theodp writes "After baring his DNA for the world to see, Steven Pinker follows up in the NYT Magazine with his take on the coming era of consumer genetics. Pinker comes away less wide-eyed than Time Magazine about the current predictive ability of $399 genetic tests, but is convinced enough to opt out of learning whether he has a gene that increases the risk of Alzheimer's and believes that genetic-testing-for-the-masses may hasten the arrival of national health insurance ('piecemeal insurance is not viable in a world in which insurers can cherry-pick the most risk-free customers'). Pinker believes that personal genomics is just too much fun to ban, but for now suggests: 'if you want to know whether you are at risk for high cholesterol, have your cholesterol measured; if you want to know whether you are good at math, take a math test.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

thefickler writes "Seagate and Symwave are jointly demonstrating the first consumer applications of USB 3.0 at CES, showing a Seagate FreeAgent drive running through a Symwave USB 3.0-compatible storage controller device. According to Symwave, this will result in 'speeds previously unattainable with legacy USB technology.' Which means, if you understand PR-write, it will be much faster."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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.

Video formats: MP4 Video or HD Version | Subscribe to CRAFT in iTunes | mov | iPhone/Android

Music is Yellow Cactus by I, Cactus.

From the pages of CRAFT, Vol. 03:

"Queen of the Misfit Toys" by Jenny Ryan, pgs 40-42.

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Z80xxc! writes "The Windows 7 Beta release is now available for download by the general public, in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Microsoft had previously announced availability around 3 PM PST on Friday, but after unexpected numbers of people interested in the download, had to postpone it to add more servers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jamie Price writes with a nice tutorial on putting technology to use in the service of mankind, with one of his latest projects — BaR2D2. "BaR2D2 is a radio-controlled, mobile bar that features a motorized beer elevator, motorized ice/mixer drawer, six-bottle shot dispenser, and sound activated neon lighting. The robot is driveable so you can take the party on the road! It was created in my garage using standard hand/power tools and readily available parts and materials. Here is a video of it in action. To see the full how-to with tons of pictures, check out the build.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jamie Price writes with a nice tutorial on putting technology to use in the service of mankind, with one of his latest projects — BaR2D2. "BaR2D2 is a radio-controlled, mobile bar that features a motorized beer elevator, motorized ice/mixer drawer, six-bottle shot dispenser, and sound activated neon lighting. The robot is driveable so you can take the party on the road! It was created in my garage using standard hand/power tools and readily available parts and materials. Here is a video of it in action. To see the full how-to with tons of pictures, check out the build.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jake von Slatt sez, "This is a fractal Teddy Bear named Mandelbrot, he was brought into this world a few weeks ago by my friend Captain Mouse as a gift for her brother."

Mandelbrot the Fractal Bear (Thanks, Jake!)

If we had a registry for emerging web standards, we would have added one to it yesterday. The emerging format is has been proposed by Digg and ratified by FriendFeed, and yesterday -- Scripting News. The format allows a photo-oriented web site or individual web page to include a thumbnail, so that when it's referred to by a site such as Digg or FriendFeed the representation may include that thumbnail.

I support this because: 1. I have such a website. 2. And I believe that sites like Digg, FriendFeed, Twitter are more attractive and useful when they include little bits of color graphics. It's the same principle that guided Apple to create the Macintosh in 1984, almost 25 years ago, when the current form of user interface was character-based.

To support this format, a site includes a <link> element like this:

<link rel="image_src" href="http://static.flickrfan.org/afp/thumbnails/2009/01/10/trwas2108818.jpg" type="image/jpeg" data-width="150" data-height="122" />

And some other metadata, as explained on the Digg site.

View source on this page to see a real-world example.

I tested it with both Digg and FriendFeed and found that it works, although there at least one place where FriendFeed could support it, but they don't, yet.

caffeinemessiah writes "In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, the local police are going to be sniffing out unsecured wi-fi access points and ordering the owners to secure them. The article notes that 'terror mails were sent through unsecured Wi-Fi connections' before bomb blasts in other Indian cities. No word on if they'll be walking around using Kismet, or if people who use pathetically weak WEP encryption will be ordered to switch to more advanced protocols. Unfortunately, a gesture like this does not take into account the insidious scenario of walking into a cafe, buying a coffee and then (legally) using the cafe's wi-fi. Or the fact that terrorists might actually be able to pay to use a cybercafe, and know what VPNs are." On the other hand, the Mumbai police may still be keeping track of the mandatory keyloggers that went into the area's cybercafes in 2007.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you missed December's biggest full moon of 2008, tonight will be the biggest full moon of 2009. NASA has a nice article about it.

Johannes Kepler explained the phenomenon 400 years ago. The Moon's orbit around Earth is not a circle; it is an ellipse, with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other. Astronomers call the point of closest approach "perigee," and that is where the Moon will be this weekend. Perigee full Moons come along once or twice a year. 2008 ended with one and now 2009 is beginning with another. It's the best kind of déjà vu for people who love the magic of a moonlit landscape. January is a snowy month in the northern hemisphere, and the combination of snow + perigee moonlight is simply amazing. When the Moon soars overhead at midnight, the white terrain springs to life with a reflected glow that banishes night, yet is not the same as day. You can read a newspaper, ride a bike, write a letter, and at the same time count the stars overhead. It is an otherworldly experience that really must be sampled first hand.

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(Image via Conhouse)

Here's an interesting design for container-like prefab housing. I'm not sure why the designers have chosen to go with a custom container-like module vs. shipping containers (of which the west has a huge surplus), but this is still a neat, actually-commercially-available, somewhat-more-sustainable housing solution.

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Lovable financial curmudgeon, goldbug, and activist Max Keiser has a new show on BBC Worldwide: The Oracle, in which he predicts the future outcomes of today's financial chaos. You might know Keiser from his startup, the Hollywood Stock Exchange, or from his wooly, profane and hilarious radio programme in London, Karmabanque. The first episode of The Oracle aired last night -- if you're out of broadcast range, try your local torrent tracker...

Back in 2006 Max Keiser predicted a global banking crisis triggered by subprime debt. Now, he's bringing his predictive powers to BBC World News in a series called the Oracle...

The Oracle with Max Keiser

On YouTube: 1, 2, 3 (Thanks, Sal!)

Wandering Wombat tips a BBC story about researchers from Imperial College London who were able to stimulate stem cell production by a factor of 100 in the bone marrow of mice. Such stem cells are released by the marrow to help with the regeneration of damaged bone and tissue. "Techniques already exist to increase the numbers of blood cell producing stem cells from the bone marrow, but the study focuses on two other types — endothelial, which produce the cells which make up our blood vessels, and mesenchymal, which can become bone or cartilage cells." The scientists hope that the increased production rate could be used to greatly speed tissue repair and to allow recovery from wounds that would otherwise be too severe. "There are also hopes that the technique could help damp down autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, where the body's immune system attacks its own tissues. Mesenchymal stem cells are known to have the ability to damp down the immune system." The full research paper is available at Cell Stem Cell.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Valentines day is just a few weeks away and this is a really geeky nice way to tell someone you care. Actually, it's a nice shadow box with LEDs that would be great for any picture or small item. Check out the link or a lot more information.

More about making a DIY Light-Up Picture Frame

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Ian Lamont writes "The war of words over the conflict in Gaza has moved from the real world to the Internet. Besides a furious stream of mini-debates on Twitter between supporters of and critics of Israel's military actions, there have also been demonstrations in Second Life at an Israel-themed sim and a collection of Facebook applications, including 'QassamCount' and 'Stop Israel's war crimes in Gaza.' Another project — 'mapping the war in Gaza' — was launched by Al Jazeera and takes user-submitted reports, tweets, and Microsoft Virtual Earth to track the number of casualties and other developments." In addition to this, the series of website defacements we discussed a few days ago has now extended to sites controlled by NATO and the US Army.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tyketto writes "The United States Air Force has taken the first public step in the search for a replacement of the Boeing VC-25, also known as Air Force One, saying it is no longer cost effective to operate and modernize the two 19-year-old VC-25s, which are converted Boeing 747-200s. Airbus has already submitted data for the A380, and while Boeing has had the Air Force One contract for nearly 50 years, delays with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Boeing 747-8, as well as the KC-X Tanker competition, may see the USAF looking to Europe for its next presidential aircraft."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gandhi_2 writes with this excerpt from the SF Chronicle: "A San Francisco chiropractor has sued a local artist over negative reviews published on Yelp, the popular Web site that rates businesses. Christopher Norberg, 26, of San Francisco posted the first review in November 2007 after visiting Steven Biegel at the Advanced Chiropractic Center on Valencia Street. In the six-paragraph write-up, Norberg criticized Biegel's billing practices and said the chiropractor was being dishonest with insurance companies. ...The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a local nonprofit that supports free speech online, is considering helping with Norberg's defense. Matt Zimmerman, an attorney with the group, said Biegel will get far more negative publicity from filing the lawsuit than from a bad review on Yelp. He said the foundation is seeing more and more cases of people trying to use the courts because they're unhappy with postings on the Internet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FleaPlus writes "Popular Mechanics reports that a 'renegade' group including NASA engineers has met with President-Elect Obama's space transition team to present information on the DIRECT architecture for launching NASA missions after the Space Shuttle is retired. According to the group, DIRECT's Jupiter launch system will be safer, less expensive, better-performing, and be ready sooner than the Ares launch system NASA is currently developing, while still providing jobs for much of the existing shuttle workforce. Meanwhile, it's expected that current NASA head and adamant Ares supporter Michael Griffin will be replaced by a new NASA administrator."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tell Cris Benton to go fly a kite. He'll return with breathtaking photographs taken from seemingly impossible vantage points. As a young architect, Chris wanted sharp images of his buildings' upper reaches, so he pioneered the art/science of of aerial kite photography. Now a professor of architecture at UC Berkeley, Chris is still a leader in the aerial kite photography community, constantly developing new ways to rig remotely controlled cameras to customized kites for stunning results. Also, see the centuries-old technique of using kites to lift people in the air! Watch the clip, and check out Chris' website.

Get the m4v or subscribe in iTunes. Or watch on YouTube or Blip.

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Make: television Episode 2:
Maker Cris Benton takes spectacular aerial photographs by rigging remote-controlled cameras to high flying kites. In the Maker Workshop John Park builds a Burrito Blaster, which can propel a burrito 50 yards, and Mister Jalopy shows off his giant iPod. The Maker Channel features vegetable flutes, cool remote control robots, printer that makes designs on a café latte, and a stealthy technique to park anywhere for free! The HD version is available at Blip.

Check out the m4v, or subscribe in iTunes.

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Need to launch hot dogs, brats, and other stadium snacks into the upper bleachers at your local ballpark? Then build a Burrito Blaster with John Park. Based on the classic combustion-powered "spud gun" project, this cannon instead relies on an air power. Made with everyday objects like a sprinkler solenoid, PVC, and simple circuitry, this project is great for picnics, games, and other outside fun.

Download the PDF for more instructions!

Get the m4v or subscribe in iTunes. Or watch on YouTube or Blip.

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The companion PDF that will help guide you through the Burrito Blaster project. Be sure to watch the original segment, or have the iPod version handy.

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In this 'Hidden Treasures' segment, Mister Jalopy urges makers to go big or go home. Marrying the powerful technology of the MP3 player with the old-time elegance of the stereo cabinet, he creates a giant iPod.

Get the m4v or subscribe in iTunes. Or watch on YouTube or Blip.

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Here are the viewer-submitted Maker Channel videos for episode 2 of Make: television

• Veggie Flute - Junji Koyama makes beautiful music with carrots, peppers and broccoli.


• Swashbot - I-Wei Huang shows off his cool crab-like remote control robots.


• Latte Art Printer - Oleksiy Pikalo programs his printer to etch intricate designs in a latte's froth.


• [Trouble Maker] Urban Camouflage - Todd Lappin disguises a personal vehicle to look like a commercial vehicle to "legally" park in loading zones.

Tell us about your project at www.makerchannel.org

Get the m4v or subscribe in iTunes. Or watch on YouTube or Blip.

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Got To Get Me A Git writes "Distributed verison control systems (DVCS) seem to be the next big thing for open source software development. Many projects have already adopted a DVCS and many others are in the process of migrating. There are a lot of major advantages to using a DVCS, but the task of migrating from one system to another appears to be a formidable challenge. The Perl Foundation's recent switch to Git took over a year to execute. The GNOME project is planning its own migration strategy right now after discovering that a significant majority of the project's developers favor Git. Perhaps some of the projects that are working on transitions from other mainstream version control systems can pool their resources and collaborate to make some standardized tools and migration best practices documentation. Does such a thing already exist? Are any folks out there in the Slashsphere working on migrating their own project or company to a DVCS? I'd appreciate some feedback from other readers about what works and what doesn't."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lifehacker's Adam Pash wrote a guide for testing the Windows 7 beta on a machine already running XP or Vista. It walks you though adjusting the partition size of your current OS so you can test the new system out without dumping your current setup.

Before you can get started, though, you'll have to download the Windows 7 ISO image an burn it to a DVD. Unfortunately, the download links on the Microsoft site have been temporarily removed, apparently due to the volume of download demand. Links to the official 32bit and 64bit downloads were available for a brief time, though, and they were posted to a number of blogs. I've posted what appear to work below.

You'll also need to get an activation key or the OS will expire in 30 days. This is also unavailable at the official download site, though the Neowin blog has recently posted an alternate way to obtain the activation key as well.

So, to sum things up:

1. Download the Windows 7 Beta ISO (warning: big 2 gig file): 32-bit Version or 64-bit Version
2. Get the activation key using Neowin's tip
3. Set up dual-boot with Adam's instructions

Note that the activation keys are said to be limited to 2.5 million copies. It might be smart to grab one now, even if you weren't planning on downloading or installing the OS right away.

Windows 7 Beta - Official site. The official download process should be available again soon.

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The Chinese Communist Party has reportedly raised a "50-Cent Army" of astroturfers who are paid RMB0.50 for each patriotic, pro-Chinese comment they post on blogs and social media sites. Some estimates have the size of the army at 300,000 people.

Comments, rumours and opinions can be quickly spread between internet groups in a way that makes it hard for the government to censor.

So instead of just trying to prevent people from having their say, the government is also attempting to change they way they think.

To do this, they use specially trained - and ideologically sound - internet commentators.

They have been dubbed the "50-cent party" because of how much they are reputed to be paid for each positive posting (50 Chinese cents; $0.07; £0.05).

China's internet 'spin doctors' (Thanks, Paula!)

I really enjoyed today’s offering over on the Average Jane Crafter blog, where she discusses the loss of an important scar that made her feel like the hard core crafter that she is:

"The needle finally gave and came through the fabric, but not before I'd chipped a chunk out of my front tooth. It looked wonky, but it became my greatest battle scar of all, and every time I'd run my tongue over the jagged spot, I was reminded of my undying dedication to craft."

Our injuries, I think, really do help define us, as trite as that may sound. Most importantly, they give us cool stories to tell, allowing us to present ourselves to the rest of the world in just about any badass way we choose. But what happens to our psyches when our scars are removed? Does it make us any less resilient, less tough? Or does it just give us fewer opportunities to tell cool stories?

--Shawn

But what about my street cred?

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Hanna von Goeler's "My Money, My Currency" via Land-o-links... The artist's statement-

The interstitial quality of money as it travels from person to person is the point of departure for "My Money, My Currency". THis ongoing project chronicles my struggle and relationship with money. It also explores the ethical, political, and aesthetic questions that surround notions of agency and currency.

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Hanna von Goeler's "My Money, My Currency" via Land-o-links... The artist's statement-

The interstitial quality of money as it travels from person to person is the point of departure for "My Money, My Currency". THis ongoing project chronicles my struggle and relationship with money. It also explores the ethical, political, and aesthetic questions that surround notions of agency and currency.

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We have a friend visiting who's on her way up to Yellowknife, Canada, to see the Northern Lights. While poking around the net researching her trip, I found James Pugsley's Astronomy North, a lovely site that has some amazing images of the Aurora Borealis. I also found out that the high temperature in Yellowknife this weekend is going to be -32 degrees F.

Besides the many cool pictures, Astronomy North provides time-lapse photography videos of the Aurora Borealis, weather and viewing forecasts, and loads of Canadian astronomy resources. I also found the icon on today's Aurora Forecast page strangely comforting.

Astronomy North

--Bruce

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Today's XKCD comic is an hilarious, Godwin's-Law-compliant stab at Vista.

Windows 7

Larry Lessig had a great appearance in Colbert Report on Thursday night, promoting his new book Remix. EFF's got a partial transcript, a video embed, and details on the remix challenge that came out of the end of the piece.

Colbert: You say our copyright laws are turning our kids into criminals, because they're keeping kids from doing all the remixing they want of pre-existing art and copywritten material, right?

Isn't that like saying that arson laws are turning our kids into pyromaniacs?? They're breaking the law! You can't just throw the law out the window!

Lessig: "Totally failed war." Is that familiar to you?

Colbert: No. No. You're saying we need a surge?

Lessig: We tried the surge. For ten years we've been waging this war. Artists have not gotten any more money, businesses have not gotten any more profit, and our kids have been turned into criminals.

Larry Lessig on The Colbert Report

NoisySplatter writes "Ernesto, founder of TorrentFreak, reports that a new trojan, 'Troj/Qhost-AC,' has been distributed on The Pirate Bay. The virus was disguised as a serial key generator, and the offending torrent has since been removed, but the source has not been identified. Troj/Qhost-AC makes changes to the user's hosts file that redirects The Pirate Bay, Suprbay, and Mininova to 127.0.0.1. In addition to making three popular torrent sites inaccessible, the virus also plays a sound file that says: 'downloading is wrong.' It looks like someone has finally stepped up to the plate to challenge Madonna for the title of 'Most Obnoxious Anti-Piracy Stunt.' Of course, this could just be the software industry's attempt at outdoing the RIAA and MPAA."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Designing CO2 cars is a project for many middle school technology and science classes. The projects gives an opportunity for students to get hands on experience with the Design Process, working with tools and materials, and design and build for aerodynamics and manufacture a vehicle that can go very fast if even for a short bit of time.

To come up with the best design, you will need to gather information about the car, how it will move through the air, and how it will overcome friction and gravity. You will need to manufacture the car, usually made of wood, though some students use other materials with tools like a drill press, band saw and sander. During any project, you will need to manage your time carefully, and make sure that the project is done on schedule so that it can be delivered on time. Projects like this often have technical specifications, and this is something to pay attention to.

Make LOTS of quick sketches, called Thumbnail Sketches of possible car designs.
Base your car design on the best of your thumbnail sketches, keeping into account the aerodynamics of the design, and the car's ability to overcome gravitational force and inertia.

Have you done the CO2 car project? Have you done this project as a student? Have you done this project as a teacher? What concepts does this project help teach? What could be done to make it really incredible? How can people doing the project use it to raise their awareness of the systems in their lives? Have you got great documentation of your work on this or other projects? How can the CO2 car project awaken automotive designers, pilots, aerodynamic and automotive designers? Just how fast do these cars go? What do you do with your CO2 car after race day has ended? If you were going to suggest ideas and information that might be useful to students or teachers designing and building rocket cars, what would you tell them? Add your comments to the discussion, and include your photos and videos to the Make Flickr pool.

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(Flash video above, downloadable MP4 here.)

Hello from CES in Las Vegas! Boing Boing Gadgets' Joel and Brownlee got a hands-on demo with the new Palm Pre here, and Boing Boing's video team was there to cover them. Watch the whole review above. In the first half of the video, Brownlee and Joel grill a Palm rep -- who doesn't want to let either of them touch the device -- about features and what's under the hood. In the second half of today's video, our fellas huddle over brews and watered-down show floor drinks with Jon Stokes from Ars Technica for a post-game analysis. Verdict seems to be that if this is Palm's "hail mary," it just might work. The Pre seems pretty sweet. Here's the Pre product page at palm.com.

Join the discussion about this video over at Boing Boing Gadgets.

Previously on BBG: Seven features that make the Palm Pre better than the iPhone

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Sponsor shout-out: Boing Boing's 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."

(Special thanks to Q-Burns Abstract Message for the background tracks in our CES episodes!)

Flash embed above, downloadable MP4 here.

---

Full Disclosure: Boing Boing's video production at CES is sponsored by WEPC.com, and they're also the subject of this episode. We were not paid to produce a piece about them, nor were we required to cover their presence at CES as part of the sponsorship. They had no editorial control or involvement in the content we produced, including this episode. Netbooks were sort of a hot topic at CES 09, and since Asus was something of a pioneer in this product sector, with interesting products out this year, we chose to cover this project's presence.

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Xeni from the motherboing here with a new Boing Boing Gadgets CES video installment! Beschizza and I visited the Asus booth to check out some of the netbooks and other devices they're developing. Rob got some hands-on time with some of the more visually interesting models, including one netbook covered in bamboo, and others covered in very Vegas-appropriate gold lamé or Lamborghini co-branding. (Ay, que Elvis, hombre!) We also spoke with one of the senior designers with Asus from Taiwan about the Intel co-partnered WEPC project, in which they're soliciting feature requests from the public, then sorting through those crowdsourced suggestions and figuring out what makes sense to implement in production.

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

(Special thanks to Q-Burns Abstract Message for the background tracks in our CES episodes!)

deltaromeo points out a BBC report calling the UK's law requiring ISPs to retain users' emails for at least a year an "attack on rights." The article also points out financial and technical flaws with the plan (which we first discussed in October). TechCrunch goes a step further, detailing how it conflicts with other governmental goals. Quoting: "...with one hand the government seeks to lock down the British Internet with an iron fist, while at the same time telling us it is boosting innovation and business online. It is quite clearly blind to the fact that one affects the other. Are we also expected to think that the consumers using online services are not going to be put off from engaging in the boom of 'sharing' that Web 2.0 created? How would you feel if every Twitter you sent, every video uploaded, was to be stored and held against you in perpetuity? That may not happen, but the mere suggestion that your email is no longer private would serve to kill the UK population's relish for new media stone dead, and with it large swathes of the developing online economy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When we talk about the economics of industries that are in transition, such as the newspaper industry or the entertainment industry, we often point out the need to adopt new business models that embrace the economic realities those industries face. Regularly, supporters of those industries respond that it's folly to jump to a new "unproven" business model without real proof that the new business model will succeed -- especially when the old business model is still going strong. There's this belief that the companies in those industries can just hang on while everyone else experiments, and when a new business model is clear, they can comfortably make the switch and everything will be fine. And, it is true, that even disintermediated businesses have a history of sticking around and throwing off cash for a long time after the disruptive technology disintegrates their foundations.

Yet, as this article in The Atlantic points out with regard to the newspaper industry, when "the end" comes, it comes amazingly fast. It is true that old industries can hang on for a while, but they reach a sort of tipping point where suddenly everyone realizes that the emperor has no clothes. And, at that point, there really isn't any time to make the necessary shift to the new business model. Instead, there's just bankruptcy. So, sure, the record labels and the newspapers can wait it out and hang on until there's "proof" that some new business model makes sense. But, by the time that proof is there, their old business might not be.

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arcticstoat writes "AMD is planning to use over 1,000 Radeon HD 4870 GPUs to create a supercomputer capable of processing one petaflop, which the company says will make 'cloud' computing a reality. When it's built later this year, the Fusion Render Cloud will be available as an online powerhorse for a variety of people, from gamers to 3D animators. The company claims that it could 'deliver video games, PC applications and other graphically-intensive applications through the Internet "cloud" to virtually any type of mobile device with a web browser.' The idea is that the Fusion Render Cloud will do all the hard work, so all you need is a machine capable of playing back the results, saving battery life and the need for ever greater processing power. AMD also says that the supercomputer will 'enable remote real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale.' Meanwhile, game developers would be able to use the supercomputer to quickly develop games, and also 'serve up virtual world games with unlimited photo-realistic detail.' The supercomputer will be powered by OTOY software, which allows you to render 3D visuals in your browser via streaming, compressed online data."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 1994, reporter Joshua Quittner famously registered the domain name mcdonalds.com, and wrote a whole article about how so many top brand names were available for registering by anyone who wanted them. Reading the article sounds pretty amazing in retrospect. The one and only domain name registrar at the time, InterNIC had a grand total of 2.5 people reviewing each and every application and trying to avoid "obvious" conflicts -- except that didn't seem to work. As Quittner points out, Sprint had registered MCI.com. There was eventually a bit of a battle over mcdonalds.com, and once people finally realized this was a big deal, a process, the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) process was created.

Of course, these days, there are many more ways that your brands interact online than just by your domain name. Erik Heels, an internet-savvy lawyer (and regular Techdirt reader) has gone through Twitter and discovered that of the top 100 global brands, only 7 have their main brand registered as a Twitter ID. Most of the others have Twittersquatters who have already taken the name. Heels, himself, grabbed the Twitter ID for Moet & Chandon and even made it look slightly "real." And, of course, it goes beyond just Twitter as well, where usernames at plenty of other services are increasingly important as well.

Many of these services have ad hoc processes by which they will "resolve" a dispute over a name, but Heels worries about how that will work. In the case of Twitter, basically the company just reserves the right to do what it thinks is right. But, that could obviously lead to some questionable situations -- and eventually even some lawsuits (remember the cease and desist sent by Burger King using Twitter? Why are the fast food burger joints at the center of all of these disputes?). Heels proposes extending the UDRP into a much more complete system for Uniform Username Dispute Resolution Policy or UURP. This way there's a clear process for anyone who disputes the use of a username in any particular service. It certainly seems like an idea worth discussing.

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Over the holidays Jim Harriman decided to investigate the family tree of alcoholic drinks. To do this, he screen-scraped all the mixed drink recipes he could find online and crunched the recipe data with a program that generates phylogenetic trees, drawing relationships between drink species with matching ingredient genes.

Note that you can make out several different "kingdoms" of drinks after a close look at the tree. I can make out the Gin kingdom, the Orange Juice kingdom, and the Amaretto kingdom, for starters. Then we have the outliers, like a 110 in the Shade, which nobody in his right mind would drink. These are the platypuses and slime molds of the drink world.

I'd love to know how closely this resembles the actual heritage of the recipes in the list. In fact, it would be incredibly cool to do something similar with food recipes. If you processed the ingredient list and preparation details for the world's apple pies, chicken soups and breads, what cultural information might that hold?

If you want to take a stab at something like this yourself, you can use a free package call PHYLIP to do the computation. It's the same program used by Jim to create his drink family tree. If you discover anything, make sure to send us a link.

Phylogenetic Tree of Mixed Drinks
PHYLIP - PHYLogeny Inference Package

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Kevin Kelly reports the exciting news that all the Whole Earth-related publications from the last 40 year are scanned and online at wholeearth.com.

One could read back issues if you could find them. I had the privilege of producing many of the issues of CoEvolution Quarterly and some of the Catalogs, so I had my own personal library of them. (Therefore you should also discount my enthusiasm for them.) I can't tell you how many wonderful evenings I have spent sitting in my reading chair re-exploring the fantastic worlds captured in these back issues. It is impossible to pick one up and not be mesmerized, thrilled, amazed, and informed by at least two stories or reviews. There is a timeless nature to this work that is due to their anti-fashionable status. The Whole Earth Catalogs and CoEvolutions were idea-based journalism, rather than event-based. Instead of reporting on top of things, they liked to get to the bottom of things. These issues zagged while the rest of the culture zigged, only to zag later.

The good news is that all this goodness is now online. Danica Remy and the last holdouts of the old Point Foundation, publishers of the Catalogs and magazine until its last issue in 2002, have given a second life to this gold mine of material by arranging them to be scanned and posted online. The entire 35-year archive of Whole Earth Catalogs, Supplements, Reviews and CoEvolutions are all up and ready to be studied. You can read them for free, or download them for a fee.

The Whole Earth Catalog Archive

We noted that the Chinese government had called out a bunch of search engines for allowing access to porn recently, and I find it amusing to see that pretty much all of the search engines called out have issued apologies. What I'm wondering is exactly what are they apologizing for? The fact that other people put pornography online? The fact that they're too good as search engines and are able to find that content?

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holy_calamity writes "Researchers from Google have written a paper about how social networks can undermine privacy. The most interesting scenario they discuss is 'merging social graphs' — when correlating multiple social networks makes it possible to reveal connections that a person has intentionally kept secret (PDF). For example, it may be possible to work out that a certain LinkedIn user is the same person as a MySpace user, despite their attempting to keep their profiles separate. The Google solution is to develop software that screens new data added to a social network, attempting to find out if it could be fodder to such data mining."

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Plustek is showing this $700 Book Reader V100 at CES 2009. It scans books directly into MP3 audio files using optical code recognition (OCR) and a tiny little man with a mellifluous baritone voice trapped inside. Or some kind of text-to-speech program. I'm not sure which.

Given the choice between this and buying something that's available on Audible, I can't imagine this is worth doing if you value your time. You've got to manually scan each page. I'd love to see a re-make that uses some LEGO Mindstorms as a page turner, coupled with a computer, scanner, OCR, and text-to-speech.

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There's been an ongoing push around the world by law enforcement to require ISPs retain certain types of data, in case it comes in handy later for criminal investigations. Of course, these demands come from the wishful thinking department. The cost associated with such data retention is tremendous, and all it does is create a huge mass of data -- often making it more difficult to find the useful information. In the UK, they've put in place new data retention laws that will require ISPs to retain records on every email sent or received in the UK for a year. It's not the contents of the email -- but just the data on that email. That, alone, though, seems like a pretty big violation of privacy, and people are starting to point that out.

The problem is this fanciful wish by law enforcement types, that actually is quite similar to the ideas among some marketing/advertising folks, that if they could just access all this data, life would be so easy. They're wrong, of course, but even if it were true, the reason we believe in privacy and rights of individuals is that it's an important part of a free society. Law enforcement isn't supposed to be easy in a free society. If the goal of society was to make law enforcement's life easy, we'd get rid of all privacy rights entirely. The excuse that this is somehow "necessary" for law enforcement to do their job is a lie. It may mean they have to investigate crimes in different ways, but no blanket removal of privacy is ever "necessary."

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We've covered Jon Sarriugarte and Krysten Mate's Golden Mean snail art car on the Make: Blog and in MAKE magazine before. But now, they've posted an Instructable on the build details so you can create one yourself! How many takers do you think they'll get? I wished we lived in a world in which this, and other art cars like it, were common city transpo. It's even got antenna that belch flames. Who doesn't want that in a town car?

Snail Art Car The Golden Mean

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darthcamaro writes "Remember the big DNS flaw that Dan Kaminsky 'discovered' last year? Well, it looks like another flaw in DNS has just been patched. This time it's an item that affects DNSSEC, which was supposed to be the savior for the Kaminsky flaw. The good news, though, is that this time, the issue is relatively minor and DNS has already been patched. 'The flaw is specific to certain usages of DNSSEC,' Joao Damas, senior programming manager of the ISC told InternetNews. 'It is strongly advised that all BIND DNSSEC deployments update in case they are using the particular pattern affected (DSA keys in some cases) and to prevent coming across the problem in the future unexpectedly.'"

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Even if you're like me and never win them, you've got to love the huge contests on Instructables. I spent at least 3 hours last weekend Googling for 'DIY plasma cutter' and could only come up with cocktail-napkin drawings. This week, there's a well-done homemade plasma cutter entry in the $20,000 Sears gift card contest. Even better, you can build this usually-$1000+ metal melter mostly out of garbage.

Whether you build one or not, I highly recommend (safely) playing with a plasma cutter: it's like writing with a pen, but instead of ink on paper you're melting metal like butter:)

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