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November 15, 2008

Politician Forces German Wikipedia Off the Net

Stephan Schulz writes "A German Member of parliament for a left-wing party, Lutz Heilmann, has obtained a preliminary injunction against the local chapter of the Wikimedia foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V., forbidding the forwarding of the popular http://wikipedia.de to the proper http://de.wikipedia.org. Apparently Heilmann is not happy with the fact that his Wikipedia article (English version) contains information on his work for the former GDR Stasi, the much-hated internal secret service. Wikimedia Germany displays a page explaining the situation, and has announced that it will file an objection to get the injunction lifted. The German Wikipedia has more than 800,000 pages, and is hosted, like all Wikimedia projects, by the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, and hence beyond the effective reach of at least German politicians and judges."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“Heat Wheel” Could Lower Data Center Power Bills

miller60 writes "An air conditioning technology called the 'heat wheel' is getting a test drive in data centers, and early adopters cite impressive reductions in their power bills. The heat wheel — also known as a rotary heat exchanger or Kyoto Cooling — is a refinement of cooling systems using outside air. Rather than introducing exterior air directly into the server room (the air economization we discussed recently), the heat wheel briefly mixes the outside air and exhaust air to create an air-to-air heat exchanger. A data center in the Netherlands using this approach only has to use chillers 11 days a year." The article points out that the heat wheel is not new, but it hasn't been applied to data centers until recently.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When a Fire Hits the Taxidermist

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What happens when a legendary French taxidermy shop catches fire? "From Ashes, Reviving a Place of Wild Dreams" is the story of Deyrolle, a 177-year-old store once populated by stuffed zebras, bull heads, and preserved butterflies. When Deyrolle caught fire earlier this year, destroying much of its taxidermied contents, Parisians stepped in to help.

Deyrolle’s stuffed menagerie — from black crows to big-game animals — its cases of butterflies and beetles, its signature pedagogic posters and century-old prints have made it a place of pilgrimage.

So after a short circuit triggered a fire in the shop, Paris seemed to come together in an unusual display of solidarity.

French soldiers on a routine patrol smelled the smoke and tried to secure the building. They were joined by dozens of firefighters and hundreds of police officers in battling the blaze. The French Army opened one of its nearby military depots as a warehouse for the burned animals and objects.

Michel Dumont, then the mayor of the Seventh Arrondissement, where Deyrolle is, rushed to the scene and lamented the store’s demise, saying, “It’s a catastrophe, the end of an institution.”

Ninety percent of the shop’s stock, including most of the animals, a celebrated fossil collection, an antique skeleton of a Nile perch and a 19th-century diorama of more than 100 birds, was lost. The dark-wood cabinets that housed birds, butterflies and beetles went up in flames.

But the 18th-century building remained intact. Prince Louis Albert de Broglie, a former banker who created a national conservatory with 650 varieties of tomatoes at his chateau, had bought the financially troubled Deyrolle in 2001 and eventually restored it to solvency. He vowed to rebuild.

"From Ashes, Reviving a Place of Wild Dreams" and a slide show.

Reminder that Gabe’s heart is in the right place

There's often talk that Gabe Rivera is in Mike Arrington's pocket, and some days even I believe that talk, but then I just stumbled on something that reminded me that of all the people who are involved in aggregating the web, he's the one guy who more often than not does the right thing, and shares his sources, opening the door for competitors.



This is the philosophy that the web was founded on, but too often people draw from the well without giving back. I've been told, when criticizing people for doing that, that I'm naive -- maybe so, but I'm also a realist, knowing that if too many people do that, eventually there will be nothing left to build on.

Anyway, I just noticed a link at the bottom of Memeorandum, the political version of TechMeme, that has become a mainstay of mine through the 2008 election (and a secret for the few people in the political blogosphere who follow it), to the leaderboard. I sent the link to my friend Nicco Mele, saying I don't know how I missed this, but I had, and that an aggregation of the list would make a good product.

Then I noticed there was an OPML file with all the sources, and sure enough it links to the RSS feeds. So it would be no work at all to assemble the aggregation.

http://www.memeorandum.com/lb.opml

Is it in any way in Gabe's interest to share this info? Hard to see how. But he shared it anyway. And for that he gets my respect and appreciation and a virtual piece of cheescake. smile

"cheesecake"

Plastic Logic E-Newspaper

Ostracus writes with news of another contender for a next-gen device suitable for displaying a newspaper page. It's very thin but weighs a bit more than a Kindle. "Plastic Logic, a spin-off company from the Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory, has recently released its design of a future electronic newspaper reader. This lightweight plastic screen copies the appearance, but not the feel, of a printed newspaper. This electronic paper technology was pioneered by the E-Ink Corporation and is used in the current generation Sony eReader and Amazon.com's Kindle. Plastic Logic's device, yet to be named, has a highly legible black-and-white display and a screen more than twice as large compared to current versions available on the market."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Democrats and civil liberties

There were at least two things I learned from going to the DNC this year that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't gone.

A picture named hillary.jpg1. There wasn't much disunity in the party between Clinton and Obama supporters. I knew this because, while the television networks were reporting a big division, you just didn't see it in Denver. When there were demonstrators, it was always the same group of about ten people. They looked like the people you see at street demos in Berkeley, who, sorry to say, no one takes seriously. There were far more abortion protestors present than Hillary protestors. Orders of magnitude more. You could also see it by talking to people who wore Hillary badges in the convention center, which I did. A few times I sat next to them, or was in a line with them, and we talked and everyone agreed that this was a Democratic year, and nothing would stand in the way of that. I think McCain's people listened too much to the TV people, and didn't bother to check with the people at the show and they overestimated division in the party.

2. There are a number of perennial Democratic Party issues, they will always get applause from Democratic audiences. The teachers union, for example, has always been a big voting bloc among Dems, and Democratic speakers always get a big cheer when they advocate raising the pay of teachers. A number of other topics are pretty good too, but the best consistent applause line, the one that got people on their feet every time at the DNC was the destruction of civil liberties by the Republicans in the last 8 years. I'm sure the leaders of the Democratic Party weren't in the hall for all the speeches, so I hope they don't miss this. If they don't do something to reverse the mistakes of the last 8 years, even while dealing with the economic and security issues, they will quickly lose the support of the party.

NYT: Democratic Pressure on Obama to Restore the Rule of Law.

CQ: Hill Democrats Wait for Obama Stance on Interrogation Standards.

Unhappy People Watch More TV

Hugh Pickens writes "A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as 'very happy' spend more time reading and socializing. 'TV doesn't really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does,' says researcher John P. Robinson. 'It's more passive and may provide escape — especially when the news is as depressing as the economy itself. The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise.' Unhappy people also liked their TV more: 'What viewers seem to be saying is that while TV in general is a waste of time and not particularly enjoyable, "the shows I saw tonight were pretty good."' The researchers analyzed two sets of data spanning nearly 30 years (PDF), gathered from nearly 30,000 adults, and found that unhappy people watch an estimated 20 percent more television than very happy people, after taking into account their education, income, age, and marital status — as well as other demographic predictors of both viewing and happiness. 'TV can become a kind of opiate in a way. It's habitual, and tuning in can be an easy way of tuning out.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comcast revisited

A picture named remote.gifI've had a few months for the Comcast debacle to settle in, and have a few thoughts this morning to share.

First a review of what happened.

1. When I moved into the new house in Berkeley, I got Comcast for TV and AT&T DSL for Internet. I had had terrible experience with Comcast at the apartment I rented while house shopping, lots of outages, and lots of time spent on the phone with Comcast trying to convince them the problem was theirs and not mine, each time resulting in them fixing the problem on their end. I wanted to see if DSL would be any more reliable. I've found that it is quite reliable. (However in the end so was Comcast, at least at a technical level. The problems at the apartment were probably due to the newness of the building, high turnover, and construction projects nearby.)

2. At some point I saw a story on TechMeme saying that AT&T was playing funny games with their customers, so I decided to order Comcast Internet service as a backup, in case something went weird with my AT&T DSL service. The Comcast service was unused for many months, there was no need for me to use it, AT&T service was fine. If ain't broke don't fix it, an old belief of mine. smile

3. Then the fateful moment -- I saw a tweet from Dave Sifry saying he had just done a perf test on his Comcast service and found it was delivering incredible throughput. I immediately did the test on my own, and was amazed that it was delivering a consistent 14 megabits up, 5 megabits down, sometimes with as high as 28 megabits up. That did it, a few days later I switched the roles of the two networks, using AT&T as the backup and Comcast as the primary.

4. At roughly the same time I was starting active testing of the photo aggregator part of FlickrFan. I had five computers running the software, all downloading hundreds of high-rez pics every day from AP and AFP. I only needed one, but as I said I was burning in the software, and sheez, I had all that bandwidth, the net never got slow, and it was a source of pride at first that I could do it and then I forgot they were all running. Until one day...

5. My Internet service was cut. I thought it was an outage, but when I called, I was told they had cut me off deliberately. I was current with my bill (if I recall correctly a total of about $180 per month for both services), but they said I was using too much bandwidth, though they wouldn't say how much I had used. I found it more than appalling that they cut me off just to get me to call them when they could have sent an email, or communicated through comcastcares on Twitter. There are so many better ways to communicate with customers. But I think they must have hired a psychiatrist who told them if you want customers to be compliant, treat them like overdue college-age billpayers, even when they're customers in good standing. You're more likely to get what you want. I wrote up the experience on my weblog, as I am doing now.

They told me that if I didn't reduce my Internet usage to what they considered a normal level, without specifying what that was or offering me any way to measure my usage, they would cut me off again, ony next time the outage would be for 12 months. I know this must sound unreal, that I must be exaggerating, I wouldn't believe it myself if I were reading it on someone else's blog, but that's what they said.

6. Having been threatened, I did two things. I reduced the use of the Internet on my LAN and I ordered DirecTV so, in case this happened again, I would just revert to AT&T and would have the redundant TV service. I also bought EyeTV devices for three of my computers so I could receive digital over-the-air broadcasts. It amazes people when they find out that such high quality transmissions are available for free over the public air waves.

7. Of course, eventually they cut me off again. I think it was after I downloaded all the content off my server onto a local hard disk for backup (it was shortly after doing that that they cut me off, I'm saying it wasn't likely a coincidence). Rather than call them, I instructed comcastcares to cancel my service, giving me the slightest shred of pride and honor, having been treated so shabbily by a vendor, in the end it was I who cut them off, not vice versa. (Yeah sure, if you believe that...)

8. Now it occurred to me that with a new administration coming into office, it might be time to re-open the issue of how vendors like Comcast resell access to something that doesn't belong to them, the Internet. It seems there be some rules about what they can and can't do, since they don't behave reasonably on their own. If all they were selling was access to other Comcast customers, I might be able to understand them being so awful with their customers, but this is a case where they have something like a monopoly providing access to a public space, and a clear conflict of interest, a reason to want to cripple that public space. Seems like a time when the government should take an interest in regulating what they can and can't do. Imho.

9. No I never forget shit like this. Sorry. smile

Researchers Turn Tables and Walls Into “Scratch Input” Surfaces

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's HCI Institute have developed a new input technology that allows mobile devices to use surfaces they rest on, like tables, for gestural finger input. This is achieved with some clever acoustic tricks — basically taking advantage of high frequency sound propagation through dense materials. Their video highlights some neat applications, such as controlling an MP3 player by scratching on a wall and muting a cell phone by scratching on a table. Further details are available in the academic paper (PDF)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

All I want to be, is someone that makes new things. And thinks about them….

Burt Clifton Thinkmakethink Temp Artworkimage 1 1
20x200 : think-make-think.... Clifton writes -

In April of 2007, John Maeda wrote a haiku entitled think-make-think and posted it to his blog. I think that it went relatively unnoticed. Over the next few months, that haiku often found its way to the forefront of my mind. When our studio, the Public Design Center, acquired the remnants of a discarded arrow sign, it was immediately clear to me that think-make-think was the perfect piece for the sign due to the haiku's small size and its potency.
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Success Not Just a Matter of Talent

NinjaCoder writes "The Guardian has an interesting article based on a new book (Outliers: The Story Of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell) which examines some persons of interest to computer technology (Bill Joy, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, amongst others). It examines reasons for their successes and strongly suggests a link between practice (10,000 hours by age 20 being the magic milestone) and luck. This maybe an obvious truism, but the article does give interesting anecdotes on how their personal circumstances led to today's technological landscape. It points out that many of the luminaries of the current tech industry were born around 1955, and thus able to take advantage of the emerging technologies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Earth Recreates Ancient Rome

thefickler writes "Google Earth now includes ancient Rome circa 320 AD, thanks to Google, the University of Virginia, and Past Perfect Productions working together to bring the historical city to life. Clicking on Ancient Rome in 3D, users can revisit Rome from a bygone era and view highly detailed reconstructions of 250 buildings, as well as 5,000 other lesser detailed buildings. 'Pop-up windows provide information on the monuments and visitors also can enter some of the most important sites, including the Senate and the Colosseum, to observe the architecture and marble decorations.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

$1M Reward Offered To Nab Data Breach Extortionist

alphadogg writes with this excerpt from NetworkWorld: "Express Scripts, the pharmacy benefits management company which recently disclosed an extortionist is demanding money by threatening to expose millions of patient records the company holds, Wednesday said it has decided to offer $1 million to nab the perpetrator. 'We're going on the offense with this reward,' an Express Scripts spokesman said. The $1 million will be paid to anyone who provides information leading to the capture and conviction of the extortionist who sent a letter to Express Scripts in early October that contained personal information on 75 people, considered members, who use the company's pharmacy-benefits services. The extortionist claims to have information on millions more Express Scripts members and wants money to not reveal it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mint-powered Google Phone

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Have a G1 Android Google phone? If you want to get hours and hours of extra talk, stand by, web and video time the do-it-yourself open source MintyBoost charger works great with it! via Ladyada.

More:
G1Headset Detail-1

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Beeswax candles

When my kids were smaller, we had some really fun craft parties. I especially liked helping kids make holiday presents for their parents; projects like these easy beeswax candles were a great success! Check out this Wikipedia article on beeswax, too. Via Crafting a Green World

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Photo gallery - Turning trash to treasure

dsu.jpg

Last week at the Duxbury Student Union, Lee Pulis and I held a workshop on using trash to learn about electricity, design and mechanical devices. We used CD drives from old computers. Inside the drives we found motors, gears, switches, and lots of interesting looking stuff. The main tools were small phillips head screwdrivers and pliers. We had some copper tape on hand, some batteries and electrical tape. Other tan the new batteries, everything we used for supplies and tools was either from the dump or a local discount store for cheap.

What started out as two boxes of computer parts was soon spread out over tables and laps in various states of disassembly. Our intention was to show that there are lots of interesting things inside the castoffs of our modern society, and from this junk, we can find the ideas, inspiration and supplies for many projects. Participants were aged from 5th to 9th grade, and everybody seemed to have a nice time.

We used some AA batteries for power, mostly just one battery per motor. There was a lot more that we could have gotten to, like wiring batteries in series to increase voltage, controlling the circuit with a switch, lighting LEDs and a lot more. Two and a half hours went pretty quickly. Several youth had devices that were pretty close to the Vibrobot from the cover of Make 10 by closing time.

Check out the photos

Have you tried teaching with junk? What does working with castoff parts show you about design, history of technology, circuit design, the way kids think?

If you are in a school, how do other teachers, administrators or students think about projects like this? Does it matter that not everybody is going to end up with similar or exactly alike outcomes? Where can a project like this lead to? How do projects like this encourage learning, exploration and inquiry? Post up in the comments with your thoughts and opinions!

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16 Interviews With Linux Kernel Hackers

DeviceGuru writes "The Linux Foundation has published a series of video interviews from the annual Linux Kernel Summit held Sept. 15-16 in Portland, Oregon. In the videos, 16 developers — including Linux creator Linus Torvalds — discuss their kernel development activities. Other kernel hackers interviewed include Rafael Wysocki, Chris Mason, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Mathieu Desnoyers, Paul Mackerras, John Linville, Stephen Rothwell, Kristen Accardi, Dirk Hohndel, Dave Jones, David Miller, Len Brown, Jon Corbet, Frank Eigler, and Ted Tso. A detailed report on the Summit can be found at LWN. Lots of interesting insights into the status and future of Linux!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Net Neutrality Vets Join Obama FCC Transition Team

circleid writes "The Obama-Biden transition team on Friday named two long-time net neutrality advocates to head up its Federal Communications Commission Review team. Susan Crawford, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, member of the board of directors of ICANN, and OneWebDay founder, as well as Kevin Werbach, former FCC staffer, organizer of the annual Supernova technology conference, and a Wharton professor, will lead the Obama-Biden transition team's review of the FCC. 'Both are highly-regarded outside-the-Beltway experts in telecom policy, and they've both been pretty harsh critics of the Bush administration's telecom policies in the past year.' The choice of the duo strongly signals an entirely different approach to the incumbent-friendly telecom policy-making that's characterized most of the past eight-years at the FCC." Reuters has a related story about Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who plans to introduce net neutrality legislation in January.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sun Banks On Open Source For Its Survival

CWmike writes "In moving to cut its current workforce by between 15% and 18% today, Sun is trying to stay ahead of a falling knife. And today's announcement made it clear that Sun officials are banking on the company's open-source strategy to help it pull through. A cut of up to 6,000 employees at Sun will hurt, but CEO Jonathan Schwartz contends users will be more inclined to try open-source products such as MySQL, OpenSolaris and Sun's GlassFish application server during a time of economic stress." Reader Barence also pointed out that Sun will begin to auction "branding space" in OpenOffice.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

“Boston for Science Lovers”

14American 600
Nice round up of things for makers, science lovers and more to do in Boston @ The NYTimes...

When you run an ice cream parlor down the street from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you expect your customers to chat about stem cell research or trade theories about neutrinos between licks of burnt caramel. But Gus Rancatore, whose Toscanini’s shop in Cambridge, Mass., is renowned as much for its deep-thinking clientele as for its sundaes, discovered long ago that catering to the technology-minded crowd could have unforeseen advantages...
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New AMD Processors Aiming Between Laptops and Netbooks

An anonymous reader writes with an article about AMD's Conesus chip, suggesting that it is intended to compete with Intel's Nano for the netbook market. However, CNet reports that AMD is eschewing that form factor in favor of something larger, yet still more portable than a traditional laptop. Quoting: "AMD's strategy seems solid, in my opinion. Go for a segment that is bigger and better than Netbooks. The ultraportable category (the MacBook Air being the best example) is full of attractive but expensive designs. Why not work with PC makers to offer an ultrathin, ultralight, full-featured 13-inch notebook that is priced a lot less than $1,800? Why not $600 or $700? In addition to the conventional criticism of Netbooks (small screens, tiny keyboards), an underrated fact is that many users eventually get the feeling that they're stuck with an underpowered laptop."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Independent Dev Reports Over 80% Piracy Rate On DRM-Free Game

An anonymous reader writes "Developer 2D Boy has written that they are seeing an 82% piracy rate for everyone's favorite DRM-free physics puzzler, World of Goo . Surprisingly, this rate is in-line with what they were expecting. The article also features a fascinating comparison with the piracy rate of another game that was shipped complete with DRM, at 92%. There seemed to be no major difference in the outcomes of the rate regardless of whether DRM was used or not... well, no difference other than the cost to implement such nonsense."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

French Recording Industry Sues SourceForge For Hosting Open Source P2P

It would appear that Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF), a group that represents French record labels, is now trying to sue a bunch of non-French file sharing applications, as well as SourceForge. This brings up a lot of different issues, so let's break them out one by one. Hopefully, the courts will come to their senses and realize, on all three of these issues, that the SPPF is out of line. But given the way some courts (especially in France) have ruled in the past, that seems unlikely.

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Duke Demands Proof of Infringement From RIAA

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a report at p2pnet, Duke University has told the RIAA that it will no longer forward the RIAA's 'early settlement' letters to its students unless the RIAA submits 'evidence that someone actually downloaded from that student,' and said that 'if the RIAA can't prove that actual illegal behavior occurred, then we're not going to comply.' While it is good news that a university is requiring the RIAA to put up or shut up, the forwarding — or not forwarding — of letters is pretty insignificant. What I want to know is this: 'When the RIAA comes knocking with its Star Chamber, ex parte, 'John Doe' litigation to get the students' identities, is the University going to go to bat for the students and fight the litigation on the ground that it's based on zero evidence, and on the ground that the students weren't given prior notice and an opportunity to be heard?' Over 1,000 infringement notices were sent to Duke students in the last year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reputation Matters Among File Sharers

Slate has an interesting article about someone (or a group of folks) under the name aXXo who is the "biggest name" in BitTorrent and consistently offers up high quality movies on a variety of BitTorrent platforms. Apparently, when aXXo uploads something, it's likely to become one of the top BitTorrent downloads on various sites. Since I don't use BitTorrent (or any file sharing system), I wasn't aware of this, but find the situation to be quite interesting. The fact that reputation "matters" in the file sharing world, definitely seems like something that moviemakers can use to their advantage.

If you have a somewhat obscure movie, and want more people to see it, rather than just putting it up for download, you're probably better off getting a "trusted party" to put it up for you. As the article notes, even the obscure movies that aXXo uploads become top downloads, because people trust aXXo, and trust is a valuable quality -- even in unauthorized file sharing. In some ways, this is similar to the whole "mixtape" phenomenon, where DJs put out unauthorized mixtapes that often are, technically, copyright infringement. Yet, the top DJs are so valuable that many record labels actively push their songs on them, knowing that if they include a song on a mixtape, it increases the popularity (and marketability) of the musicians. You could easily see the same thing happening with movies and other content as well.

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Northrop Grumman Markets Weaponized Laser System

stephencrane writes "Northrop Grumman is making available for sale the FIRESTRIKE weaponized laser system. The solid-state laser unit weighs over 400lbs, sends/receives instructions and data via an RJ-45 jack and can be synchronized with additional units to emit a 100 kW beam. It looks like some piece of stereophonic amplification equipment out of the 50's. Or Fallout 3. The press release suggests that FIRESTRIKE 'will form the backbone of future laser weapon systems.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maker’s Notebook light mod build photos

I took my first stab at sewing the conductive thread from the Lilypad e-sewing kit into my Maker's Notebook bookmark ribbon. I have gotten some great suggestions from readers on switches and wires and things, which I have yet to try. Currently, I'm just putting the coin battery into the battery holder to test out my sewing job. It works pretty well, and puts out enough light to scribble ideas late at night without disturbing anyone who's sleeping. What's this "sleep" they speak of, anyway?


Build photos on Flicker

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Pentagon Clears Flying-Car Project For Takeoff

unassimilatible writes "DARPA has announced a 'Personal Air Vehicle Technology' project. It will 'ultimately lead to a working prototype of a military-suitable flying car — a two- or four-passenger vehicle that can "drive on roads" one minute and take off like a helicopter the next. The hybrid machine would be perfect for "urban scouting," casualty evacuation and commando-delivery missions, the agency believes.' Wired has the summary of the project." Maybe they'll take inspiration from Terrafugia's "drivable airplane."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Study Reveals Shocking News: People Ignore The Speed Limit

For those of you who never have actually been in a car, some researchers have now revealed the obvious: most drivers are comfortable ignoring the speed limit. Of course, what's more interesting is the theory for the reason behind this: it's an unintended consequence of the decision by the federal government to mandate a nationwide 55mph speed limit back in 1974. Setting such an artificially low speed limited basically made people realize that speed limits had little, if any, relationship to actual safety regulations, and felt more comfortable trusting their own judgment in terms of what speed was safe for driving. Thus, now, even if speed limits were set to match safety levels, many people would still ignore them because they've learned that speed limits are somewhat meaningless. Yet another example of unintended consequences that result from bad legislation.

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Best of Maker Faire: photos, and then some

I understand Maker Faire Austin is done and gone, but I'm still thinking about how much fun it was. Over the next week or 2, I'll continue to share some highlights from the most make-tastic event Austin's ever seen.

Here's a nice photostream from Aaron, one of many Maker Faire visitors who sported penchant for photography:


And, if you've got your own, tag them 'makerfaireaustin2008' and they'll show up with several thousand others here:

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