make fake banking cards. Before it was shut down earlier this month, the Web site had registered more than 2,500 members. Although Dark Market was thought to have been administered by a criminal going by the name Master Splyntr, German Public Radio reported on Monday that the FBI had been running a sting operation on the site since late 2006, and that Master Splyntr was actually an FBI agent named J. Keith Mularski." Of course, they say it in German; non-German speakers may want to consult the Babelfish.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There was plenty of attention a few months back when it was revealed (first by a hacker, then confirmed by Apple) that the iPhone contained a kill switch that could remotely disable any application. Nancy Gohring, over at IDG, has gone through the terms of service for the first Google Android-based phone and noted that it appears to have a remote kill switch as well, though at least it's upfront about it. You can understand why mobile operators might want this (for example, to stop a bandwidth hogging app), but it's still rather troubling that an app that you thought you had placed on your own device might be remotely deleted one day. If we've been able to deal with rogue and runaway apps on PCs for all these years, you would think that mobile operators would be able to deal with it as well.

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The Stribe is a really cool open source music controller. It takes some serious soldering skills to make one, but the end results are fantastic. Check it out at Maker Faire in Austin.

Eight touch-sensitive strips are flanked by dual columns of LEDs, providing subtle fingertip control coupled with illuminated feedback. The Stribe's firmware communicates via USB with music programs such as Max/MSP and Reaktor.

More about The Stribe

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Processing is a great open source application for artists and experimenters. This Minority Report style application was created in 20 minutes! Amazing! Check out the link to download the source code. [Thanks Guru]

Today I read about touchless an opensource sdk microsoft has released. it enables you to track objects using a simple webcam to create apps similar to a multitouch display.

Then I spent about 20 minutes coding a processing sketch that does roughly the same :-)

As you can see in the screenshot I cant affort the same cool toys the microsoft coder has in the demo video, so I had to use some post-its instead

Read more about "Touchless" Multitouch in Processing

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Today on Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at the T-Mobile Android G1's "not evil" killswitch and a tiny little Korean monitor for corralling your contact lists. Joel Johnson — Obama supporter — said "so what?" to a report that Verizon and AT&T provided temporary cellular towards to McCain's ranch, and Brownlee looked at a gorgeous refreshof a 1960's Italian stereo Joel loved a 64K intro by a Hungarian demoscene group, puttered a 3D printed car around his desk while making puttering noises with his mouth, put a paper plate made out of leaves through the dish washer and the old Lemonaid Loaders his grandfather used to make. Brownlee liked a Space Invaders alarm clock, an R2D2 backpack and a suicidal light night. The newest 3D webcams will stab porn into your eyes, Studio Ghibli is doing a DS game, Joel needs advice on building a gaming PC for $1k and Rob got some hands-on time with Sony's hot new all-in-one desktop. Oh, and according to Apple France, the new MacBooks are perfect shit. Link

sparky1240 writes "While Americans are currently fighting the net-neutrality wars, spare a thought for the poor Australians — The Australian government wants to implement a nation-wide 'filtering' scheme to keep everyone safe from the nasties on the internet, with no way of opting out: 'Under the government's $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material. ... According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,000 Web pages from one million."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sparky1240 writes "While Americans are currently fighting the net-neutrality wars, spare a thought for the poor Australians — The Australian government wants to implement a nation-wide 'filtering' scheme to keep everyone safe from the nasties on the internet, with no way of 'opting out': 'Under the government's $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material. ... According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,0000 Web pages from one million."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is a really cool project by Eric Lundquist. He will be displaying his Video Head at Maker Faire in Austin. I can't wait to see it in person.

The Video Head Project was inspired by the amazing art project called Drum Head by Murat Konar. In a attempt to take it to the next level, the Video Head will have multiple mouth and eye expressions in order to display a wider range of emotions and interactions. The foam head gives the image an eerie lifelike 3-d appearance.

More about the Video Head

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It took quite some time for authorities around the world to recognize the extent to which organized crime was using the internet for various scams and frauds, but in the last year or so, it seems like many agencies around the world really are looking to go after the criminals. The latest example is that Darkmarket, an invitation-only secretive forum for buying and selling credit card numbers, has been shut down, and 60 people involved with the site have been simultaneously arrested. This is definitely a step up from what we were hearing just a couple of years ago, where the best authorities could do was arrest kids messing around with phishing scams, rather than actually going after the organized criminals who were the real issue. Cracking down on one site and arresting 60 individuals isn't going to stop these scammers, but it's at least good to see authorities trying to focus on the real problem cases, rather than just the small fry.

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Creators of the 'black silicon' that has been much discussed, following an article in the New York Times, have said it's too early to discuss what their material's benefits might be for digital photography. The novel, doped silicon technology holds out the promise of increased sensitivity but is still in development by SiOnyx, a Harvard University spin-off.

The record industry lost a landmark battle last spring, when a court said that merely printing "not for resale" on an unsolicited promo CD does not prevent you from reselling it -- and certainly does not prevent me from buying it. The judgement establishes that "first sale" -- the legal doctrine that says that once you buy something, it's yours -- is still alive and well. This The Legality article unpacks it all for you:

Once again, the music industry overestimated the level of control they should be allowed to maintain over their copyrighted works. Just as when Sony invaded its consumers’ privacy by embedding software in CDs and when the five largest music distribution companies illegally corroborated to fix the price of CDs, the music industry has again violated the law. The United States District Court for the Central District of California concluded, via summary judgment, that the purported EULA included by UMG did not create a “license,” nor does it allow UMG to retain any control over the promotional CD. UMG gave away these CDs, and those who receive them are free to dispose of them as they see fit. Therefore, the court found, as the legal owner of the CDs in question, Mr. Augusto and Roast Beast Music broke no laws in selling these recordings, and may continue to do so.

At least we can still sell our old CDs… Right?

It depends. While Mr. Augusto enjoys the right to sell his legally owned CDs, questions arise in a number of states as to who can purchase them. The music industry, it seems, is foregoing lawsuits in favor of promoting preventative legislation. Recent legislation in Florida, Utah, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island has made it more difficult to sell used CDs in those states than it is to get a driver’s license. In Florida, for example, anyone attempting to sell used CDs to a retailer must present identification and be fingerprinted, and any retailer looking to sell those same CDs must apply for a permit and submit a $10,000 bond with the Department of Agriculture and Human Services. Thankfully, those restrictions do not apply to online or person-to-person sales.

“Damn The Man!” The Ability To Sell Second-Hand CDs (Thanks, Steve!)

Remember when the Electronic Frontier Foundation discovered that the NSA had been wiretapping the entire Internet, illegally, with collaboration from the nation's phone companies? Remember when they sued the phone companies in order to discover the full extent of this illegal, warrantless domestic spying?

Remember when Congress -- including both presidential candidates -- voted to give the phone companies immunity from prosecution, even though they had clearly broken the law, on the grounds that the president had asked them to? (If the president asked you to shoot someone, would Congress let you off the hook, too?)

Well now EFF is suing to have the immunity -- the unconstitutional immunity -- overturned. Go EFF!

"The immunity law puts the fox in charge of the hen house, letting the Attorney General decide whether or not telecoms like AT&T can be sued for participating in the government's illegal warrantless surveillance," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "In our constitutional system, it is the judiciary's role as a co-equal branch of government to determine the scope of the surveillance and rule on whether it is legal, not the executive's. The Attorney General should not be allowed to unconstitutionally play judge and jury in these cases, which affect the privacy of millions of Americans."

In the public version of his certification to the court, Attorney General Mukasey asserted that the government had no "content-dragnet" program that searched for keywords in the body of communications. However, the government did not deny the dragnet acquisition of the content of communications. In support of its opposition, EFF provided the court with a summary of thousands of pages of documents demonstrating the broad dragnet surveillance of millions of innocent Americans' communications. Eight volumes of exhibits accompanied the detailed summary, including eyewitness accounts and testimony under oath.

"We have overwhelming record evidence that the domestic spying program is operating far outside the bounds of the law," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Intelligence agencies, telecoms, and the Administration want to sweep this case under the rug, but the Constitution won't permit it."

EFF Challenges Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity in Federal Court, Donate to EFF

Bill Higgins sez,

Starting in 1942, Jack Williamson wrote a series of stories about tough space miners who go after antimatter asteroids. There's the hope of unlimited energy, but the danger that any touch unleashes nuclear hell.

In the latest issue of Symmetry, a magazine about particle physics, I've traced the chain of scientific developments in the 1930s and 1940s that inspired Williamson to write his "Seetee" tales-- if not the first, certainly the most influential stories to explore the physics of "contraterrene" (CT) matter.

Fermilab, where I work, manufactures antiprotons in quantity, so I enjoyed looking backwards at the ancestors of our business, tracking down the long-ago crossover where an abstruse possibility in nuclear physics led to speculation that flowed from astronomy to meteor science to SF.

Best of all, we obtained an image of Jack Williamson's carbon copy of "Collision Orbit." In their regular "Logbook" feature, the editors treated the manuscript with the reverence due a historic lab notebook, letter, or graph.

The Seetee stories originated in a weathered shack back of the family home on the Williamson ranch, which Jack built himself in 1934 so he could write in seclusion. This shack is still the object of occasional pilgrimages by 21st-century science fiction writers. See Scott Edelman's tour.

( Symmetry describes itself as "a magazine about particle physics and its connections to other aspects of life and science, from interdisciplinary collaborations to policy to culture.")

Antimatter’s science fiction debut (Thanks, Bill!)

Roland Piquepaille writes "Flower robots are not new, and some have already been developed in the US. Now, South Korean researchers have created a robotic plant which acts like real ones. This robot has humidifying, oxygen-producing, aroma-emitting, and kinetic functions. It is about 1.30 meters tall and 40 centimeters in diameter. The robotic plant can interact with people when they approach, and it can 'dance' when music is played. The researchers don't say when a commercial version of their flowers will come to the market. They also don't mention a retail price."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few years ago, we pointed out how silly it was for various companies to rush out and hire a "chief digital officer," noting that thinking digitally isn't a separate job function, but something that often needs to be considered across the board in many companies these days. That's certainly true in the journalism world, so it's good to see the new dean of Syracuse's School of Public Communications point out that they won't offer a special "new media" major for undergrads:

"All of our undergraduates need to be conversant with new media. And none of our students, no matter what their major, should be leaving Newhouse without having a basic understanding of the fundamentals of new media and how to tell stories on multiple platforms."

Hopefully, this lack of a specific major doesn't make people think that the school is ignoring new media, but that the school recognizes that new media isn't a silo, but influences things across the board.

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Got a little felt and a safety pin? Mix 'em with a turtle neck you've got a halloween costume. Star Trek Comm Badges by user Crafty Intentions in the CRAFT Flickr pool.

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I took this photo of two pumpkins weighing around 700 lbs each outside the hardware store in Sebastopol, Calif.

longacre writes "While some giggles were floating around about the irony of a Microsoft product (Photosynth) finding itself on the same top 10 products list as a toilet, the true stars of last night's annual Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards were innovations of far more consequence. MIT professor Amy B. Smith won the marquis Leadership Award for her work on building simple, low-cost technology to help developing countries. Joining Smith from the appropriate technology field were a group of CalTech students who created all-terrain wheelchairs for the disabled, and a Procter & Gamble exec who developed a water purifying powder for the third world. Aptera Vehicles founders Steve Ambro and Chris Anthony made the cut for their 300mpg Typ-1e, which is expected to hit showrooms by the end of this year. Other winners ranged from the Mars Phoenix Lander team, to the developers of a low-cost cancer test, to the creators of Spore."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A reader writes: "Check out the EULA for the Department of Homeland Security's web page for applying for travel visa waivers!" This is possibly the most obnoxious pop-up I've ever seen. Imagine the federal government making you agree to waive your legal rights in order to read about one of its programs! Welcome to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization Web Site

This incredibly patronizing 1950 Colonial Film Board short film explains the intricacies of bus-riding to ignorant foreigners newly arrived in London, unravelling the mysteries with helpful advice like, "Be sure to board a bus headed to your destination," and explaining that drivers aren't allowed to run over school-children. Journey by a London Bus (1950)

The Zombiefie Six is a set of six papercraft zombie dollies for you to print, fold and play with. Fun! the ZOMBIEFIE SIX (Thanks, Doctor What!)

Robbo sez,

In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil's Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow are also along for the ride.

RiP: A remix manifesto (Thanks, Robbo!)

Jeff sez,

San Marcos, Texas' Aquarena Center, formerly a hilarious tourist trap called Aquarena Springs, will be bulldozed, with the land being restored to turn-of-the-previous-century condition.

Aquarena was the home of the infamous Ralph the Swimming Pig, and his keeper Glurpo, a one-time "nightmarish aquatic clown" (http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/20/nightmarish-aquatic-.html) turned "underwater witch doctor." There were also "aquamaids" who picnicked & performed ballet underwater, diving ducks, and a sadistic swan named Rufus.

Glass-bottomed boats will continue to ply the lake, described as "home to eight federally listed endangered species. ... one of the oldest continually inhabited sites in North America, and the second largest artesian spring in the western United States."

(Full disclosure - I worked in the underwater show for a couple of seasons in the early 70s. I WAS Glurpo, (in his witch doctor persona) as well as Bubblio, Scrubblio and "Announcer" and I knew Ralph personally!)

Demolishing Aquarena (Thanks, Jeff!)

If you're doing wearables, I'd suggest transitioning over to the LilyPad Arduino sooner rather than later, but If you want the full Diecimilla board integrated into your project for one reason or another (ease of removability, street cred, etc.), Instructables user Pulsea has got a solution for you. She details how to sew male headers right to the fabric to make a "shield" for connecting fabric-embedded components right to the full Arduino board.

More:

• Wearables archive on MAKE
• Fashion Tech archive on CRAFT

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Marilyn sez, "Astronauts returning from spacewalks have noticed a distinctive smell of fried steak on their space suits when they take them off. Who knew?!" Turns out, the cosmos is not vegan.

He said: “When astronauts were de-suiting and taking off helmets, they all reported quite particular odours.

“We have already produced the smell of fried steak, but hot metal is more difficult.

“We think it’s a high energy vibration in the molecule and that’s what we’re trying to add to it now.”

Space smells of steak, say Nasa (Thanks, Marilyn!)

The Republican Party and the McCain campaign are saying some really awful things about Barack Obama in robo-calls in battleground states. It's strange and remarkably honest of them to self-identify, given that everything else they say is a lie. They even provide their phone number.

So tomorrow I'm going to call the Republicans and tell them, politely and honestly, how I feel about them bothering people at home with lies about Obama. I'm going to call them at 202-863-8502. This is the exact opposite of what they're doing. I'm a real person, not a robot, and instead of lying I will tell the truth.

If you want to help the Republicans straighten their act out you can call them too. I'd wait until their office opens tomorrow, though, all the voicemail boxes seem to be full at this time.

Last year, we pointed out that, after quite a slow (and, at times, backwards looking) start, it appeared that the NY Times was finally figuring out how to truly embrace the web. That meant more than just putting its newspaper online, but taking advantage of the unique opportunities opened up by the web. However, there was still plenty of room for improvement, but it appears that the NY Times continues to move in that direction. Two years ago, we wrote about how newspapers should start freeing up their data via APIs so that others could make useful applications out of it. News organizations often have a tremendous amount of useful data that others might not have access to. Putting it to good use by opening up an API would be a truly valuable service.

And that's exactly what the NY Times appears to be doing, if only on a limited scale (for now). It's set up an API for campaign finance data, allowing anyone to build useful tools or visualizations on top of it. And, that's not all, they're also getting ready to release an API for movie reviews. In other words, the NY Times is definitely recognizing the value in not just freeing up their stories, but making core underlying data totally accessible and useful.

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It's amazing that Sarah Palin, would-be VP to a 72-year-old cancer survivor asks Who Barack Obama Really Is? and yet we know almost nothing about her. More than amazing, isn't it imprudent?

Well, they cracked the nut on FreshAir, inviting Michael Carey, a former editor of the Anchorage Daily News to a 40-minute interview. He answered a lot of the outstanding questions about Sarah Palin. Highly recommended.

Fresh Air: Sarah Palin, A View From Anchorage.

It's not too late to ask who this would-be VP is. And if you believe Obama, and I do, there's no reason to assume she will not be elected on November 4.

Kotaku recently ran a story questioning whether the survival-horror genre still exists, and how Dead Space may or may not fit into it. With reviews for the game starting to come in, Ars Technica reports that the game is, indeed, both scary and good. Gamespy wrote up a Dead Space survival guide, and Gamasutra has a lengthy interview with the game's senior producer. In the production of the game, the developers studied things like car wrecks and war scenes to increase the level of realism. They also want the game's sounds to terrify players, including appropriately timed silence. The launch trailer is also available, though it does contain spoilers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A year ago, there was a legal ruling in the US that said an individual could not be forced to hand over their encryption key to encrypted data on a computer, since it violates the 5th amendment against self-incrimination. Over in the UK, they apparently also have protections against self-incrimination, but apparently it doesn't cover handing over your encryption key (thanks to JJ for sending over the link). Basically, the ruling is pretty close to the opposite of the US ruling. Basically, it found that an encryption key isn't speech but an independent "thing" that can be required to be turned over to authorities.

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sash writes "From the fresh press release: 'Investigations at CERN following a large helium leak into sector 3-4 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel have confirmed that cause of the incident was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator's magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel. Proper safety procedures were in force, the safety systems performed as expected, and no one was put at risk. Sufficient spare components are in hand to ensure that the LHC is able to restart in 2009, and measures to prevent a similar incident in the future are being put in place.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.