Today on Offworld we debuted One More Go, our newest regular column (joining Jim Rossignol's launch column Ragdoll Metaphysics) from former Edge editor and current games consultant Margaret Robertson. In her debut column, Margaret found an interdimensional rift split open from a misguided New York Times Crossworld puzzle that saw Atari, rather than Nintendo, becoming the modern day global games powerhouse. Elsewhere we saw a Game Gear that played Atari 2600 games and a Wii that played like a theremin, saw Left 4 Dead makers Valve tell us precisely how pitiful we are against a zombie horde, and played a World of Warcraft April Fools joke to its full conclusion. Finally, we rounded up digital download Black Friday sales from Microsoft and from Sony that both feature games typifying what it is Offworld is all about.

Fun video about the fruit and people featured in Adam Gollner's wonderful book, The Fruit Hunters.

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about the case of a developer in China who had created an add-on for the super popular QQ instant messaging software used in China. The add-on, called Coral QQ, made the software work better, by getting rid of some of the annoying features of QQ and adding some additional features as well. For making the software better, the guy got charged with copyright infringement. This didn't make much sense. The guy wasn't copying anything. You still needed the original program in order to use Coral QQ. Coral QQ was just an add on that worked on top of regular QQ. Yet, now a court has sentenced the guy to three years in jail, all for making a software product better. It's difficult to see how this encourages anyone to ever make products better. If anything, it guarantees that bad products get less competition.

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On Wired's How-to Wiki, they decided to try their hand at building Mike Golembewski's Scanner Camera project, featured in MAKE Volume 14 and in the Sept 19th episode of Make: Weekend Project (see both below). Charlie Sorrel, author of the piece, did what looks like a nice job with the build, but the results look like something from a questionable episode of Ghost Hunters (if that's not redundant).

We asked Kip Kay of Weekend Projects for any tips he can offer Charlie:

Here is what I discovered about focusing. You have to really play with the focusing elements and the distance to the object. I got some pretty good results as seen in the video from about 4 feet away. But the results were nothing like what the original author, Mike Golembewski achieved. I think he had an actual lens on his rather than a magnifying glass for the pictures in the article. (He did mention he had built a better one)

Before taping the camera to the scanner, you should tape on a piece of
tracing paper over the back which allows you to see the image and get it
focused properly.

Wired's How-To Wiki: Make a Scanner Camera

More:

Weekend Project: Scanner Camera

Weekend Project: Scanner Camera (PDF)

Mod a flatbed scanner to take photos that decontruct time and motion with wild results!
Thanks go to Mike Golembewski for the original article in Make Volume 14
View the PDF

Scanner cam portraits at American Maker

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DeviceGuru writes "In a better-late-than-never move, Blockbuster has introduced a video-on-demand (VOD) service accompanied by a 'free' set-top box (STB). Like TiVo, Roku's Netflix box, and many other modern Internet-enabled A/V gadgets, Blockbuster's new VOD STB runs Linux. But darn it; when will someone finally offer a reasonably-priced, open-platform STB that serves as an A/V gateway to multiple Internet-based services — one consumer-friendly, environmentally-designed, low-power gadget 'to rule them all,' if you will."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Enlightenment in the checkout line. After forgetting the liter of olive oil that I went to the store to get and had to return for, I saw on my return trip, down on the bottom shelf of the rack in the chute to the register was a ratty box of beat up plastic fans. Summer is long gone, so they were marked down to $1. Cheap enough to grab two and chuck them onto the conveyor belt. With the oil and a few other shiny objects that I had missed on my previous run.

On the way home, I realized that these little fans might just be a gold mine. A dc motor would cost about a buck, a battery pack with a switch, the same, and a hub for the shaft of the motor that you could attach a wheel to might just be hard to make quickly. Action packed with lots of features and priced to move. The personal fan, battery pack, motor holder, hub, what could you do with this if you had a dozen? two dozen? a hundred? a thousand? What kind of projects come to mind? I was thinking little car, attach a cd to the hub, but there are other ideas as well. What are the ideas you think of when you see these? Certainly they could be used to explore fluids and movement of air. How about cooling and thermodynamics? Screw into the plastic, and you have a mountable system. Hack into the switch, and turn it on and off based on a sensor with an Arduino.

Just what could you do with these? Have you tried any projects with them? Do you have any in a drawer in your house? Do they have them at the local junk store/gas station/thrift shop/lost and found?Try out some projects with these little fans. Make some pictures and post them in the Make Flickr pool. Make a video, post it online and use the tag dollarfan
Post your ideas in the comments and lets see what we can come up with!

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Canstruction '08 features some very awesome works built entirely from canned foods -

Canstruction is an international charity competition that opened last Thursday at the Winter Garden and Courtyard Gallery of the World Financial Center, featuring giant structures built entirely out of cans of food. Top architectural and engineering firms in over 100 cities across North America participate in Canstruction, collecting millions of pounds of food for local food banks — the New York City show features local architectural and engineering talent. At the close of the competition, all of the food from the show will be donated to City Harvest.

- Canstruction

More:

Canstruction - Sculptures made from can stacking

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MSNBC is running an article claiming that last year's virtual bank collapse in Second Life somehow foretold the current financial crisis. It makes for a good headline, but it's simply not true. The factors that resulted in the real world financial crash, as compared to the one in Second Life were entirely different. While there may have been some similarities (people not taking the time to understand the risk of certain investments) to compare the two is a pretty big stretch. From there, the article gets even worse, pretending that both financial crashes show that free markets don't work.

That's simply not true.

The eventual crash actually does show that free markets can work properly, punishing those who took risks without fully understanding the risks. The response in Second Life, to ban banks like the one that crashed, seems like the wrong way to go about things as well. Yes, many people were fooled, and ended up losing money, but that should help educate people not to blindly rush into putting money in a totally unregulated "bank" that made promises that were clearly beyond reasonable (40% interest?). Having regulations that prevent outright fraud (lying) seem reasonable, but banning all banks in response to such a poorly run one seems like going to far. The problem isn't just with the fact that it was an "unregulated free market." It was with the fact that people blindly believed that something too good to be true was legit.

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gaijinsr writes "The damage done in what CERN calls the 'S34 Incident' (and what other people call a major explosion in the cryogenics system) is much more serious than originally admitted: The earliest possible restart date is late summer next year, but with some proposed improvements to avoid repetitions of the incident, it looks more like 2010. They kept this pretty quiet up to now, not the kind of information policy I would expect from CERN."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My friend William Gurstelle is a frequent contributor to MAKE. He's one of the best all-around DIYers I know, has an intense curiosity about everything, and is really fun to hang out with. You can get a taste of this human dynamo by picking up his new DVD, Barrage Garage, which is full of explosively fun projects. Here's an excerpt that shows how to make a smoke bomb.

Best-selling author William Gurstelle (Backyard Ballistics and MAKE Magazine contributing editor) blends science, humor and the Barrage Garage Gals into an explosive new instructional DVD. It's MythBusters meets Baywatch. It's the hobbyist's ultimate video guide to all things that go boom. Bill shares the origin, historical significance and simple step-by-step instructions for safely creating high-voltage experiments including the Night Lighter 36 Taser-Powered Potato Cannon, Smoke Bombs, a Jam Jar Jet engine, and the world famous Mentos Fountain. Then he turns it over to the Barrage Garage Gals to help do some field testing and high-test high-jinks ensue. Dale Dougherty, Publisher of MAKE Magazine raves, "Bill Gurstelle's enthusiasm and knowledge come through on Barrage Garage. Bill makes you want to build something to amaze your family and friends. It's like magic, only there are no tricks involved."

BarrageGarage

Over at Offworld.com, Brandon "Shiny-Eyed Death Gnome" Boyer says,

While we here at Offworld gather exclusive content for future editions of Offworld's BBtv transmissions, our second update is a status report, telling the wider world what we've been getting up to over the past week (including the rapid growth of our Boing Boing Steam group, as we all gather for Left 4 Dead extended plays), and a quick rundown of the new things coming to the site in the following weeks.

As usual, here's the direct MP4 link, if you prefer a downloadable rather than the Flash.

Video duration: 3:14. Let Brandon know what you think of this week's video report from the slums of Azeroth here in the Offworld comments thread.

Previous BBtv/Offworld video updates: Offworld BBtv premiere: What's Offworld?

(Special Thanks to the PROJECT LORE düdes, namely SaintGermain. Big Orc-hugs, guys!)

In the landmark cyberbullying case, Lori Drew was found not guilty of three felonies, but guilty of three misdemeanors. The jury is deadlocked on the fourth count of felony conspiracy. The three counts of "accessing a computer without authorization" relate to the creation of a fictitious account on MySpace that was used to engage in an online relationship with Megan Meier. This verdict is not surprising considering the emotionally charged nature of this case. Prosecutors were desperate to convict Lori Drew of something, despite the fact that she may not have technically done anything illegal. If what Lori Drew did was truly criminal, then laws need to be passed to make it that way. To twist around computer fraud laws to simply get a conviction not only sets a dangerous precedent, but it is not the appropriate way to serve justice.

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Street Anatomy has launched a cool new sister site, Think Anatomy.

I found that reading an anatomy textbook, sitting in lecture, and dissecting in lab weren't enough to really master anatomy. So I turned to the Internet to find resources like dissection videos, interactives, games, quizzes, etc., to supplement my study material. It took a lot of time to sift through the results and put together a list of valuable online anatomy resources. That's where the inspiration to make Think Anatomy started. I wanted to make a site that anatomy students could use to find study aids without having to use a major search engine like Google. So after many many hours spent searching, reviewing, and categorizing anatomy sites, Think Anatomy is finally ready.

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Sour Harvest has a couple of sneak peek photos of paintings in Amy Crehore's upcoming art exhibition, Dreamgirls and Ukes.

My solo exhibit at Thinkspace (February 13-March 6, 2009) is entitled Dreamgirls and Ukes. In this show, I will feature a new series of oil paintings of playful, iconic nudes and introduce some new characters (in addition to my cats, pierrots and monkeys): a lion, a tortoise, and large flying insects. Ukuleles will play a role in these narratives, giving the works musical ambience. Some of these dream sequences will take place in nature, others in curtained rooms.

I am also painting over a dozen antique ukuleles as part of this exhibit. Most of these instruments are from the American ukulele boom of the 1920’s. I have personally hand-picked a collection that represents a variety of styles and designs including banjo ukes, mahogany and koa ukes, as well as art deco novelty ukes. On these ukes, I will incorporate motifs from my paintings, plus I’ll be adding creative type and logo design. My long-time music partner, Lou Reimuller, is also a luthier and he has lovingly restored each of these instruments. These ukes are all “players” as well as fine art objects.

Dreamgirls and Ukes by Amy Crehore

grassy_knoll writes "As a follow up to an earlier story, the Lori Drew 'cyber-bullying' trial has resulted in misdemeanor convictions." grassy_knoll quotes from the AP story as carried by Salon: "The Los Angeles federal court jury on Wednesday rejected felony charges of accessing a computer without authorization to inflict emotional distress on young Megan Meier. However, the jury found defendant Lori Drew guilty of three counts of the lesser offense of accessing a computer without authorization. The jurors could not reach a verdict on a conspiracy count. Prosecutors said Drew violated the MySpace terms of service by conspiring with her young daughter and a business assistant to create a fictitious profile of a teen boy on the MySpace social networking site to harass Megan. Megan, who had been treated for depression, hanged herself in 2006 after receiving a message saying the world would be better without her." Adds reader gillbates: "She now faces up to 3 years in jail and $300,000 in fines — a troubling precedent for anyone who has ever registered with a website under a pseudonym."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Earlier this year, we noted, with surprise, that a Danish court had ordered Tele2, a large ISP, to block all access to The Pirate Bay website. This followed an earlier ruling requiring Tele2 to block access to AllofMp3.com. It's never been clear why an ISP should take on the responsibility of blocking access to a site, and Tele2 appealed the ruling. Unfortunately, it looks as though the company has lost. The Danish High Court has apparently sided with the IFPI, and says that, indeed, Tele2 must block The Pirate Bay. Of course, this is unlikely to matter. Whenever these blocks are ordered, there are always ways around them, and the attention from the blocks tends to alert more people to the site's existence.

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All parents should be trained as toy mechanics before they accept the gig. For, no matter how many high-quality, wooden, German toys you give your young ones, at some point they're going to fall in love with a fragile, mass-produced hunk of plastic. Knowing how to fix it will save money and forestall its trip to the landfill.

This is my son's Buzz Lightyear action figure. (I'll admit mine's in the original box in the garage.) The wires that connect the upper arm "laser" button to the LED in his forearm are routed through his elbow joint in a less-than-perfectly engineered fashion. They've been severed four times. The first three times, I soldered them back together and kept them running through the elbow joint. The fourth time, I decided I'd had enough of that, drilled some holes, and routed the wires outside the elbow entirely. With a bit of braided wire tubing it looks pretty cool. Doesn't Robosapien look sort of like this?

About a year ago these figures became hard to find in toy stores. When they returned they had a poor substitute for Tim Allen doing the voiceover. It's pretty unholy sounding. That's another reason why I'm willing to repair this guy as many times as necessary.

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The cause of the crumbling economy is the city of NY where all the banks are located, the ones that are crumbling. I know this may sound silly, but I believe that when a city destroys a baseball stadium, nothing but bad things happen. Look at Seattle's Kingdome for an example. I don't need to say any more. The meaning is obvious.

Well this year NY is destroying two stadiums. Two! And they are two very historic stadia. Okay one not quite as historic as the other. There were a few interesting games played at Yankee Stadium over the years, but that's nothing compared to the history of Shea Stadium, where the hapless Mets of the 60s played and the Miracle Mets of 1969 won it all. Mookie Wilson and the 1986 Mets beat Bill Buckner and his Red Sox.

Oh the humanity!

Now if you want the proof, the absolute incontrovertible proof, check out what the name of the new stadium is.

That's right. Citi Field. Appalling.

God speaks to us in mysterious but clear ways.

Repent ye sinners!!

Behold! The Vulcan Ironworks sign on Cumberland Street in Charleston, South Carolina, circa 1865. Such steampunky exuberance! Teresa sez, "I count wagon wheels, a plow, an anvil, what may be some wagon springs, a great deal of ornamental ironwork, a purely ornamental sword, what look like some arrow fletchings (except those aren't normally made out of iron), a wrought iron hand holding a wrought iron candlestick, a rather fine alligator or dragon, and a small cannon. I'm sure that's not the complete list."

Vulcan Iron Works Sign, Vulcan Iron Works: 1865 (Thanks, Teresa!)

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that the big spam-spewing Srizbi botnet, shut down two weeks ago when McColo was shuttered, has been resurrected and is again under the control of criminals, security researchers said today. As of late Tuesday, infected PCs were able to successfully reconnect with new command-and-control servers, which are now based in Estonia, said Fengmin Gong, chief security content officer at FireEye. The comeback confirms what researchers noted last week, that Srizbi had a fallback strategy. So, in the end, that strategy paid off for the criminals who control the botnet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's no secret that Apple is excessively protective of the way some of its systems work. That includes trying to stop any other application, other than iTunes, from controlling an iPod. That's a bit of a pain for those of us who like to use alternative apps, such as Songbird. Because of this, there are plenty of folks who work out ways to reverse engineer Apple's system to make this work. Specifically, they need to understand a file called iTunesDB, which Apple tries to prevent others from writing to with a checksum hash. When Apple first introduced the hash it was reverse engineered within a couple days. Apple just recently changed the hash, meaning that it needs to be reverse engineered again. There's a public wiki where a bunch of folks were collaborating to do just that... but Apple sent a DMCA takedown notice to the site.

The EFF has stepped up to walk through the many, many reasons why there's no DMCA violation on the site, and Apple's takedown notice appears to be fraudulent. Yes, the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA do say it's illegal to offer a technology, product, service, device or device to get around DRM, but an open discussion on a wiki is not any of those things. Perhaps more importantly, Apple doesn't own the copyright on iTunesDB. Each iPod makes its own iTunesDB file based on what files they put on their device. The copyright is unlikely to belong to Apple. Next up, reverse engineering is perfectly legal, and the DMCA has a specific exception for reverse engineering. And, finally, the anti-circumvention clause is designed to protect copyright infringement -- but the folks building alternative software programs aren't doing anything for copyright infringement -- they're just trying to make iPods work with their software.

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One of the new kit releases I got a big kick out of at Maker Faire Austin was the HexPummer Lantern from our compadres at Solarbotics. This is an add-on to their popular HexPummer, a kit version of a cool BEAM circuit that creates throbbing LED light that "PUMMs" when darkness falls and the circuit slowly dumps the power from the solar cell and rechargeable batteries that have been soaking up and storing the day's sun. Put this inside of a handsome little laser-cut Japanese lantern with geeky silhouettes (or seasonal ones) and you have the HexPummer Lantern. This is a great entry-level kit, something that the builder will have fun showing off when s/he's done making it.

Solarbotics even made special MAKE and Maker Faire Austin Lantern kits. These kits, and the HexPummers, are available in the Maker Shed.

HexPummer Kit (Pummer only)
Our Price: $27.50

Lantern Kit (Lantern only)
Our Price: $7.50

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Just spotted on Twitter (search: mumbai or #mumbai) and via chat sessions here in the Boing Boing tv studio: Attacks in Bombay (NYT), and here's a snip from the Times of India report:

Terrorists struck at India's financial capital late Wednesday night as at least seven near-simultaneous firings and explosions rocked areas in the vicinity of posh hotels in South Mumbai, leaving ten persons dead and several injured. ( Watch )

Armed with AK-47 rifles and grenades, a couple of terrorists entered the passenger hall of crowded Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal (CST) railway station and opened fire.

Ten people were killed in firing at Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) station, police said. Over 30 people were injured in firing at CST, a senior police official said.

Director General of Police A N Roy said at least two terrorists were holed up inside the Oberoi Hotel where firing was on.

Three people, employees of Taj Hotel in South Mumbai, were killed after being fired upon by terrorists and an equal number of people died in a bomb blast in a taxi at Dockyard Road.

The best live streaming TV coverage I've found is on CNN-IBN (CNN's partner in India). I'm watching the stream now, as I type. Mumbai Metblogs has a post up, I'd imagine they'll be posting more.

One of the BBtv crew members is from Bombay, and I think he looks to the Times of India for breaking coverage of events such as this -- looks like they already have a lot of news online. Neha Viswanathan at Global Voices has a comprehensive roundup of what's happening (thanks, joncamfield). Toronto Globe and Mail coverage here. (thanks, howlabit). Al Jazeera's coverage is here. A number of independent blogger/journalist types in Bombay right now are posting a lot of updates to Twitter, someone just recommended Dina Mehta, another points to Karishma, both of whom are near the attack site. PHOTO: A blogger named Vinu in Bombay is uploading photos of damage from the attacks, including the image above; more photos are being uploaded as I type this post (thanks, Maurice Reeves).

Please add other pointers in the comments thread.

This Instructable details a simple little hack to get USB power out of a VGA port, to power external disc drives, DVD players, and the like. All you need is a male to male VGA gender changer and a female plug from any old USB extension cable.

VGA to USB power!

Best Of Instructables
Our Price: $34.99
Sale Price: $29.99
You Save $5.00!

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 home, craft, food and 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.

Highlights from the book:

* 336 pages, 6-5/8 x 9-3/8, same dimensions as The Best of MAKE and MAKE magazine.
* Over 120 projects!
* Projects cover everything from food hacking and making home furnishings from junk to building robots and CNC milling machines. And in-between you'll find projects on arts, crafts, costume-making, tool tips, themed photo galleries, and tons more.
* There are also the results of the Community Choice contest winners (the best of Instructables as voted by its members) and links to their projects.
* There are key user comments from the site throughout, called User Notes, and even a section in the back for you to keep your own User Notes as you build the projects.

We tried to involve the Instructables community as much as possible in the creation of the book (we were in direct communication with several hundred authors!). We hope the results do this maker community proud. It was a thrill ride to be sure.

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nnfiber writes "What if home owners could also own their Internet connection? Tim Wu, of New America Foundation and Derek Slater, Google's Policy Analyst, say this can be a new effective way to encourage broadband deployment — an important issue in 'America's economic growth.' In his post, Timothy B. Lee says: 'That might sound like a crazy idea at first blush, but Wu and Slater do a great job of explaining how it might work. The key idea is "condominium fiber," an arrangement in which a number of neighboring households pool their resources to install fiber to all the homes in their neighborhoods. Once constructed, each home would own its own fiber strand, while the shared costs of maintaining the "trunk" cable from the individual homes to a central switching location would be managed in the same way that condominium and homeowners' associations currently manage the shared areas of condos and gated communities.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well, it's coming up to the holidays and I've started to make my list and fill it in. As a starting point, I went through all the books and DVDs and gadgets I'd reviewed on Boing Boing since last November and looked at what had been the best-sellers among BB's readership, figuring you folks have pretty good taste! As I was taking a walk down old review lane, I realized that many of you would probably be interested in seeing these lists too, so I've turned them into a series of blog-posts that I'll be sticking up, one per day, for the next week or so. Today I'm starting with kids' media and media about kids and child-rearing. Later this week, I'll do fiction, nonfiction, comics and graphic novels, CDs and DVDs and gadgets and everything else, one a day. Hope this helps you with your holiday shopping as much as it's helped me with mine!

Baby's First Mythos
(C.J. Henderson)
Cthluhoid picture book
Original Boing Boing post

Invention of Hugo Cabret
(Brian Selznik)
Award-winning steampunk graphic novel for kids
Original Boing Boing post

Good as Lily
(Derek Kirk Kim)
Ass-kicking girl-positive graphic novel for young readers
Original Boing Boing post

The Plain Janes
(Cecil Castellucci, Jim Rugg)
Funny, spirited little story about a gang of girls named Jane at a strait-laced high-school, rejected by the mainstream, and their art adventures.
Original Boing Boing post

Little Brother
(Cory Doctorow)
My bestselling young adult novel about kids who hack for freedom
Original Boing Boing post

The Starry Rift
(Jonathan Strahan)
Science fiction anthology for teens
Original Boing Boing post

St. Trinian's: The Entire Appalling Business
(Ronald Searle)
Ronald Searle's original dark, weird and hilarious St Trinian's comics
Original Boing Boing post

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
(Daniel H. Pink)
Optimistic and iconoclastic career guide in manga form
Original Boing Boing post

Alice in Wonderland Tattoos

Alice in Wonderland temporary tatts
Original Boing Boing post

Freakazoid - The Complete First Season

The best TV cartoon since the Max Fleischer era, on DVD
Original Boing Boing post

Boy Proof
(Cecil Castellucci)
A compassionate young adult novel about a weird, smart, angry girl
Original Boing Boing post

Cycler
(Lauren McLaughlin)
Smart YA novel about sex and sexuality
Original Boing Boing post

My Mother Wears Combat Boots: A Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us
(Jessica Mills)
Kick-ass punk-parenting book
Original Boing Boing post

How to Ditch Your Fairy
(Justine Larbalestier)
Hilarious kids book about the problems with fairies
Original Boing Boing post

Nation
(Terry Pratchett)
Moving and sweet young adult novel about science, superstition and decency
Original Boing Boing post

ABC3D
(Marion Bataille)
The best pop-up book in the world
Original Boing Boing post

The Baby Sleep Solution: A Proven Program to Teach Your Baby to Sleep Twelve Hours a Night
(Suzy Giordano)
The best parenting book I've read
Original Boing Boing post

How Children Learn
(John Holt)
Cllassic of human, kid-centered learning
Original Boing Boing post

The Graveyard Book
(Neil Gaiman)
Spooky, magical retelling of The Jungle Book in a graveyard
Original Boing Boing post

How Children Fail
(John Holt)
Angry lessons from failures to teach
Original Boing Boing post

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: A Pop-Up Book
(Sam Ita)
The paper kraken wakes
Original Boing Boing post

Alphabutt
(Kimya Dawson)
Weird, jangly, hilarious awesome music for kids
Original Boing Boing post

Zoe's Tale
(John Scalzi)
Scalzi's smart-ass young-adult sf thriller
Original Boing Boing post

Free to Be...You and Me (The 35th Anniversary Edition, Hardcover)
(Marlo Thomas and Friends)
The book every kid needs
Original Boing Boing post

It's been amusing to watch folks like Andrew Orlowski continue to misinterpret Chris Anderson's slight admission that things in "the long tail" aren't exactly they way he'd predicted them to be. Of course, Orlowski entirely misses the point by assuming incorrectly (as many others have done) that the discussion of the long tail meant the death of "the blockbuster." That's not at all true. The idea of the long tail was that it both enabled more content to be produced by opening up more shelf space and then made it easier to find that content.

But, the fact remains that the finding of that content is entirely dependent on the filtering and recommendation systems, which is highlighted in the recent NY Times piece by Clive Thompson about attempts to improve Netflix's recommendation engine (and, yes, this is the second post I've written on that article, but this is discussing an entirely different issue than the first, so it seemed worthwhile). In the article, Thompson notes:

Cinematch has, in fact, become a video-store roboclerk: its suggestions now drive a surprising 60 percent of Netflix’s rentals. It also often steers a customer’s attention away from big-grossing hits toward smaller, independent movies. Traditional video stores depend on hits; just-out-of-the-theaters blockbusters account for 80 percent of what they rent. At Netflix, by contrast, 70 percent of what it sends out is from the backlist — older movies or small, independent ones. A good recommendation system, in other words, does not merely help people find new stuff. As Netflix has discovered, it also spurs them to consume more stuff.

Basically, that entire paragraph explains the issue. A good recommendation system does two things: it gets people to consumer more -- and it introduces them to stuff they might not have heard about otherwise. But, that second part is not necessarily the same as the first part. Many people assumed, incorrectly, that the greatness of such "long tail filters" was that it would drive people to consumer more down the tail -- but as Netflix is seeing, the good recommendation engine drives people to consume more content in both the head and the tail.

And, when you think about it, that makes an awful lot of sense. Popular stuff often is popular for a reason. While some may disagree, things are often popular because they really do appeal to a lot of people, so it should be no surprise that a good recommendation system would increase consumption in the head: it's accurately noting that an awful lot of people will like that content. But that doesn't exclude promoting some of the content from the tail. Since the recommendation system is driving more consumption overall, it's "lifting all boats" as they say, even if (as is likely) it lifts the boats in the head more than in the tail. In the past, that content in the tail wouldn't get any business at all, but these days it can at least make some money, if not a huge amount.

So, no the concept of the long tail is hardly dead or even in trouble (or, as Orlowski notes, downgraded). Instead, it's just being understood better.

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A terrorist attack in Mumbai is on the other side of the world, but it's all surprisingly connected. India and Pakistan are constant bitter enemies. Both are nuclear powers. Pakistan may be on the verge of becoming a failed state. Their new PM is the widower of a recently assassinated leader and the Taliban, which is encamped in tribal areas near the Afghan border, are wielding more power in Pakistan. There's fear they might get control of one or more of Pakistan's nukes.

Also camped out in the tribal areas are Al Qaeda, and if he's still alive, almost for sure Osama bin Laden.

Meanwhile, the Taliban are patiently fighting the US and its allies to regain control of Afhanistan, and they're winning. Our puppet, Karzai wants to negotiate with them. I wonder why? (Perhaps he'd like to live to old age?)

On Afghanistan's western border is Iran. An oil giant, and for sure a country you need no introduction to.

So it's not that many steps, chaotic ones, from an attack in Mumbai, which probably is somehow connected to Pakistan and the Taliban, to nukes in Pakistan, and oil in the Middle East.

Mikey Sklar has posted a nice hack for bringing a dead Roomba back to life:

I repaired my $60 Dirt Dog battery with just a AA battery and some tape. We start off with a Dirt Dog battery that has a voltage of 15.87V which is indicative of a bad cell. When we complete the repair we are at 17.12V and that is without even charging the pack.

Check out Mikey and Wendy's blog for all kinds of quality, green DIY.

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The Arduino open-source microcontroller platform can be programmed and equipped to perform a nearly endless list of functions. It's likely the best all-around centerpiece to a modern electronics project. But one of the tasks Arduino is best used for is straight-up fun - the open design means there's an Arduino board suitable for almost any project, and a wealth of add-on "shields" extends its abilities with ease.

Starter kits

Arduino Starter Kit - The best way to get going with the very capable microcontroller platform, the starter kit sets you up with a bunch of basic parts necessary for tinkering plus a wealth of knowledge in the included 400+ pages of Making Things Talk, by Arduino developer Tom Igoe. Features -

• 1x Arduino Diecimila
  
• 1x Mini Breadboard
  
• 1x 3 ft. USB Cable
  
• 10x 1K Resistors
  
• 2x 10k Resistors
  
• 3x Red LEDs
  
• 2x Green LEDs
  
• 1X Superbright Blue LED
  
• 1x Momentary Tactile Switch
  
• 2x Interlink Force Sensing Resistors
  
• 1x Protoshield Kit (unassembled)
  
• Making Things Talk by Tom Igoe
  
• 24" each of Red, Blue & Black AWG jumper wire
  
• 9V Battery Case w/DC Plug (some assembly required)
  
• Yes, even a 9V battery

Price $89.99

---

Arduino Starter Pack - A different take on the Arduino survival kit, this pack from Adafruit includes potentiometers, a DC wall adapter, and a nice selection of LEDs -

• Arduino Duemilanove - including 4 rubber feet
  
• 3' USB cable
  
• Protoshield Kit
  
• Tiny Breadboard
  
• 9V DC regulated wall adapter
  
• 9V Battery case with switch and a 2.1mm plug
  
• 10K potentiometer, 1K potentiometer
  
• 2 small pushbuttons
  
• 5 red diffused bright LEDs, plus one each of red, green and blue ultra-bright LED
  
• 5 100 ohm resistors, 5 1K resistors, 5 10K resistors
  
• CdS photocell sensor
  
• 4 pieces of 18" long jumper wire in red, black, yellow and blue

Price $65

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Hugh sez, "We wanted to find out if three-star chef recipes were all they were cracked up to be, and if people like us (read - enormous geeks) could cook them. So we took one geek, one Gordon Ramsay recipe, a few hours, and a camera to film the results..."

Normal Person vs ... Gordon Ramsay (Thanks, Hugh!)

Master archivist Rick Prelinger sez,

It's 1951, and America fears Communism and the Bomb. Since the Johnsons, a working-class Midwestern family, can't afford a Thanksgiving turkey, they decide to spend an evening writing up what they're thankful for, and share their thoughts around the dinner table.

Unlike almost every other Cold War educational and industrial film, this film doesn't equate freedom and happiness with material things. Made by Centron, the same visionary company that spawned Herk Harvey and his "Carnival of Souls," and written by Margaret "Trudy" Travis, one of the few women creating ephemeral films at the time, it's deeply patriotic, yes, and anti-Communist as well, but it runs counter to many of the Fifties clichés we hold dear.

Download a high-quality version from the Internet Archive and watch it with your family!

A Day of Thanksgiving (1951)

I've just finished listening to Tony Benn's More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001-2007. Benn was a long-serving left-wing British Parliamentarian who also served as Secretary of State and has been key in the anti-war movement. I was only vaguely aware of him until I saw his amazing appearance in Michael Moore's fantastic movie Sicko, and since then, I've found him popping up all over the place.

This volume of Benn's diaries covers the 9/11 attack, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Hutton inquiry, and many amazing turns and twists in domestic and global politics. Benn -- now 83 -- is incredibly insightful, thoughtful, and principled in his analysis of these events, and is an inspiring whirlwind of activity as he packs his days with interviews, position papers, lecture tours, private meetings with everyone from Kofi Annan to Iraqi dissidents. In between, he's absolutely charming with his grumbles about his flagging health and energy, his search for his favorite frozen pizzas, his overwhelming pride in his family, and his ruminations on an extraordinary life in politics.

Benn hails from an era in politics characterized by thoughtfulness, civility, passion and deep commitment to principle. Listening to him narrate his diaries is an education in what politics can and should be, and what it means to give yourself over to public service. The world's a better place for Benn -- and I feel like I'm a better person for having lived inside his diaries for a few hours.
More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001-2007

Michael J. Ross writes "As perhaps the only substantial computer language embedded inside of the major Web browsers, JavaScript has brought an unprecedented level of power to client-side programming for the Internet. Yet as a result of cross-browser incompatibilities and other problems, it has probably also resulted in an unprecedented number of headaches for Web developers. JavaScript libraries attempt to mitigate much of these difficulties. One of the most popular such libraries, jQuery, is explored in a book by Bear Bibeault and Yehuda Katz, titled jQuery in Action." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Glyn sez, "The flawed proposal to extend the term of copyright protection afforded to sound recordings, robbing consumers in the name of performers but for the benefit of the world's four major record labels, is being fast-tracked through the democratic process. It's vital that you contact your MEPs now and tell them why term extension is bad news. The Open Rights Group describes what has been happening so far and their meeting with MEPs in Europe. How ever they say that the best lobbying tool know to man is a constituent writing to their MEP, and now's the time to do it."

They proposed a host of worrying new amendments which threaten to:

* Weaken further already inadequate measures intended to allow orphan works, and commercially worthless but culturally significant recordings to pass into the public domain (Culture (CULT), Internal Market (IMCO) and the Industry, Technology and Research (ITRE) committees draft reports).

* Allow record labels to deduct “costs” from a fund intended to benefit session musicians, further shrinking the pot of money made available to performers in favour of labels (IMCO committee draft report).

* Dramatically widen the scope of the Directive to include audio-visual recording, even though no relevant impact assessment has been conducted into what effect this might have on consumers and follow-on innovators. (JURI and ITRE committee draft reports).

From bad to worse: MEPs to rush through disembowelled term extension directive. (Thanks, Glyn!)

The makers of the Whizzinator, a fake penis that dispenses fake, drug free piss so that you can beat workplace urinalysis tests, have been convicted of "conspiracy." They'll be sentenced on Friday. The BBC calls their operation a "fake penis scam," but I think the real scam is employers who think your piss is their business. I don't take drugs or drink, but I think that the right to choose what state of mind you want to be in when you're off the clock is fundamental, and no one's business but your own.

The device was sold with a heating element and fake urine to help people test negative for illegal substances.

They could face up to eight years in prison and a $500,000 (£334,000) fine.

Men guilty over fake penis scam (Thanks, Fee!)

The purpose of copyright is clear: it's to provide an incentive for the creation of new content. As such, it makes absolutely no sense to ever retroactively extend any sort of copyright. The government, backed by citizens, made a deal with content creators: you create content and we give you a monopoly for x number of years -- and clearly that deal was considered fair by the content creators, or they wouldn't have agreed to it and created the content. To go back and change the terms of the deal at a later date is unfair to everyone. It's renegotiating a deal against citizens' best interests. It's as if you bought a car for a price you negotiated, and three years later, the car company comes back to you and says that you need to pay more, because they, alone, decided that they didn't make enough off of you. Even worse, they get the government to force you to pay, saying that you need to do so.

Sounds ridiculous, right? But that's exactly what's happening with copyright extension in the UK.

We've covered this before. Performance rights in the UK only last 50 years, so music performed in the 60s has started to move into the public domain, and some musicians are freaking out. They first tried to push for an extension using some famous musicians, like Cliff Richards and Ringo Starr, but later realized that people didn't have any sympathy for aging millionaire rockers, demanding more money. So, after that proposal failed, they switched tactics, talking about how poor studio musicians needed copyright extension as a form of welfare.

This argument is incorrect for a variety of reasons. First of all, copyright was never intended to be a welfare system. Studio musicians knew the terms of the deal, and if they chose to rely on earnings from a single performance in 1958 for 50 years, it's difficult to see why the government should bail them out for their own short-sighted thinking, and their decision to live off of a single performance for all those years. If they performed regularly for many years, then they should still be earning plenty off of royalties from songs they recorded less than 50 years ago, so it's difficult to see what the problem is. And, of course, the whole thing about poor studio musicians is mostly a myth. A recent study showed that if performance copyrights were extended, the vast majority of the money generated would go to major record labels, and not to these studio musicians. At best, most studio musicians would earn less than 27 euros per year from the extension.

But, of course, that won't stop the propaganda fueled by the record labels who stand to make a nice, totally unearned, profit from an extension. They've put together a video of these "poor studio musicians" begging the government for a handout. They don't even try to disguise it, admitting that they're asking the government to "show a little gratitude." So, basically, you have musicians who made a fair deal fifty years ago, now being manipulated by the record labels who apparently didn't pay them enough for their session work when it occurred, asking for a handout at the expense of everyone else. The UK government should reject this blatant and unfair renegotiation of terms, and tell the musicians if they want to ask someone for a handout, why not turn to the record labels who apparently didn't pay them enough in the first place.

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Quince is an oddly shaped fruit with a subtle, distinct fragrance. It's not something to eat like a pear but it looks like a knobby version of one. Quince needs to be prepared as a paste or jelly, utilizing all its natural pectin, but then quince achieves its mighty satisfying status in flavor and rose-red color. Quince comes from the Caucasus region, near Iran and Georgia, just like the pomegranate, which I'll cover later today.

I have a medium-sized quince tree, which is very productive. For a while, I didn't know what to do with quince until last year when I began making quince paste. The Spanish call it dulce de membrillo and feature it with manchego cheese.

As quince ripens, the skin turns from green to yellow. Quince have a grey-white fuzz, so the first thing is to give the quince a good scrubbing. Then, place the 4-5 quince in the oven to bake until they're cooked through. Once they've cooled, peel them and remove the seeds. This is somewhat tedious and messy. (Some recipes call for boiling the quince.)

Next, blend the quince in a food processor until the pulp is smooth. Remove to a saucepan, measuring equal amounts of sugar and quince puree. Cook thoroughly, a couple of hours or more. Slowly, the color of the quince mixture will begin to darken.

My wife, Nancy, put some of the liquid quince at this stage over ice cream and she thought it tasted like butterscotch. She decided to save some in a jar for future desserts.

After stovetop cooking, scoop the quince mixture into a baking dish lined with parchment paper. Warm the oven and put the dish in it. Leave it overnight or longer until it begins to turn rose-red. The idea is to let the quince dry out and harden.

Next, with a spatula, try to separate and remove squares of the mixture on to wax paper. The bottom side of the mixture will still be soft but I find that it continues to dry later on. Fold the wax paper to cover the quince paste and refrigerate. It keeps for months and I think it gets better over time. If you want to give some as a holiday gift, place the packet in a plastic bag.

To serve, scrape the paste away from the wax paper and place in a shallow bowl. Surround it with cheese and crackers and fresh fruit for a wonderful appetizer or snack. You won't want to move to the main course.

Google cryptographer and all-round security expert Ben Laurie's been blogging some great security thinking lately. Today he's got a really fascinating, thoughtful piece about the problems of passwords:

So, where does this leave us? Users must have passwords, so why fight it? Why not admit that its where we have to be and make it a familiar (but secure) process, so that users can actually safely use passwords, phishing-free?

The answer to this is deeply sad. It is because we have done a fantastic job on usability of passwords. They’re so usable that anyone will type their password anywhere they see the word “password” with a box next to it. Phishing is utterly trivial because we have trained the world to expect to be phished every time they see a new website.

Of course, we can fix this cryptographically - that’s easy. But let’s say we did that. How do we stop the user from ever typing their password into a phishable box from this day forward? So long as they only ever type the password into the crypto gadget that does the unphishable protocol, they are safe, no matter who asks them to log in. But as soon as they type it into a text box on a web page, they’re screwed.

So, this is why passwords are the worst usability disaster ever.

Do Passwords Scale?

Macula offers a free download of this boxy little Thanksgiving turkey papercraft - a fun holiday project for kids!

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Innovation in America... A gathering storm? @ The Economist-

LISTEN to the growing cries of despair coming from some leading business people, and you might imagine that corporate America’s competitiveness could be the next victim of the global financial crisis. But Jeffrey Immelt, the boss of GE, the world’s largest industrial firm, sees opportunity amid the woe. “Companies and countries that really play offence vis-à-vis technology and innovation are going to come out ahead,” he said this week at an event in New York to present GE’s coming innovations in health-care technology.

With those words, he touched on a debate that has been heating up for many months. Even before the financial crunch began, many businessmen were worried that America was losing its lead in innovation to India and China. They were particularly upset that Asian rivals had been investing with more gusto in teaching young people mathematics and science, and in advanced scientific research. America’s National Academy of Engineering even issued a report last year, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm”, arguing that America’s “economic and strategic security” was in question because of lack of investment.

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Anonymous Coward writes "SIFO (a major Swedish survey company) has conducted a gaming survey right before the launch of Dreamhack Winter. One of the results being that gaming in bigger than football and hockey combined."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It would appear that the lawyers at diamond conglomerate De Beers are unaware of the Streisand Effect. As you might have heard, a week after the US Presidential election, some prankster put out a spoofed version of a future New York Times. It got plenty of attention for a few days and then people moved on. Well, apparently not everyone. De Beers is upset that the online version of the spoof contained a fake De Beers ad. Rather than recognize that this was a spoof (ha ha) that everyone had pretty much forgotten about, the company had its lawyers send off a threat letter. However, rather than target the creators of the spoof, or even the hosting firm, De Beers threatened the registrar who handled the domain registration for the site, demanding that it take down the site or face a trademark infringement lawsuit.

Of course, as the EFF notes at the above link, intermediaries (third party service providers) are clearly well protected against liability for the actions of their users in the US. And, of course, there's the whole issue of parodies being protected from infringement suits. However, even more ridiculous is the fact that De Beers is now calling more attention to the ad. The spoof of the entire newspaper did get some attention, but that attention quickly waned, and it's unlikely that too many people paid attention to the spoof banner ad on a spoof website for the NY Times. I hadn't even heard about the ads. Almost all of the attention was on the spoof stories. Yet, now that De Beers is threatening to sue, a lot more folks are going to know about and see the ad. How is that possibly a smart move on the part of De Beers?

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Mikey's HOW TO - iRobot dead cell battery fix...

I have three iRobots which help clean our house. I bought them about two years ago. As the one year warranty was coming up I called iRobot and asked them to help with various issues. They basically replaced all three of them. Now that I am at the one year point with the replacements I'm running out of options as things break. I can either fix it myself, or buy more shit. Obviously, I don't want to pay for anything. This morning I took apart the battery pack in the Dirt Dog vacuum cleaner. After about 30 minutes of cutting, sawing, and taping I had a battery pack that was performing like a new one. Now instead of getting 10 minutes of lousy vacuuming I get over a hour of powerful cleaning. This saved about $60 which is the cost of buying a new replacement pack from iRobot.

More:

Photos & Instructable on fixing the batteries...

MAKE - 06 Roomba Tronic
Take a tour into the underground robotic relentlessness of Roomba hacks, robots in the streets of Austin, and robot fighting.


Roomba Hacks - MAKE 10
Don't let your Roomba just collect dust when you can hack, mod, and take over the world with your own (cleaning) robot army.

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Gio sent in a link to this interesting preamp. The builder was able to make the preamp with parts on hand. I'm not sure I would have the tubes, but the rest of the parts are fairly common. [Thanks Gio]

I was pleased with how well it turned out, at 30 bucks it looks pretty professional with the solid gold plated jacks on the black case. A neat feature I added later on is the ability to adjust the brightness of the front LED. The yellow LED is to indicate that the tube filaments are active.

More about DIY 12AU7 tube preamplifier

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Over on the Make blog, there's a great list of a bunch of Arduino kits, books, and add-ons.

The Arduino open-source microcontroller platform can be programmed and equipped to perform a nearly endless list of functions. It's likely the best all-around centerpiece to a modern electronics project. But one of the tasks Arduino is best used for is straight-up fun - the open design means there's an Arduino board suitable for almost any project, and a wealth of add-on "shields" extends its abilities with ease.

Make's gift guide to Arduino

An anonymous reader writes "BBC News and CNET Cutting Edge are reporting on a new play starring at Osaka University, in which two Mitsubishi Wakamaru robots interact with human actors and move around the stage. Named "Hataraku Watashi" ("I, Worker"), the play is authored by Oriza Hirata, a renowned playwright. It focuses on a robot who complains about his boring and demeaning jobs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After having such a great time making the Gakken Inchworm, we decided to try the Gakken Mechamo Centipede. It's nicely packaged, too, and also comes with its own tools; it just needs 6 batteries.

This kit only had directions in Japanese - there was no English version included. Since we had experience with the Inchworm, we decided to see if we could put it together just using the pictures, but we found it helped a lot to look at the English instructions periodically. (If you decide you need the text in English, it's available as a PDF through the Maker Shed Centipede link - you do need to download the Japanese font to view any text at all, even the English, which is odd, but it only took a minute.) There was an errata page in the kit that had corrections for steps 5 and 7, but the errata page looked the same as the page in the Japanese instructions. The online illustrations for steps 5 and 7 were missing some little spring washers, so we assumed the kit had come with updated instructions.

The little cranks are numbered; take care to assemble them in the correct order. They also have to be aligned in a specific configuration for the leg movement to work correctly.

This was definitely a harder build than the Inchworm was. So many legs! There were just more parts in general, you had to keep track of the numbered parts, and it was a more complicated build. But again, it's a forgiving kit, you can backtrack easily if you've put something in backwards. One battery pack wire came loose during the build, but it just took a quick solder to fix it and we were good to go. When we put the batteries in for testing, we found that one of the leg cranks kept getting hung up on a nut that was sticking out just a hair too far - we had to take out the spring washer behind the nut to fix that.

All in all, it was a fun build - it might not be the best kit for a first project, depending on the kid and their level of patience. The motion is totally awesome! I lived in Korea for a while when I was a kid, and one morning there was an amazing many-legged bug that kind of flowed across the bathroom floor - this reminded me of that bug, the motion is very realistic (but mechanical, and slower!).

In the Maker Shed:

The Gakken Mechamo Centipede kit is available through the Maker Shed.

More:
Gakken Mechamo Crab build and mod
Build: Gakken Mechamo Inchworm

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The BeagleBoard is an incredibly little embedded system. It's Linux-powered, easy to hack, and has lots of connectors; everything from an expansion port with GPIO/I2C/SPI on up to HDMI. Pair it up with Arduino (don't miss our great Arduino gift guide), and you're unstoppable.

Enrique wrote in to tell us about the amazing BeagleBoard-powered project he made for his son:

For Halloween, my son wanted to be Iron Man. In about 2 months time, I integrated various gadgets into a store-bought costume. The most powerful components were BeagleBoard and Arduino. If I had more time, I would have added an overhead display in mask, a webcam for night vision, a 3G modem connected to BeagleBoard and maybe more. ;)

The suit is really tricked out:

• Repulsor Air - Blows air with CO2 air pump on hip and hose back to his hand.
• Repulsor Missile - Using CO2 air pump can also launch a paper missile.
• Repulsor Sensor/Light - A magnetic switch sensor lights his repulsor hand light and fades out and in his glowing eyes. Arduino handles this effect.
• Repulsor Sound Effect(s) - Originally not working. Worked around problem by using right-mouse, middle-mouse button and configured Elightenment17 to playback sound effects using Mplayer script. Mouse buttons activated by Arduino Digital output triggered by sensors.
• Arc Reactor - A LED night light from Costco embedded in his chest.
• BeagleBoard: Powerful Computer - With BeagleBoard already running in JARVUS box on my son's back need to add other features. Possibilities: Web cam, mobile router with hotspot and a head-mounted display, VoIP, streaming video of Iron Man view.
• Arduino: Super Input/Output Board - Handles repulsor effects but can add other sensors to enable even cooler special effects!!

LinuxNerd: My son in an Iron Man Suit!

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SpuriousLogic writes "A Los Angeles real estate developer is suing Apple for patent infringement over the way the iPhone navigates Web sites. The suit, which was filed on behalf of EMG Technology, seeks unspecified damages. EMG Technology is a company that holds the patents of Elliot Gottfurcht, the real estate developer, as well as Marlo Longstreet and Grant Gottfurcht. The company claims that the iPhone infringes on patent 7,441,196 — a patent that was approved only last month, after a filing process that began on March 13, 2006. That patent is for an invention that displays 'on-line content reformatted from a webpage in a hypertext markup language (HTML) format into an extensible markup language (XML) format to generate a sister site.' This sister site is a simplified version of the original site that is then displayed on any number of devices — including cell phones, EMG says."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpuriousLogic writes "A Los Angeles real estate developer is suing Apple for patent infringement over the way the iPhone navigates Web sites. The suit, which was filed on behalf of EMG Technology, seeks unspecified damages. EMG Technology is a company that holds the patents of Elliot Gottfurcht, the real estate developer, as well as Marlo Longstreet and Grant Gottfurcht. The company claims that the iPhone infringes on patent 7, 441, 196- a patent that was approved only last month, after a filing process that began on March 13, 2006. That patent is for an invention that displays 'on-line content reformatted from a webpage in a hypertext markup language (HTML) format into an extensible markup language (XML) format to generate a sister site.' This sister site is a simplified version of the original site that is then displayed on any number of devices--including cell phones, EMG says."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader Philip writes in to ask about our thoughts on a commentary on News.com by Dave Rosenberg concerning Sun's open source strategy. Rosenberg seems very concerned that Sun has decided to forego trying to sell software directly:

Sun's approach--at least the way I'm reading it from Jonathan Schwartz's statements, is about making the software totally free and trying to sell support and hardware. This clearly diminishes the value of the products and doesn't offer a mechanism that encourages people to pay for software.

It's difficult to see what Rosenberg is worked up about here. Sun seems to be following pretty closely an economically sound approach to a market: using infinite goods (software) to make scarce goods (hardware and services) more valuable. That's a lot more reasonable than using infinite goods to try to get people to pay for more infinite goods. There's no reason why Sun needs to encourage people to pay for software, and there are many reasons why they should not try to make people pay for software.

Yet, for some reason, Rosenberg seems to think that this strategy is somehow damaging to the open source movement:

It also puts an unnecessary burden on the notion of open source--such that if Sun is wrong, everyone else will look wrong too.

Why? If, as Rosenberg notes elsewhere in the article, Sun's open source strategy is different than other companies', then such a failure should be seen as a failure of Sun's model, not a strategy of embracing open source. There are plenty of reasons why Sun may (or even is likely to) fail in this endeavor. The Sun brand name has been tarnished. People may not find the hardware or services Sun is selling as providing enough value compared to alternatives (even with the software included). On the whole, it's not clear what's compelling about Sun's offer compared to the alternatives, and that's its biggest challenge. But that hardly reflects poorly on open source software or on the idea of not selling software.

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theodp writes "In an Onion-worthy move, the USPTO has decided that IBM inventors deserve a patent for splitting a restaurant bill. Ending an 8+ year battle with the USPTO, self-anointed patent system savior IBM got a less-than-impressed USPTO Examiner's final rejection overruled in June and snagged U.S. Patent No. 7,457,767 Tuesday for its Pay at the Table System. From the patent: 'Though U.S. Pat. No. 5,933,812 to Meyer, et al. discussed previously provides for an entire table of patrons to pay the total bill using a credit card, including the gratuity, it does not provide an ability for the check to be split among the various patrons, and for those individual patrons to then pay their desired portion of the bill. This deficiency is addressed by the present invention.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's an interesting video of another walking iPhone. Then it rings, instead of you getting up to pick it up, it walks over to you. Ah, maybe Apple will build this into iPhone 4G.

via Suicide Bots

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This hefty clock uses classic bells and binary display - and it knows where you are!

The case measures about 15×13x8 centimeters. The bells which I happened to have lying around are from a very old telephone and were the remains of my very first electronics project (which was about seven years ago).

The most remarkable feature of this alarm clock is the fact that it uses a microswitch mounted in my door to detect if I left my room. It can only be disabled when the door is open.

This thing could probably intimidate you to wakefulness - Ultimate Alarm Clock [via Hacked Gadgets]

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SpaceAdmiral notes a new study making the claim that rocks have been evolving throughout Earth's history. "'Mineral evolution is obviously different from Darwinian evolution — minerals don't mutate, reproduce or compete like living organisms,' said Hazen in a statement announcing the study's findings. 'But we found both the variety and relative abundances of minerals have changed dramatically over more than 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. For at least 2.5 billion years, and possibly since the emergence of life, Earth's mineralogy has evolved in parallel with biology,' Hazen added. 'One implication of this finding is that remote observations of the mineralogy of other moons and planets may provide crucial evidence for biological influences beyond Earth.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DIY Navy - Oberon Class Submarine for sale - I bet those pirates might pick this up on the cheap...

The Otama is a decommissioned Australian RAN Oberon class submarine of 2030 tons displacement surfaced.Apart from the removal of classified communications and sensor equipment, OTAMA is in the same state that the crew left it, an operational Oberon class submarine, with a full outfit of spares and equipment.

MADE ON EARTH: Erik and the Submarine
Photography by Andreas Nilsson

Erik Westerberg was 5 years old when he first saw tons and can dive to a depth of 100 meters. Down a large oil tank standing next to a neighbor's barn in in the dark waters of the Gulf of Bothnia, the sub-his rural hometown in northern Sweden. "I started marine is powered by an electric motor from a dreaming of a submarine," he remembers. "I wanted lathe, giving a modest top speed of 2. 5 knots. so badly to see what was down there." Westerberg's submarine is only the second civil The underwater world still calls to him, but the submarine in Sweden. The first was built in the construction itself is now the biggest driving force. 1960s by Håkan Lans, who can also claim the inven- "When I first started building, I looked around for tion of a Neanderthal computer mouse on his list information, but there wasn't a lot out there, since of merits. submarines are mostly classified as military. So But there are other submarines in Swedish history. I gave up. I decided to build it completely from my In October 1981 the Soviet submarine U137, armed own imagination and common sense." with nuclear torpedoes, ran aground in the Swedish For the past two years Westerberg, 26, has spent archipelago, and for many years holidaymaking more than 2,400 hours, apart from his day job as a Swedes, wearing Speedos and sunscreen, kept a freelance mechanic, building his submarine. He had wary eye on the horizon. to invent a special device to bend the 30-millimeter, "It would be funny to put the hammer and sickle matte-finish sheet metal for his 6-meter-long hull. on the sub," Westerberg says laughing. "Then there He used 200 kilos of filler metals in welding, and could be a little action when I'm out and about." thought out all the tiniest details -- from the Volvo seat and racer steering wheel down to the smallest, well-oiled mechanical bearing.

makezine.com/go/eriksub

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 13, page 23 - Johanna Hallin.

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This researcher connected a bunch of electrodes to his face to stimulate his nerves and tendons causing him to become a human puppet for the duration of this video. Although we don't conduone this type of thing here at Make, it's still pretty amusing to watch.

via Suicide Bots

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R Scott's analog MIDI drum machine puts circuitry from an old organ's rhythm section under digital control -

The 8 knobs on the top of the case control Master Volume, Kick, Clave, Snare, Conga, Low Tom, High Tom, and Hi-Hat levels. The two LEDs indicate power and midi activity.
[…]
The drum sound circuitry was taken from a broken old Farfisa organ. I removed the entire rhythm accompaniment assembly and later built a power supply for it, turning it into a stand-alone drum machine.

MIDI control was implemented via a custom kit from Highly Liquid. Combining pre-existing analog synth boards with new controller hardware is an awesome idea that coud be applied in a number of creative ways. Head over to the site to hear samples and get more of the story - analog MIDI drum machine

More:

MegaDrum MIDI trigger

MIDI glockenspiel

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Panasonic has announced the launch of the compact FL220 flashgun and will update the DMC-LX3's firmware to accommodate it. Firmware v1.1 not only allows full compatibility with the DMW-FL220 flash unit, it also promises to improve Auto White Balance performance. Firmware v1.1 will be available for download on 15th December, 2008.

There are a bunch of headlines today about a new study that notes that you shouldn't rely on Wikipedia for drug info that I'm sure has various Wikipedia-haters feeling good about themselves. Of course, the details of the study suggest that Wikipedia comes out of the study looking much better than you might expect.

First of all, who relies on any encyclopedia for comprehensive drug information? That's not the purpose of any encyclopedia. But, more to the point, the study didn't find any errors in Wikipedia info, compared to their review of Medscape Drug Reference, a peer-reviewed site. While MDR did provide the answers to many more questions than Wikipedia, four of the answers in MDR were inaccurate, while none in Wikipedia were. The real issue was that Wikipedia's info wasn't as complete, often leading to "errors of omission." Of course, again, things aren't as bad as they seem, as the researchers noted that while watching Wikipedia entries over a 90 day period, the entries improved greatly, a process that's likely to continue.

So, basically, the study pretty much points out the obvious: you shouldn't have been relying on Wikipedia as your sole source for anything, let alone something as important as questions about pharmaceuticals you're taking. But, as a starting point that is backed up with multiple other sources, it might not be that bad. And, that's exactly what Wikipedia is designed to do.

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This giant octopus was spotted in the Shoreditch area of London. Inflatable and made to catch passing wind drifts, the octopus moves in sync to appear as if it's alive and grappling the building. Interesting idea that definitely scared a few locals as the comments at the link below suggest.

via Monster Munch

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Photograph by Albert W. Starkweather

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a ... boat? Technically, it's a planeboat. And to Dave Drimmer of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the live-aboard craft was home for 20 years.

The vessel has a colorful history. Its name, Cosmic Muffin, comes from singer Jimmy Buffett, who caught a glimpse of the yacht on a sailing trip and wrote it into his 1992 novel, Where Is Joe Merchant?

But the planeboat started out as infamous aviator Howard Hughes' personal Boeing 307 Stratoliner in 1939. Rumor has it Rita Hayworth had a hand in decorating its 12-foot-wide interior.

In 1964, under different ownership in Florida, the plane was grounded by Hurricane Cleo.

It didn't stay on land for long. After buying it as scrap for $70 in 1969, the vehicle's new owner decided to salvage the ailing aircraft and turn it into a motor yacht. Then in 1981, current owner Drimmer answered an ad in the local classifieds: "Unique houseboat, great bachelor pad."

"It was in horrible condition and almost everyone tried to talk me out of buying it," Drimmer says, "but it had a strange and wonderful appeal that compelled me to grab it."

With trashed floors, a leaking, rotted hull, and no motors, propellers, or rudders to speak of, Drimmer had his work cut out for him just making the boat livable. With the help of friends, he stopped the leaks, rewired the electrical system, installed a water heater, air conditioning, and fridge, and renovated the head (that's bathroom in boatspeak). Powerful motors installed in recent years have made it seaworthy once again.

Drimmer lives on land these days, but the planeboat is docked nearby. He's always willing to give tours and charters, and to talk on and on about the strange conveyance he once called home. He kinda misses the old girl.

"My house doesn't move around at all," he says. "I really enjoyed the motion of the ocean. And being in a fuselage sometimes felt like flying."

>>Now Boarding: planeboats.com

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 15, page 23 - Megan Mansell Williams.

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Astronaut Dr. Don Pettit demonstrates what is likely the most convenient method for enjoying a beverage in space - using a simple cup with airplane-wing-like shape which uses a liquid's surface tension to draw the beverage evenly towards the mouth -

When Dr. Don Pettit lived aboard the International Space Station in 2002, he became known for his "Saturday Morning Science" sessions, during which he would demonstrate really cool, simple microgravity experiments.

Earlier this month, Pettit returned to space, this time as member of space shuttle Endeavour's crew on a mission to upgrade the outpost. After 10 days of hard work, the STS-126 crew got some time off Sunday morning and Pettit took the opportunity to film a special episode of Saturday, err, Sunday Morning Science.

Not sure if it's safe enough to use around a sensitive control panel, but very cool all the same. - Sunday Morning Science

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Here is a great use for an empty soda can. Just be careful of those extremely sharp edges when working with any thin metal, especially aluminum.

Soft drink cans are easily recyclable as scrap metal, but I fancied trying something a little more direct - a simplified form of tinwork.

All that's needed for this project is a strong pair of scissors, a cork-backed table mat, a pointed object (a scriber or just a ballpoint pen), a little bit of tape and some fine abrasive paper. Plus of course an empty aluminium drink can.....

More about How-to: Tin box made from a can [Vintage Glam]

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Flowers by Jan van Nuenen was created using a Monome controlling Ableton Live via a max/msp patch called boiingg. I really like the combining of music and video into one piece of performance art.

Live generates a string of midinotes with velocity 0 to 20 and back to 0. The velocity channel is used to tell the game engine which frame of the loop will be displayed. In this case, a loop of a growing flower is playing from frame 0 to 20 and back. So you can re-animate the flower by changing the velocities. Framerate can be changed by changing bpm in live. This technique also allows you to change in and out points of the loop live.

More about the making of Flowers [wire to the ear]

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Another thing I have a vague recollection of was an announcement in August or September that Asus was going to offer an Eee PC with a built-in EVDO modem and a service plan. This started the thread about $99 netbooks. The product was supposed to ship in October but I can't find any evidence of it. Do you know what happened? Did they ship? If not, is it still planned?

I have an idea for a business built around a new Top Level Domain or TLD. It wouldn't matter what the name is, it could be .xyz or .x98 -- I'd just like to plunk down some money and create a little economy around domains all ending with the same three letters. I seem to remember reading somewhere that ICANN was going to open this up, that you'd have to make some kind of relatively large payment to them, and offer a business plan that indicated you were doing something honorable.

Did I remember this correctly?

Pointers would be most welcome...

Update: Thanks to Daniel Bruce for the pointer on FF.

The answer is yes. Next year.

6/28/08: "The new decision will allow companies to register their brands as generic TLDs. For instance, Microsoft could apply to have a TLD such as .msn and Apple apply for .mac."

Barence writes "The deplorable speed of British broadband connections has been revealed in the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, which show that 42.3% of broadband connections are slower than 2Mb/sec. More worryingly, the ONS statistics are based on the connection's headline speed, not actual throughput, which means that many more British broadband connections are effectively below the 2Mb/sec barrier. Better still, a separate report issued yesterday by Ofcom revealed that the majority of broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "Bank of America has taken steps to cover up the original we-don't-need-no-stinking-America sentiment of its patent application for Country Assessment, which described BofA's innovative way of dealing with the problems of 'a typical American employee [who] demands a high salary, good benefits, a good work environment, vacation time, and other job-related perks' -- relocating jobs to India or the Philippines. BofA has instructed the USPTO to strike its remarks about why employing Americans is such a bad idea, and to replace references to India and the Philippines with 'Country X' and 'Country P'. How clever. By the way, BofA came under fire Tuesday as news broke that CEO Ken Lewis, who is currently preaching 'tough love' for the Big 3 automakers was quietly spending $7B of his spare cash to up BofA's stake in China Construction Bank after snagging a whopping $25B in U.S. bailout money."

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Tim is a high school senior doing an independent study. An important part of his work is to learn and document his process with the Shopbot.

In order to improve on this first design I modified the top to be 14 inches in diameter as opposed to the original 16 inch diameter, which some people said was too big. I used part wizard's vector modification tool to alter this. I had recieved positive feedback on the handles, so I kept those by sliding them towards the center in part wizard. I cut too more legs for this new top to sit on using an irregular piece of scrap plywood. By modifying the angle of the toolpath I could very efficiently use the wood. I found that plywood is thicker than avantech when I tried to fit these legs together, they were much more difficult and ended up slightly warped, creating a tip in the stool. The top still slid on just fine.

Tim was enrolled in the Engineering the Future course several years ago. The ETF curriculum was developed by the Museum of Science in Boston. and learned some effective ways of working with the Design Process.
http://timkis.pbwiki.com/Shopbot+Stools

Shopbot is a great tool. Are you using it? Does your school have computer controlled tools? Does your school encourage students and teachers to be innovative and creative while making real things? Have you seen great projects done with CNC tools? Post your pictures in the Make Flickr pool, and add your ideas to the comments.

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Processing is officially out of Beta! Yep, after 162 iterations of the ever-so-popular open-source programming environment, they have officially released version1.0. Check out the link at the end of the post to download your copy today and start learning about this amazing program. [image: Solar demo, 2008. Robert Hodgin]

Today, on November 24, 2008, we launch the 1.0 version of the Processing software. Processing is a programming language, development environment, and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy within the visual arts. Initially created to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing quickly developed into a tool for creating finished professional work as well.

Read the full press release here.

[image: Solar demo, 2008. Robert Hodgin]

Processing is a free, open source alternative to proprietary software tools with expensive licenses, making it accessible to schools and individual students. Its open source status encourages the community participation and collaboration that is vital to Processing's growth. Contributors share programs, contribute code, answer questions in the discussion forum, and build libraries to extend the possibilities of the software. The Processing community has written over seventy libraries to facilitate computer vision, data visualization, music, networking, and electronics.

Get the latest version of Processing here.

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Collin posted about the Arduino MIDI touchpad a few months ago. At the time, there wasn't too much information about the project. Now you can get the code and read more about the build on the Arduino forums. It's always great to see Makers share their code! Thanks ludo!

More about the Arduino MIDI touchpad

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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It's no secret that former Disney boss, Michael Eisner, has a rather confused (and incorrect) view of how intellectual property works, so it should be no surprise that his current business efforts continue to be influenced by his incorrect assumptions. Robin writes in to point us to an interview with Eisner in the NY Times, where he explains that the key to success on the internet will be "professionally produced" exclusive content. This shows a profound misunderstanding of the internet, but one that certainly fits with Eisner's background.

Specifically, Eisner still doesn't seem to realize that the internet is a communications medium more than a content medium. That's not to say that there isn't room for professionally produced content online, but focusing on the "exclusivity" part may lead to trouble. These days, people want to be a part of the content they interact with. They don't just want to watch it. They want to share it, they want to comment on it -- they want to be a part of that content. Focusing just on professionally produced and exclusive content is missing the point. We already have media for that: television and movies. The internet is nothing special if it's just yet another way to deliver professionally produced, exclusive content -- and sooner or later perhaps Eisner will realize this. Perhaps it will be the same time that he finally learns that Abraham Lincoln had nothing to do with defining modern intellectual property laws, as he's insisted for years.

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Antique voltmeter displays current air quality from the web - By Tom Igoe...

One thing that disappoints me about computers is how little character they possess. Antique instruments of information display, like Victorian pendulum clocks, barometers, and compasses, and Babbage’s calculating engines, have a presence that modern computers lack.

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Just seven weeks until MAKE: television premieres. In the meantime, here's one of our viewer-submitted Maker Channel videos. Ted and Zack make an instant French fry machine called the Uber Tuber. If you want to tell us about something you make, go to www.makerchannel.org

Make:'s Public Television premiere is in January 2009. Want to know when the series will broadcast in your hometown? Call your public television station and ask for "Viewer Services;" they'll give you the information. And of course, we'll also stream full episodes here on www.makezine.tv.

m4v, also on iTunes.

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hi_caramba_2008 writes "We are a bunch of good friends at a large software company. The product we work on is under-budgeted and over-hyped by the sales drones. The code quality sucks, and management keeps pulling in different direction. Discussing this among ourselves, we talked about leaving the company and rebuilding the code from scratch over a few months. We are not taking any code with us. We are not taking customer lists (we probably will aim at different customers anyway). The code architecture will also be different — hosted vs. stand-alone, different modules and APIs. But at the feature level, we will imitate this product. Can we be sued for IP infringement, theft, or whatever? Are workers allowed to imitate the product they were working on? We know we have to deal with the non-compete clause in our employment contracts, but in our state this clause has been very difficult to enforce. We are more concerned with other IP legal aspects."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The current economic collapse is a difficult story for TV. It's a peculiar period in between an election and an inauguration. This most important story, this great-or-not-so great depression, is also the hardest for CNN to tell. I have more than enough reasons why in this late-night rant.

1) It's not a hurricane so Anderson Cooper of CNN is unable to position himself in the middle of the storm for optimal drama. In other words, TV anchors can't get wet and windblown, while viewers worry about their safety. The state of the economy is a disaster but not a natural disaster. Nobody's leaving the studio for this one. There's no place to go.

2) It's like a war and we keep losing ground each day. In the place of casualties, we have falling stock indices but it's hard to show the real damage. There's only so much you can do with oversized charts to tell a story. The war on terrorism featured a real enemy. We've just never been able to find them, no matter who goes after them. (Maybe it's not so different.) Campbell Brown ("No Bull, No Bias") should say that what the capitalism's finest did to themselves and to us was worse than any terrorist could have imagined.

3) Few CEOs, fewer economists, and almost no one in the financial industry, want to step forward and say with conviction what will happen. A year ago we couldn't get them to stop telling us what great things to expect in the next quarter. Not now. They don't know what's coming and they aren't willing to say even that much. They are MIA. Insider information is at an all-time low.

Memo to all American CEOs: don't presume in ten years' time to write business books about your leadership skills; maybe there's a gripping survival story to be told about how you held on to your job.

We want them to face the music. Even the Watergate hearings, which had a large cast of characters, were compelling to watch day after day.

4) There is not a President at the center. Bush is just not there. Like us, he's watching TV to find out what to think. Reporting from the White House doesn't have any relevance today. Moreover, the satisfaction in blaming Bush for everything is diminishing.

In addition, with the election over, reporters can't simply ask the candidates to react to the day's bad news. It seldom produced much insight anyway but it filled time. Now Obama is filling time, and he keeps repeating that "there's only one President" but there's really not a President. There's a leadership vacuum waiting to be filled by Obama. (BTW, this story is much bigger and more important than Obama's election and I think he understands that.) Bottom line is we're waiting for a central figure to emerge.

5) Real experts are hard to find, especially ones with big hair. So over-present talking heads such as Suze Orman ramble on and on in front of Larry King and others. Here's an incredible ramble from Suze Orman on CNN:

People feel they need medication because they are panicking. It’s as if the economy right now is in the I.C.U. unit of a hospital. We are in intensive care and they are throwing everything type of medication at us to cure what is going on. They are panicking because why? Nothing is working. They tried this, it didn’t work. They tried that medication, it didn’t work. They are running out of prescriptions to give it. We are going to be in the I.C.U. unit for a while. Eventually, I don’t know when that will be, six months, a year, year and a half, we will get out, we’ll be in the hospital then. We’ll stay in the hospital for about a year or two. After another year or two we will end up in rehab and then we’ll be okay. This is a long stretch. People have to stop panicking.
CNN link

Makes me think of Amy Winehouse singing "They try to make me go to rehab, I say no, no, no." Rehab is taking place over on CNBC.

6) Where are the winning and losing teams? We have learned more about Al Queda cells and Saddam Hussein's Elite Guards than about the people in power behind CITI, Goldman Sachs, Lehmann Brothers, AIG, etc. We know more about the New York Jets than we do about CITI Bank. Are the slow-moving Detroit Manufacturers competing head-to-head against the fast-talking Wall Street Financiers? Please tell us more about these teams as we're entrusting them with such large amounts of public money. Maybe we need to start thinking that, as with football, we care because we're betting on teams to win. We have our money at stake.

7) I can almost hear producers wondering each night if there isn't a better story to lead with. "Isn't there a story we can do on Sarah Palin? Like her or hate her, people can't get enough of her." At least that appears to be the thinking behind her getting the most air-time in the week following the election. Would you rather hear about Sarah Palin pardoning a turkey or David Gergen saying no one knows what to make of the economic mess? At least, the Palin piece will have something interesting going on in the foreground and the background.

8) "Why can't this be happening to Russia or China? If it was only happening there, and not here, we would know how to cover it." CNN would send Christiane Amanpour there. "Live from...". We don't have visuals like people knocking down walls, rushing into the streets or standing in lines. The Fall of the Berlin Wall is the Fall of Communism, the fall of Saddam's statue -- now these are stories of new freedoms. In America today, we have a big fall without a distinctive symbol, without a video loop, without an exotic locale.

Also, how do you explain that China is providing the bail for the bailout? As David Gergen said tonight on CNN, "China's become our banker." Even harder to tell that kind of "freedom" story.

9) The problems aren't going away and there's no timeline. So, where's the equivalent of "America Held Hostage: Day XN"? Nightline evolved from a special report to become a nightly hard-news program to follow the ongoing story of Iran holding American hostages during the Carter Administration. Why isn't this economic story played front-and-center in the same way? Isn't there a TV journalist saying "Holy Christ, this is the biggest story of my career and I'm going to bring it to you every night"? Ted Koppel, Edward R. Murrow, where are you?

Here's my list of names for a new Nightline-like special series on the economy:

• America's Panic Attack
• The Joke's on US
• Invisible Hand-Wringing
• Capitalism on the Ledge
• The Economy on the Couch
• Future Shock & Awe
• Hitting the Wall And Falling on the Street.
• America Sucks Right Now
• US: Out of Order

10) Lastly, the TV media is no better off than we are at understanding this complex crisis. On a gut level, viewers know what the story is, that it's about them, their future and their children's future. They have specific questions that are difficult to answer (see the Suze Orman blog on CNN where it is promised that she'll answer these many, many questions; she doesn't, of course.) and they have general worries (should I panic?) that are hard to resolve. While we try to absorb as much information as possible, we keep having the same conversation over and over:
Q. What's going on?
A. I don't know. It's hard to tell.

One of the sillier attempts by businesses to look cool by setting up shop in Second Life was that of Reuters, which assigned a reporter to hang out in the virtual world full-time and report on it as if it were any other economy. While we noted at the time there might be some interesting stories in Second Life, that seemed to be taking a back seat to the publicity value of the stunt. It was surprising to learn that the Reuters reporter was still there until recently, when he finally gave up the beat, calling it "about as fun as watching paint dry." With 9 out of 10 efforts by businesses going into Second Life ending in failure, perhaps there wasn't much for a business reporter to cover any longer. For what it's worth, the reporter says Linden Labs should give up on the idea that Second Life is a business application -- not because of its shaky in-game economics, or because there's no value for there for most businesses, but because of technical problems. While those may be easier to solve for the company, they pale in comparison to the sheer pointlessness of real-world businesses establishing themselves in Second Life.

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

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We discussed the advent of Google's SearckWiki when it was introduced a few days back. Now Lauren Weinstein offers a thought experiment in transmitting coded messages using SearchWiki, with a working example encoded into the results of this Google search.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've discussed in the past the idea that newspapers today need to get beyond reporting the news and also move towards opening up their data such that others can make that data useful. Newspapers have access to all sorts of interesting and useful data -- but traditionally, they've hoarded it and only used it as a resource for editors and reporters in creating stories. However, by opening up that data to others, it could make those news organizations much more valuable. We're seeing some movement in that direction, and recently noted that the NY Times had come out with an API for the campaign finance data it had.

However, one thing that seems clear is that very few newspapers have the resources necessary to do this on a regular basis. The NY Times (and, to some extent, the Washington Post) seems to be willing to invest in this area, but for many newspapers, the entire concept seems foreign. Writing for OJR, Eric Ulken from the LA Times discusses how much effort it took to get the necessary resources just to build a homicide map to go along with a blog that planned to chronicle every homicide in the LA area. If Ulken's experience is any indication, it seems pretty clear that very, very few traditional news organizations are going to be able to pull this off. They're just not set up to do such things.

It seems increasingly clear that these types of innovations are more likely to come from newer news organizations who actually recognize the value of data in addition to straight reporting, and the concept of openness compared to being a gatekeeper.

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The NYTimes reports that Atlantic is the first major label to report getting a majority of its revenue from digital sales, not CDs. Analysts say that Atlantic is out in front — the industry as a whole isn't expected to hit the 50% mark until 2011. By 2013, music industry revenues will be 37% down from their 1999 levels (when Napster arrived on the scene), according to Forrester. "'It's not at all clear that digital economics can make up for the drop in physical,' said John Rose, a former executive at EMI... Instead, the music industry is now hoping to find growth from a variety of other revenue streams it has not always had access to, like concert ticket sales and merchandise from artist tours. ... In virtually all... corners of the media world, executives are fighting to hold onto as much of their old business as possible while transitioning to digital — a difficult process that NBC Universal's chief executive... has described as 'trading analog dollars for digital pennies.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a neat opportunity for you music makers out there, the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition by Georgia Tech, Wired, and Harmonix (the makers of Rock Band):

INSTRUMENTS

Any new musical instrument is eligible for the competition. Instruments may generate sound acoustically or electronically, they may exist in physical or virtual manifestations, and they may be played by humans, robots, or computers. They may modify, improve, or extend existing instruments -- including the human voice -- or they may offer entirely new design paradigms. New instruments which cross over these categories or which defy any such categorization are also welcome.

PERFORMANCE

Entrants must perform a musical work with their new instrument to demonstrate its musicality, design, and engineering features. Performances may include traditional acoustic and/or electronic instruments alongside the new instrument. They may also include multimedia elements such as video, animation, graphics, text, kinesthetics, hydraulics, dance, or acting. The performed work may be composed by anyone, including the entrant, or it may be an arrangement of an existing work. It may be in any musical style. The duration should be between 2 and 10 minutes. Entrants must be prepared to perform with their instrument at Georgia Tech on February 27th-28th, 2009.

Via the AME blog.

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While I have no doubt that the movie studios are being sleazy and underhanded in how it deals with both writers and actors concerning various contracts, it still seemed like both movie and TV writers were making a big mistake in demanding residuals for internet usage. All that does is make it more difficult to get that content online. And, of course, it meant that actors were going to fight for the same thing.

Now, just as the studios and actors had their negotiations breakdown, the Writers' Guild is claiming that producers are not living up to their end of the deal struck earlier this year. The writers claim that they're not getting the promised residuals, and the producers seem to be disputing which content is covered by the agreement. The writers say that all modern content from the past few decades is covered, while producers say the agreement only covers content made after February 13th of this year -- the date of the settlement.

To be honest, the whole dispute is rather silly. Any such system of royalties is going to break down. It may have worked in the past, but it's based on that same old concept of artificial scarcity that makes it more difficult to adapt to the modern economic reality of digital content. By insisting that the studios have to pay residuals on content reused on the internet (effectively getting writers and actors paid multiple times for the same work), it just solidifies the barriers for the folks who employ those writers and actors to adapt to the modern economic and technological reality. The writers and actors are just harming themselves by making it harder for studios to move into the internet era, adding tremendous additional costs beyond what was already paid for.

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According to an article in New Scientist, global climate warming may actually suppress plagues of locusts. One less thing to worry about, eh?

Zhibin Zhang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues have trawled through 1000 years of historical records documenting locust swarms and compared it with 1000 years of temperature, drought and flood data estimates.
image from wikipedia.

They found that the Oriental migratory locust (Locusta migratoria manilensis), which has been named as one of the most damaging agricultural pests in Chinese history, operates on a climate-driven cycle. Every 160 to 170 years, the swarms get bigger then subside again.

Counterintuitively, the timing of the largest swarms coincides with cooler periods.

"The popular view is that global warming may accelerate natural and biological disasters like drought and flood events, and outbreaks of pests, as predicted by the IPCC," says Zhang. "Our results suggest that warming reduced climatic extremes and locust plagues in ancient China."

That doesn't mean swarms won't happen. (Add this back to the list of things to worry about.) This month in Australia, drought followed by heavy rains in New South Wales has brought enormous swarms of locusts. One swarm is six kilometres long and 170 meters wide.

Here's a BBC video of the swarms. It's kind of like watching Hitchcock's "The Birds".

phorm writes "BBC is carrying an article which states that 90% of visitors to Europe's 'video game addiction clinic' are not, in fact, addicted. The problem is a social one rather than a psychological issue. In other words, the patients have turned to heavy gaming because they felt they didn't fit in elsewhere, or that they fit in better 'in the game' than elsewhere in 'the real world.' This has been discussed before, with arguments ranging from gaming being a good way to socialize, the clinical definition of gaming addiction, and claims than males are wired for video-game addiction."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today on Offworld we discovered that the post-apocalyptic Wasteland in Bethesda's RPG Fallout 3 was about to get a little bit wider, got a glimpse of what a Criterion Collection for games might look like (props for the analogy, N'Gai!), and learned that -- happily -- the world's Guitar Heroes are picking up real guitars as well. We also looked at a photojournalist's project that shows us what it looks like when we're immersed in our virtual worlds, read about the people who got rich off those worlds, and listened to me live on national radio trying to explain the importance of those worlds.

While filming the Wii/Arduino Flight Recorder episode of Make: television, we went to the Mall of America for a location shoot. The Mall has four roller coasters in it. How many does yours have? Mine has none, but I think that's because it never gets cold in Los Angeles, so we leave ours outside.

We were there to film me pulling low-grade g-forces on the turns and hills. I don't like huge coasters (OK, I'm a total wimp) but they assured me it would be a dinky little one. I arrived with the executive producer and the rest of the crew were already there, standing in front of a coaster with big vertical drops, loops, corkscrews, the works. I'm starting to feel a bit uneasy (read: terrified) as they're figuring out how to get a camera man, sound guy and me on this thing and film the segment while we're all white-knuckling it and screaming our innards out.

Thankfully, we all decided (I begged) it was going to be too violent a ride for us and we downgraded to a happy little regular coaster for lightweights like me. The slap in the face: all of the teenage girl extras went on the scary one anyway just for fun.

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New stats from the British government show its various departments lost an average of one computer per week over the past year. The good news is that the government says only one of those losses put any personal data at risk -- although it's hard to verify the claims of some departments that the data on their devices was encrypted or otherwise made safe. It's hard to get too upset about the missing devices, since it seems inevitable that any any organization with a large number of employees carrying laptops and other devices around will lose some or have them stolen. The issue isn't the devices, or at least it shouldn't be; the issue is data. It may be an easy way to score political points by pointing out how often physical devices are lost, but the value of a $2000 laptop or $500 smartphone pales in comparison to the value of the data, or the data it can access. Care must be taken to ensure that security policies and procedures don't place importance on securing physical devices at the expense of securing data. For a start, it would be nice to make people accountable for data they have, but that's probably a stretch.

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

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Please allow me to sing the praises of persimmons. Bright orange persimmons are about the last fruit to ripen in the fall. There are two main types of persimmons, and I have both in my yard: fuya and hachiya. Persimmons come from China originally but the common varieties that we find in California are from Japan. The fuya persimmon is round, more like an apple, while the hachiya is distinctively acorn-shaped. Fuya are ripe now, while the hachiya ripen later.

Fuya

The best thing about the fuya is that it can be sliced and eaten like an apple or not-quite-ripe pear. You don't need to peel fuyas. My favorite use for fuyas is sliced or diced in salads. Last Thanksgiving, I created a relish with diced fuya persimmons and pomegranate seeds mixed together.

Hachiya

The hachiya persimmon is more familiar to people, and the trees are also more commonly planted. Hachiya need to be very ripe before using. Putting them in a bag helps to force ripening.

Hachiya persimmons are very astringent - your mouth will be unusable after taking a bite. Just don't eat them off the tree, like a fuya. Typically, this kind of persimmon is turned into pulp and then used to make a sweet bread or a pudding. I saw a recipe for a persimmon sorbet, which I'll have to try, maybe for the Christmas holidays.

In short, you can't have enough fuyas but you'll easily have too many hachiyas.

James Delaney's created The Unfocused Brain, an interesting variation on Mitch Altman's Brain Machine:

This program and schematic is designed to flash LED's in certain brain wave inducing patterns. The device is controlled by four buttons that switch the generator between Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Theta frequencies.

...
After building and trying out the SLM I noticed that certain transitions from one state to another created particularly strong visual hallucinations.

My project is a deviation from the original SLM. Since my hallucinations seemed to be the same with or without the audio component I decided to leave it out. I added buttons rather than a program so the user can change frequencies spontaneously. I built this project with the Attiny461 chip.

Check out the Make Brain Machine thread for more ideas on variations.

And, if you get really ambitious, switch to low-frequency ultrasound for brain stimulation (pdf; thanks to Bryan Bishop for the link)

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