An ambitious effort to provide free WiFi in a large number of New York City parks -- including the massive Central Park -- has collapsed, after the company behind it couldn't raise the funds to build out the networks and keep them operating. The company was unable to round up corporate sponsors willing to back the project, and it couldn't afford the concession fee it had agreed to pay to the city. It also suffered from a difficult buildout, in particular getting backhaul for its WiFi nodes into the parks. The shutdown highlights, yet again, the problems providers can face in trying to set up large-area WiFi networks. It's far more complex than a coffee shop plugging in a router, and requires a committed and deep-pocketed benefactor. For a coffee shop or business district, the benefits of sponsoring or backing WiFi is easy to envision, but for a public space like a park, it's more difficult to sell sponsors (particularly companies) on the benefits. Local governments are likely losing some of their interest in paying, too, given the budget shortfalls many are experiencing. The big push for muni WiFi lost a lot of its steam in 2008, and it continues to look like the sponsored hotzone will continue to be the way forward for larger-scale free WiFi.

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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alphadogg writes to tell us that lessons learned from peer-to-peer networks are being applied to traffic systems in order to prevent jams. "Their Autonet plan would center around ad hoc networks of vehicles and roadside monitoring posts supported by 802.11 technology (the prototype uses 11b). The vehicles would essentially be the 'clients' in such a system and feature graphical user interfaces to pass along information to drivers. They're building the system to be able to handle data on thousands of traffic incidents and road conditions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seamster posted this instructable for making an impressively accurate Atari joystick lamp -

I have a few basic hand tools and a few small power tools. I started this project doubtful of how I was going to accomplish each step with my relatively small supply of tools, but I came up with some creative ways to use them to get what I wanted. I did have to practice making most of the parts multiple times before I got them the way I wanted them. This was by far the most difficult and time consuming thing I've ever made, but I'm very pleased with the result.

Nicely done! - Giant Atari Joystick Lamp

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You don't expect unboxing pr0n on a program development board like this, but uC Hobby thought this board and box was different. The board itself even has a snazzy tat. I'm not familiar with the AVR Dragon. Is this treatment new? The board has labels silk-screened on both side, too, which is nice.

AVR Dragon's at uCHobby

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Over the past few years, mobile operators began to get annoyed at being called "soviet ministries" for their preference towards being extremely closed off with high garden walls. So, they suddenly started to claim they were throwing their doors wide open. Verizon Wireless kicked it off in 2007, by declaring a plan to open its network. It got a ton of press attention (especially from Verizon Wireless, who had been more closed than others). However, when the details finally came out, there was little to get excited about.

And, indeed, Broadband Reports checks in and notes that for all of the hype surrounding Verizon Wireless' declaration of openness it's meant a whole lot of nothingness in terms of actual products and services. In fact, Verizon's own phones and phone service remain pretty closed. Effectively, Verizon Wireless got a PR coup by suggesting they might possibly allow more open devices on the network -- should there actually be any businesses that wanted to offer that. It did work to stop criticisms and threats of regulatory interference, but it hasn't resulted in much in the way of actual openness.

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An anonymous reader writes to tell us that new research is suggesting as many as a quarter of all IT staff in small to medium businesses have suffered some sort of abuse and are looking for careers elsewhere [PDF]. "The study also found that over a third have suffered from sleepless nights or headaches as a result of IT problems at work, while 59 per cent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours. [...] The biggest cause of stress among IT staff is problems arising from operational day-to-day tasks, the survey found. Another major cause came from loss of critical data, according to Connect."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

All you whovians longing to recreate Tom Baker's signature scarf accurately need look no further than DoctorWhoScarf.com. Knitting patterns for scarves from all of the fourth Doctor's seasons are available.
[via EMSL]

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All you whovians longing to recreate Tom Baker's signature scarf accurately need look no further than DoctorWhoScarf.com. Knitting patterns for scarves from all of the fourth Doctor's seasons are available.
[via EMSL]

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Last night, Larry Lessig went on The Colbert Report to talk up his latest book Remix. While I think Remix is an important book and Lessig is a brilliant commentator on these issues, I was a little disappointed by the performance, but I'm willing to chalk it up to the fact that appearing opposite Colbert is incredibly difficult (almost impossible), and Colbert is the best at throwing interviewees off their game. Of course, pretty much everything Colbert does is satire, and included in the video was the joking suggestion that no one take the video and remix it. Colbert, of course, has been one of the champions of getting folks to remix videos for him. So, obviously, the idea was to get more folks to remix.

However, just a little while ago, some folks started noticing a message at the top of Colbertnation.com saying:

Lawrence Lessig's REMIX has been removed at the request of Penguin Publishers.

At this point, it's unclear what exactly has been removed. The video of the interview is still online, so that's not what's been removed. Some are wondering if Colbert originally posted a downloadable copy of the book itself that has been removed. Many folks have noticed that Remix is not available for download, despite promises that it would be. Apparently, the free version of the book has been delayed until May, which is pretty lame, itself. And, then, of course, there's the possibility that the "removal" notice itself is just a Colbert joke -- though, it almost seems too subtle for Colbert's style of humor. If anyone has more info on what happened here, it would be great to know.

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Earlier today I revised a proposal from December for including thumbnail images in HTML. I am now revising that proposal again to be compatible with Digg's (undated) proposal, which I just found out about.

I'm not going to add another format when one exists that differs from mine only by the choice of a name (they call it an image_src, I called it a thumbnail).

Their format doesn't call for a type, or height and width -- I'm going to include that info and hope that Digg ignores it.

You can see an example by viewing source on this page.

To test, I've submitted the example to Digg. They ask if it's an news article, video or image, I chose image. A few steps later and it's submitted, and apparently they picked up the thumbnail. Looks good!

Seems like a done deal!

Update: FriendFeed does support this format in their bookmarklet. I tested it, and it works. Happy! That's already a lot of compatibility for less than an hour's worth of work. My photo site plugs into Digg and FriendFeed.

As a long-time couple, finding art or photography that we both enjoy can sometimes be difficult. For instance, we’ve been searching for a painting of the rolling hills of Sonoma County that we can both live with for roughly 18 years.

However, the work of Kate Kunath amazes both of us, not only because of the quality of the images, but because of the thought she puts into each of her projects. Whether it’s dilapidated buildings in China or the portraits of people holding rabbits, we both agree these are beautiful and thought-provoking. We first heard about Kunath’s work when Treehugger featured her Stung: Beekeeping in the 21st Century series of photos, which is also full of terrific photos we can both agree on.

Kate Kunath’s Work

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Nick Fletcher writes "Just a few short months after the initial release, Google has released a pre-beta version of Google Chrome 2.0. It sports a few new features including form auto-completion, full-page zoom, 'profiles,' and Greasemonkey support. It seems the only notable feature would be profiles, which allows users to separate out their homepage, history, and bookmarks on a per user or category basis. It seems Google is still playing catch-up but they're definitely moving at a pace unknown to some of their competition. The full list of new features is available in the release notes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lexus has announced plans to roll out a system that will allow the company to send audio messages to its cars, which most people immediately realized meant we should get ready for spam in our cars. It's pretty obvious that's what Lexus is thinking when it says things like: "messages can be highly targeted, such as tailored for those who have a specific vehicle type or who live in a particular ZIP code." However, the company is obviously sensitive to the spam issue, saying that "We're not going to barrage customers with marketing messages," and noting that some may not want this: "Many of our owners enjoy their car as a cocoon." The whole thing sounds like a trial balloon idea to see how people react, and so far it doesn't sound good. You could see some potentially useful situation -- such as in the event of a recall, but the likelihood of someone in marketing getting a "brilliant idea" for some extra revenue and pissing off a lot of people just seems too high.

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Joel Stein wrote an opinion piece for the LA Times alleging that nut allergies are, by and large, a Yuppie invention.

Your kid doesn't have an allergy to nuts. Your kid has a parent who needs to feel special. Your kid also spends recess running and screaming, "No! Stop! Don't rub my head with peanut butter!"

Yes, a tiny number of kids have severe peanut allergies that cause anaphylactic shock, and all their teachers should be warned, handed EpiPens and given a really expensive gift at Christmas. But unless you're a character on "Heroes," genes don't mutate fast enough to have caused an 18% increase in childhood food allergies between 1997 and 2007. And genes certainly don't cause 25% of parents to believe that their kids have food allergies, when 4% do. Yuppiedom does.

I wonder if he would have written this piece had he witnessed a child go into anaphylactic shock, as my daughter did when she ate a cookie with hidden nuts in it. It was very scary.

Nut allergies -- a Yuppie invention

A collection of 20 different portraits of the outgoing U.S. president by Vanity Fair’s illustrators. Shown here: The Imperial Family, by Edward Sorel. From left: Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Condoleezza Rice. From “The Monarchy of George II,” by Niall Ferguson, September 2004. Vanity Fair's collected portraits of Bush

Drdeak writes -

This is a video I took on the 2nd of January 2009 at my amateur radio station. I first heard it on New Year's eve early afternoon. It was on all day today and other ham operators across the country have reported receiving the signal; a very strong signal as well. The frequency of the signal is at 14.250 to 14.255 MHz. It seems to be on at all hours and no one has yet to decipher or explain it. Any theories? Anyone?

Curious, anyone know of a good explanation? Please share in the comments.

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Drdeak writes -

This is a video I took on the 2nd of January 2009 at my amateur radio station. I first heard it on New Year's eve early afternoon. It was on all day today and other ham operators across the country have reported receiving the signal; a very strong signal as well. The frequency of the signal is at 14.250 to 14.255 MHz. It seems to be on at all hours and no one has yet to decipher or explain it. Any theories? Anyone?

Curious, anyone know of a good explanation? Please share in the comments.

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An anonymous reader writes "At CES, Nvidia has announced a graphics card with 480 cores that can crank up performance to reach close to 2 teraflops. The company's GTX 295 graphics cards has two GPUs with 240 cores each that can execute graphics and other computing tasks like video processing. The card delivers 1.788 teraflops of performance, which Nvidia claims is the fastest single graphics card in the market."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Becky Stern of CRAFT shows you how to change the hair on a Blythe doll.

I started getting interested in Blythe when I wanted to make a three-dimensional self portrait, and was dumbfounded by the enormous community of customizers working with the Blythe Doll. One of the main online sources for customization is Puchi Collective, which houses oodles of tops for changing her eyechips, face makeup, and clothes. I was mainly interested in rerooting her hair, as the doll I acquired from co-blogger Jenny Ryan had blonde hair, and I wanted to use my own wavy red hair from a recent haircut. I made this video to illustrate the process, based on text-and-image tutorials I found on Puchi and Flickr. You can see some photos of my self portrait as Blythe in my Flickr set

. Rerooting Blythe Doll Hair - CRAFT Video Podcast

Chris sez, "Craig Finlay has been posting to the Flickr pool 'infiltration' some photos of an abandoned mansion in Beirut that turns out to be the former prime minister's. Amazing."

I saw this abandoned mansion last week from the street and went in with my friend Michel as translator in case we ran into anyone. It took a bit of jimmying to force the door, and inside we found piles and piles of of binders and dozens of black and white photos, all showing one man at various political events.

It turns out the mansion used to be the home of Takieddin el-Solh (born 1908, Sidon, Lebanon; died November 27, 1988, Paris) Lebanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Lebanon from 1973-74, and again briefly in 1980. The binders were full of voter lists and various political documents. I'm assuming he abandoned the place during the civil war and moved to a more secure location. The house is in the Sunni section, but was within easy artillery distance of the Green Line.

Abandoned Mansion - Beirut (Thanks, Chris!)

In "The Altruist," artist Laurie Munn documents her adventure in found portraiture: working from a 1965 yearbook from Emerson High in Union City, New Jersey that she found in the trash, Munn painted portraits of all 220 members of the class of 65. Then she returned to the Emerson High and tracked down the subjects of her portraits to show them the great work -- discovering the heartbreaking story of the original yearbook on the way.

It's a fabulous short feature, with humor, pathos, art and nostalgia all swirled up together in a mad project.

The Altruist by Laurie Munn (Thanks, Marilyn!)

See also: Artist draws entire yearbook

Silver Dragon Studio makes $50 flails out of novelty outsize D20s. It's the ideal B&D/D&D crossover item!

D20 Flails (via Wonderland)

Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Margaret Robertson looks back at Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, in which you control the action by banging on crappy electronic drums. Margaret is the former editor of Edge magazine and I am thrilled that she's now a regular columnist for Offworld. From "One More Go: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat":

One of the worst game ideas ever was embodied in Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, which is a platform game you control with a pair of cheap electric bongos.

Not, please note, a modern, newfangled, automagic platform game like Assassin’s Creed. A proper, old-fashioned 2D platformer with ledges and enemies and timed swings and all the things that make you cry out for a nice crisp d-pad and a decently sprung jump button. Or, in the absence of those, perhaps at least something with more than two buttons which you can operate without having to pretend to be a toddler who just dropped a jam sandwich off his high chair.

So why go back to Jungle Beat? For a little reassuring schadenfreude that I’m not the only person who can have bad game ideas? No. Because it’s a dazzling, dizzying delight. Bad idea; brilliant game.

One More Go: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

Around here, it's basically preaching to the choir, so most of you probably recognize this already, but buying anything with DRM on it is basically asking for trouble down the road. The latest example? An eBook seller named Fictionwise has realized that one of the companies that provides DRM for some of its books has announced that its shutting down at the end of the month. Because that DRM has to check in with an authentication server that's no longer going to be there, everyone who "bought" (really: incorrectly thought they bought) eBooks that used this DRM will discover that the books they paid for no longer work. It's as if a publisher could retroactively erase the text from within a physical book that you bought. Since Fictionwise is just passing on the eBooks from third party aggregators, it has no means of replacing the "disappeared" eBooks. Has anyone found any thing that DRM is actually good for yet?

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New research shows that people with insomnia are five times more likely to be highly paranoid than those who are well-rested. The study was conducted by Wellcome Trust fellow Daniel Freeman who has co-written what promises to be a fascinating new book, Paranoia: The 21st Century Fear. (Excerpt here.) The results of Freeman's latest scientific study were published in the journal Schizophrenia Research. From Science Daily:

"As most of us know, a few nights of poor sleep can make us feel stressed, muddled in our thinking and disconnected from the world," says Dr Freeman. "These are ideal conditions for paranoid fears to take hold. Regular, good-quality sleep is important to our psychological wellbeing."

Although the study shows a clear link between the two conditions, it is unclear which causes the other. Clinical experience indicates that there is a vicious cycle: insomnia makes us anxious and fearful, and these feelings make it harder for us to sleep.

Dr Freeman believes that the research points to a potential treatment for helping to reduce the risk of developing persecutory thoughts.

"The good news is that there are several tried-and-tested ways to overcome insomnia," he says. "In particular, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has proven benefits. The intriguing implication of the research is that use of the sleep techniques may also make us feel safer and less mistrustful during the day. A good night’s sleep may simply make us view the world in a much more positive light.”

"Macbeth's Curse: Link Between Sleeplessness And Paranoia Identified" (Science Daily), Paranoia: The 21st Century Fear (Amazon)

At the very end of last month I started a thread here about adding thumbnails to photo pages in such a way that web apps such as Tweetree, and others that can display graphics inline, can grab info about the thumbnail directly from the HTML of the page that the full image is displayed on. If we're going to have a future of graphics-capable Twitter-like services, or if Twitter itself is going to grok images, then thumbnails are not just nice-to-have but must-have. And a machine-readable way to link to them from the original HTML is needed.

My first impulse was to create a <link> variant, but to do so would have meant adding width and height attributes. I could have omitted them, but that's ridiculous -- all image processing apps have that information at-hand, and if you don't put it in the HTML, then the client has to do an HTTP reference to get the data, and that's a waste of bandwidth. Better to put the info in one place rather than have N clients fetch it for themselves.

However, Zach Beane objected that you can't just invent elements for <link>, so I took a different route and defined an XML namespace for a new thumbnail element. Later, Sam Ruby suggested that HTML allows for arbitrary attributes to be added where they make sense as long as their names begin with "data-". I didn't know about this. So I'm going back to the initial simpler approach and use a <link> element.

So here's the new template...

<link rel="thumbnail" type="image/jpeg" href="http://static.flickrfan.org/afp/thumbnails/2008/12/28/trpar2329681.jpg" data-width="150" data-height="87">

You can see an example by viewing source on this page.

Update: Over on FriendFeed, Paul Buchheit, one of FF's founders, says that Digg has a format that does most of what I'm doing here. There are some weird things about it, like why specify the title in a <meta> element when HTML already has a <title> but I think I have to go with the Digg format. The philosophy: "One way to do something, no matter how flawed that way is, is better than two, no matter how much better the second way is." It's a corollary to Postel's Law, being conservative in what you send. I asked Paul if FF is supporting the Digg proposal.

Michael J. Ross writes "After installing and learning the basics of the content management system Drupal, many Web developers do not know how to best proceed from there. They may realize that much of the programming potential of Drupal — and thus the earning potential of Drupal developers — is derived from the use of community-contributed modules that greatly extend Drupal's power. But there are thousands of such modules, with no objective direction as to which ones are best suited for particular tasks, and what bugs and other flaws could trip up the developer. These programmers need a thorough guide as to which modules are the most promising for the development of the most common types of Web sites. A new book, Using Drupal, aims to fill this need." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This solar refrigerator, invented by Emily Cummins, is a brilliantly simple solution for keeping food cool in a hot, dry environment. It's basically a metal cylinder surrounded by wet material, surrounded by a mesh sleeve to hold it all together.

Between the outer cylinder and the inner cylinder is an open compartment where any medium capable of holding water can be placed. The medium would usually be sand, wool or soil and is packed into the gap and then water is added.

When the fridge is placed in a warm environment, the sun's energy causes the water to evaporate from the medium. As the water/medium mix is held against the inner cylinder, heat is removed in the form of energy. Due to heat transfer the inner cylinder becomes cooler. The reduced temperature and completely dry environment of the inner chamber makes it perfect for the storage of perishables as it will allow items to be kept fresh for longer.

It's encouraging to think that important, real-world problems are still out there to be solved with a bit of ingenuity and the sort of materials that are taking up space in the corner of your garage.

Emily Cummins' Site (flash)
Amazing solar-powered fridge invented by British student in a potting shed helps poverty-stricken Africans [via MashupMark]

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Selectism did an interview with American commuter bike makers Freeman Transport on the importance of feeling the hand of the maker in their product (bikes). It's all around inspiring!

...We wanted people to know how important it is for us to support US manufacturing and the lack thereof. If things continue to go the direction they are going, we could potentially have no products made in America. I think it is important for us to take control of that. I see that Jeff Staple has produced a line of button down shirts made in New York. Steven Allen makes some clothing in New York. Freeman Sporting Club makes most of their clothing in New York. Band of Outsiders, Thom Brown, Engineered Garments. I just saw that Huf did a bunch of his cut and sew in America. So that's really nice. That's not to say we don't see both sides of the conversation and recognize the challenges and limitations. I mean after all, there are certain things that just can't be made here anymore.

Via Core77.

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A modder by the call sign "Jake of all Trades" built this impressive Victorian-era PC case mod and I thought I'd share it with you all. It's not quite as fancy as some of the others featured in this series but is special just the same.

For the tour click below!

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Bonnie is an orangutan who has taught herself how to whistle. Her imitation of a human caretaker is providing scientists with new insight into social learning and the evolution of speech. It's the first time that a non-human primate has been documented mimicking another species' sound without training. Bonnie lives at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. Her unique talent is discussed in a new paper in the journal Primates by researchers from the Great Ape Trust and their colleagues. The Great Ape Trust site also has video of Bonnie whistling away. From the Great Ape Trust:

Scientists have long known that orangutans copy physical movements of humans, but Bonnie’s whistling indicates that the learning capacities of orangutans and other great apes in the auditory domain might be more flexible than previously believed, (Great Ape Trust researcher Serge) Wich said. The behavior goes against the argument that orangutans have no control over their vocalizations and the sounds are purely emotional – that is, an involuntary response to stimuli such as predators.

Bonnie appears to whistle for the sake of making a sound rather than to receive a food reward or some other incentive. If asked to whistle, she is likely to oblige, another indication to scientists that she makes the sound voluntarily.

"Orangutan’s spontaneous whistling opens new chapter in study of evolution of speech" (via Fortean Times)

One of the more important points made in Matt Mason's book, The Pirate's Dilemma is that piracy almost always is a leading indicator for what the market wants, but isn't being delivered. This is a point that's extremely difficult for those whose content is being pirated to grasp -- because their natural reaction is to feel like a victim, rather than the recipient of useful market data. So, it's great to see that's not always the case. A couple people have sent in a story about a pair of small time iPhone developers who recently discovered that their iPhone game had been cracked and a ton of people were downloading it for free. Rather than freak out about it, the guy had an open conversation with the cracker who explained why he did it. Basically, he said he was disappointed with the fact that many games did not live up to the quality level promised, and a cracked version let them try before they bought. The developer actually felt that was a good point, and is now looking into alternative business models for his app, including a try-before-you-buy option, or an ad supported version. It's also worth pointing out, by the way, that the day that the app was getting pirated a ton, it also brought in more sales than usual...

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I made some changes to twitterRiver this morning, and this post exists simply to test them.

Oy the last test was inconclusive, so here's another test. Sorry! :-)

Things seem to be working, but I want to be absolutely sure!

French design/photo duo Helmo (Thomas Couderc and Clement Vauchez) created a lovely window installation at the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris. Titled "Bêtes de mode," the 2006 work consisted of thirteen human portraits superimposed with animal images that were revealed through the use of various gels.
Bêtes de mode (Helmo, thanks Meri Brin!), Helmo @ Galeries Lafayette (YouTube)

An anonymous reader writes "Verizon Wireless will forge a deal with Microsoft to include the software giant's Live Search on its mobile phones, giving Microsoft a victory over rival Google and ending a months-long dance toward the partnership. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will announce the deal in his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas." InfoWorld notes that Microsoft is rumored to be changing the name of its Live Search service to Kumo , which is Japanese for "cloud."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jenny @ CRAFT found these little gems in the CRAFT Flickr pool: soap made to look like dentures! These wouldn't be too hard to make yourself using a mouth-safe alginate to make a mold, then cast two different colors of soap into it! I'll keep this one in mind for next Halloween.

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Alt weekly The Boston Phoenix has cast its eye on cryptozoology in a long article featuring BB pal Loren Coleman who has been exploring the realm of hidden and unknown animals for 50 years. "Cryptids are recession-proof," Loren says. The online version of Mike Miliard's article includes a delightful slideshow from the incredible International Cryptozoology Museum which is in dire need of donations. From the article, titled "Where the Wild Things Are" (photo by Matthew Robbins):

"For every square mile that man has walked on the Earth, three hundred square miles exist that have never been touched by human feet — but MAY INDEED HAVE BEEN TOUCHED by the hooves, paws, tentacles, and horrid tongue-foot-pads of the CRYPTIDS." — John Hodgman

Venture out into the waters and woodlands of New England, and there's a chance you'll bump into "Champ," America's own Loch Ness Monster, who allegedly plies the muddy ripples of Lake Champlain. Or, perhaps, the Gloucester Sea Serpent. Or the Granite State Bigfoot. Or Connecticut's Winsted Wildman. Dare you wander into the dark-woven forests of Maine or the eerie and unexplored Hockomock Swamp, smack in the middle of the Bay State's allegedly supernatural "Bridgewater Triangle"?

You well may. After all, could what's living in there be any scarier than what's living out here? We find ourselves in a world where presidents swindle their countries into wars, governors shake down children's hospitals, and con men abscond with $50 billion from their investors, many of them charities. Is it any wonder that some people spend hefty chunks of each day dreaming of a world inhabited by unseen creatures untouched by the mean banality of mankind?

Can it be a coincidence that the field of cryptozoology — literally, the study of "hidden animals" — has evolved from a discipline cloaked in shadows and pooh-poohed by science into a full-fledged pop-cultural explosion? In short: the world of late has gone cryptid crazy.

"Where the Wild Things Are" (The Phoenix), Loren's take on the article (Cryptomundo)

overheardinpdx writes "I'm sad to report that longtime HPC technology pundit Roland Piquepaille (rpiquepa) died this past Tuesday. Many of you may know of him through his blog, his submissions to Slashdot, and his many years of software visualization work at SGI and Cray Research. I worked with Roland 20 years ago at Cray, where we both wrote tech stories for the company newsletter. With his focus on how new technologies modify our way of life, Roland was really doing Slashdot-type reporting before there was a World Wide Web. Rest in peace, Roland. You will be missed." The notice of Roland's passing was posted on the Cray Research alumni group on Linked-In by Matthias Fouquet-Lapar. There will be a ceremony on Monday Jan. 12, at 10:30 am Paris time, at Père Lachaise.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Behind the Scenes at the permiere of Make:television @ Geekdad - Dan writes -

MAKE:television invited GeekDad to their premiere event in Minnesota this week. GeekDad John and I played with some of the projects they built on the air, met the host, John Park and got a preview of the series. It was a fun evening and a fitting start to a great program...

....So, if you are already actively making, you can catch the show for a few tips and techniques. If you've considered yourself allergic to power tools, it just might cause you to rethink your tinkering skills and start that trebuchet. Try your local PBS station or look for one of the ubiquitous webby options.

Thanks to Nick and Heidi at TPT for inviting us, to Dale Dougherty and John Park from Make for sharing their vision with us and Robert Stephens of Geek Squad for sponsoring season one and giving me the phrase "Minnesota is the Russia of America"

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Billionaire Broadcom founder Henry Nicholas lost his fight to keep the following email message from being admitted as evidence in his trial for "21 counts of conspiring to commit accounting and securities fraud by misreporting $2.2 billion in employee stock options." You can't blame him for trying.

An Email Visit with Broadcom's Henry Nicholas

BoingBoing has the latest story of trademark insanity, where a "charity" focused on the rare, but apparently serious disease of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH), is trying to trademark the phrase "Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Awareness" and appears to be threatening other charities for using the phrase, and (according to this petition) has filed complaints to get fundraising stores shut down for using the phrase. The whole thing is so bizarre, and so far outside the purpose of trademark law that it's really difficult to understand how this issue could have gone as far as it has. But, you have to say one thing for the charity doing this: they have "raised awareness" of CDH.

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Harry Truman: "I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell."

80 characters, including punctuation.

It occurs to me this morning this is one of the most American ideas out there.

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," another Trumanism.

52 characters.



At dinner last night in a discussion about the future of the University of California Journalism School, I figured something out. Journalism has always been about the sources, but somehow we lost our way and focused on the reporters, the conduits, the pipes. Okay, so the way we move news from sources to their destinations is changing, but when it's all done, the news process yields the same result.

So this explains why a 140-character limit in Twitter is so in tune with our times. It teaches us how to summarize, to condense, and it rewards those of us who are good at it by making our ideas go further.

It also levels the playing field. Last night there was a 5.0 earthquake in southern California. Not a big one, but Twitter had the full story within a minute. Was there more to say, for cameras and analysts to pore over? Not this time. 140-characters was plenty.

This rickety old suspension bridge in Japan is the stuff of nightmares. The sound of the wind adds to the dreadfulness. (via Japundit)

Do you have the knack? Do you know someone with it? via Bre...

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Not a label you'd frequently see on clothing, right? The sweater in this picture is an exception:

Image, story via Ecofriend

Geurrero Mantis has got the insight that recycling those filthy cigarette butts could make them wearable. These hats, gloves and jackets are fabricated with 10% of recycled cigarette filters and the rest comes from natural fibers.

Here's the original article (Spanish)

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Sound itself attracts — ask any eavesdropper.

#

Smivs writes "The BBC are reporting that footage of one of the world's most strange and elusive mammals has been captured by scientists. Large, and with a long, thin snout, the Hispaniolan solenodon resembles an overgrown shrew. It can inject passing prey with a venom-loaded bite. Dr Sam Turvey, a ZSL (Zoological Society of London) researcher involved with the program, told BBC News: 'It is an amazing creature — it is one of the most evolutionary distinct mammals in the world.' Along with the other species of solenodon, which is found in Cuba (Solenodon cubanus), it is the only living mammal that can actually inject venom into their prey through specialized teeth. Little is known about the creature, which is found in the Caribbean, but it is under threat from deforestation, hunting and introduced species. Researchers say conservation efforts are now needed. The mammal was filmed in the summer of 2008 during a month-long expedition to the Dominican Republic — one of only two countries where this nocturnal, insect-eating animal (Solenodon paradoxus) can be found (the other is Haiti). The researchers from the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Ornithological Society of Hispaniola were able to take measurements and DNA from the creature before it was released."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Timothy Leary wrote this postcard to his kids while on the lam in Egypt in 1970. It's currently on eBay with a starting bid of $450. Here's what Tim wrote:

Tripping around the Middle East grooving with the guerillas… New life, fabulous adventures. We are happy that you are happy. Love, Timothy.

Timothy Leary signed postcard from Egypt (click images for larger pictures)

I found this chart from the IEEE Spectrum showing the worldwide breakdown of industrial robots to be fascinating. I'm not surprised that Japan has the highest density of robots per manufacturing workers, but I was surprised by how far ahead they were of every other country.

IEEE Spectrum: The Rise of Machines (via TokyoMango, illustration by Mike Vella)

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

CES 2009: Pretec has introduced a 32GB CFast, the smallest solid-state drive (SSD) to feature a SATA interface. The SATA interface should allow CFast cards, the next-generation devices from the CompactFlash Association, to reach speeds of up to 375MB/s. The 32GB Pretec card is capable of transfer speeds of up to 160MB/s (300% faster than the fastest CF card today), and will be available next month, with a 64GB version to follow soon. There are no cameras at present that accept the CFast format.

Many years ago I wrote an article for Wired about strange candy. If X-Ray Fish had been around then, I would have included them in the piece.

Strange Candy: Gummi X-Ray Fish

With an Eastwoodian cheroot dangling from his lips, this gun-toting convenience store robber looks like an action movie anti-hero. As Joshua Bearman says, "Just look at this fucking guy and tell me he wasn't supposed to go out like this." Take a look at the photos by the very brave David Proeber.

Our friend and guest blogger alum, Douglas Rushkoff is teaching an online course, Life Incorporated, through the MaybeLogic Academy beginning January 12, for six weeks. “

Students” will get a working draft of book chapters (to be published in June by RandomHouse US and UK) as well as six weeks of discussion and interrogation of the issues within and beyond them. I’ll be doing some live video lectures, as well, and inviting participants to help devise ways of restoring bottom-up commerce and social exchange to a world that seems incapable of abandoning its faulty, top-down, disconnected way of extracting value from people.

But the bulk of the exploration will be history, economics and social theory: How did corporatism become the dominant cultural ideology and operating system, who did it benefit, how did we internalize it, and what keeps it running?

Corporatized: An Alternative To Corporatism & Beyond

New Scientist reports that the Arctic could become ice-free during summers by 2030.

At the time, researchers including Mark Serreze of National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado claimed that the Arctic had reached a "tipping point" - a dramatic and irreversible slide towards ice-free conditions.

As the summer melting season finished up this year, they waited with bated breath to see how much, if any, ice would survive.

4.67 million square kilometres remained at the end of September. A positive interpretation says that the Arctic defied the apocalyptic prophecies by recovering slightly, thanks to a pattern of colder and windier weather.

But Serreze is sticking to the idea that we have reached a point of no return.

"If you look over the past five years, you see an acceleration of ice loss," says Serreze. Though 2008 did not beat the record set by 2007, it is still the second-lowest amount on record, below the record lows of 2002 and 2005.

Arctic melt 20 years ahead of climate models (Thanks, Alex!)

s31523 writes "Today a US airline carrier conducted a 90 minute test flight with one of its engines powered by a 50-50 blend of biofuel and normal aircraft fuel. This was the first flight by a US carrier after other airlines have reported trying similar flights. In February 2008, a Virgin 747 flew from London to Amsterdam partly using a fuel derived from a blend of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts. At the end of December, one engine of a Air New Zealand 747 was powered by a 50/50 blend of jatropha plant oil and standard A1 jet fuel."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

s31523 writes "Today a US airline carrier conducted a 90 minute test flight with one of its engines powered by a 50-50 blend of biofuel and normal aircraft fuel. This was the first flight by a US carrier after other airlines have reported trying similar flights. In February 2008, a Virgin 747 flew from London to Amsterdam partly using a fuel derived from a blend of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts. At the end of December, one engine of a Air New Zealand 747 was powered by a 50/50 blend of jatropha plant oil and standard A1 jet fuel."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's another "mind control" toy, these will be fun to take apart via CrunchGear.

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It happens over and over again... if you can't innovate to compete, why not litigate to compete? Broadband Reports points out that Charter Communications is now suing Verizon for patent infringement relating to Verizon's FiOS fiber optic internet connections. The article makes it pretty clear this has nothing to do with any "stolen" technology, and everything to do with Charter not wanting to have to compete with Verizon's faster fiber optic offering. Progress, just the way Jefferson intended, right?

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Here's the Air Force's blog assessment chart, developed by its Emerging Technologies Division.

(Thanks, Brian! Via Global Nerdy)

Wide Angle writes in with a PBS report on tough economic news from Ireland: Dell announced that it will relocate its manufacturing plant in Limerick, Ireland to Lodz, Poland. "Dell's announcement... is a severe blow to the Irish economy, which has been hit hard and fast by the global economic crisis. Dell is Ireland's second-largest corporate employer and the country's largest exporter. Nineteen hundred shift workers will lose their jobs. ...Dell's closing is not a result of the economic downturn, but of a pattern all too familiar in the United States — corporations' perennial search for cheaper labor. Since 2000 several companies, such as Procter & Gamble, Intel, Gateway, and NEC Electronics, have moved manufacturing jobs from Ireland to China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. When Poland joined the European Union in 2004, it became an attractive place for companies to set up manufacturing plants. ... However, Ireland has managed to maintain and attract... 'knowledge-intensive jobs.' Google's European headquarters are based in Dublin, and Facebook announced late last year that they would locate their international headquarters there. But the overall economic picture for Ireland is bleak."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our future President (11 days!) is said to be considering a famous TV doctor for Sur-Gen.

Paul Krugman explains why he's not a good choice, and I concur, but something has been bothering me about this, and an email from a friend helped nail it.

If you really want to turn things upside-down for the better, instead of a healthy young doctor, how about an older person who is not a doctor, who has health problems and has been treated by the system, someone who has actual experience being a user of American health care.

Then let the doctors and insurance companies and HMOs listen a bit. There's no doubt the other users would hear what this person says. (There's a scene in the latest Clint Eastwood film that illustrates this principle beautifully.)

I am not suggesting an average or ordinary person, not a Joe The Patient, not a knucklehead or idiot, rather someone with a life of accomplishment, a passion for living, but someone who hasn't lived the perfect life and paid a price, and maybe someone like the future President who saw a relative die sooner or suffer more because of deficiency in the system.

That would signal a very pragmatic change -- from health care defining an ideal most of us won't achieve, to improving or just sustaining the reality we make the best of.

Thanks to Ann Greenberg, a longtime friend and Berkeley neighbor, for the perspective-shifting email.

Sigma has set the suggested retail price of the new 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM at £799.99. Initially announced at Photokina 2008, this HSM (Hyper Sonic Sonic Motor) lens will be sold alongside the current Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG. It will be available in Sigma, Nikon, Canon, Sony and Pentax mounts.

SD Times Blog says Google might be working on their own router-

For a long time now, Juniper has had one big ol' customer floating its bottom line: Google. It makes sense, as Juniper specializes in gigantically powerful boxes for routing traffic, and Google exists as one giant pool of information in a constant state of flux. Both incoming and outgoing, it's hard to imagine a world where Google isn't the absolute largest generator of traffic on the Internet, no matter what all the monitoring agencies say.

But all of that is going to change soon. According to multiple sources, including one inside Cisco, Google is working on its own router.

Since we are doing "alt.CES" this week, I'd like to propose the following to Google - make the best router design in the world, then make it an open source hardware project - let anyone compete on bringing the hardware to market and adding new features to the design, provided they share it back, it's open source hardware so commercial use is fine. Google benefited a lot from the open source software world, it would be very bold and very cool to have an open source hardware router designed (at first) by Google. Once it's released, may the best made, most cost effective one win in marketplace.

Here's post from Lifehacker about an open source firmware project for routers right now... Turn your $60 router into a $600 router. Adam wrote...

Of all the great DIY projects at this year's Maker Faire, the one project that really caught my eye involved converting a regular old $60 router into a powerful, highly configurable $600 router. The router has an interesting history, but all you really need to know is that the special sauce lies in embedding Linux in your router. I found this project especially attractive because: 1) It's easy, and 2) it's totally free. So when I got the chance, I dove into converting my own router. After a relatively simple firmware upgrade, you can boost your wireless signal, prioritize what programs get your precious bandwidth, and do lots of other simple or potentially much more complicated things to improve your computing experience. Today I'm going to walk you through upgrading your router's firmware to the powerful open source DD-WRT firmware.

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A Skeptical Cynic among our readers points us to a post over on the EFF's blog about how Apple is still a huge supporter of DRM, despite getting the record labels to dump DRM from music files. This isn't a huge surprise. In the past we noted that even after Steve Jobs came out against DRM on music files, he was clearly still for it on things like video files -- even suggesting business models based on DRM. As the EFF points out, it goes well beyond that, however:

• Apple uses DRM to lock iPhones to AT&T and Apple's iTunes App Store;
• Apple uses DRM to prevent recent iPods from syncing with software other than iTunes (Apple claims it violates the DMCA to reverse engineer the hashing mechanism);
• Apple claims that it uses DRM to prevent OS X from loading on generic Intel machines;
• Apple's new Macbooks feature DRM-laden video ports that only output certain content to "approved" displays;.
• Apple requires iPod accessory vendors to use a licensed "authentication chip" in order to make accessories to access certain features on newer iPods and iPhones;
• The iTunes Store will still lock down movies and TV programs with FairPlay DRM;
• Audiobook files purchased through the iTunes Store will still be crippled by Audible's DRM restrictions.

So, while DRM may be dead for music, it's still quite alive in many different places. Also, the EFF points out that many of these uses of DRM have little to nothing to do with the risk of "piracy" and plenty to do control and limiting how customers can use their products.

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An anonymous reader writes "AMD debuted its 45nm Phenom II processors, and The Tech Report has already run them through a complete suite of benchmarks to see how they perform compared to Intel's latest and greatest. The new 2.8GHz and 3GHz Phenom IIs are in a dead heat with like-priced Core 2 Quads, but they generally fall well behind Intel's new Core i7 chips. TR concludes that AMD's future doesn't look as bleak as some say, and future Phenom IIs could compete favorably with more affordable Core i7 derivatives."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Craving a toasted marshmallow but frustrated by lack of a proper campfire coupled with an annoying inability to rotate the marshmallow evenly? Henry has cooked up an Instructable for a lovely, single-serving Arduino automatic marshmallow roaster using a beeswax candle and a stepper motor from an old printer. Yum!

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Use a cellphone camera for espionage that captures long-distance secret activities!
Thanks go to Eric Rosenthal for the original article in Make: Volume 16

To download The Portable Spy Scope MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

Check out the complete Portable Spy Scope article in MAKE: Volume 16 "Portable Spy Scope"

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Misch writes "Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) will be taking the chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Rep. Boucher has been an advocate for consumers rights, is a co-founder of the Congressional Internet Caucus, and has participated in a Slashdot Interview. He was instrumental in defeating key escrow, back in the day."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Research Songsmith... Sing in to it, and it makes music...

Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC’s microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

You really need to watch the video, it's surreal...

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Use a cellphone camera for espionage that captures long-distance secret activities!
Thanks go to Eric Rosenthal for the original article in Make: Volume 16
View the PDF

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From the MAKE: Flickr pool

Flickr member bengt-re serves up this dusty electronics eye candy of a 47? resistor in the wild. I sure enjoy me some good ciricuit board macro and this shot has some sweet detail including specs on it's creation -

Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Exposure: 0.5 sec (1/2)
Aperture: f/13
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 320
Exposure Bias: -1/3 EV

- Resistors on Flickr

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A popular theme at this year's Consumer Electronics Show is merging the internet with the television. As the WSJ reports, a number of companies have announced products that aim to bring net content into the living room: some LG televisions will be able to directly access Netflix's on-demand service. Intel and Yahoo want to put widgets in TVs, and so on. This isn't a new trend, but it's one that is definitely gathering pace. Just as computer screens are becoming popular places for television content, TV screens are quickly becoming destinations for internet content, thanks to the likes of Netflix and the Xbox, the Nintendo Wii, Apple TV and other products. That means that viewers are moving more and more towards an internet-like viewing experience, one in which they access the content of their choice when they want it, not according to the scheduling department of a TV network.

So will the further spread of internet content to people's living rooms hasten the demise of the TV channel? This is an idea that we've been kicking around for a few years now, that TV networks should unbundle their shows and move away from their schedule-focused format. In short, they need to stop thinking of themselves as broadcasters, and instead as content distributors, adapting their distribution networks to changing technologies and their viewers' changing demands. Certainly DVRs are already doing this, and some cable companies are taking the steps that TV networks won't by creating remote DVRs. But instead of embracing these developments and working to successfully monetize them, networks simply just try to shut them down. They must realize that television sets are nothing more than another screen for many types of content, not just on-ramps to network TV schedules. As it becomes easier for viewers to access internet content on their TVs, this lesson should become much clearer.

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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Barence writes "At CES, Palm announced what promises to be the product that finally matches and even betters the Apple iPhone, and certainly looks to be the most important product announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. It's called the Palm Pre and it's based on a completely new operating system, called Palm webOS. Its key specs include a 3.1in 320x 480 touchscreen, 8GB of storage, UMTS HDSPA support (in the UK version of the phone), 802.11b/g WLAN, Bluetooth, and GPS. It also includes a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, 3.5mm headphone jack, and what Palm described as the 'fastest ever' Texas Instruments OMAP processor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In Atlantic Recording v. Brennan, the landmark Connecticut case in which the first decision rejecting the RIAA's 'making available' theory was handed down, the RIAA has finally thrown in the towel and dismissed its own case. Mr. Brennan never appeared in the case at all. In February, 2008, the RIAA's motion for a default judgment was rejected for a number of reasons, including the Court's ruling (PDF) that there is no claim for 'making available for distribution' under the US Copyright Act. The RIAA moved for reconsideration; that motion was denied. Then, in December, the RIAA's second motion for default judgment was rejected. Finally the RIAA filed a 'notice of dismissal' ending the case."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This "green" cellphone concept by Je-Hyun Kim takes the dilemma of getting a new phone every two years (which most of go through constantly) into account by integrating a biodegradeable body into the phone. Made to disintegrate when the two years are up, the phone will make you feel a bit better about wanting the newest gear.

via InHabitat

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Most of the time when we see studies about the "cost" related to being online, it's about how much it costs in various places to get connected. However, a study over in the UK is looking at the cost of not being online, noting that not having access to the internet can cost a family an average of £70 per month (about $100) in lost savings on household goods and services. So, while some families may complain about the cost of an internet connection, they may not realize how that cost can quickly be made up elsewhere in savings from being online -- especially during an economic downturn like we're experiencing now.

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The shape of sound is a few different experiments in circuit bending and creating simple laser pointer light shows. There are some interesting sounds generated from the hacked toy sword. Also, I like the effect of bouncing the laser beam off of tin foil as opposed to a mirror.

More about The shape of sound

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pln2bz writes "Astronomers looking for confirmation for emissions from early stellar formation in the cosmic microwave background radiation instead found a signal indicating large amounts of unaccounted-for spiraling magnetic fields in space, but without any accompanying infrared emissions. The discovery possibly dredges up the claims of plasma cosmologists like Eric Lerner, who claim that the intergalactic medium is a strong absorber of the CMB with the absorption occurring in a fog of narrow filaments. These filaments are the result of plasma's natural tendency, as observed within the plasma laboratory and in novelty plasma globes, to form braided, ropelike structures which are collimated by coiled magnetic fields."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This DIY portable game console features a color screen, tilt sensors, and 4 games. Of course you can always program more games if you build one for yourself. Check out the link for pictures of the system stuffed inside a relatively small enclosure. This is a great electronics project that is very well documented.

By pulling together a handful of low-cost parts and building the system ourselves, we have demonstrated that a complete programmable portable console can be had for less than $70, even when purchasing the parts we sampled. Our implemenation runs on a single 9V battery and features tilt-based control, monophonic sound, and 3 playable games. We call it the Weeboy because it combines features of the Nintendo Gameboy Color and the Nintendo Wii.

A lot more information about making a Weeboy [embedds]

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Sony announced a super tiny Vaio, the P series - here are some lovely dissection photos of it - it's amazing what's crammed in there.

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While legislators try (and fail) to ban the use of mobile phones while driving, the market for technology to kill phone use while driving is heating up. Last month, a company announced a device aimed at stopping teens from talking while driving, though it appears to have plenty of pitfalls. Now comes "Textecution" (a piece of software for Android phones) that kills a device's ability to send or receive texts when it detects the phone is moving at more than 10 miles per hour. The application's developers intend for parents to install it on their kids' phones so they can't text while driving -- assuming, of course, the kids have a G1 handset. That's a significant hurdle in itself, as it's hard to imagine that, as with so many other things, kids won't find it too hard to circumvent. Also, the application can't tell when a kid is actually driving a car, or simply riding in one, or riding on a bus or train, or in another situation where they're moving faster than 10 mph, but not driving a car, and perfectly able to safely text. It really appears that this software isn't much of a solution, but rather window dressing that makes parents think they're doing something to protect their kids. But isn't installing some easily defeated application on your teenager's phone to put your mind at ease simpler than trying to teach them responsibility?

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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Update for the power geeks - we have a cheap cap which works just as well as a supercap, we fixed a reset issue with slow power, and it's all crammed in the kill-a-watt casing now, so it's working - more soon!

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"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ljc0Gpt5_xI&hl=en&fs=1&en&fs=1&rel=0&fmt=18
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This is one of the better DIY electric rides that I have come across. It's an amazing 48-Volt, 15 horsepower, bike that uses a Briggs and Stratton Etek motor. It looks like it's a very smooth ride. However, at those speeds I would suggest using a motorcycle helmet. What a great project!

About a year ago, my dad and I had the idea to convert a beach cruiser bike into an electric motorcycle. We purchased the bike and all the parts necessary and got to work. We modified the frame and rebuilt the bike from the ground up. When we finished, we were extremely satisfied with the results - a 48 volt, 15 horsepower board track racer.

More about making your own 48V Electric Flat Tracker

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This week:
Ardunio-based Anime Sound Glove, World's Smallest Flapping Wing Flyer?, Rubber Band Gatling Gun, IAMAS Gangu Project, A Picture That Changes Depending on the Source of Light, VR Panorama Shots of Make Tokyo Meeting 02, Arduino PS2 Command Sequencer, Arduino Wrist Watch, Carving a QR Code Into Stone, Art Made w/ 5-Yen Coins, After Hours Magazine's Cross-Stitched Cover

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Guangdong province may be the "world's factory," prosperous and bustling (modulo a few toy-factory riots), but the development there is wildly uneven, as is evidenced by this shambolic school in Heyuan City:

On December 25, 2008, the South.cn's Guangdong Development Forum carried a series of photos of the perilous conditions at the Jiutang Elementary School in Zijin County, Heyuan City, Guangdong Province. The school was called as the "most run-down school in Guangdong province."

The person who made the post also divulged: "Jiutang Elementary School has witnessed 60 years of storms under which the helpless children attempt to learn. During the rainy season, the teacher and his students lived in fear. The relevant government departments paid no attention to them. Can the young flowers of the motherland be neglected this way?" In the same post, there were also photographs of the majestic buildings of the relevant government departments in Zijin county. This was a way for expressing the anger over the long-term negligence of the problems at the Jiutang Elementary School.

This story about the bitter lives of these children was shocking. Within a few days, the photos became red-hot on the Internet.

But many Chinese people clearly do not have knowledge about the uneven development within Guangdong province. Given the "aura of the number one province in terms of the economy," many netizens were skeptical about these photos who looked like as if they belong in western China. "Can there be places that are this impoverished in Guangdong province?"

The Most Run-down School in Guangdong Province

Interesting question, from over 50 years ago... Why don’t we have… SUN POWER Mechanix Illustrated, 1953-

Old Sol has more energy than all the atom bombs in the world lumped together. And it’s free … if we can find a way to harness it. EVER since James Watt built the first steam engine, inventors have been trying to harness the sun’s heat to stoke their boilers because the sun is the mightiest heat source known to man. Every hour, it floods the earth with a deluge of thermal energy equal to 21 billion tons of coal. Every day, the sun pours more potential power upon our land areas than all mankind’s muscle, fuel and working waterfalls have generated since the beginning of time.

The enormous output of solar energy is almost impossible to conceive. The sun is a monster atomic-fusion furnace, some 109 times the diameter of the earth, with a central temperature of 20 million degrees centigrade. It operates like a continuous, slow-burning hydrogen bomb generating half a million billion billion horsepower per second. As the sun is a sphere, this power radiates in all directions. Most of it flows out through interstellar space with only about half a billionth part of the total being intercepted by the earth. Of this tiny fraction, 50 per cent is reflected back into space by our atmosphere. The rest, partly reflected, partly absorbed by the earth’s surface and plant life, is potent enough to maintain our globe at a livable temperature. If this segment of solar energy seems small, it is only by comparison for it has been estimated that if all our remaining fuel—coal, oil, wood, natural gas, etc., plus the entire supply of fissionable uranium— were set ablaze in one gigantic bonfire, it could match the intensity of the earth’s solar ration for less than three days!

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Wagner James Au sez, "Here's the latest CC-licensed Second Life machinima from Lainy Voom, the UK artist who's 'Dumb Man' Boing Boing blogged last year. I wrote a short post on how she did some of the cooler visual effects. The air bubbles, for example, were achieved by attaching an invisible aquarium rock to the avatar's mouth and nose."

Fall (Mini Project 3) (Thanks, James!)

JD sez, "In the grand tradition of amazing edible sculpture comes this nerdy piece of jaw-dropping confectionery. It's holding a d20, and sitting on a white chocolate hoard. There's a lot of really amazing detail in this thing. Seriously. A dragon made of cake." Dragon cake (Thanks, JD!)

Retro Sabotage (humorous homebrew levels for vintage video games) has produced a nice little 1985 Super Mario remix with a pretty good punchline. The makers have a little tool to customize the level and share it with your pals.

Retro Sabotage - Super Mario Bros. (via Neatorama)

My latest Locus column, "Writing in the Age of Distraction" is up -- a grab-bag of practical tips for getting the writing done in the internet era.

We know that our readers are distracted and sometimes even overwhelmed by the myriad distractions that lie one click away on the Internet, but of course writers face the same glorious problem: the delirious world of information and communication and community that lurks behind your screen, one alt-tab away from your word-processor.

The single worst piece of writing advice I ever got was to stay away from the Internet because it would only waste my time and wouldn't help my writing. This advice was wrong creatively, professionally, artistically, and personally, but I know where the writer who doled it out was coming from. Every now and again, when I see a new website, game, or service, I sense the tug of an attention black hole: a time-sink that is just waiting to fill my every discretionary moment with distraction. As a co-parenting new father who writes at least a book per year, half-a-dozen columns a month, ten or more blog posts a day, plus assorted novellas and stories and speeches, I know just how short time can be and how dangerous distraction is.

But the Internet has been very good to me. It's informed my creativity and aesthetics, it's benefited me professionally and personally, and for every moment it steals, it gives back a hundred delights. I'd no sooner give it up than I'd give up fiction or any other pleasurable vice.

I think I've managed to balance things out through a few simple techniques that I've been refining for years. I still sometimes feel frazzled and info-whelmed, but that's rare. Most of the time, I'm on top of my workload and my muse

Writing in the Age of Distraction

CurtMonash writes "Fandome offers a fascinating video explaining how the first-down line on football broadcasts actually works. Evidently, theres a lot of processing both to calculate the exact location being photographed on the field — including optical sensors and two steps of encoding — and to draw a line in exactly the right place onscreen. For those who don't want to watch the whole video, highlights are here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This probably won't come as a surprise to pretty much anyone, but a new study by Ofcom in the UK found that, on average, customers received bandwidth at approximately 45% of the speed that was being advertised. Welcome to the world of "up to" marketing, where service providers get to promise "speeds up to x" and can then deliver a tiny fraction of that speed and still not be lying in their ads. However, it sounds as though Ofcom is going to get a lot more specific, and is demanding that ISPs start providing more accurate statements on what speeds customers should expect.

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Sure, we've seen all sorts of moral panic-type reports about kids not thinking so much about the consequences of what content they reveal about themselves online, but it still strikes me as a bit unlikely that one in five teens reports sending sexually explicit photos of themselves to others using either mobile phones or online tools. Perhaps it depends on the definition of "sexually explicit."

This brings up another issue that was raised recently at the privacy discussion I attended recently. After someone pointed out that the younger generation is just used to being more open, a question was raised: is this a generational issue or a maturational issue? In other words, is the younger generation really just used to being more open about things, or is it that they haven't matured enough to recognize the potential impact of what they're doing -- and, as they age, will be more reasonable. I'm not sure anyone really knows the answer to that just yet.

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From BB:

Lisa Jones's Symbiosis chairs start to get at the potential of cheap and ubiquitous laser-cutters -- the backs are and seats cut with highly intricate designs inspired by human anatomy. Shown here, the Venus Chair from 2006.

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nandemoari writes "A six-year-old who recently stole his parents' car and drove it into a utility pole has passed the buck onto a familiar scapegoat: the video game, Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar Games' controversial Grand Theft Auto video game has been criticized by parent groups and crusaders (or in the eyes of gamers, nincompoops) like former lawyer Jack Thompson for years (Thompson once tried to link the Virginia Tech slayings to late-night Counterstrike sessions. He's since been disbarred). However, not as of yet has anyone under the age of, oh, ten, blamed the game for a car theft."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A newly published study from Oxford University suggests that Tetris is a useful tool for treating post-traumatic stress disorder. The study doesn't seem wholly comprehensive, but the basic idea is that the game engages the mind in such a way that it's essentially too busy working out where to put the pieces to have flashbacks. The key is that the game requires "visuospatial cognitive tasks" that preclude the mind's ability to generate mental images, so it's not necessarily Tetris itself that's the treatment, but rather it and other games that engage the mind in the same way -- so we'll go out on a limb and say first-person shooters and other games probably wouldn't be ideal. The author of the Guardian post raises a good question, though: what happens when you turn people hobbled by PTSD into people hobble by Tetris addictions?

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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If you're traveling and you can't find a WiFi connection, it's handy to be able to route your laptop's traffic through your phone. Windows and Mac users have been able to easily tether their BlackBerries this way for some time, and Linux users can do the same with the help of Barry, an Open Source BlackBerry utility.

Barry is an Open Source application that will provide synchronization, backup, restore and program management for BlackBerry ™ devices. Barry is primarily developed on Linux, but is intended as a cross platform library and application set, targeting Linux, BSD, 32/64bit, and big/little endian systems.

...

Today, it is possible to:

• charge your Blackberry's battery from your USB port
• retrieve Address Book, Email, Calendar, Service Book, Memos, Tasks, PIN
• Messages, Saved Email, and Folders
• export Address Book contacts in text or LDAP LDIF format
• make full data backups and restores of your device using a GUI
• synchronize contacts and calendar items using the OpenSync framework
• use the Blackberry as a modem

The device basically simulates a modem connection, and your laptop can connect to it using AT commands and starting a PPP connection. The Barry installer comes with the necessary connection scripts and options files to connect to most networks, including Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

barry - BlackBerry Synchronization For Linux [via OStatic]
Using your BlackBerry as a USB Modem

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(Flash embed above, downloadable MP4 version here.)

In today's installment of Boing Boing Gadgets' video coverage from CES 2009 in Las Vegas:

* Rob Beschizza reports from the Sony press conference. Sony Electronics president and COO Stan Glasgow unveiled new OLED and LCD TVs, "Webbie" social networking video cameras, and the P series "lifestyle devices." Rob got a hands-on demo of these 1.4 pound laptops, which retail for $900 and allow you to connect via WiFi, Bluetooth, or Verizon cellular broadband.

* Joel harasses people waiting in line for the Ballmer keynote. What do people want from Microsoft? Verdict: most folks at the front of the line seemed most excited about their imminent proximity to His Ballmerhood. Many were in line with hopes of gleaning more info on Windows 7 features and release date, and one guy just wanted to see Ballmer "dance around and sweat and yell." Another dude wanted to hear Microsoft admit, at long last, that Bill Gates is a Communist.

* Xeni, Rob, and Joel huddle on the floor and fight over whose mobile phone is dumber, and who is more of a shameless fanboy/girl of which manufacturer.

* Xeni points out badly designed CES signage which might lead one to believe that attendees go about bashing babies in strollers.

* Joel is not amused that one of his colleagues tweeted he'd be wandering around the convention dressed in a fursuit. People are talking.

Join the discussion for this episode over at Boing Boing Gadgets.

Previously: Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day One

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Sponsor shout-out: Boing Boing Video coverage of CES 2009 is sponsored by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is intended to be a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "could influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."

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Special thanks to Q-Burns Abstract Message for the background tracks in our CES episodes! Today: remixes of songs he produced with the lovely Lisa Shaw.

I left a comment on jkOnTheRun about the new Palm Pre that was announced today at CES.

First question: Can it tether?

That is, can it play the role of the Cradlepoint router I just got, and the Sprint EVDO modem plugged into it?

Are they going to be as locked down as Apple is with the iPhone?

When and how can I get one to play with?

This morning I couldn't imagine why anyone would even go to a Palm press conference, and now I'm on the edge of wanting one of these to try. I'm ready to get off my iPhone, I'm sick of the locked up mentality. If this thing pairs nicely with a netbook, I might just switch to it for a year or so.

The next step in the evolving netbook is the cellphone that pairs with it. Whatever it is it must be reasonably debugged both in software and philosophy. Apple has the software but their philosophy is totally up a creek.

Now I'm looking for some Palm Pre clipart.

Whenever we talk about changes impacting the movie industry or the television industry, there's always someone who chimes in with claims about "how will we be able to make $200 million movies any more?" Of course, that question has a few false premises hidden in there -- such as the idea that movies have to cost $200 million to make. But perhaps an even bigger question is why movies need to exist at all. A few months back we were discussing how popular artforms change over time. Epic poems, stained glass, mosaics, book illumination, fresco painting, tapestry and plenty of other forms of culture were quite popular at one time or another, but eventually times changed and they went out of fashion.

I'm reminded of that discussion in reading Clive Thompson's latest piece about how the rise of the ability for anyone to create and distribute videos on YouTube and other video sites is leading to the creation of video content that just can't be classified in the traditional manner. He talks about a video collage of thousands of people making videos of themselves holding up their hands with short sayings written on their palms. Is it a movie? Is it a documentary? Does it matter?

The people who believe that TV shows and movies and such forms of broadcast content are the be-all, end-all of creative cultural content still don't recognize the true power of the internet as a communications platform, that allows individuals to interact and communicate in ways that simply weren't possible before. The official sites like Hulu may get lots of attention, but they're just about taking content from the TV and movie world and moving it to the web. The power of YouTube is that it enables something entirely new and different to emerge and to thrive. In the history of disruptive innovations, merely taking a product from one medium and moving it to another usually doesn't get very far. It's the projects that really embrace the new possibilities that are only possible via that new medium that really make an impact.

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