Stretchable electronics and the strongest material ever were just two achievements of 2008... The Year in Materials @ Technology Review.

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iPod speakers made out of iPods via HackedGadgets. Jordan writes-

I took a pair of speakers, and put them in two of the original iPods where the scroll wheels normally were. I was looking through a bunch of old stuff when I came across my original iPod. I had long ago scavenged it for parts, so I came up with another use for it. Although I already had the iPod speaker “shell”, I wanted to make two speakers so that it could be stereo sound. My iPod speaker shell was barely recognizable with too many scratches to count, so I ordered two front panels and two back panels.

The total cost ended up around 100 USD for everything. It was mostly the shipping prices that made it so expensive. If I had spent some more time finding cheaper prices, or finding the parts locally, the cost would have been about 60 USD.

The speaker size that is needed is 2.25 inches. I couldn’t find any online, so I went to a local electronic surplus store and had them order two for me. Unfortunately, when I test fitted the speakers into the iPod, they were just a little too deep, so I dremeled the back just a little.

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Ian Lamont writes "The Industry Standard has put together a collection of video highlights from Steve Jobs' Macworld keynotes since his return to Apple in the late 1990s. It's interesting to watch. Jobs was basically able to turn tech product demonstrations into convincing consumer spectacles that made even the simplest product feature — such as the handle on the clamshell iBook — seem innovative and utterly desirable. And while his appearance changed greatly over the years (compare his 1998 iMac demonstration with his "iPod Mini" keynote in 2004, when he was reportedly trying to treat cancer with a special diet), his enthusiasm never waned. Of course, he may make appearances at Apple's WWDC or other events, but a Macworld expo with Phil Schiller headlining just won't be the same."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you desire high-resolution images of the Earth, the good folks at Unearthed Outdoors have made available the 250m True Marble image set for a free download with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. It's a map of the Earth made up of 32 tiles, where each tile is a 21,000 pixel square, available in png and tif formats. There's also a series of smaller files that may be more useful -- in case you don't need a map of the Earth that ends up being 84,000 pixels tall and 168,000 pixels across. Printed at 600 dpi, that's about 12 feet by 24 feet!

Happy New Year! (Thanks, Mikael!)

Unearthed Outdoors True Marble Imagery

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

HSRD writes "Web-savvy moms who breast-feed are irate that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace restrict photos of nursing babies . The disputes reveal how the sites' community policing techniques sometimes struggle to keep up with the booming number and diversity of their members."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Don't let that dead laptop battery ruin your life. Repacking a old ibook battery with new cells is a easy operation. Within 10 minutes and $30 you can have a battery that lasts twice as long as the original.

Here's the video, complete with catchy soundtrack:

Of course, exercise due caution when making your own battery packs (especially if they're lithium-ion!)

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You can't be on Twitter or FriendFeed and not be inundated with comments from and about Scoble. I don't know how he does it, but it's really annoying. I find myself relaxing when he takes a break from Twitter, for example to fly from Europe to the US. Finally I can speak without having everything one-upped by Scoble. Whatever it is, he's done it better, or bigger, or with more important people. It's irritating because I don't believe it. I'd really like it if he just turned down the volume. Or if there were a way to segment the Twittersphere, I'd like to be in the part where Scoble isn't the main topic of conversation 24-by-7.

That said, I heard that Jason Calacanis and Mike Arrington were giving him a hard time on the Gillmor Gang, saying he was dumb to invest so much time in Twitter and FriendFeed. If he were blogging, they say, he'd be working for himself. On Twitter he's working for someone else. I've thought the same thing myself many times, but not about Scoble, since my whole existence does not revolve around Scoble. (I once parodied Scoble, in jest, saying that he was the next Christ, little did I know how prophetic it would turn out.)

So is Scoble a chump, and are all of the rest of us chumps, for not enhancing our own space, rather enhancing Ev's and Biz's and Jack, Fred and Bijan's space? If you don't run ads on your blog, I don't see how it matters. And if you primarily push pointers through Twitter, as I do, it's just a notification system, not where you pour your creativity. Even if you put ads on your blog -- it's like RSS, it feeds traffic to your blog, it isn't replacing your blog. Surely Calacanis and Arrington aren't advising Scoble to get rid of his RSS too?

In a hasty twit last night I said these guys were "ignorant" for this opinion, but maybe that was too harsh. But maybe they aren't being creative enough.

Technology is a process, an evolution -- don't focus on what's here right now today, because a year from now it'll be different. Look at the trend. In the last year Twitter hasn't changed much on its face, but it has changed in substance. I have a lot more followers now, and I follow far more people. There are a lot of PR people there now, where it used to be gossip. There are also a lot more tech entrepreneurs, analysts and carpetbaggers, people who think there might be a business model in here somewhere. They're largely adding clutter and noise, but that's change too.

But I can't imagine that blogging and Twitter won't fully merge, and I expect that to happen soon. Look at services like Posterous and Tumblr for a clue. Browsers have the ability to expand and collapse detail. Expect more of that. Services like Tweetree show that it's possible to include rich content inline with the twitstream. How far are we from having full blog posts? How far from being able to render the content in your own domain? How long until people think of the idea of a site aggregating the work of a handful of analysts as a quaint predictor of the rich world of the next-gen Twitter?

This is why I thought Arrington and Calacanis were missing the big picture -- seriously. Both have major investments in rollups of the pre-Twitter blogosphere. They may be suffering from the same kind of limited vision of their predecessors in the tech and business press, who were caught flat-footed by the generation of editorial content exemplified by their own offerings. Wouldn't be the first time that Generation N of tech failed to anticipate or even acknowledge Generation N+1.

aputerguy writes "My Fedora 8 Linux server crashed sometime between 18:59:40 EST (GMT -5:00) and 19:00:00 EST (GMT -5:00) on Dec 31, 2008 which remarkably corresponds to within at most 20 seconds of the New Year in GMT. I have been running this same hardware non-stop for more than six years and other than the occasional reboot for kernel (or distro) upgrades, it has not crashed more than 1 or 2 times in 2237 days of cumulative uptime. Nothing other than background processes were running at the time of the crash. Could this be a coincidence or was there some 2008/2009 rollover issue going on here? Has anyone (other than Zune 30GB owners) noticed similar year-end issues with their computers or electronic devices?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Good morning and welcome to 2009!

Lots of housekeeping...

Last night I saw Benjamin Button. Some people didn't like it, I can see not liking it, but I did like it myself. I'm a sucker for a love story. I empathize with Benjamin, he didn't fit in as a child, but he found people who appreciated him for who he is, not on appearances, and they stayed with him through his life. Something a lot of people want but don't have. I also liked that New Orleans played a role in the story, because I love the city, and it's been through a hard time, just like Benjamin. The last scene, the water rushing in to a basement where a clock that runs backwards is still running, is especially sweet. Not best picture, and if anyone gets a nomination for this movie it'll be Brad Pitt, but I think the real star is Cate Blanchett.

Every year there are lists and list of New Year's resolutions, we're not going to do that here at MAKE. This years it's all about what you plan to make! I asked our team and advisory board to send me what they plan to MAKE in 2009 and here is what some of them are going to make!

Since I made everyone answer my email over the holiday break, I'll start with mine :) Click "read more" to see over a dozen others from the MAKE team and our advisory board! Lastly, post what YOU plan to make in 2009 - I'll check the comments at the end of the day and pick a winner (We'll send you out the very popular Maker's notebook).

Twittering power usage device

Limor Fried and I are working on a cool project that should be done in early 2009, you take an off the shelf power usage device like the Kill-a-Watt and add an Xbee wireless module - once tapped in to the Kill-a-Watt you transmit the power usage to a local computer and that computer publishes how many watts per day you're using to your twitter account and will also add something like #mywatts so everyone can compare what they use. You could also use an Arduino with ethernet or wireless and eliminate the computer completely. The project will be open source of course and we expect someone will see it and do a commercial product.

Phillip Torrone, Senior Editor, MAKE Magazine

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An anonymous reader writes "New security check points in 2020 will look just like something out of the futuristic movie, The Minority Report. The idea of the new checkpoints will allow high traffic to pass through just as you were walking at a normal pace. No more waving a wand to get through checkpoints — the new checkpoint can detect if you have plans to set off a bomb before you even enter the building."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New open source hardware business start up coming out in 2009 - Robotics, from Chris Anderson, Wired's editor in chief. I'm extremely excited about this.

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Go forth and void ye warranties 3G iPhone toting makers! The iPhone 3G unlock is here.

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My internet friend, David Erwin, had a crisis on his hands; the Christmas tree was a "brown, shedding, fire hazard and it ended up in the front yard on the 23rd." Well, being a ShopBot owner (as well as the owner of the best darned mid-century modern door company out there, Crestview Doors) he did what any good maker would -- he CNC'd a tree out of styrofoam! Go David!!

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northern squirrel writes "As reported by Security Focus, Google had publicly released their 50-page Browser Security Handbook (under a CC BY license, too). To quote, the document is 'meant to provide developers, browser engineers, and information security researchers with a one-stop reference to key security properties of contemporary web browsers,' and features a comparison of security features in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and — you guessed it — Chrome. Is it a belated Christmas gift to web developers, or just a reaction to recent bad publicity?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Awesome slow-mo footage of a butterfly ornithopter from the Shimoyama-Matsumoto Laboratory, University of Tokyo, Japan. [via BotJunkie and Smart Machines]

Artificial butterfly wing on a butterfly-type ornithopter

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Kelly writes "Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favor of Firefox or Chrome. Google recently removed Firefox from the Google Pack bundle, replaced it with Chrome, then added a direct download link for Chrome on Google and YouTube. Google's decision to list IE6 as an unsupported Gmail browser does not affect just consumers: Tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that run Google Apps hosted services may dump IE6 as well. What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mac Cowell recently started the site DIYBio as a resource for biohackers working outside academic and industrial labs.

DIYbio is an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety. This will require mechanisms for amateurs to increase their knowledge and skills, access to a community of experts, the development of a code of ethics, responsible oversight, and leadership on issues that are unique to doing biology outside of traditional professional settings.

One of their current projects is the BioWeatherMap, where you can help compare microbes on crosswalk buttons worldwide. Check out the Instructable about the process!

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RobGoldsmith writes "Governor Bill Richardson today announced that Virgin Galactic has signed a 20 year lease agreement with the State of New Mexico. Virgin Galactic's world headquarters will be established in New Mexico and its operations will be located at New Mexico's Spaceport America, the nation's first purpose-built commercial spaceport. The signing of the lease agreement coincides with the beginning of the test flying program for Virgin Galactic's WhiteKnightTwo launch vehicle which got underway this month in Mojave, CA. The WhiteKnightTwo will serve as the mother ship for SpaceShipTwo, the vehicle that will carry commercial astronauts into sub-orbital space from Spaceport America."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Just captivating. Via Wooster Collective.

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theodp writes "According to Microsoft, 'No information is collected during the [Genuine Advantage Program] validation process that can be used to identify or contact a user.' That's little comfort to the software counterfeiters who were just handed jail sentences ranging from 1.5-6.5 years by the Futian People's Court in China, especially since Microsoft contends that much of the estimated $2B in bogus software was detected by its Windows Genuine Advantage program. 'Software piracy negatively impacts local economic growth,' explained Microsoft VP Fengming Liu in a celebratory New Year's Eve press release. But then again, so does transferring $16B of assets and $9B in annual profit to an Irish tax haven, doesn't it?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

?This artwork by Anders Valde is called "Totem For Vebjørn Tandberg" and is a interesting sculptural jumble of old radio receivers, tape decks, record players, and stereo speaker cabinets. The piece is currently on display at Gallery Bodøgaard in Norway.

Totem For Vebjørn Tandberg by Anders Valde

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Beavis Audio Research brings us the Fuzzlab, an fusion of 4 classic DIY guitar distortion circuits into one hefty tweakable unit. The construction was a very long and educational process -

Now that all is said and done, I learned a great many things from this project. I made a large number of mistakes and came up with a few mildly innovative ideas along the way. I also ended up with a huge pedal that looks cool :) Some Key Points:

• Four fuzz circuits in one box adds some practicality to my rig, but not any hugely new tones. A fuzz into a fuzz sounds interesting, but not necessarily great.
  
• My favorite of all the fuzzes is the Big Muff Pi clone. The Fuzz Face can sound good, but it can just be too much work to dial in *that* sound especially when the Fuzz Face isn't first in the line of pedals.
  
• Adding a voltage sag circuit to fuzz circuits adds a great degree of control you just can't get otherwise.
  
• A slight ring mod/circuit adds incredible nuances to your tone, with or without fuzz.
  
• Never underestimate the amount of time it takes to do the integration work. I spent a total of about 20 hours populating, soldering and debugging the individual PCBs. It took over 150 hours to do the actual integration, wiring, drilling, etc. Now I understand why traditional pedal makers don't take on something of this size.
  
• I've learned enough in this project to build just about any pedal design out there--in other words, there are *some* good reasons for making your first DIY project overly ambitious!

Check out the project's page for a bunch of really helpful tips and ideas - The Beavis FuzzLab

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Davros writes "GateHouse Media, which publishes more than 100 papers in Massachusetts, accuses the Times of violating copyright by allowing its Boston Globe online unit to copy verbatim the headlines and first sentences from articles published on sites owned by GateHouse"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wonderful New year animation by Electrabel.

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Late at night I like to walk around the financial district in New York city. I live a couple blocks from ground zero and a few blocks from Wall street, the financial ground zero site now. When people and businesses move out of the area, which they seem to be doing a lot lately, they usually throw out tons of good stuff, no one moves in New York it seems, they just toss stuff and buy it again at another location. I have a mental list of all the things we need for the MAKE office that's in my apartment, why buy stuff when you can find it. Lately I've noticed a lot of things thrown out that seem broken but after inspection, are not. We've needed a shredder for awhile, paying money for one seems silly, especially since I knew I'd find one on the street. Yesterday was my lucky day, walking back from an evening stroll, there it was - a shredder, a "Fellowes Powershred" in a pile of trash outside one of the dozens of Duane Reade drug stores. It was a little heavy, but I brought it back home and started to poke at it. I plugged it in and the LED lit up, but it didn't work. Maybe it was the motor, or the sensor. A shredder is not that complicated, there's not a lot that can break really. Taking it apart didn't yield any clues, but then I inspected the bin it sits on. There's a small plastic nub that activates a switch once you put the shredder in the bin, without this you could potentially get hurt if you pick it up while it was on and shredding, without it just doesn't shred. The little plastic nub was snapped off! That's a right, a perfectly fine and useful piece of equipment thrown away when it could have been fixed with one dab of glue or a tiny bit of cardboard. Seconds later with a new cardboard nub, I fired up the shredder and it worked, it shreds nicely.

About 5 years ago we started MAKE, a handful of motivated people shared a belief that makers should be celebrated. Through hard work and sacrifice a lot of dreams came true. 16 volumes of projects that will stand the test of time, handed down to sons and daughters, a Maker Faire that has hundreds of thousands of participants, a web site that captures the imagination of millions with the best community online, an online store with the best selection of electronics kits made by makers - in just a few days Make: television will make it's debut on public television and the web. We didn't do this by ourselves, you did, the makers.

It was a good year, but also a pretty crummy year too. We are at a defining moment in history, the world is a mess - what we do now will shape generations to come. The solutions to our problems aren't going to come from the same people who created them. How will we inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers? We all can have a role - makers, teachers, parents, siblings, communities, a relentlessly curious friend. At Maker Faire parents tell us that their kid picked up MAKE or saw something interesting on our site, maybe it was a post, maybe it was a video - it sparked something and years later they've gone on to become a maker, an artist, a scientist, an engineer. How can we do more of this everyday, how can we celebrate making things and the people that make them in more ways?

2009 is going to be one of the most challenging years ever, 2008 wasn't easy, 2009 will test our collective ability to endure. But something is stirring, there is energy out there - people are making things again, people are coming together to share, to learn, to inspire each other, people are starting businesses selling the things they make. If you make something, you're not alone - through the web, through the pages of MAKE, through videos, through Maker Faires, through the site here, at hacker spaces - we're going to get through these tough times together and we'll be better for it. We're going to "make" our way of it.

2009 is year of the ox - according to the Chinese calendar, the ox is an animal that brings prosperity through hard work. The outgoing Rat symbolises "wealth". I'm happy to jettison the celebration of stupid, we are what we celebrate, good or bad - reality tv, irrational ideologies, ponzi scheme economies, the dumbing down of things, good riddance to bad rubbish. I can't think of a more fitting symbol than the ox for the next year, unswervingly patient, tireless, fortitude... hard work. I feel lucky that I work with the best group of people in the world at MAKE, it makes working hard a lot of fun.

We hope you've gained something from MAKE over the last year, maybe looked at things a different way, took something apart, put something together - or maybe spent some extra time with your kids building something together. In 2009 we have big plans for MAKE, from international Maker Faires to connecting more makers with makers in person and online - 2009 will not be the year for small ideas and small plans, with your help we'll celebrating making around the globe more than ever before. In 2009 we'll ask many of you for help with things we need to do - we can all share mutual responsibility in making things better. I hope to meet more of you online and in person in 2009 to get this important work started, but most of all, meet people who will become new friends as we make this all happen together.

I know there is a lot of cynicism and doubt out there, from snarky comments on blogs to a collective "look the other way" when problems arise - but we're not going to stop what we do here at MAKE, the makers are not going to stop building and sharing amazing things, the investments of time and resources in the world of making will help build our future - we all know we need to do something. I think America is going through some big changes, the more challenging things get the more gratifying it is to be patriotic, perhaps it's because I like to fix things.

Maybe we are like that thrown away shredder that now sits in the MAKE office, at first glance it's broken and not worth anything - but once taken apart, inspected, it's clear that our motor is strong, our parts all work, we just need some makers to fix our switch to get working again.

Happy New Year makers.

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Ender_Stonebender writes "TechCrunch is reporting that three independent sources have mentioned to them a large form factor version of the iPod Touch, with either a 7 or 9 inch screen, to be released fall of 2009. The device is expected to have access to the iTunes App Store. Beyond that, everything about it appears to be pure speculation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Video embed above, and here's a direct MP4 download.)

A special treat from Boing Boing tv for your New Year's eve revelry, we're gonna sneak this one last episode in before the clock strikes 2009 here! Enjoy this music video for Sydney, Australia-based band The Herd, directed by the phenomenally talented Mike Daly. More about the band's "glam/folk/tropical" music here. Every time we played this one in the BBtv editing bay, we all ended up dancing around the Final Cut windows. Mike Daly did incredible work here, there's not a frame of this I'd do differently, and it says so much about the year we're ending tonight, don't you think? Dig it, TRY not to dance, keep the faith my fellow mutants, and Feliz Año a todos ustedes, from all of us at the Boing Boing blogs, and the Boing Boing TV team! Peace.

A few weeks ago, we got an email sent to the feedback box that asked how we can possibly stay upbeat. I have to apologize because I can't find the email anymore -- so I don't remember who sent it -- but he pointed out that while he really enjoyed reading Techdirt and liked what we had to say, the stories about corporate cluelessness, political corruption and short-sighted thinking were so consistently frustrating and depressing that there were times he considered giving up on reading Techdirt -- if just to keep himself from banging his head against the wall. He wanted to know how we possibly stayed upbeat, and kept positive enough to avoid giving ourselves heart attacks. I didn't get a chance to email him back, but wanted to address the question here as my final post of 2008.

Techdirt has been going strong since 1997, so it's not like we're new to covering these sorts of things. But, in the end, I personally stay extremely happy and optimistic because I see how far we've come -- and I recognize the inevitable outcome of most of these debates. Yes, we point out plenty of bad stuff, but it's not about complaining about how terrible things are -- but about trying to help open some eyes to the possibilities of moving forward, adapting and embracing new technological possibilities. And, while there are some extremely loud and public holdouts, every day we're seeing examples of it working. We see the inevitable results of technological change in enabling new and powerful business models that greatly expand markets, provide consumers with much more than before, and enable new innovations that you might never have thought were possible before.

The internet is a phenomenal communications tool that very few people had even heard of not so long ago. The world wide web only came into being slightly more than fifteen years ago. The ability to go online and find just about anything you need in seconds is a brand new phenomenon. The fact that you can talk to people, easily, in far away places -- make new connections, share stories, exchange ideas, debate, argue and connect, well beyond your local community -- is all simply amazing. Beyond online communications, the internet has provided new and amazing tools for business, commerce, entertainment and information that were nearly impossible to imagine by all but the most visionary people just a few decades ago.

How can you not be optimistic and excited when you look back at how far we've come in such a short time, and think about how much further we can go?

Yes, we're in the midst of a brutal financial mess -- but that won't stop innovation. Yes, incumbent forces, with short-sighted plans and a desire to hold back the tides are annoying and disruptive (not in a good way) in the short run. But even they are finding they can't hold back progress. Robert Friedel has a wonderful book called A Culture of Improvement that details how we, as a society, are constantly looking to improve on what we already have. We add ideas and ingenuity to old concepts and build something better -- not because of the desire to grab some "intellectual property," but because of the desire to improve our own lot, to build a better tool that we want to use. Incumbent short-sighted players have been able to hinder and harm progress, but they can't keep it down completely. That culture of improvement can't be stopped entirely.

There is, of course, plenty to be vigilant about, of course. Bad and corrupt political moves can seriously stunt economic improvement, but history has shown that such periods are often short-lived, as the need for continued economic growth and advancement is impossible to stomp out completely -- and as it seeps out through the cracks, legacy businesses crumble, and outdated political rules and short-sighted policies are pushed to the side. Yes, more come along, often as the innovators of yesterday seek to stop the innovators of tomorrow, but the march of innovation hasn't been stopped yet.

So, yes, we rant and rage against short-sighted policies, and efforts that hinder and delay the inevitable, but we're excited and optimistic and happy about what we see as the eventual possibilities from that advancement and innovation. Any "anger" or "unhappiness" we might display is more frustration at ourselves for not being able to clearly paint a picture -- for those seeking to hold back progress -- of just what opportunities moving forward provides.

As we move into 2009, there are plenty of things to be worried about, but look around at what progress has brought to us already, and look at the trends and the obvious direction in which technology is taking us -- there's so much to look forward to, it's hard to let any depression seep into the discussion at all. Happy New Year to all of the many readers of Techdirt, whether you agree with us or disagree with us, and we look forward to seeing what great new things come about in the new year and beyond.

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Roland Piquepaille writes "The Cyberknife is not a real knife. This is a robot radiotherapy machine which works with great accuracy during treatment, thanks to its robotic arm which moves around a patient when he breathes. According to BBC News, the first Cyberknife will be operational in February 2009 in London, UK. But other machines have been installed in more than 15 countries, and have permitted doctors to treat 50,000 patients in the first semester of 2008. And the Cyberknife is more efficient than conventional radiotherapy devices. The current systems require twenty or more short sessions with low-dose radiation. On the contrary, and because it's extremely precise, a Cyberknife can deliver powerful radiation in just three sessions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Roland Piquepaille writes "The Cyberknife is not a real knife. This is a robot radiotherapy machine which works with great accuracy during treatment, thanks to its robotic arm which moves around a patient when he breathes. According to BBC News, the first Cyberknife will be operational in February 2009 in London, UK. But other machines have been installed in more than 15 countries, and have permitted to treat 50,000 patients in the first semester of 2008. And the Cyberknife is more efficient than conventional radiotherapy devices. The current systems require twenty or more short sessions with low-dose radiation. On the contrary, and because it's extremely precise, a Cyberknife can deliver powerful radiation in just three sessions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mactech's homemade New Year's eve ball!

It's 20 feet tall, made of two pieces of 3/4" EMT with a coupler that wasn't strong enough, so I taped some shims along the joint...guy wires to keep it from keeling over sideways. There are a couple of pulleys to hoist the ball.

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Way back in 7th grade social studies class, I still remember one of the first assignments we had from Mr. Kemp (I think that was his name...) was to make a suggestion for a way to change or improve the way government functions. My suggestion was that in addition to the two legislative branches (the House of Representatives and the Senate), we could add a third branch for direct citizen voting on bills. I think I called it the Peoplocracy or something. Whenever it was time to vote on various bills, the information would be broadcast via TV, and individuals could call a phone number and "vote" one way or the other. I remember that I got a bad grade on the paper, as the teacher told me such an idea made no sense: our elected officials in Congress where there to represent the will of the people, and direct voting on bills by citizens was entirely redundant and unnecessary. To this day, I still feel the teacher dismissed the idea too quickly... but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea.

Since the election there have been a bunch of stories about how President-elect Obama has built up this huge direct line of communication to a huge, passionate and committed group of citizens and supporters via the internet, and there's plenty of speculation about how he intends to use that connection to help push his legislative agenda forward. In many ways, this is quite exciting, and I'm curious to see how it works -- and hoping for the best. After all, a huge problem with our elected officials in the past is that they were so far disconnected from the citizens they were supposed to represent that their policy choices were often backwards. Instead, it was often the powerful lobbyists who got through and were able to fashion laws to support their positions, rather than the overall well-being of the citizenry.

Anything that gives the actual people a bigger voice and a better ability to communicate and connect with the President or other elected officials seems like a great idea -- and we're already seeing some of that in action with the Obama's impressive Change.gov operation, which, among other things allows people to submit policy ideas and allows others to vote on them, in a Digg-like fashion. The possibilities for such a program are potentially limitless and incredibly powerful.

And yet... I'm still left wondering if there isn't a huge risk as well. As we've seen time and time again, powerful technologies don't discriminate. They can be used for very good purposes and they can be used for very bad purposes as well. I'm very excited about the good possibilities, but I'm wondering how much thought is being given to limiting the downside possibilities. There is, of course, the risk of "mob rule"-type decision making at times. While majority rules is the foundation of democracy, there are times when a simple majority can end up taking away the rights of a minority or put in place a dreadful and dangerous policy. This can happen especially after emotionally-charged incidents, where "mob rule" and thoughts of revenge or punishment overrule the rational parts of many people. Also, with any such system, there is the risk of gaming. As we've unfortunately seen with Digg over the past year or so, a small group of individuals have figured out how to effectively control the system, almost entirely stomping out the voices of others.

I don't think this is where things are headed, and I'm not saying that the technology or embracing a direct connection to people is a bad thing. I think just the opposite is true. I'm really excited to see where all of this leads, and the fact that there's at least some indication that we're not dealing with politics as usual is great. But... in seeing everyone talk up how wonderful this is, I worry about what's being done to at least guard against the worst abuses that occur when a direct connection to the people turns from rational into irrational mob rule out for blood.

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lazyforker writes "A NYTimes blog post reports the results of security researcher Kate McKinley's tests of various browsers' (FireFox, Chrome, IE, Safari) privacy protection mechanisms. Specifically she tested their cookie handling. She also examined their handling of Flash's cookies. In summary: Safari on Mac OS X (in the "private browsing" mode) is not so private ("quirky"). Safari on XP is not private at all. Flash behaves awfully everywhere."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have submitted the news that the cartoon character of Popeye is about to go into the public domain in the UK, and it should be quite interesting to see what happens next, as it will be something of a preview of the eventual Mickey Mouse fight that will be coming. To be honest, I'm surprised that were didn't hear attempts to extend basic copyright protection in the UK to prevent this from happening in the first place, as has happened in the past every time Mickey Mouse is about to fall into the public domain. I guess Disney just has more lobbying clout.

However, what will be most interesting is to see what happens next. Disney was able to continually extend copyright to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain for years -- in part because copyright wasn't an issue that the general public cared about or that really impacted them in a noticeable way. Obviously, over the past decade, that's changed quite a bit. Disney must know that it will have an awfully difficult time extending copyright yet again (though, the company will almost certainly try). In the meantime, though, what happens with Popeye in the UK may be a rough guide as to what will happen should Mickey Mouse hit the public domain.

And... the reality is that not very much different might happen.

That's because even though the copyright on the character has fallen into the public domain, the trademark remains -- and the current holder of the Popeye trademark in the UK, King Features (owned by Hearst), is expected to "protect its brand aggressively." That means people will still be quite limited in how they can use Popeye. If King Features is able to successfully use trademark law to keep Popeye under control, perhaps Disney won't go quite so crazy trying to extend the copyright on Mickey Mouse again... Either way, this little "experiment" will be worth watching.

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itsnotabigtruck writes -

After doing some poking around in the source code for the Zune's clock driver (available free from the Freescale website), I found the root cause of the now-infamous Zune 30 leapyear issue that struck everyone on New Year's Eve.


The Zune's real-time clock stores the time in terms of days and seconds since January 1st, 1980. When the Zune's clock is accessed, the driver turns the number of days into years/months/days and the number of seconds into hours/minutes/seconds. Likewise, when the clock is set, the driver does the opposite.

The Zune frontend first accesses the clock toward the end of the boot sequence. Doing this triggers the code that reads the clock and converts it to a date and time. Below is the part of this code that determines the year component of the date:

year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */

while (days > 365)
{
if (IsLeapYear(year))
{
if (days > 366)
{
days -= 366;
year += 1;
}
}
else
{
days -= 365;
year += 1;
}
}


Looks like it's a leap year thing and it might happen again in 4 years... For now those with ZUNEs can just wait a day. This bug and the android "run every word you type" bug - typing "reboot" would reboot the phone are 2008's weirdest mobile device bugs.

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Brad Greenspan, who at one point was CEO of Intermix, the spyware/adware firm that originally created MySpace, has been complaining for years that News Corp. engaged in fraud when it purchased Intermix in order to get MySpace at a discounted price. A court found nothing to support this, pointing out (yet again) that the acquisition was agreed to by both parties. However, that hasn't stopped Greenspan, whose own competitive startup Live Universe filed an antitrust lawsuit against MySpace for blocking Live Universe videos from MySpace profiles.

How is this possibly an antitrust issue? Well, that wasn't clear to anyone... least of all to the courts apparently. After first losing at the district court level, an appeals court has now found no validity in the antitrust claims either, sending Greenspan back to the drawing board for attempts to find ways to suck some more money out of News Corp.

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Tripod: a student entry from last year's contest.

The EPA just announced its newest lifecycle building challenge:

Enter the third year of the Lifecycle Building Challenge competition, to shape the future of green building and facilitate local building materials reuse. Submit your innovative project, design, or idea for reducing to conserve construction and demolition materials and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by designing buildings for adaptability and disassembly.

Lifecycle building is designing buildings to facilitate disassembly and material reuse to minimize waste, energy consumption, and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Also known as design for disassembly and design for deconstruction, lifecycle building describes the idea of creating high-performance buildings today that are stocks of resources for the future.

There are awards for both full buildings and building products, and both students and professionals can submit entries ("professionals" built or unbuilt, students only unbuilt). More info here.

(via Treehugger)

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