MarkWhittington writes "NASA has unveiled a new prototype lunar rover, called the Chariot, a production version of which is hoped to be operational on the lunar surface by 2019. NASA is now testing the Chariot lunar rover in Arizona, on terrain that resembles the lunar surface." Perhaps Arizona's an even closer match to the moon's surface than is Texas, or Moses Lake, WA where NASA was testing the last time we mentioned Chariot. (Here's a bit of video from the Texas round.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MarkWhittington writes "NASA has unveiled a new prototype lunar rover, called the Chariot, a production version of which is hoped to be operational on the lunar surface by 2019. NASA is now testing the Chariot lunar rover in Arizona, on terrain that resembles the lunar surface." Perhaps Arizona's an even closer match to the moon's surface than is Texas, or Moses Lake, WA where NASA was testing the last time we mentioned Chariot. (Here's a bit of video from the Texas round.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

notthatwillsmith writes "With Ubuntu 8.10 due to be released in just a few days, Maximum PC pored through all the enhancements, updates, and new features that are bundled into the release of Intrepid Ibex and separated out the new features that are most exciting for Linux desktop users. Things to be excited about? With new versions of GNOME and X.Org, there's quite a bit, ranging from the context-sensitive Deskbar search to an audio and video compatible SIP client to the new Network Manager (manage wired, Wi-Fi, VPN, and cellular broadband connections in one place)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When you go to vote...

Do you know what to do if someone tells you you're not on the list?

1. Don't just walk away.

2. Only as a last resort should you accept a provisional ballot

3. Call 866- OUR-VOTE or go to 866OURVOTE.org to get information on where to vote and the facts on your right to vote. A trained team of advisors is available to help you resolve your problem.

Over 10,000 lawyers are dispatched to the polling places on Election Day.

That's all you need to know.

oahazmatt writes "Some time ago my wife was having severe issues on her laptop. (A Dell Inspiron, if that helps.) I eventually found the cause to be McAfee, which took about an hour to remove fully. I installed AVG on her system to replace McAfee, but we have since found that AVG is causing problems with her laptop's connection to our wireless network. She's not thrilled about a wired connection as the router is on the other end of the house. We're looking for some good, open-source or free personal editions of anti-virus software. So, who on Slashdot trusts what?" When school required a Windows laptop, I used Clam AV, and the machine seemed to do as well as most classmates'; what have you found that works?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wow, Aneel used 6 "SpokePOVs" to turn his bicycle wheels in to Obama logos (photo set here)... He included the files for download if you want to do this on your own, or you can of course make whatever you want. Oh, just to be clear and to avoid a comment-fight, MAKE does not endorse any political party, this is just a cool use of open source hardware.

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r writes "The New York Times reports on a security flaw discovered in the new Android phones. The article is light on details, but it hints at a security hole in the browser, allowing for trojans to install themselves in the same security partition as the browser: 'The risk in the Google design, according to Mr. Miller, who is a principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators in Baltimore, lies in the danger from within the Web browser partition in the phone. It would be possible, for example, for an intruder to install software that would capture keystrokes entered by the user when surfing to other Web sites. That would make it possible to steal identity information or passwords.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Japan Today (via Ecogeek):

The transport ministry aims to introduce a system in fiscal 2010 to provide 30% of the cooling energy at New Chitose Airport terminal building in summer from snow collected in winter, ministry officials said Tuesday.

A regional office of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism collected snow last winter at the airport and confirmed that it could retain up to 45% of it by September by covering it with heat-insulating materials. It has concluded that the snow could be used to chill the liquid used in the airport's cooling system in summer and that doing so would lead to a cut of some 2,100 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, according to the officials.

Here's a picture of a similar concept deployed in Sweden, with more info here (as well as yearly results):

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I got lots of people asking me how we did the arms of our Zombie for this video. And here is how we did straight from the guy who invented the technique. Although I think straight liquid latex works better (although some people are allergic and it's a pain on hairy arms). I really do like the burned effect which you can read about here.

Like I stated on another post, this is a similar technique done by Edge Effects on the tv version of "The Shinning" (fango #162) but they "glued" the plastic wrap down with KY jelly and removed it with warm water. Take some plastic wrap/press n' seal and pull out enough to cover your area eg: arm.

In the meantime if you have a DIY trick up your sleeve like this why not enter our DIY Halloween Contest today?

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Pickens writes "University of Pennsylvania biologists have discovered a mutation in fruit flies aptly named the 'couch potato' gene that allows them to simply chill out — entering a mild state of quasi-hibernation known as diapause, when winter arrives. 'It's not like they're bears sleeping in a cave,' says Paul Schmidt. 'They just look like they're a little bit more sluggish.' The couch potato gene, first discovered in the early 1990s, got its nickname because flies with mutations in the gene became really sluggish and behaved abnormally. Little is known about the underlying evolutionary genetic architecture but in diapause, the slacking off is far less severe, the flies' bodily functions slow down, and they are better able to tolerate stress. The fruit fly gene may have implications for human health, as it can help biologists study the function of the nervous system and diseases such as epilepsy, refuting a recent statement by a political candidate that fruit fly research has 'little or nothing to do with the public good.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

moteyalpha writes "Mark Shuttleworth described the beginnings of what could a great step forward in making file systems more usable. I've personally had the experience of trying to find a file for a customer who had just finished editing a critical report, saved it, and then couldn't locate it to deliver to their client. Quoting: 'My biggest concern on this front is that it be done in a way that every desktop environment can embrace. We need a consistent experience across GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice and Firefox so that content can flow from app to app in a seamless fashion and the user's expectations can be met no matter which app or environment they happen to use. If someone sends a file to me over Empathy, and I want to open it in Amarok, then I shouldn't have to work with two completely different mental models of content storage.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You only have a couple more days to pick up the special Make: Halloween collector's edition - if you're looking for a special gift for a little ghost or goblin in your life, this is it. I picked out a few images from the volume and posted them on Flickr and also made a video (above) with some freaky-scary cool music from Zyzzybalubah's excellent Halloween LP.

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Now I'm getting somewhere.

I mostly paused yesterday, read docs, thought, tried to understand how the various pieces fit together, and I think I've got some of the basics down.

1. You don't do a lot of customization of your AMIs, you might tweak up some of the settings for the OS, but don't install too much software in there, because all changes have to be bundled and saved and that's a slow process, and you don't want to do that too often.

2. The work is done in Amazon EBS Volumes. Install your software there, it can be attached to any instance. They're analogous to a hard disk drive in cloud space.

If you're an EC2 oldbie, did I get this right?

Now I'm wondering about costs. I've got the minimal system. It costs 12.5 cents per hour. That means in a 31 day month it will cost: $93 and that's without any storage costs. I'm having trouble estimating how much storage this instance will use. I have a bundle saved in my S3 space, and it's huge. Obviously I'm paying for that. I'll pay something for at least one IP address. Another question for oldbies -- how much should I expect to pay on a monthly basis for the most modest possible server?

Next thing -- All the docs say you can't depend on an instance staying up, but how does it relaunch if it goes down? I can't believe that's done manually. How can you build a reliable web service if it goes down unpredictably? (Not that my servers currently don't crash from time time, they do.)

SkydiverFL writes "Does anyone have an idea for a good solution for using a game console (Xbox 360, PS3, etc.) with a laptop and / or external monitor? I am planning to set up each of my developers at the office with a shiny new Xbox 360, surround headphones, and Gold memberships. The only catch is that I have to do it 'gracefully.' I would be grateful for any input on the technical setup and politics (how to get it in and how to work through the politics)." Read on for further details on the situation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Evan writes-

I just finished the first major round of updates to the DeTouch project in almost two years. DeTouch is an interactive online tool that visualizes the alterations made by professional re-touch artists. This update doubles the amount of data from re-touch websites and includes downloads for full screen standalone applications in Linux, Mac, and Windows.

DeTouch will be on exhibition as part of Beyond A Memorable Fancy at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts from Oct. 30th to Dec. 13th. Details below:

EFA Project Space
Gallery hours: 12-6, Wed- Sat
Opening Reception, November 1, 6-9
323 W 39th Street, 2nd Fl
New York City

Also included in the exhibition is TSA Communication, and the G.R.L. Laser Stencil / Green Lantern (more on that soon).

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An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review is running an in-depth story about the way cellphone banking is transforming the lives of many poor people in India. By enabling users to manage a legitimate bank account and finance micro-loans, cellphones are a major force of social and economic change. It's perhaps not surprising, given that despite widespread poverty, India has the world's fastest-growing cellphone market and the second largest number of cellphone users (after China). The article mentions one Indian start-up, mChek, that is thriving as a result. There's also an excellent video report."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Simple Sisters have a list of 9 Simple Reasons Why MakerFaire Made Our Weekend. Check out the link for the complete list. Thanks!

What do you call a person who spends 90% of their time and expendable income building a battlebot? Or how about a harp made of lasers, or tesla coil electronic music? The easy answer for a lot of people would be 'nerds.' But this weekend at MakerFaire, we found out that they're actually some of the best people on the planet.

Check out the List of 9 Simple Reasons Why MakerFaire Made Our Weekend

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Ars Technica reports that the debate between broadcasters and white space supporters has intensified after each side recently made inflammatory comments and suggested that science would vindicate their position. Several organizations are pushing to delay the upcoming white space vote, in part because it takes place on the same day as the US presidential election. We recently discussed Google's claim that a test of this system was rigged to fail. From Ars: "The broadcasters contend that adjacent channel interference would be significant even at the 40 mW level proposed by Kevin Martin. In fact, they claim that such a device would interfere with digital television signals when the viewer is 25 miles from the television tower and the whitespace device is 10m or less from the TV set. At 50 miles from the television tower, a whitespace device within 50m from a set could allegedly cause interference. The broadcasters also want several safeguard requirements put on the technology that go beyond the new, lower-power transmission levels."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fine Clonier is hosting a Haunted Halloween Custom LEGO Minifig Contest - there's still time to enter! Here are a few of the rules - complete information is here. (I hope somebody comes up with a scary princess)

What is the contest," you ask. Well it is simply building a Custom Scary Halloween figure out of official LEGO or custom elements. LEGO has been helping us out with scary pumpkin heads, goblins, ghosts, and even trolls, so you might not even need custom elements. Just play mix and match.

"There has to be a catch," you say, well not this time, anyone from any country can enter. And now for the best part, the prize is TBA

RULES:

1. Figure constructed must be scary. No princesses. Clowns yes, they scare the hell out of plenty of kids, but I have yet to meet a scary princess.

2. Figure must be constructed from "OFFICAL" LEGO or custom elements. Decals, cut up parts, whatever it all flies here.

3. Contest is open to ANY and ALL, WORLDWIDE, so spread the word. The only ineligible person is ME, Kaminoan.

4. You are allowed to submit as many FIGURES as you like, only limit is ONE ENTRY PER POST. If you have multiple entries you must make multiple posts.

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Semiotech's Butt-crack detector..

using a Lilypad Arduino, vibrating motor, and a photoresistor (measures the amount of light in your coin slot), you will make a wearable apparatus. when the photoresistor/your coin slot is covered, the hip-pack is at rest, when it/your coin slot is exposed, this triggers the vibrating motor to start vibrating & let the user know.

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Tyndmyr writes "In conjunction with the previously covered Knol system, Google has recently released Knol Debates, where users can vote for and discuss various topics. First up, presidential debates, representing topics from any party, and with some commentary being given by the libertarian Cato Institute. Unfortunately, patent law and technology questions are still rather poorly represented. Oddly enough, Knol Debates doesn't even appear to be in beta. The system makes use of Google Moderator to select questions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Homemade CO2 laser build photos via Hacked Gadgets. Tekwiz writes...

I purchased the tube, & built the rest, including a custom aluminum case & cooling system. The laser is basically complete, but my original power supply design failed on powerup, & is on the bench being rebuilt. The tube requires ~9kv @ 15ma, with a 16-18kv start voltage. I am using a 2 stage, 8 step voltage multiplier, driven by a microwave oven transformer. The multiplier is designed with much larger caps in the first 3 steps, so that it provides ~16kv until the tube ionizes & begins to draw current, at which point the second stage(5 steps) gets swamped out & the first stage(3 steps) supplies operating current @ ~8-9kv.

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jedibfa writes "Las Cruces International Airport came alive with applause and cheers yesterday afternoon as John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace took the first place prize for the Level 1 challenge of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, winning $350,000 and bragging rights. Adding to the excitement of the day, shortly before completing their second qualifying flight, Armadillo Aerospace and The Rocket Racing League announced a joint program to develop a sub-orbital tourist vehicle that will fly out of the New Mexico-based Spaceport America and cost less than $100,000 per ticket. On Sunday, the team will have three opportunities to go for the Level 2 challenge that more closely approximates the required performance for a real lunar landing. Good luck, Armadillo Aerospace, both on Sunday and in your new endeavor!" We discussed preparations for the challenge last week. Several other readers have contributed additional coverage, including the Space Fellowship's live blog of the event, the website for Truezer0, another team participating in the challenge, and a VentureBeat article discussing the economic downturn in space exploration, and how the X-prize competitions figure in. Today's Level 2 challenge will be covered live via webcast.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Techdirt makes note of some problems cropping up already for early voters in the presidential election. CNN covers some of the issues, including machines in a West Virginia county which recorded some votes incorrectly because of an alignment error. A lengthy discussion of the problems was also featured on NPR. Reader Rooked_One points out a related story at NPR about a voting program called PVOTE, written in Python and only 500 lines long. "Pvote is not a complete voting system. It is just the software program that interacts with the voter. Other necessary functions, such as voter registration, ballot preparation, and canvassing, are not part of Pvote. It is especially important that the voter interaction be correct because it is the only part of an election that must take place in private, whereas all other parts of an election can and should be subjected to public oversight and verification."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Techdirt makes note of some problems cropping up already for early voters in the presidential election. CNN covers some of the issues, including machines in a West Virginia county which recorded some votes incorrectly because of an alignment error. A lengthy discussion of the problems was also on NPR. Reader Rooked_One points out a related story at NPR about a voting program called PVOTE, written in Python and only 500 lines long. "Pvote is not a complete voting system. It is just the software program that interacts with the voter. Other necessary functions, such as voter registration, ballot preparation, and canvassing, are not part of Pvote. It is especially important that the voter interaction be correct because it is the only part of an election that must take place in private, whereas all other parts of an election can and should be subjected to public oversight and verification."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bug Labs has a new series of videos they just posted, check them out here.

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Wikipedia for Schools is a torrentable DVD version of Wikipedia that you can run on classroom PCs that aren't connected to the net. It's also a handy size for sticking on a memory card and plugging into your phone or netbook.

Welcome to this Wikipedia Selection. This 2008/9 Wikipedia DVD Selection is a free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia, targeted around the UK National Curriculum and useful for much of the English speaking world. It has about 5500 articles (as much as can be fitted on a DVD with good size images) and is about the size of a twenty volume encyclopaedia (34,000 images and 20 million words). Articles were chosen from a list ranked by importance and quality generated by project members. This list of articles was then manually sorted for relevance to children, and adult topics were removed. Compared to the 2007 version some six hundred articles were removed and two thousand more relevant articles (of now adequate quality) were added. SOS Children volunteers then checked and tidied up the contents, first by selecting historical versions of articles free from vandalism and then by removing unsuitable sections. External links and references are also not included since it was infeasible to check all of these.

2008/9 Wikipedia Selection for schools (via Waxy)

Wired reports on the Enriched Xenon Observatory 200, a particle detector scientists hope will answer the question of why there is significantly more matter than antimatter in the universe. Quoting: "The new detector will try to fill in the picture, determining basic features of [neutrinos], like their mass and whether or not they, unlike almost all other particles, are their own antiparticles. That quirk is why some scientists believe neutrinos could be the mechanism for the creation of our matter-filled universe. Almost all other particles have an antiparticle twin that, if it comes into contact with the particle, immediately annihilates it. But if neutrinos are their own antiparticles they could conceivably be knocked onto matter's 'team,' thereby causing the cascading win for matter over antimatter that we know occurred. As the Indian theoretical physicist G. Rajasekaran put it in a speech [PDF] earlier this year, neutrinos that are their own antiparticles would explain 'how, after [the] annihilation of most of the particles with antiparticles, a finite but small residue of particles was left to make up the present Universe.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In this week's video, we take a visit to the new fabric store Whiz Bang Fabrics in San Francisco where owner Helen Fawcett shows us how to make some cool fabric wall art.

Download the MP4 Video or HD Version | Subscribe to CRAFT in iTunes

You can see more photos in my Flickr set of the store and finished fabric wall art.

And if you live in the Bay Area, CA and love fabric, don't miss a chance to check out this great store. You'll be in craft heaven with their amazing variety of prints and patterns.

WhizBang Fabrics (@ Active Space)
3150 18th Street, Suite 113 (on Treat @ 18th),
San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: 415-621-2849

Hours:
Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 7pm
Sunday Noon - 5pm

Whiz Bang Fabrics is also having a sale!
Saturday, October 25 - Sunday, November 2
25 - 50% off ALL fabric, trim, notions and patterns

amy butler, joel dewberry, anna maria horner, kokka, fiskars cutting tools, gutermann thread, favorite things patterns and much more!

++ mention the CRAFT podcast and get an additional 10% off

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A nice essay to freak you out from Kevin Kelly... computing superorganisms...

I am not the first, nor the only one, to believe a superorganism is emerging from the cloak of wires, radio waves, and electronic nodes wrapping the surface of our planet. No one can dispute the scale or reality of this vast connectivity. What’s uncertain is, what is it? Is this global web of computers, servers and trunk lines a mere mechanical circuit, a very large tool, or does it reach a threshold where something, well, different happens?

So far the proposition that a global superorganism is forming along the internet power lines has been treated as a lyrical metaphor at best, and as a mystical illusion at worst. I’ve decided to treat the idea of a global superorganism seriously, and to see if I could muster a falsifiable claim and evidence for its emergence.

My hypothesis is this: The rapidly increasing sum of all computational devices in the world connected online, including wirelessly, forms a superorganism of computation with its own emergent behaviors.

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Fred Wilson in his famous answer compared Twitter to Google when it was a pre-revenue startup. A nice problem to have, for sure, but what if Twitter is more like Netscape than Google?

I was a web developer when Microsoft passed Netscape. They did it in a classic style, perfectly executed in every way to take advantage of every door Netscape left open.

1. Netscape had left their Mac browser to languish while they focused on Windows. Microsoft, realizing that most web developers used Macs, produced an excellent Mac browser first, and worked closely with all the Mac developers to make sure their browser worked with all the Mac software web developers used.

2. Netscape let anyone download their browser for free, but charged corporate users for the software. Microsoft's browser was totally free of charge, for everyone.

3. Microsoft fixed bugs, enhanced performance, listened to market and responded, did all the things a mature company that remembered its entrepreneurial roots could do. Netscape, being a disorganized, chaotic Valley wunderkind, did none of this.

Now, Netscape could have anticipated that Microsoft was going to do all this, could have kept up the investment on the Mac, made their software fully free, and become the first startup in history to be deeply rooted in everyone else's ego instead of their own. But all that would have been very very hard to pull off. In retrospect, you'd have to say that Netscape tried to own too much, became spread too thin too early. They probably should have narrowed their focus on something very valuable and defensible.

I thought of Netscape when I read this well-intentioned post by Alex Payne, who is single-handedly grappling with the most vexing of strategic problems on behalf of Twitter, without a clear model of the landscape of the market that's ahead of them.

The problem is this, how much of the flow of Twitter should they let outside their cloud and under what terms. You can see the promise to grapple with this in the last section of his piece, The Proverbial "Firehose."

So many things to say about this, but for now -- this reminds me of IBM's attempt to put the genie back in the bottle in the transition from PC-DOS to OS/2 in the late 80s. They wanted to shut down the clonemakers, Compaq, Dell, HP, etc, without losing their base of software. This opened the door for Microsoft to welcome all the clonemakers to their platform, Windows, and now OS/2 is only of historical note.

When one of the big guys competes with Twitter, they will do everything Twitter does, compatibly, and they will also offer a firehose without restrictions, licenses or approval. Twitter will have to follow suit, but then it will be too late, they will be following in the market they created.

Much better to get out ahead of it, narrow the focus, welcome the competitors, and reserve for itself the position of the naming authority. It will be impossible to unseat them from this position if they play it right. They can of course continue to operate twitter.com, and with a fully open firehose a bigger competitor might not even find a way into their market. Either way, Twitter must find a defensible posture, they've definitely staked out too much territory, they're spread too thin.

forrestm writes "At home, my internet connection is limited to 1GB / month before I have to pay extra. At my university, I'm charged around 2.5c per megabyte. I rarely download anything big, but I often go through a large amount of bandwidth by simply browsing around. For example, when I play a YouTube video, click a link, and then return to the video, the whole video reloads. When I read some websites, such as BoingBoing.net or Cnet.com, my status bar shows a whole lot of data being transferred through other domains. Some pages seem to send/receive data at certain intervals for the duration of my visit. When I begin to enter a search in Firefox's search bar, a list of suggestions is automatically downloaded. In addition to this, Firefox often requests internet access of its own accord, even though I have automatic updating turned off. All this is costing me! How do I stop unsolicited use of my internet connection? How do I go about not wasting bandwidth like this?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Clayton Cubitt tells Boing Boing,

Rachel Hulin (former photo editor at Nerve) is doing get-out-the-vote in battleground state Wisconsin, and documents this choice example of anti-Obama propaganda flyers being stuffed in mailboxes, in the guise of a letter directly from "Barack Hussein Obama II."

Wisconsin Day Two: Barack Hussein Obama II (rachelhulin.com)

Now that the recent announcement about Star Wars: The Old Republic has had time to sink in, specific details about the game are beginning to come to light. Massively, in particular, has a variety of interviews and in-depth looks at the classes, the combat, and the setting of the game. "When you play like a Jedi from 1 to max, and then decide to start as a Sith, you won't see any content that will be the same." They also discuss the leveling, questing and companion characters. "We want you to think of them as actual companions on your journeys throughout the game. Your actions are going to change how your companion characters develop." Eurogamer is running a preview of the game, and a wiki has sprung up to catalog all of the new information. Other tidbits: support for Star Wars Galaxies will continue, the new game will be PC only, and LucasArts is hoping to snipe some of the World of Warcraft customer base.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The GAO had warned that there would be some pretty massive e-voting problems this year, as election officials were not properly trained on the already problematic machines, so it should come as little surprise that over in West Virginia, the "early voting" procedures have resulted in numerous complaints that the e-voting machines selected the wrong candidate. The scenario is depressingly similar to the one that The Simpsons predicted, where the voter selects one name, and the other one shows up as highlighted. Poll workers told them to just keep clicking until the right one was chosen, and noted that the machines have "just been doing that."

What's more depressing is how everyone involved seems to brush this off as no big deal. Officials claimed that these "were isolated cases and that poll workers fixed the problems so the correct vote was cast." That may be true of the two people that CNN spoke too, but who knows if others got the machines to work properly. And then there's West Virginia's Secretary of State, Betty Ireland , who basically pulled a page from Sequoia's playbook, of covering her eyes and ears and screaming loudly that everything is fine:

"There are no problems with the machines as recalibrated. Touch-screen voting in West Virginia is accurate and secure."

Because you say so? As opposed to those who are actually voting and finding it's not? That's comforting.

In this case, the machines are supplied by ES&S whose machines (like both Sequoia and Diebold) have a relatively long history of screwing up at election time. ES&S is also the company where an employee of the company showed up here to berate us and insist that no independent experts should be allowed to look at the machines and that they were safe and reliable because those working at these firms knew better than the rest of us. It's as if the e-voting companies and the politicians think that if they just keep repeating it, maybe it will become true.

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Joshua Gill says: "Last year I went to a Korean Folk village in Suwon, South Korea. I took some video and put it on Youtube, this one is my favorite but you're welcome to browse around. "

Korean kids jumping really high on a teeter totter

Alex Pham of the LA Times wrote a piece about a typewriter repair shop in Los Angeles that's enjoying a small resurgence.

The simplicity of the typewriter is alluring to writers who may be overwhelmed (or underwhelmed) by increasingly elaborate technology. A typewriter is also appealing in its transparency -- whack a key, and watch the typebar smack a letter onto a piece of paper. Try figuring that out with a laser printer. Many people also find typewriters charming ambassadors of a bygone era. One recent customer asked Flores to fix her mother's college typewriter so she could type letters home when she went off to college.

All that helps to keep U.S. Office Machine humming at its inconspicuous corner of Figueroa Street and Avenue 58. Watch the video to see how three generations of the Flores family have helped keep the typewriting tradition alive.

Typewriter stays relevant in technology-saturated world

Brandon McClelland, 24, was dragged to death beneath a truck driven by two white men in Paris, Texas last month. McClelland was black. The site of his death is just 200 miles away from the location where James Byrd was murdered in a similar manner ten years ago.

McClelland's murder took place on September 16, 2008. First responders treated the case as a hit and run.

The incident was reported in the local newspaper, which later followed with this editorial. Some bloggers and news sites associated with the Nation of Islam have been discussing the killing as a presumed hate crime for weeks.* Howard Witt at the Chicago Tribune, who has covered related stories about racial injustice and hate crimes in this region, wrote about the case earlier this month.

The story of McClelland's death -- and the apparently botched investigation by (white) local police investigators -- seems to be gaining broader attention after having been picked up by AP today: Another Dragging Death In Texas (Associated Press).

Snip from a related story about racism in Paris, Texas, also from Witt at the Chicago Tribune:

The public fairgrounds in this small east Texas town look ordinary enough, like so many other well-worn county fair sites across the nation. Unless you know the history of the place. There are no plaques or markers to denote it, but several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged.

One of the most widely-publicized lynchings of a black person in American history took place there 115 years ago. On February 1, 1893, Henry Smith was tortured to death in front of a crowd of ten thousand (presumably, mostly or entirely white) people.

Here is the New York Times article from that date, documenting his death (his torturers "thrust hot irons into his eye sockets."). ANOTHER NEGRO BURNED; HENRY SMITH DIES AT THE STAKE. DRAWN THROUGH THE STREETS ON A CAR -- TORTURED FOR NEARLY AN HOUR WITH HOT IRONS AND THEN BURNED -- AWFUL VENGEANCE OF A PARIS (TEXAS) MOB (NYT)

Update: BB commenter JWB nails it:

This must be viewed in light of the Ashley Todd incident this week. Todd made up a false story that a black man attacked her and carved a "B" in her face, ostensibly because she supports John McCain. In Paris, Texas, a hundred years ago, a charge like that would get a black man burned alive. Today it doesn't go quite that far but you could see the shadow of the lynch mob forming in the darker corners of the right-wing blogosphere when the Todd story first circulated.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has an interactive map of racist organizations and businesses (think: White Pride record stores, KKK branches), here.

* Incidentally, SLPC also categorizes the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party as "hate groups."

Previously on Boing Boing: The Last Lynching: Ted Koppel documentary on Discovery tonight

From Austin Energy, here's a good overview of a variety of sustainable construction technologies. Much of this is Austin-centric, but the reading references and overviews are broadly applicable. For example, here's the start of the graywater systems page:

In Central Texas, any opportunity to reuse water should be taken because we are using up more water than we have. Not only is our water supply dwindling, but also pumping water from place to place requires extra energy. In Austin we typically use 35 percent of our water for landscape irrigation. If we used graywater for this purpose, it would conserve treated water and save energy.

Recent legislation has made it possible for home and business owners to collect and reuse graywater onsite for surface and subsurface irrigation needs.

Graywater is defined as the wastewater produced from baths and showers, and lavatory sinks. The wastewater generated by toilets, kitchen sinks, dishwashers, and diaper washing in clothes washers is called blackwater .

Anybody have links to other good overviews of sustainable technolgoy, location-centric or not?

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Wassup 2008: A brilliant parody short from 60frames. If this means nothing to you, go here, then here, then here. Update: apparently this is the original cast, reunited. Wow, cool. (via Clayton Cubitt, via @brianoberkirch)

Lauren sent in an amusing spoof put together by a website about handbags, looking at how the handbag industry would be different if it had the equivalent of the MPAA around. It's an amusing little satire, with things like demands that you not appear on YouTube with a handbag and getting threatened with lawsuits for sharing handbags. Then, of course there's Handbag Rights Management, which pisses off legitimate handbag buyers, but the industry insists is necessary to stop copying.

Of course, this might not be as far-fetched as it seems. Remember the 17th century French button makers? They tried to do something along these lines. And, the fashion industry (including handbag makers) have been pushing for new intellectual property restrictions, and claiming that if they don't get them, counterfeit fashion items will help terrorists (which is one of the points in the spoof post too!). It appears that truth may have beaten fiction to the punch line.

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Danny Hellman is a terrific illustrator who contributed a lot of work to bOING bOING, the print zine. He recently set me a copy of a comic anthology he edited and published called Typhon and I'm impressed by the quality of the large cast of contributors.

The stories in Typhon focus on some heavy themes, and aren't for the squeamish. On of my favorite stories is a near the front of this fat anthology, called "Hail Jeffrey" by Hans Rickheit. The seven-page comic is about a child dictator who takes pleasure in destroying the lives of everyone around him, and nobody dares stop him. In fact, they assist help him in his efforts to make others miserable. It's like an NC-17 version of The Twilight Zone's "It's a Good Life," only the Billy Mumy character gets all his power from the fear of everyone around him.

Of course, Hellman's contribution to the book is one of the best. Here's a sample page. (Click for full size). I have always loved his clean line work.

Typhon, Vol. 1

g8orade points out two recent articles in The Economist about the rise of cloud computing. The first discusses how software-as-a-service has come to pervade online interactions. "Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a technology visionary at IBM, compares cloud computing to the Cambrian explosion some 500m years ago when the rate of evolution speeded up, in part because the cell had been perfected and standardised, allowing evolution to build more complex organisms." The next article examines how the cloud will force a "trade-off between sovereignty and efficiency." Reader pjones contributes news that the Virtual Computer Lab will be supplementing more traditional computer labs at North Carolina State University, and adds, "NCSU's Virtual Computing Lab and IBM are offering the VCL code as a software 'appliance' for use in schools to link to the program. Downloads are available at ibiblio at UNC-Chapel Hill. The VCL also is partnering with Apache.org to make the software available and to allow further community participation in future development."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

About five or six years ago, I had landline phone service from MCI. In the age before VoIP was common, MCI had a service called "The Neighborhood" which was like many VoIP services today, but without the VoIP part. Unlimited calls for a single flat rate and such advanced (at the time!) features as emailing you your voicemails. It wasn't a bad deal, and I used it for a year or two, until I was getting ready to move. VoIP services had become popular, so I transferred that phone line to a VoIP account and canceled the MCI service in 2004. And that was that. Or so I thought. In 2006, Verizon bought what was left of a scandal-ridden MCI, and as far as I knew, the MCI brand had pretty much gone away.

Yet, in the last couple of weeks, I've received a barrage of robocalls from MCI, letting me know that my credit card is expiring, and I need to log into mci.com to update the card. The call notes that my bill is automatically charged to this credit card and if I want to "continue enjoying this convenience" I need to update soon. The call is correct in that the credit card I used back when I had MCI expired this month, but is it that hard for Verizon (or whoever it is) to recognize that the very phone number they're calling me on hasn't been connected to MCI service in four years and that the company has not, in fact, billed me during that time? And, honestly, why did they hang onto my credit card info for so long? And, finally, why call me three times a day with no way for me to tell them to knock if off? I thought perhaps this was a new form of phishing, but the call directs you to log into mci.com itself, so it sounds like it's legit. Either way, it raises plenty of questions about MCI (and now Verizon's) data handling practices.

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Take a visit to CRAFT and check out my tutorial on how to make quick and easy Star Wars Halloween costumes for dogs. Learn how to make a simple Ewok, Princess Leia or Darth Vader costume for the furry friend in your life.

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Bookride presents an enjoyable series of anecdotes about crabby booksellers.

One must not forget the Birmingham dealer, who on being asked for a discount for books would tear them in half in front of the customer. What particularly irked him was the phrase 'What can you do on this?' A red mist would descend and he would reply 'I'll show you what I can do on this...' and tore up the book. One imagines that this was selective, possibly only books under £20. Not a wise business stratagem but probably quite satisfying...

This bookdealer reminds me of my beloved friend Loretta. About 10 years ago she had a garage sale. Carla and I were there and we watched as some guy tried to talk her into selling an ashtray, priced at 25 cents, for a dime. Loretta wouldn't budge, and the guy kept pestering her. Finally Loretta whacked the ashtray on a table, breaking it in two. "I said no!" she told the guy. The expression on the guy's face is one of my fondest memories. Yet more Bastards with Bookshops