Our anonymous prankster pals in the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) will make a rare public appearance at UC Berkeley tomorrow for the Takeovers & Makeovers conference exploring "artistic appropriation, fair use, and copyright in the digital age." The BLF will take the stage at 2:15 for a presentation titled "Media Bandidtry in the Digital Age." The entire conference, which started today, looks fascinating. Takeovers & Makeovers conference (Berkeley Center for New Media), "He who steals my artwork steals... what, exactly?" (Berkeleyan)

Previously on BB:
• BBtv: Google and China's "Great Firewall": Fun with the BLF
• Billboard Liberation Front vs. ATT + NSA
• Billboard Liberation Front: video of AT&T hit<

Sweetshark writes "IBM and Sun joined at the 2008 OpenOffice.org conference in Beijing to announce the ODF Toolkit Union. The ODF Toolkit project will be independent of the development at OpenOffice.org, and will operate under the liberal Apache license. It goes from small tools that simplify using ODF in the software development process to large ODF Java and .NET libraries that can be used within other projects. 'The future of accessing and distributing software is here today,' said Michael Bemmer, senior director of Collaboration Engineering at Sun. 'It is no longer an acceptable business practice to have silos of office document data stored in proprietary formats. The industry has moved forward and is replacing the silos with business content, such as on-premise business applications, software solutions offered over the Internet and applications supported by mobile devices that are critical in Service Oriented Architectures.' Will this help ODF to make inroads in the business world after the successes on the desktops of users at home?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This massive salmon carcass was found last week near Anderson, California. It's 4 1/2 feet long and weighed around 85 pounds. Loren Coleman has more on giant salmon over at Cryptomundo.
Giant Salmon Photo

A stick had the honor of being inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. I love what the curator had to say about it.

"This toy is so fantastic that it's not just for humans anymore. You can find otters, chimps and dogs -- especially dogs -- playing with it."

(Anyone else having Ren and Stimpy flashbacks?)
via BB

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Unsung Geniuses: Florence Thomas of ViewMaster via DnR.

Most fans of the tiny fantasy worlds glimpsed through the lens of a View-Master viewer are probably unaware of the name Florence Thomas. Thomas was the Portland, Oregon sculptor employed by the makers of the 3-D viewer to create miniature dioramas of fairy tales and pop culture scenes which she then photographed for reproduction into the iconic circular white reels that have delighted children and adult collectors for decades.

Thomas produced her first reels for View-Master in 1946 --a series of Fairy Tales and Mother Goose rhymes that are still in circulation. According to one source, Thomas "developed special methods of close-up stereo photography and modeling which is now in common use by major motion picture studios" (John Waldsmith, Stereo Views, 1991). She created scenes of such detail and attractiveness that you feel you could step inside and look around a corner at a complete world

More:

• Images of View-Master Plant & Equipment.
• As Seen on TV - ViewMaster History DVD.

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These days, it's probably best to just assume that any private data you've ever provided to a company is public. Given the pace at which the data you've entrusted to companies is leaked, whether via malicious hackers or via company carelessness, it's almost as if the exception to the rule is a company that's actually been able to keep your data safe. So it's hardly surprising that Express Scripts, the massive medical benefits management company, has said that its records appear to have been compromised. Apparently, the company was sent a note, detailing the medical records of about 75 people, with an extortion threat telling the company to pay up or face the exposure of millions of patient records. The FBI is now investigating. Still, we're reminded once again that companies have very little incentive to really keep your records straight. It's almost reached the point where these stories are barely worth commenting on, since they're so common. There's something quite depressing when you realize that these sorts of data breaches are barely even newsworthy any more.

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SilverHalo's Digital thermostatic beer refreshment regulator - he writes...

This is my work in building an Arduino based digital thermostat for controlling my DIY kegerator.

The project is based around the Arduino and uses a LM35 sensor for temperature measurement, a solid state relay for turning on/off the refridgerator, and a serial LCD panel for displaying the temperature inside the fridge and a handy-dandy button to turn the back-light on for reading beer temperature in the dark! WoW!! .

I consider this v1.0 and plan to update this instructable as I add new and fun things that make beer drinking more pleasurable... as if that can really happen!

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Wanda's tangible remake of the familiar Photoshop desktop would likely make an awesome them for the popular app were it skinable - as real as it gets... [via Kottke]

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An anonymous reader writes "A startup named Mgestyk Technologies claims that they have an affordable solution for 'Minority Report'-like PC control. They have released a video in which they use hand gestures to play games like Halo and Guitar Hero, as well as perform 'multi-touch' interactions for applications like Google Earth. Engadget and Gizmodo discuss the potential of the technology but point out that the system has visible lag when used for gaming. Will camera-based interfaces ever meet the low-latency demands of gaming? For how much longer will we still be using keyboards, mice and joysticks?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Conservative blogger and lawyer Patterico makes the case for Obama's decency. He admits that all the evidence could be dismissed as tactics to win an election, but then so could anything anyone does be so dismissed. I went through the same process in deciding about Obama, saw the same evidence, while looking for the slightest crack -- never saw it. He's a tough politician, but he doesn't cut corners.

There are a lot of good people in the world, I know quite a few, but what's remarkable about Obama:

1. He's risen so high. When asked today what Presidents he's turned to for advice since winning the election, he offered, with a smile -- Lincoln. As the therapist in The West Wing observed to the fictional President Jed Bartlet, "This is a hell of a curve you get graded on now." But even that's not the most impressive thing.

Update: I had to find the scene. Here's the MP3. Great stuff. Season 3, Episode 13 at minute 37 approx.

2. There are a lot of good decent people in the world, but few of them get credit for it. Obama gets credit. Now, what kind of example will this provide, and how will it change things? Are we looking at an antidote to cynicism? It's clear to me that unless we can create a strain of idealism, we're not going to come through the challenges ahead.

In a piece I wrote earlier today, talking about volunteerism replacing professionalism in journalism, I don't think many people reading it believed that people will work to make our world better without being paid. This has always frustrated me, because the evidence is everywhere that people do. We just elected a President through millions of selfless acts on the part of millions, yet people still doubt that selflessness exists and is so powerful.

I don't know why but today has been a rough day for me. Haven't been this aimless in a long time. Something needs to be processed and I'm not sure what it is. Coming to grips with what's next is not easy, I guess.

Time for a walk!

PS: The Economist doesn't know the first thing about blogging.

PPS: StumbleUpon discovered MockCain.com today.

A scapular art dress created by artist Rachel Wright, available on Etsy for $900.

This piece is called “Scapular” because of the wing-like velvet shoulder blades that grace the back. The slip is a rayon slip probably from the 50’s that I dyed a scarlet red. I then used a variety of different fabrics for the appliqué: velvet, silk for the many petaled breast & kidney, a recycled sari for the flower-heart, recycled leather for the tentacles on the bottom, and moiré silk for the vertebrae.

Related: "The Visible Woman Stalks the Catwalk." (Via Trend de la Creme.)

A plain ol' stick was entered into the National Toy Hall of Fame yesterday. It joins the kite, Mr. Potato Head, Crayola crayons, the Atari 2600, LEGO, and several dozen other toy greats. Also added this year are the baby doll and the skateboard. From the Associated Press:

Curators said the stick was a special addition in the spirit of a 2005 inductee, the cardboard box. They praised its all-purpose, no-cost, recreational qualities, noting its ability to serve either as raw material or an appendage transformed in myriad ways by a child's creativity.

"It's very open-ended, all-natural, the perfect price -- there aren't any rules or instructions for its use," said Christopher Bensch, the museum's curator of collections. "It can be a Wild West horse, a medieval knight's sword, a boat on a stream or a slingshot with a rubber band. ... No snowman is complete without a couple of stick arms, and every campfire needs a stick for toasting marshmallows.

"This toy is so fantastic that it's not just for humans anymore. You can find otters, chimps and dogs -- especially dogs -- playing with it."

"Stick, skateboard, Baby Doll enter Toy Hall of Fame"

MaxwellEdison writes "Researchers, oddly enough from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, have found a way to make diamond films using tequila. They were originally testing methods of creating the films with organic solutions like acetone when it was noticed the ideal ratios of water and ethanol turned out to be about 80 proof, or 40% alcohol. '"To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," Apátiga said. "We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this year, Sprint followed Verizon in tacking on a 5GB cap on its EVDO wireless broadband offering for computers (for either datacard or phone-as-modem users). Because of that, I find Sprint EVDO a lot less useful, and am actively looking for alternatives. Unfortunately, for now there aren't many, though I hope that will change. Either way, I end up using Sprint a lot less, and would be a lot more open to competitors. One of the reasons I stuck with Sprint for so long was the unlimited nature of the EVDO. Even if I don't use up 5GB, not worrying about reaching a limit used to be a huge benefit. Now, when I use EVDO, I feel like I need to carefully track what's happening -- since Sprint might cut off my service if my usage is deemed abusive.

Now, to make matters even more ridiculous, it appears that Sprint has signed a deal "valued at $500 million" to stream live football games over EVDO to its mobile phones. (Half a billion sounds like a big deal, but it doesn't actually mean $500 million was paid out -- it's likely much of it involves trades of promotion and services.) Now, the tricky part is that the 5GB cap on EVDO does not count towards content viewed just on phones, so Sprint is sending a very mixed message. First Sprint says that there isn't enough bandwidth on its network to support really unlimited usage for PC users, but then it's also coming up with ways to increase the amount of bandwidth its customers are using on phones. Does that mean Sprint doesn't care about PC users on its network -- and datacard users will be further squeezed as Sprint prefers its phone customers to use up the wireless bandwidth? Shouldn't Sprint focus on improving its network so that the bandwidth limits for PC users doesn't get worse rather than buying into deals to increase the bandwidth burden?

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I'm happy to discover that one of my favorite art books, As I See by the late Boris Artzybasheff, is back in print, once again. Boris Artzybasheff was a prolific magazine and advertising illustrator in the first half of the 20th Century. His specialty was anthropomorphic machines, such as sneering torpedoes and smug internal combustion engines.

(See the many previous posts about Artzybasheff on Boing Boing here)

As I See

By way of Laughing Squid comes this awesome plastic army man costume.

Plastic Green Army Man Halloween Costume

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Sparkfun posted a helpful collection of circuit design tips for avoiding problems at the fabrication house. Very handy for reducing the stress and suspense involved with handing over your designs for production - Designing a Better PCB

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The New Yorker has an interesting article by John Seabrook about researchers who study the brains of psychopaths: "Suffering Souls."

The scanner was housed in a tractor-trailer parked behind the prison’s I.D. center. We followed a correctional officer through an internal courtyard to the rehab wing, which consisted of a large common area surrounded by two-man cells. The prisoners were standing at attention outside their cells, some holding mops and brooms. I entered a vacant cell and saw the occupant’s brain, a grainy black-and-white image on a piece of a paper, its edges curling, tacked up over the desk.

Then we walked through the common room and out a door at the other end, passing under a large poster with lines that read, “I am here because there is no refuge, finally, from myself.” The officer led us along a corridor of offices in which students from the University of New Mexico, where [cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Kent] Kiehl is on the faculty, conduct psychopathy interviews and also counsel participants in the drug-treatment program. Carla Harenski, one of Kiehl’s postdocs, was interviewing a beefy guy with a tattoo on his neck. Her office, like those of all the researchers in the lab, is equipped with a button she can press to call for help if an interview gets out of hand.

In order to distinguish psychopaths from non-psychopaths among the Western volunteers, Kiehl and his students use the revised version of the Psychopathy Checklist, or PCL-R, a twenty-item diagnostic instrument created by Robert Hare, a Canadian psychologist, based on his long experience in working with psychopaths in prisons. Kiehl was taught to use the checklist by Hare himself, under whom he earned his doctorate, at the University of British Columbia. Researchers interview an inmate for up to three hours, and compare the inmate’s statements against what is known of his record and his personal history. The interviewer “scores” the subject on each of the twenty items—parasitic life style, pathological lying, conning, proneness to boredom, shallow emotions, lack of empathy, poor impulse control, promiscuity, irresponsibility, record of juvenile delinquency, and criminal versatility, among other tendencies—with zero, one, or two, depending on how pronounced that trait is. Most researchers agree that anyone who scores thirty or higher on the PCL-R is considered to be a psychopath. Kiehl says, “Someone who scores a thirty-five, a thirty-six, they are just different. You say to yourself, ‘Aha, here you are. You are why I do this.’ ”

Harenski recently interviewed a Western inmate who scored a 38.9. “He had killed his girlfriend because he thought she was cheating on him,” she told me. “He was so charming about telling it that I found it hard not to fall into laughing along in surprise, even when he was describing awful things.” Harenski, who is thirty, did not experience the involuntary skin-crawling sensation that, according to a survey conducted by the psychologists Reid and M. J. Meloy, one in three mental-health and criminal-justice professionals report feeling on interviewing a psychopath; in their paper on the subject, Meloy and Meloy speculate that this reaction may be an ancient intraspecies predator-response system. “I was just excited,” Harenski continued. “I was saying to myself, ‘Wow. I found a real one.’ ”

"Suffering Souls." (Image credit: John Ritter.)

mikesd81 writes to tell us that four Google employees may be facing charges of defamation and failure to control personal data simply because they didn't remove a video of a boy with Down's Syndrome being harassed and eventually hit over the head with a box of tissue, from Google Video. The video was posted in September of 2006 and was removed by Google within a day of receiving the initial complaints, but apparently that isn't fast enough. "Google maintains charges against the employees are unwarranted, Pancini said. Europe's E-commerce Directive exempts service providers from prescreening content before it is publicly posted, he said. Also, the video was technically uploaded to a Google server in the U.S., not in Italy, Pancini said. 'It was a terrible video,' Pancini said, adding that Google is concerned about the case's impact on censorship on the Internet. The defendants include David C. Drummond, a Google senior vice president, corporate development and chief legal officer. Pancini said Drummond did paperwork to create Google Italy, but has never lived in the country."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fellow named Chad Kimball calls the Chicago police, the city clerk, and the legal department to find out if he can raise chickens in the city. No one really seems to know.

Does My City Allow Me to Raise Chickens? (Via Homegrown Evolution)

From Scott Beale's Laughing Squid blog: "Obama for America campaign photographer David Katz shot some wonderful behind the scenes photos of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and their families watching the election results come in from their hotel room in Chicago." Flickr set of behind the scenes photos of Obama watching election results

Coop says: "Our pal Aaron Grote built this crazy thing from the rusty haunches of a '59 Plymouth. (He's already got another one in the works!) Not only is the car cool, the auction text is pretty funny, too."

Motor is a 392 Hemi, it runs and drives great and starts easily since my pals at Harrell Mfg in Rockford, IL (who will soon be making the famous Harrell heads and intakes again) took it and got it tuned in for me. It has a tubo 400 Tranny built by Midtown transmission in Eau Claire, WI. Brand New Johns Industries Posi 9 inch with their Buick style drums that I had polished (not covers) hung with adjustable coil overs and polished stainless hair pins. The front end is a chrome drilled and dropped I beam from Pete and Jakes with Wilwood discs hidden inside Obrien truckers Buick drums and backing plates. If you need to know more read the Rod and Custom magazine article. It wouldn't matter what I say about the car anyway because some goof will most certainly e-mail me without reading it anyway. Almost every nut and bolt is either chromed or polished stainless. I spent a small fortune on this car so don't call me up and expect me to end the auction early for half what I spent on the car. I don't HAVE to sell it. I don't believe all of this talk about a recession. I am coming out of the biggest recession I have ever seen after building this thing!! I can assure you though, if it sells I promise to blow most of the money on more stupid car stuff! I have contemplated moving into a bigger trailer though, and maybe one with a bon-a-fide crawlspace and foundation under it. That would make me a bit hit with all of my friends come tornado season! I would also be interested in taking partial payment in the form of Pre-war Coupe or truck projects, value to be determined before the end of the auction. I like Zephyrs, 32's, 33's, 34's, and 36's I am also interested in vintage motor bikes. I don't mind selling overseas either, but the car is being sold as is, where is and I don't want to have to transport it. Check out my other auctions and improve your lousy wardrobe with a spiffy new T-shirt!

Awesome roth-style bubbletop custom hot rod for sale

Simple but fun, the Major Output pixel art site let's you create and post your own simple pixel graphic - plus browse through a big collection of other's work. My resistor and capacitor contrubutions can be seen in the mix above. - Major Output

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Download the MP4 Video or HD Version | Subscribe to CRAFT in iTunes | mov | 3g2

Here's a video tour of CRAFT Magazine issue 9. Check out the special Green Craft section with 21 projects with an eco-groove. Learn to fuse recycled plastic bags to make a tote bag and hat, make folded fabric gift wraps, and even learn the basics of hydroponic gardening! Make a secret stash box from vintage books and add LEDs to light up your embroidery. Even learn how to use Google's free 3D modeling software, Sketchup! View the complete table of contents.

Subscribe to CRAFT Magazine

Craftzine readers can now get $5 off a yearly subscription by entering the code MCRAFT. That's just $29.95 for 4 quarterly issues!

More:

CRAFT: 09 on Newsstands Today!

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We've written an awful lot about the rise of political blogging in Malaysia. The government there has had something of a love-hate affair with blogs for quite some time, starting with a plan to force blogs to register, to later telling various candidates for government they were requiring them to blog, to having a special agency set up to respond to bloggers. More recently, though, things have taken a very negative turn, as various opposition party bloggers were able to use their blog popularity to catapult themselves into office, the ruling party began cracking down, even sentencing leading bloggers to jail.

The good news on that front, however, is that a court has decided that the arrest was illegal and the blogger is to be freed. Though, you get the feeling that the government will continue to try to punish him.

In the meantime, one of the most interesting political bloggers in Malaysia may be the former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who apparently championed many of the free speech restrictions that allow the crackdowns. We had mentioned his embrace of blogging about a year and a half ago, and now the NY Times has written up a more detailed article, claiming that now that he's no longer in power, he's had quite a change of heart concerning restrictions on freedom of the press. Of course, much of it seems to come off as whining that people won't listen to him any more:

"Where is the press freedom? Broadcast what I have to say! What I say is not even accurately published in the press!"

While it is a good thing that he's realized how problematic free speech restrictions are, there is a bit of karmic justice in having him find himself stymied by rules that he championed and used to his own advantage when in power.

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On Dinosaurs and Robots, Mister Jalopy posts and comments on a whole bunch of his favorite videos from MTV's video archive.

Here's a small sample of Jalopy's picks:

MTV was the internet of the 1980s. It was the connection from our mundane suburban lives to the urbane sophisticated world that we imagined joining. Now everybody knows everything and every trend is overexposed to the point of lifelessness, but MTV played an important role as it gave us a window into subcultures that meant the world to us. True, D+R is about inspired objects, but we sometimes diverge to consider the exceptional whatever the form. The MTV offering is not as broad as YouTube, but the quality, searching and metadata quality make it worthwhile. The MTV embedding function is a bit of a stinker. If you embed, strip off all html after the ending embed tag.

Bauhaus - Ziggy Stardust

At the time, Bauhaus was skewered by the British press for doing a light cover of a classic Bowie song to rocket up the charts. Indeed, it was, and remained, their greatest commercial success, but I loved it then and I love it now. Peter Murphy brings a growling, sleazy sneer that is completely successful.



Digital Underground - Humpty Dance

He likes his oatmeal lumpy.



Massive Attack - Teardrop

Amazing work by Gondry. Transcendent song.

Many more videos and commentary here: Ladies and Gentleman, The MTV Music Video Archive

arcticstoat writes to mention that Toshiba's latest line of high-powered laptops has three GPUs included. Both the Qosmio X305-Q706 and Q708 come with an integrated GeForce 9400M for day-to-day processing tasks but have a pair of GeForce 9800Ms in SLI that kick in when you need the extra horsepower. "The [Qosmio] X305-Q706 costs $1,999 US (£1,257) in the US, although we haven't seen any UK pricing on the laptops yet. The system comes with a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo P8400 and 4GB of RAM, while the costlier X305-Q708 comes with a quad-core 2.53GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9300 CPU."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The Morning After," copyright Zina Saunders 2008, from The Party's Over, a "hilariously scathing visual chronicle of the McCain/Palin presidential campaign. (Via This Isn't Happiness.)

Jason writes on Hackszine:

The "$1 Recognizer" is a simple gesture recognition algorithm created by Andy Wilson from Microsoft Research and Jacob Wobbrock and Yang Li from the University of Washington.

By simple, I mean that it's under 100 lines of code that you can quickly add to your application to give it gesture recognition capabilities.

Gesture recognition for Javascript and Flash

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hedonisticaltruism writes "The CBC reports that Honda has just unveiled a new walking-assist device that enhances the walking motion rather than just providing transportation. The device braces and strengthens natural leg movements primarily in walking and crouching. They're looking to market this to rehabilitation cases, the handicapped and industries requiring repetitive crouching and walking movements such as factory work and delivery services."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool, nickjohnson writes:

I made a strange piece of modern furniture with concrete and LEDs. I built this by first constructing a mold out of MDF, and by embedding LEDs into the surface of the mold. The control/batteries are located behind a panel on the bottom, and all the wires are routed through the concrete.

Check out build photos in his flickr set.
More:

• How-to: Cast concrete planters using packing inserts
  
• Concrete Lamp
  

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Today on Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at a nifty little traffic loop sensor activator that lets bicyclists get their fair place on the road, and rounded up the best speakers in every class. An anti-static keychain prevents you from turning into a human tesla coil, while a Darth Vader toaster proves the divinity of Darth Vader. You may think you can shop at Circuit City's liquidated stores for a good deal on HDTVs: you can't. But you can soothe a tattered soul with a beautiful ocarina solo on your iPhone. We looked at motorcycles made of watch parts and what PhotoShop's interface would look like in the real world. Ericsson has insanely lofty plans for mobile phones, an electric bullet train will carry 100 million Californian passengers a year by 2030, a buttonless Xbox 360 controller improves your FPS gaming, and Windows 7 comes in 2009; And Nintendo's new DSi handheld? Comes with a virtual budgie. Link

Serve Your Country Food is a fascinating project to illuminate the growing movement of young farmers in the United States The creators encourage the use of data visualizations and maps (soil maps, agricultural areas, superfund sites, etc.) to find opportunities and identify challenges. The overall aim is to encourage "thousands of new growers of fruits, nuts, vegetables, grains, dairy, and livestock to transform the landscape of sprawling development and corporate control into a dignified, livable, and culturally rich mosaic of ecological farming." It makes me want to start a vegetable garden. Seriously. From Serve Your Country Food:

The young farmers now emerging onto the land seek to reclaim, restore, and resettle the deserted rural towns of America. We are similarly poised to revive the fabric of urban life with markets, gardens, bees, corn patches and waterways. Motivated by a force of intention that cannot be rationalized economically, with lives driven by an instinct for direct action and stewardship that honors the planet, people, and place, we are the allies of every American. Our instincts are emboldened by the mercury shatter of dew on the broccoli plants at dawn, by the roar of pollinators in a flowering crop of buckwheat, and by the river of neighbors streaming through the farm-gate clamoring for “real” tomatoes and happy chickens. The hands of young farmers on the land seek to push forward an agenda of sustainability on a human scale.

Serve Your Country Food (Thanks, Mike Liebhold!)

Google has become a big target for patent lawsuits over the years, as does just about any successful company. Most of the lawsuits seem like more of an attempt to shakedown a successful company, rather than any legitimate complaint, and the latest is no exception. Valleywag points us to the news that a Russian company named Era Vodoleya claims that it invented and patented "contextual advertising" and that Google owes the company $3 billion. It may be a translation issue, but the article falsely claims that Google implemented its contextual ad program in 1999, when it actually came about much later. Also, what's odd, is that no actual lawsuit has been filed. Instead, the company is going public with threats to file a lawsuit and asking Google to settle up. It says it will wait until Spring to file the actual lawsuit.

The concept of contextual advertising was hardly a new idea. In fact, from the early days of web advertising, it was always a target. Plenty of other companies tried to do it, but what made Google so successful was that it actually implemented the process in a way that worked. It was about putting it into practice, not the grand scheme that ended up in a patent somewhere. This seems like nothing more than a company trying to shakedown Google.

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The Mcor Technologies 3D printer makes objects from regular paper... via Giz

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Journalist Radley Balko makes fun of the Office of National Drug Control Policy's new anti-pot disinformation campaign, which "suggest that drug users can look forward to a career as a 'burrito taster,' a 'couch security guard,' or 'remote control operator.'

Balko calls it "an incredibly lame campaign, [which] reeks of stodgy wonks making a desperate attempt to look hip."

Here’s my challenge to Agitator readers, bloggers, and others: In this comments thread, let’s compile a master list of admitted pot smokers—current or former—who not only haven’t ended up as heroin junkies or burnouts, but have gone on to lead successful lives. If the person is famous, include a link. But feel free to add yourselves and what you do now, too, if you fit the criteria. School teacher? Cop? Stay at home mom? Grad student? Count yourself in. You can leave out your name if you like. Or include it. Either way.

I’ll get it started:

Barack Obama, president-elect. Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the U.S. John Kerry, U.S. Senator and 2004 Democratic nominee for president. John Edwards, multi-millionaire, former U.S. Senator, and 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president. Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, 2008 Republican nominee for vice president. British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, and and Chancellor Alistair Darling. Josh Howard, NBA all-star. New York Governor David Paterson. Former Vice President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Oscar winner Al Gore. Former Sen. Bill Bradley, who smoked while playing professional basketball. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and former New York Governor George Pataki. Billionaire and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Help Radley add to the list of successful potheads: Successful Pot Smokers: Let’s Make a List

bakamaki writes "I work for a small manufacturing company as a SysAdmin. My boss is a DBA. We are the only IT employees. He recently decided to record hours spent on his projects and then evaluate how much time the databases he writes save the employees. Then he translates that into a $ figure. He's asking me to do something similar but I'm kinda at a loss. It seems most of the stuff I do is preventative, IE care and feeding of servers and network infrastructure in addition to all the break fix stuff I do for the user base with their desktops. When in this position what do you folks usually do?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ewenc writes "A psychology study of hundreds of people waiting for front-row access to U2 concerts points to the best ways to cut in line and not get caught. "Super-fans" are most irked by queue-jumpers. People were equally peeved whether someone cut in front or behind, and cutters who jumped beside a friend were less likely to attract scorn."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael J. Ross writes "As Internet users' expectations continue to ratchet upwards, it is increasingly essential that every Web site owner maximize the chances that those users will find the site in question, and, once found, that the site will perform well enough that those visitors become customers or members, and recommend the site to others. Key elements of a successful strategy include optimization for search engines, pay-per-click advertising, and visitor conversion, as well as responsive Web pages and fine-tuning of all the above, using various metrics. These topics and others are explored in Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets by Andrew B. King." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Italian duo Eva & Franco Mattes 0100101110101101.org had a show up in June at Dutch gallery Mu called It's always six o'clock . It features toys and characters taking over other toys and characters, including the piece above with Winnie the Pooh. More pictures, via Buzzfeed.

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Not sure how this could be used practically outside of the lab and human response research, but it definitely looks like a relatively cheap and easy way to gather GSR data in a non-intrusive way.

Galvanic skin response computer mouse

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Usually persistence is an admirable quality. There comes a time however when you reach that fine line between endeavoring to persevere, and drunk dialing your ex-girlfriend. The mail this week is from people who don't know when to say when. You have to admire their determination and feel a little bit bad that they don't have anything else to do. Read below to see how many times someone can click send in a day.

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You may recall that the Copyright Alliance is a group that is basically the personal vehicle of Patrick Ross, a copyright maximalist, who has been known to twist copyright law to ridiculous extremes on a regular basis. He's the guy who has claimed that fair use harms innovation, that government-backed monopolies in copyright represent a free market and any attempt to actually free up the market and remove government backed monopolies would be unnecessary regulation that would result in market failure. Ross also sent all of the presidential candidates one of the most ridiculous surveys ever on their views on copyright, that was written in an extremely leading "and when did you stop beating your wife" style.

With such extreme and twisted views, it's no surprise that Ross has lined up a bunch of big entertainment companies to back him as he goes around trying to convince politicians that day is night and up is down when it comes to copyright -- but now he's moved on to trying to convince the Supreme Court as well. As you may recall, back in August there was an extremely important Appeals Court ruling that noted that Cablevision's remote DVR setup did not infringe on copyrights. The ruling pointed out the rather obvious troubles that would occur if we interpreted copyright laws the way copyright holders wanted to. It's clear that DVRs, like TiVo, are perfectly legal in the home. Time shifting shows has been found, quite clearly, to be legal. Cablevision's remote DVR is effectively the same exact thing. The only difference is that the DVR is stored at Cablevision data center, rather than at someone's home. The ruling, quite clearly, demonstrated how twisted copyright law has become, as it is patched up each time some new technology comes along.

The importance of this ruling cannot be understated, however, as it will enable many important online services that will be tremendously useful. Needless to say, copyright maximalists in the entertainment industry don't like that. They prefer the way things used to be, and want the law to force the market never to change. So, before the Supreme Court has even decided whether or not to hear the appeal on the case, Ross's Copyright Alliance has already begged the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling -- the first time the Alliance has become involved in any lawsuit. The amicus brief itself, basically uses Ross's typical logic: copyright is good, therefore, making companies pay multiple times for different types of licenses to use content in more ways must be even better!

Hopefully, the court recognizes the logical fallacies in the filing. Preventing this service will not help anyone. The entertainment industry that Ross claims to represent thinks that this will get companies like Cablevision to pay them yet again for content it already licensed. But, the reality is that they'll just move on. People will instead keep buying TiVos or home DVRs, and the potential for truly new and unique services that make the entertainment company's content even more valuable will be greatly diminished. Ross and the content companies falsely believe that the old model is the best, and that content should be paid for again and again, every time it's accessed. Basic economics tells you that this is wrong, and that protectionist policies -- such as what Ross champions -- only shrinks markets and hurts just about everyone.

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Stephen Worth says:

Today, we posted more amazing "Cappiana" from the collection of cartoonist, Mike Fontanelli at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, including...

• Al Capp's infamous "Jack Jawbreaker" story -- a devastating satire of the notorious exploitation of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster by DC Comics.

• More than a dozen rare Wildroot Cream-Oil strips, as well as original artwork and Nat King Cole's version of the jingle.

• Two complete Fearless Fosdick stories, including Capp's over-the-top masterpiece of surreal violence, "The Case of the Chippendale Chair (or Kiss The Blood Off My Springs)"

Capp's sense of humor was decades ahead of its time, predating the sort of sick humor that is so popular in comics and cartoons today. It's amazing what he got away with in "family newspapers" during the 50s!

CAPPtivating Heroes: Jack Jawbreaker and Fearless Fosdick Fight Crime

Next Sunday, any Austin analog synthesizer addicts have an event they should check out:

Looks like fun for the rest of us, too:)

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If you built a kit in the Maker Shed at Maker Faire Austin, you might have gotten some help from Jimmie Rodgers, the creator of one of the newest additions to the Maker Shed Store, the Open Heart Kit. It's an array of LEDs that you hook up to an Arduino, and can be programmed to display an animation sequence.

The Open Heart is an LED matrix of individually addressable LEDs. It can be used to create a brooch or bag light with highly customizable animations. It can be configured so that you can temporarily attach it to fabrics with headers that you simply push through, or you can configure it to be sewn into a project using conductive fabric for a more permanent setup. You'll need an Arduino to complete this project as well as a soldering iron and basic hand tools.

You don't even have to learn Arduino programming to use it, because Jimmie has created a web application where you can sketch out the animation frames. This application generates the Arduino source code, which you can upload to your Arduino.

It's not only a beautiful wearable piece, but it's a great introduction to multiplexing digital outputs. Jimmie's kit uses a technique called Charlieplexing, in which you can drive multiple LEDs using only a few digital outputs. Jimmie's kit uses six digital pins on the Arduino to drive 27 LEDs.

Jimmie's original Open Heart project is featured in the Best of Instructables, and is also available at the Instructables web site. Jimmie is also involved with the Willoughby and Baltic Hackerspace, and he can often be found at Willoughby and Baltic's First Friday open hacking sessions:

Held on the First Friday of every month, the Open Hack is an opportunity for the public-at-large to use the Hackerspace, and hack with Willoughby and Baltic members. Come on over and bring your gear from 7-whenever.

Age 18+. For more information, visit www.willoughbybaltic.com

Accessible via the Red Line Davis Square Stop.

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mallumax writes "Obama has launched Change.gov. According to the site 'Change.gov provides resources to better understand the transition process and the decisions being made as part of it. It also offers an opportunity to be heard about the challenges our country faces and your ideas for tackling them. The Obama Administration will reflect an essential lesson from the success of the Obama campaign: that people united around a common purpose can achieve great things.' The site is extensive and contains Obama's agenda for economy and education among many others.They first define the problem and then lay out the plan. Everything is in simple english without a trace of washington speak. The site also has details about the transition. According to many sources Obama's transition efforts started months ago. The copyright for the content is held by 'Obama-Biden Transition Project, a 501c(4) organization'."

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Behold Andy Martin's stop motion video for Paul Steel's "Honkin' (On My Crack Pipe)." Now, I will never be able to get this song out of my head. (See also: Tony Oursler.) Note: This video contains bad words. (Via Videos.antville.org.)

Against Monopoly points us to a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a trademark lawsuit that is worth the read, not just for the absurdity of the case, but also for the court's reasoning. The lawsuit involves a strip club in Los Angeles, called The Play Pen, that apparently got pissed off over a strip club found in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. As players of recent GTA's well know, the designers of the game try to make the cities in the game look somewhat realistic (in an extreme manner) compared to the real cities they're supposed to be portraying. They usually change up names just slightly to highlight that it's fictional. Thus, Los Angeles becomes Los Santos and The Play Pen becomes The Pig Pen.

It's already surprising enough that the strip club owners would be upset by this. After all, I would think that being known as the strip club found in GTA might actually drive more business to the club. However, the court reasonably found no trademark infringement and no "unfair competition" as the strip club owners' charged. Beyond the fact that the strip club in the game looks pretty different from the one in real life, the court found the likelihood of confusion to be quite limited:

The San Andreas Game is not complementary to the Play Pen; video games and strip clubs do not go together like a horse and carriage or, perish the thought, love and marriage. Nothing indicates that the buying public would reasonably have believed that ESS produced the video game or, for that matter, that Rockstar operated a strip club. A player can enter the virtual strip club in Los Santos, but ESS has provided no evidence that the setting is anything but generic. It also seems far-fetched that someone playing San Andreas would think ESS had provided whatever expertise, support, or unique strip-club knowledge it possesses to the production of the game. After all, the Game does not revolve around running or patronizing a strip club. Whatever one can do at the Pig Pen seems quite incidental to the overall story of the Game. A reasonable consumer would not think a company that owns one strip club in East Los Angeles, which is not well known to the public at large, also produces a technologically sophisticated video game like San Andreas.

Undeterred, ESS also argues that, because players are free to ignore the storyline and spend as much time as they want at the Pig Pen, the Pig Pen can be considered a significant part of the Game, leading to confusion. But fans can spend all nine innings of a baseball game at the hot dog stand; that hardly makes Dodger Stadium a butcher's shop. In other words, the chance to attend a virtual strip club is unambiguously not the main selling point of the Game.

That butcher shop line is a classic. If you want to read the entire lawsuit, you can see it here:

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Espresso geeks are always trying to measure and adjust the pressure and temperature of our machines to make better shots. Like the gearhead distinction between theoretical engine horsepower and actual power to the wheels of a car, we don't always trust the boiler manometer, and want to know what the pressure is right at the portafilter (where the coffee grounds are). This home-made solution should to do the trick for around $25 in parts.
CoffeeSnobs - Home-made Portafilter (PF) Gauge for under $25

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SkiifGeek writes "A year ago Didier Stevens discovered that padding IE malware with 0x00 bytes would happily slip past most of the scanners in use at VirusTotal.com. Revisiting his earlier discovery, Didier found that detection on his initial samples had improved, but not by much. For all the talk of AV companies moving away from signature based detection to heuristics, it is painfully obvious that not many of the tested engines can successfully handle such a simple and well known obfuscation method and the best of those that can detect the obfuscation can only detect it as a generic malware type. At least the scanning engines that can detect the presence of malware with the obfuscation aren't trying to claim each differential as a new variant."

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Snip from a Salon opinion piece by Michael Lind, which argues that Obama's victory marks "the beginning of a new era in American history," and that such eras are sparked by technological change.

[W]hat causes these cycles of reform and backlash in American politics? I believe they are linked indirectly to stages of technological and economic development. Lincoln's Second American Republic marked a transition from an agrarian economy to one based on the technologies of the first industrial revolution -- coal-fired steam engines and railroads. Roosevelt's Third American Republic was built with the tools of the second industrial revolution -- electricity and internal combustion engines. It remains to be seen what energy sources -- nuclear? Solar? Clean coal? -- and what technologies -- nanotechnology? Photonics? Biotech-- will be the basis of the next American economy. (Note: I'm talking about the material, real-world manufacturing and utility economy, not the illusory "information economy" beloved of globalization enthusiasts in the 1990s, who pretended that deindustrialization by outsourcing was a higher state of industrialism.)

Naturally, the Americans alive during the founding of new American republics have other issues on their minds. The Civil War was fought over slavery, not steam engines, and the New Deal, for all of FDR's commitment to nationwide electrical power fed by hydroelectric dam projects, was animated by a vision of social justice. The broad outlines of technological and economic change merely provide the frame for the picture; the details depend on the groups that emerge victorious in political battles.

That is why it is too early to predict the outline of the Fourth American Republic. Its shape depends on the outcomes of the debates and struggles of the next generation. But it is possible to speculate about its life span. If the pattern of history holds, the Fourth Republic of the United States will last for roughly 72 years, from 2004 (or, if you like, 2008) to 2076. And if the pattern of the past holds, we will see a period of Hamiltonian centralization and reform between now and 2040, followed by an approximately 36-year long Jeffersonian backlash motivated by ideals of libertarianism and decentralization.

Obama and the dawn of the Fourth Republic (Salon)

If you recall, Tom Brokaw signed on to moderate MTP through the election. I thought he did mostly a good job, an improvement over the previous management. A couple of times I thought he crossed the line into advocacy, but on the whole, well done.

Now the big question -- who's next?

People I hope it's not: Andrea Mitchell (boring, petty, insidery, bird-like). David Gregory (just boring).

Someone I could live with: Chuck Todd, would bring excellent guests on the show, he has everyone's respect. But he's a numbers guy and numbers aren't the game now that the election is over. You need someone who's better at political nuance. He's better as a sidekick than the main act.

Someone else I could live with: Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe, starting to step out on her own, subbing for Gregory (whose show has a new name indicating he's probably not the choice for MTP). She is intelligent, experienced, and has been in the background too much for all the talent she has.

Now the person I really want who they'll never pick: Aaron Brown. I can't say enough about his interviewing style, intelligent, humorous, disarming, he's the kind of guy you'd like to spill the beans to and then realize you just screwed yourself. My benchmark for this job is who would Lindsay Graham have a hard time bullshitting. Only one answer there -- Aaron Brown.

Like I said, it'll never happen. :-(

An anonymous reader notes an Inquirer story reporting on something of a breakthrough in virtual machine management — a demonstration (not yet a product) of migrating a running virtual machine across CPUs from different vendors (video here). "RedHat and AMD have just done the so called impossible, and demonstrated VM live migration across CPU architectures. Not only that, they have demonstrated it across CPU vendors, potentially commoditizing server processors. This is quite a feat. Only a few months ago during VMworld, Intel and VMware claimed that this was impossible. Judging by an initial response, VMware is quite irked by this KVM accomplishment and they are pointing to stability concerns. This sound like scaremongering to me... All the interesting controversy aside, cross vendor migration is [obviously] a good thing for customers because it avoids platform lock-in."

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Jamie @ F.A.T writes...

A visualization of people who’ve contributed to the Barack Obama page on Wikipedia. Users who edit a lot drift toward the center. Best watched full screen. Visualized using code_swarm (Processing) and my new Wikipedia page history parser Wikiswarm (Ruby). Instructions on how to make your own visualizations can be found in the README.

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Rakesh Reddy gives an old toy a modern twist - it records your works of art...

One of the frustrations of the Etch A Sketch is its temporary nature. You put in all that time learning to draw and your little brother (or spouse) bumps you and it's all gone — your great art is lost forever. Rakesh Reddy has a gadget-based solution — the Remember-It-All Etch A Sketch. Reddy's gadget captures that otherwise ephemeral art and provides the ability to re-create it over and over. When the unit is in record mode, sensors in the bottom of the Etch A Sketch monitor the motion of the knobs and save the resulting motion sequences that can be repeated.

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Voltage, current, and resistance by Joe Grand. Voltage, current, and resistance are three staple quantities you'll encounter with anything that has electrons running through it. Here's how they all tie together. Page 164 - MAKE 10. Read this article now in the MAKE digital edition.

Or get MAKE 10 from the Maker store and/or subscribe to MAKE (use code CMAKE for $5 off USD).

You can view all our in depth Primers from MAKE here too.

Solar Power System Design - A Primer @ MAKE
Solering and Desoldering - A Primer @ MAKE
HOW TO - Make printed circuit boards - A Primer @ MAKE
Welding - A Primer @ MAKE
Microcontroller Programming - A Primer @ MAKE
Sensor interfaces - A Primer @ MAKE
MIDI control - A Primer @ MAKE
Moldmaking by MythBuster Adam Savage - A Primer @ MAKE
Working with carbon fiber - A Primer @ MAKE

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What didn't change in the 2008 election is the way news flowed. This is a big disappointment to me and something that causes great concern. I see the newspapers dying, and the broacast media failing to do news, and I want to evolve to the next thing, but it doesn't seem that's the way it'll go. Instead we're likely to see a sudden collapse, and a void, much like the financial collapse in September. This would be tragic, unneccesary, a very bad for us.

The next thing, btw, involves the same spirit of volunteerism that drove the Obama campaign. It should be possible for a citizen like you or me to take a one month leave of absence, just like doing jury duty, and go to a news story and camp out and cover it. It's not so hard to do. If a citizen can be trained to render a life and death decision (sometimes) fairly and carefully, we can also learn to get "Just the facts ma'am" and report the news alongside the pros. In case the pros should either disappear or fail to be professional.

In order to do this we're going to need the cooperation of the people who the press covers, for example, a new administration taking office. But unless they get this big idea real soon, it can't happen.

People are thinking too small, imho. Bloggers in the White House briefing room? Of course. But if the same gatekeeping applies, you're just going to have people who get through the gates. There's really no difference betw a columnist that works for the Washington Post and one who writes for Talking Point Memo. Yet some how we should feel that we're being better represented by the latter? I don't. They're still gatekeepers, and people like you and me are on the outside looking in, getting the news they want to give us, through their lens, from their perspective, and missing a lot of what's going on and what matters. The only way to turn the system upside down is to just do it, and have a system whereby fresh blood comes in, systematically.

It's been flattering when people have said I should be the country's CTO. First of all, it isn't going to happen, and second, I'm not a good candidate. Most of the technology you'd need to be a good CTO is stuff I just use, and am not an expert at. (That said, one of the first things our new CTO should do is uncover and expose the games Comcast and other big Internet vendors are playing with public access to the net. We paid for the development of the net through tax dollars, they can use it, like everyone else but it's not their place to throttle or control it.)

The job I really want is designing and implementing an open platform for news for our government, and of course that would quickly become the way of doing news in all walks of life. We need something fast here, even the strongest news organizations are seriously undermined and could disappear within months. Just having a blogger inside the new administration is not nearly enough.

Anyway, I'm thinking that a flash conference in NY, DC or Cambridge, like the one we did after the 2004 election at Stanford, might be a good idea. Last night I asked Jay Rosen at NYU what he thought of this, and he was positive. We might do it. I'm thinking about new non-BloggerCon formats, that get people talking about specific ideas as opposed to having wide-ranging discussions. I think we've now learned enough about blogging and public media to work on the next level of change.

Earlier this year, we were somewhat stunned that prosecutors in Italy would be charging four Google execs with criminal charges, because some kids had posted a video of themselves taunting a boy with Down Syndrome on Google's Italian video hosting site. The execs in question obviously had absolutely nothing to do with the video. The kids who filmed and uploaded the video have been charged separately, and it makes absolutely no sense to then charge executives at the company that provided the tool. Why is Italy not also charging the executives of the company who made the mobile phone that was used to film the video? Or the executives of the ISP that was used to upload the video? Or the administrators of the school where the video was filmed? Any of those would make just as much sense as suing Google execs.

We had hoped that, perhaps, an inkling of common sense would come into the proceedings, but instead, it appears that the Italian prosecutor is moving forward and demanding the execs appear in court for a trial starting early next year. If this moves forward, it sets a horrible precedent, effectively allowing prosecutors to blame just about anyone who is tangentially connected to a crime. It's a travesty of justice, and the Italian justice system should be ashamed that it's even gotten this far.

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What a rush the last few days have been.

Geez, never mind the last few days -- it's been going on since January, since the Iowa Caucus. A continuing stream of "Wait For This" spans of time. First it was New Hampshire, then Super Tuesday, then Texas and Ohio. Then a month of downtime, followed by Pennsylvania and the early May primaries (can't remember what states they were) finally Indiana and North Carolina, and Tim Russert proclaiming we now know who the Democratic nominee will be. Whew.

I think at that time we really knew who the next President would be, but who cares. There were ways to pretend at least that the stuff between then and now mattered.

Now it's all over and I know what has to come next. No matter what the expectation, built up over so much time, can't be matched by reality. Like many others, I imagine, it's time now to look elsewhere for meaning. We will have an African-American president, a Democrat, a smart man with big ambition. It'll be interesting to watch him, but not all-consuming as it was.

What comes next? I honestly don't know.

An anonymous reader writes "I am a biomedical researcher interested in having general-purpose, scientific programs developed and released as open source. Interface design and reusability of the code are of primary importance to me. For my purpose, Cocoa applications relying on Core Data seem to be the best way to get the job done quickly. While I have some programming experience, I have few connections to the industrial world. So my question to Slashdot readers is: how do I find someone (individual or business) to write high-quality programs? Are there reputable contractors experienced in Cocoa? What sort of rates should I expect, to use as a starting point in negotiations? Would a requirement that programs are released as open source make it more or less difficult to find someone to do the job?"

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Jenny @ Craft posted about these a while back - I think these plush particles would make great teaching tools.

WEIGHT: Particle weights vary according to their properties. The Higgs boson, top quark and W boson, for example, are the heaviest-they're stuffed with polished gravel. The massless bosons are the lightest--they are stuffed with polyfill. The muon, a middleweight (very loosely speaking), is stuffed with poly beads. I tried to make the tachyon completely massless but I'm still waiting for him to return from the past (future?) to find out if it worked.

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There was some great music of all kinds this year at Maker Faire in Austin, Texas. Take a look at some of the highlights and make plans to attend the next Maker Faire.
To download Maker Faire Austin 2008 - Music MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

More Weekend Projects are on the way.

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Khemisty writes "Back in grade school you were probably taught the importance of warm-up exercises, and it's likely you've continued with pretty much the same routine ever since. Science, however, has moved on. Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes' warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but are actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. In a recent study conducted at the University of Nevada, athletes generated less force from their leg muscles after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all. Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 percent. Also, stretching one leg's muscles can reduce strength in the other leg as well, probably because the central nervous system rebels against the movements."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A still from a new high-tech production of Berlioz's "Damnation de Faust," premiering this weekend at the Met. An "interactive opera," the production synthesizes performers and sets through technology: flocks of digital birds fly in sync with an aria, video grass parts its blades for oncoming soldiers, high-def water reflects a passing boat, a JumboTron mirrors a singer's love song in flames.

To bolster his argument that the technology is appropriate, [director Robert] Lepage cites Berlioz’s epoch, a time of technological innovations like photography and electricity. “All these ideas were around,” he said. “They believed these things were modern alchemy.”

"Techno-Alchemy at the Opera," audio slideshow. (Photo credit: Sara Krulwich.)

Well, it seems bound to happen in just about any profession that has been impacted by the internet in some way. Eventually, the "older generation" is going to whine and complain about "the way things used to be." Apparently that's even true of stand up comedians. A bunch of stand up comedians are apparently worried about the internet's impact on young up-and-coming stand-ups, because (I kid you not), they're worried that the internet lets young standups have too big an audience. The reasoning is basically that it's better for young comics to fail in front of small audiences, learn their lesson and get better. Of course, what none of the complaining comics explain is why those "bad" young comics will have that big an audience in the first place if they're so bad. No one's going to watch them.

These same comics seem to ignore the flip side of the coin -- which is that a good young comedian can actually use the internet to amplify his or her comedic talents in order to get noticed and move on to bigger and better things. A great example of this would be Andy Samberg, who basically made a name for himself online, before being snapped up by Saturday Night Live. It certainly doesn't seem like there's any lack of young comedic talent these days compared to in the past, and it seems like the internet often creates a much better feedback loop for those young comics. But, of course, since it's "not the way we did it"(TM) it must be bad.

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Inspired by Huxley's Brave New World, Jeremy created the Somaphone instrument using the Arduino Pocket Piano kit and some veneered wood salvaged from old furniture -

This device uses the Arduino controller and the Pocket Piano Synthesizer keyboard add on from Critters and Guitari that I picked up at Maker Faire in SF earlier this year. I havent got the first clue about electronics and I am sure many of you don't have either, so what I did here is put together a collection of readily available household devices to make a single independant (and electrically safe) musical instrument and furntiture piece.

- He refers to the apparent visual style as "decopunk", referencing the art deco movement of the 1920's. - Construct a Decopunk Somaphone

Arduino Pocket Piano Synth Kit

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?This interesting project, entitled "60 Seconds" chains up 60 old school digital wristwatches that are all off from each other by one second to create a simple time sculpture installation.

via VVORKIgnacio Uriarte

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Count Fenring writes "Since the Vi version of this question was both interesting and popular, let's hear from the other end of the spectrum. What are your favorite tricks, macros, extensions, and techniques for any of the various Emacs? Myself, I like 'M-x dunnet' ;-)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung Techwin, the Korean manufacturer, plans to separate out its camera division into an individual entity (under the same ownership), according to news agency Reuters. Samsung Techwin is part of the Samsung Group's machinery and heavy industry division and makes mobile artillery and gas turbines, as well as digital cameras. Tentatively named Samsung Digital Imaging, the new company will have a separate listing from Feb. 1, 2009, allowing its management to concentrate on the fast-moving consumer market into which its products are sold, without also having to also consider sales of aircraft engines.

Glenn Fleishman writes "The reports earlier today on WPA's TKIP key type being cracked were incorrect. I spoke at length with Erik Tews, the joint author of the paper that discloses a checksum weakness in TKIP that allows individual short packets to be decrypted without revealing the TKIP key. I wrote this up for Ars Technica with quite a bit of background on WEP and WPA. Tews's paper, co-written with Martin Beck, whom he credits as discovering and implementing a working crack (in aircrack-ng as a module), describes a way to use a backwards-compatible part of TKIP to exploit a weakness that remains from WEP. ARP packets and similarly short packets can be decoded. Longer packets are likely still safe, and TKIP hasn't been cracked. Don't believe the hype, but the exploit is still notable."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This bench project by Dutch artist Rogier Martens includes a detailed instruction set for how to build this easy to move outdoor furniture. Check it out at the link below and see how long it takes you to build.

Mobiele-Bank via Neatorama

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There's a bunch of great user mods out there for the SX-150 - great idea fuel for those looking to customize their kit.

SX-150 Analog Synthesizer Kit

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?Rhizome has a nice interview / article with Make-friend Mark Allen, founder of Machine Project, an experimental art / exhibition / workshop space in the Echo Park nieghborhood of Los Angeles. Machine has hosted many DIY workshops including building circuits, cooking workshops, sewing, primitive synth construction workshops and many more.

Machine Project, Inside Machine Project: ?An Interview with Mark Allen

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narramissic writes "Starting on Monday, researchers from Nokia and UC Berkeley will kick off the Mobile Millennium project. The researchers hope that thousands of volunteers will download a free Java program that figures out by their movement and location when they are driving, and then transmits that information to the project's servers, which then crunch it into a Bay Area traffic map. 'The whole concept here is that if everyone shares just a little bit of what they're seeing ... then everyone can benefit by seeing the conditions ahead of them,' said Quinn Jacobson, a research leader with Nokia in Palo Alto."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Happy birthday Marie Curie...

Marie Sk?odowska–Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) was a physicist and chemist. She was a pioneer in the field of radioactivity, the only person honored with Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and the first female professor at the University of Paris.

Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity (a term coined by her and Pierre), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, radium and polonium. It was also under her personal direction that the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms ("cancers"), using radioactive isotopes.

She named the first new chemical element that she discovered (1898) "polonium" for her native country, and in 1932 she founded a Radium Institute (now the Maria Sk?odowska–Curie Institute of Oncology) in her home town Warsaw, headed by her physician-sister Bronis?awa.


In an unusual decision, Marie Curie intentionally refrained from patenting the radium-isolation process so that the scientific community could do research unhindered.

Since they were unaware of the deleterious effects of radiation exposure attendant on their chronic unprotected work with radioactive substances, Marie and Pierre had no idea what price they were paying for their research.

Makers, will your daughter, niece or grandchild be the next Marie Curie? What can you do to spark their interests? Post in the comments!

More:

Physics Pro Kit - An advanced physics kit that allows you to continue your study of statics and dynamics from previous lessons and begin your study of more complex topics in physics, including fluid dynamics, energy, oscillation, hydraulics, and pneumatics. The main focus of the kit is the behavior of the two most important fluids in our world — water and air — and objects immersed in them. You will investigate how air and water rest and flow, what they can carry and how they move. More than 213 parts are included in this kit, which are compatible with all other Thames & Kosmos Physics kits. For ages 10 and up.




Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments - For students, DIY hobbyists, and science buffs, who can no longer get real chemistry sets, this one-of-a-kind guide explains how to set up and use a home chemistry lab, with step-by-step instructions for conducting experiments in basic chemistry. Learn how to smelt copper, purify alcohol, synthesize rayon, test for drugs and poisons, and much more. The book includes lessons on how to equip your home chemistry lab, master laboratory skills, and work safely in your lab, along with 17 hands-on chapters that include multiple laboratory sessions.

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While I was at Maker Faire, I picked up a new book from the Maker Shed called The Best of Instructables Volume I. It's a really cool 300+ page book that's filled with over 120 great projects. One of my favorite quotes from the book was written by Eric Wilhelm of instructables "Making things by hand is cool again. You can be a creator, not just a consumer." Awesome!

Instructables.com has become one of the most popular magnets for makers and DIY enthusiasts of all stripes. Now, with more than 10,000 projects to choose from, the Instructables staff, editors of MAKE: Magazine, and the Instructables community itself have put together a collection of technology how-to's from the site. The Best of Instructables Volume 1 includes plenty of clear, full-color photographs, complete step-by-step instructions, and tips, tricks, and new build techniques you won't find anywhere else. Over 300 pages!

There are a couple of PDF sample chapters online.

I really like the Magnetic Refrigerator Lights [PDF] and the DIY Vacuum Former [PDF].

Another really popular project is the screen-printing tutorial. [PDF]

You can pick up a copy in the Maker Shed, it's a really great read!

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You may recall the story that got a lot of press earlier this month about the bank robber who, rather creatively used Craigslist to enlist a bunch of unwitting conspirators. He put up a day labor job ad, telling anyone interested to show up at a particular corner (in front of a bank) dressed in a very specific manner (blue shirt, safety goggles, dayglo work vest) where they would find out what work they were expected to do. Instead, the guy robbed the bank dressed in the same manner, and left police confused as they saw a bunch of folks who met the description of the bank robber.

However, it appears that the guy has now been caught, as police used some good old fashioned detective work to figure out his identity -- relying on witness clues and DNA evidence. While the method of his getaway seems intriguing, what may be even more worthy of note is that the guy posted the original Craigslist ad using an open WiFi, believing that would help him avoid getting caught. Over the past few years, we've heard time and time again law enforcement officials complain and fret about open WiFi being a criminals' best friend, because it meant a criminal could do whatever they want and never get caught. Yet, as we've seen time and time and time again, such criminals can often be tracked down via other means.

Yes, it's true that an open WiFi network makes it more difficult to track down the criminal, but we don't live in a world where criminals are expected to leave a calling card everywhere they go either. Instead, we expect police to do a variety of detective work. A guy who walks into a bank with a ski mask isn't identifiable by his face, but the police look at other clues. In the same way, a criminal who uses open WiFi isn't identifiable via his IP address, but police look at other clues. And that's just what they did in this and many other cases that involve criminal behavior using open WiFi.

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Yes, you read the title correctly. Kris and Carly drove 1100 miles, each way, to Maker Faire Austin 2008. They have a really nice blog post about the trip. I really enjoyed reading about Maker Faire from their perspective. Oh, and thanks for making the trip, we really liked having you there!

Check out Maker Faire: A 2200 mile journey [Part 1] [Part 2] [another post about Kris & Carly]

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RobotsDinner writes "In what sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot, the Home Office has made public plans to outfit the country's Internet with upstream data recorders to log pretty much everything that passes through. 'Under Government plans to monitor internet traffic, raw data would be collected and stored by the black boxes before being transferred to a giant central database. The vision was outlined at a meeting between officials from the Home Office and Internet Service Providers earlier this week.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tim Writes:
As a way to support my son's interest in technology and supplement what is, except for computer class, an almost tech-free school experience, we have created a web show called WREXLabs (Reverse Engineering eXperimental Labs (the W is silent)), in which we take things apart to see how they work. We've got three episodes created so far with another one in post-production. In future episodes we will not only take things apart but we'll be taking the parts we find and using them to make new things. We've got brush bot and electrical generator episodes planned.

What we'd really like to do with WREXLabs is build a community of kids who don't look at each other funny when they say they want to take apart an RC Car or an alarm clock or a disk drive. You can check out our web page and videos at wrexlabs.com. We'd love to see teachers using reverse engineering to get kids interested in science and technology, and if WREXLabs could help in doing that then we'd be very happy.

Thanks Tim and Declan, nice work! There is so much to be learned from taking things apart. Just check with the previous owner of the thing you're taking apart, and Always Wear Your Safety Glasses!

Please add your education resources to the comments.

Wrex Labs - Link

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This looks like a cool project that uses an Arduino & Processing to generate LED graphics based on MIDI inputs. I really like how it is housed inside an old slide viewer.

A while ago I found an interesting post on the arduino forums about a guy who made a 8x8 LED panel for his friend to use to visualise when playing music. So when I was browsing my local thrift-store I found an old slide viewer (for you kids, it's an old pre digital way to take photo's).

More about Opal: Arduino based LED and MIDI [arduino.cc]

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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Nice and simple laser cut project, a chess set - part of Bre's "things" series...

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Unique Game for Party Amusement Modern Mechanix, 1933 - surely to be a Wii game soon....

“SPIKE the Potato” is a highly entertaining game for any party. All that is needed is a single large potato, a number of paper cones and some needles. The paper cones are about 7 in. long and 1-1/2? in diameter at the large end. When you roll them into shape, slip a needle or pin into the small end and daub it with glue. This, when dry, will hold it in place. At the same time, glue the edge of the paper fast. Then pull a small tuft of cotton into a fluffy ball and after rubbing some glue on the inside of the open cone end, push the cotton in.

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These days, it's become quite common to see surveillance cameras pretty much all over in any major downtown metropolitan area. There have been plenty of protests against such cameras, but it hasn't done much to stop them from spreading. However, Rob Hyndman points us to the news that Toronto has agreed to remove some controversial surveillance cameras that were placed at an intersection with a high crime rate. People protested over the potential for their privacy to be violated, and worried that all it would do is shift crime to neighboring streets. Six months of such protests have convinced the police to remove the cameras, noting that the decision was partly due to "human respect." Of course, that doesn't explain the next statement: "The supervisor also indicated that the cameras will be used elsewhere in the city." So, apparently, they feel perfectly fine disrespecting humans elsewhere.

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RcK writes "In addition to the rising controversy of the possible Australian version of the Great Firewall Of China already mentioned several times of late here on Slashdot; the viability of the proposed AU$5Billion internet infrastructure upgrade promised by the Federal Government during their 2007 election campaign is under fire. The MD of arguably Australia's leading internet company, iinet, has branded the proposal a waste of taxpayers money. Steve Ballmer, during his current Australian visit, has also weighed in on the topic and diplomatically indicated that Australia should get on with the job. Much of the current criticism appears to surround the likelihood of people in remote areas being left out of the proposed plan. Ironically, where I lived previously (remote town in central Aus — nearest town over 400km away) everyone had, at the absolute least, subsidized satellite internet, and most had ADSL. In my case a flawless 512k connection for ~4years. However, I now live 5 minutes from the center of a capital city and due to archaic telephone infrastructure cannot get ADSL, and even line noise is too great for dialup!" Today's front page at Whirlpool Broadband News also features several articles relating to the saga.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool, user SUB Boy Photography writes:

This is the ThingaMunny, aka "The Goblinator." It incorperates my two favorite DIY kits; Kid Robot's Munny, and Bleep Labs' Thingamakit. Thanks to Bleep Labs, Kid Robot, and HackADay. PS: Can anyone guess what I used for the jetpack?

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It really amazes me when we see companies go out of their way to sue critics or those who post negative reviews of their products or practices. If those companies put the same amount of effort into actually treating their customers right and taking the criticism as feedback, they'd probably be doing a lot better. Instead, companies that treat customers badly usually discover that suing critics only helps turn more people off to the company. Reader Crash70rs points us to a post on the HotRodders.com forum, where one of the moderators at the site is being sued for defamation by an aftermarket manufacturer named Streetbeasts.

The moderator had written a wiki article about the company, highlighting the fact that the company was connected to another company that had been found guilty of wire fraud and defrauding customers. Streetbeasts seems upset about a bunch of things that were said about the company -- though, some of them clearly seem to be opinion-based, and others hardly seem defamatory. The moderator notes that this is basically a SLAPP lawsuit designed to silence him rather than to win a defamation case, and he's decided to fight it (good for him). Maybe, one day, companies will realize that dealing with your problems is better than suing those who point them out.

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Guitar Hero: World Tour's recent launch saw boxes of plastic instruments flying off store shelves, quickly selling out in many areas. Unfortunately, many players reported problems with the bundled drums sets, prompting Activision to release a drum "tuning" application and a free midi-USB cable to connect the instruments to a PC. Otherwise, reviews for the game have been largely positive, and MTV's Multiplayer Blog did an analysis of using Rock Band drums in GH:WT, and vice-versa. Kotaku looked at which set was louder, coming to the conclusion that while they sound different, decibel levels are very similar. The early success in sales for GH:WT caused Activision to say holiday demand may not be met, and that they're examining two methods in particular to develop the franchise: instrument upgrades (hopefully less ludicrous than Logitech's $250 axe) and the possibility of a subscription-based model for user-generated content. "[Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby] Kotick says that there are now 25,000 user generated tunes that have been created for the game, and projected 'up to 100,000 songs' by the end of this year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Massimo Banzi writes over at the Arduino blog:

After a couple of years of prototypes, tests and announcements, finally we have produced an ethernet shield for Arduino. This module gives Arduino the ability to open connections to other Internet hosts or behave like a server, for example a simple web server. We like this design because it uses the w5100 chip from WizNet that implements the whole IP stack in itself providing up to 4 sockets simultaneously. I believe this will provide Arduino enthusiasts around the world with a platfrom that is initially simple to use but with room for growth as the knowledge of the user increases. From the Internet of Things to the Internet of Arduinos, happy tinkering.

More:

• Ethduino
• HOW TO - Make plants talk! They'll Twitter you when they need to be watered (and more)...
• The Arduino ethernet board
  

From the Maker Shed:

Arduino Diecimila

XPortShield for Arduino Kit (not the same one as mentioned above)

Getting Started with Arduino- This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open

source electronics prototyping platform that's taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for projects and helps you get going on them right away. To use the introductory examples in this book, all you need is a USB Arduino, USB A-B cable, and an LED. By Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino Project.

Making Things Talk - Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.

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Among the fun folks who joined us for last night's BB/BBtv/Laughing Squid/NextNewNetworks/Metblogs Drinkup in San Francisco was Tcritic founder Karl Long.

He put together the amazing "prez dispenser" t-shirt previously blogged on Laughing Squid. Karl explains that this shirt was "based on a linocut print from local artist Eric Rewitzer who does some wonderful prints." Linocut, shown above at left.

I also dig the "Under New Management" shirt Karl pointed us to, from Print Liberation, shown above right.

A bunch of folks have been sending in Wired's short article claiming that the MPAA is "already lobbying Obama." And, while I'm certainly never one to suggest that the MPAA isn't full of sneaky tricks, this is hardly anything to get worked up about. I don't even understand why Wired posted it, other than to get people angry. The MPAA, like pretty much every major lobbying organization, put out statements congratulating Obama. That's what you do as a lobbying group, and it's entirely meaningless at this point. I have no doubt that the MPAA will pull plenty of misleading stunts over the next four years, and most likely will convince all sorts of politicians, including Obama, to put into place bad laws. But a simple congratulations statement from a lobbying group is hardly a sign of impending doom.

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totem destroyer
spot the difference
memory checker
split words
coign of vantage
open doors
daymare town

previously on web zen:
mind games zen

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Image above: One of 12 full-page engravings from The Anatomy of the Brain Explained in a Series of Engravings, by Charles Bell (1802). (via neurophilosophy.)

HOW TO - Fool a stoplight into thinking your bike is a car - The Loop Sensor Activator via Core77.

A common problem for bicyclists, and in particular for bicycle commuters, is the traffic loop sensor. These are the devices which detect the presence of vehicles to control the sequencing of traffic lights at many intersections. Often, they are installed in figure-eight slits cut into the pavement near a traffic light.

The way they work is to detect the slight change in inductance of the loop of wire buried in the slit caused by a large metallic object (such as a motor vehicle) above the loop. The problem for bicyclists is that traffic departments often feel compelled to set the sensitivity of the electronics behind the loop rather low, so that false detections are avoided. This can make it difficult for a bicycle (a relatively small metal object) to make its presence known to the sequencing circuit. The result is a lot of frustration for a bicyclist trying to get a green light or left-turn arrow. This can be especially frustrating at streets with low traffic (often where these sensors are used in the first place), as one waits for a motor vehicle to come by and trip the sensor. Sometimes one must resort to laying the bicycle down on the road surface above the loop with the hope that the extra metal presented to the loop will cause detection. Sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes frames aren't made of metal.

Various devices have been patented in order to address this problem. Some are a little impractical, and some don't work with modern loop sensor circuitry. One patented solution (see USP 5,652,577) has the bicyclist laying down a big piece of metallic foil or screen right on the road surface!

After studying this problem for many years, we have developed a new device (It's patented! See USP 7,432,827) designed to be much more effective on a wide variety of loop sensors.

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I like tumblelogs. Do you? I tumble myself. But my favorite tumblelog is Peter Nidzgorski's This Isn't Happiness. It's mostly images, sometimes quotes or words or videos or music, and the one thing I can say for sure about it in sum total is that it's always beautiful, whether the subject is politics or poverty, women or zombies, life or death. Also, you may want to check out Nevver, where Nidzgorski mashes movie stills and MP3's daily to delightful effect. (Photo credit: Raul Gutierrez, original photo, Flickr stream.)

Still wrapping my head around this, but it sure is interesting at first glance -- in part because of the speed in which it was launched. Change.gov is a website launched by the Obama team's Presidential Transition Project which documents the transition into power and solicits ideas from the public. Change.gov (Thanks, Nate Westheimer)

Da Massive writes "'Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?,' asked a young developer to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Sydney yesterday. 'That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky,' Ballmer said. Then came the startling revelation that Microsoft may also adopt an open source browser engine. 'Open source is interesting,' he said. 'Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here in D.C. the town's collective post-election hangover is lifting, and folks are beginning to ponder exactly what the new administration will mean for their respective corners of the world. Those of us working in technology are no exception, and a new blog post by Wayne Crews on OpenMarket.org has renewed discussion of President-elect Obama's proposal for a national CTO.

Unfortunately, Crews' post doesn't offer much insight — he simply conflates "CTO" with "czar" (as in "drug czar") and then decides that the track record of such positions means the initiative is a bad idea. As Jerry Brito noted in comments at the TLF, this rhetorical sleight of hand is a bit dishonest. The Obama campaign's stated intention is for the CTO to "ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices." That's considerably less expansive than what Crews seems to fear.

Our own Tim Lee has weighed in on the idea before, defining two possible roles for a national CTO: one as a coordinator of federal systems (as described above) and another as an adviser on tech policy. As Tim notes, it's important that President-elect Obama receive smart counsel on tech policy — and the Obama campaign's association with people like Vint Cerf is encouraging on this score. But again, it's not clear that such advising is within the purview of the CTO role as Obama conceives it.

So what about the other function? Tim isn't enthusiastic about it, noting that the government probably already achieves what economies of scale it can, meaning that centralizing IT decisions would only result in reduced flexibility for individual agencies.

Speaking as a former government IT contractor, I'm not so sure about that. In my experience, IT procurement decisions within agencies are played very, very safe. The person making the purchasing decision is generally operating in CYA mode: the purchase is being made with an eye toward their career. There are no stock options or revenue sharing to consider — no upside — so the primary goal is to make decisions that minimize the potential for blame.

In practice this means buying from huge, established vendors, even when doing so isn't really appropriate. I've seen projects buy massively expensive Oracle licenses when MySQL or PostgreSQL would've worked just fine, and would have cost far fewer dollars and man-hours. Why waste those resources? Because Oracle was seen as safe (particularly since Sun hadn't yet acquired MySQL AB). It's the same old problem that slowed private industry's adoption of open-source software, except without the profit motive to push things along.

It's possible to mount a justification for such a cautious approach by government, but "efficiency" isn't likely to be part of that argument. And here's where a national CTO really could make a difference: the high-profile, appointed nature of the position calls for a big name — someone with influence and a proven record of innovative ideas — rather than a cowering careerist. And that, in turn, might embolden the don't-blame-me CTOs and CIOs further down the federal ladder. Desktop Linux springs to mind as the sort of technology that could save huge amounts of taxpayer money, but which is probably too intimidating for most agencies to undertake without direction from above.

What would this mean for you, me and the larger tech industry? In all likelihood, not very much. It's not as if open-source technologies need the government's stamp of approval to prove their viability; and every indication is that the important regulatory decisions that affect our industry will continue to be made at places like the FTC and FCC. A national CTO will be irrelevant to most of us, so time spent fretting over the office is probably time wasted. But that doesn't mean that such a position isn't a good idea — saving tax dollars usually is, and there's reason to think that a national CTO could do just that.

Tom Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tom Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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The New York Times reports New York governor turned Luv Gov Eliot Spitzer won't be charged for his part in the call girl scandal that ended his political career.

On March 6, 2008, this office announced the filing of criminal charges related to an international prostitution ring known as the Emperors Club V.I.P. The investigation which led to those charges began when this Office learned of payments made in a questionable manner by former Governor Spitzer to a bank account in the name “QAT Consulting.” After the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation Division, the office determined that the QAT Consulting account and a similar account at another financial institution had been used to launder more than $1 million worth of criminal proceeds derived from the Emperors Club V.I.P.’s prostitution business.

Eliot Spitzer has acknowledged to this Office that he was a client of, and made payments to, the Emperors Club V.I.P. Our investigation has shown that on multiple occasions, Mr. Spitzer arranged for women to travel from one state to another state to engage in prostitution. After a thorough investigation, this Office has uncovered no evidence of misuse of public or campaign funds. In addition, we have determined that there is insufficient evidence to bring charges against Mr. Spitzer for any offense relating to the withdrawal of funds for, and his payments to, the Emperors Club V.I.P.

In light of the policy of the Department of Justice with respect to prostitution offenses and the longstanding practice of this office, as well as Mr. Spitzer’s acceptance of responsibility for his conduct, we have concluded that the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter.

In a statement, Spitzer responds:

I understand the office of the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York has decided that it will not bring criminal charges against me. I appreciate the impartiality and thoroughness of the investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office, and I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed.

I resigned my position as governor because I recognized that conduct was unworthy of an elected official. I once again apologize for my actions, and for the pain and disappointment those actions caused my family and the many people who supported me during my career in public life.

I asked my friend Debauchette, a blogger and ex-courtesan, for her thoughts on the news. She writes:

It's definitely annoying.

I suppose my immediate response is that it seems like a pretty typical case of the john being released while the prostitute, or in this case, the agency, gets punished. It's sad to think that Emperors would have been left alone if it hadn't been for Spitzer. He's the one they were after, and now he gets off while the agency owners get god knows what kind of punishment. Put this within the larger context that Spitzer saw prostitutes while actively seeking their imprisonment, and that Emperors was only attending to his requests, and the whole mess strikes me as a distortion of justice and a sickening waste of resources. But that's nothing new.

Related: "Letters from Johns."

(Image credit: Barbara Kruger's award-winning cover for New York Magazine.)

UK photographer Nick Knight's latest surreal SHOWstudio online fashion film is "Fantasia," "a mesmerising, full-throttle trip around the most sensational sartorial propositions of the past ten years," including Alexander McQueen's football fetishisms and Hussein Chalayan's remote-controlled dress.

Related:

Hussein Chalayan: future couture

Hussein Chalayan's awesome animatronic fashion

Tech couture roundup: Chalayan, McQueen, android beauty

Hussein Chalayan's latest tech couture is lovely.

Hussein Chalayan and Kristin Baker