As you may know, there are a number of circumvention tools used by businesses, activists and journalists seeking to avoid the Internet censorship efforts in countries like Saudi Arabia or China. What you probably did not know was that a number of the most popular tools willingly provide specific user data, including browsing history. Harvard researcher Hal Roberts revealed last week that DynaWeb, FreeGate, GPass and FirePhoenix all partake in the startling practice of selling user data.

These tools work by operating as virtual ISPs for the user in the censored country, so they have incredible amounts of information about the online practices of millions of users. As Roberts points out, the best way to avoid sharing this information, which authoritarian governments would love to have, is to not store it. Unfortunately, these projects have chosen to support themselves through the sale of data, thus potentially compromising their goal of Internet freedom. Although they claim to have "strict screening" before selling personally identifiable data, one can easily imagine leaks or errors.

While this shouldn't be entirely surprising - no system is perfect - it is a practice which should be corrected. And it should serve as a reminder that those wishing to remain anonymous online have an uphill battle.

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

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An anonymous reader writes "California Rep. Joe Baca has proposed a bill which would mandate placing health warning labels on any video game rated T (13+) or higher by the ESRB. The Video Game Health Labeling Act of 2009 would require a cigarette pack-like label that reads, 'WARNING: Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Looking to enhance MIDI -> control voltage conversion for his x0xb0x synth/sequencer, Robin designed and built his own converter using Arduino and a 16-bit DAC chip -

Having looked around the Arduino forums I found a lot of people using the PWM outputs on the Arduino and just running them through a low pass RC filter to get a smooth variable DC voltage out. This has the benefit of being quick to make but the downside of non-linearity across the domain of the duty cycly and the range of voltage out and the small portamento this approach will neccessarily come with. Having decided against using the PWM out and having recently been introduced to the analog devices catalogue by an a electronics friend I decided to get hold of one of their AD5668 DAC chips and dive into the world of surface mount chips and SPI. I’m not claiming to be the first to hook up a DAC chip to the Arduino as there’s a fair amount of evidence people have taken the same approach when building their own cv boxes but the approach worked and I’m pretty pleased with the results.

- Homebrew midi-cv box

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twitter writes "Ever wonder why schools still use Windows? Boycott Novell has extracted the details from 2002 Microsoft email presented in the Comes vrs Microsoft case and other leaks. What emerges is Microsoft's desperate battle to 'never lose to Linux.' At stake for Microsoft is more than a billion dollars of annual revenue, vital user conditioning and governmental lock in that excludes competition, and software freedom for the rest of us. Education and Government Incentives [EDGI] and "Microsoft Unlimited Potential" are programs that allows vendors to sell Windows at zero cost. Microsoft's nightmare scenario has already been realized in Indiana and other places. Windows is not really competitive and schools that switch save tens of millions of dollars. Because software is about as expensive as the hardware in these deals, the world could save up to $500 million each year by dumping Microsoft. Now that the cat is out of the bag, it's hard to see what Microsoft can do other than what they did to Peter Quinn."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The picture says it all, and you can even click on it to register (technology is so fancy):

ONLY 3 DAYS LEFT TO ENTER: Deadline is January 15! In association with CEA, Core77 hosts this year's Greener Gadgets Design Competition 2009, challenging designers to create the next generation of greener gadgets. Once again, finalists will be JUDGED LIVE at the Greener Gadgets Conference, this year slated for February 27th in New York City. Prize money is $3000 for 1st Place, $1000 each for 2nd and 3rd Places. Fire up those markers and tablets and get in the game!

Keep in mind this doesn't have to be something you've actually built yet, and get those designs in!

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Just a few weeks ago, we warned that, while the thought of increasing broadband is a good idea, the details of any sort of "broadband stimulus" plan was important -- especially if it just looked like giving money to the same old incumbent players who have a long, and rather disgusting, history of accepting tons of public money and then not delivering. At other times, those incumbents have spent a lot of money trying to stop the actual spread of broadband. Broadband Reports is warning the incoming administration that the incumbent players are going to be spinning all sorts of stories about how they'll provide all sorts of new broadband improvements, while ignoring their history of fighting against broadband expansion. Unfortunately, Business Week points out that the broadband stimulus plan is almost certainly heading in that direction, meaning that it will almost certainly reward the incumbents, despite the fact that they're a part of the problem.

For years, plenty of people have been pointing out that the real problem with broadband in the US is the lack of competition in the market -- and a big part of the reason there's so little competition is because of these sorts of government handouts that favor a single player in a market. It's difficult to see how continuing that tradition changes anything -- other than making a few legacy providers even wealthier. If we want to see more and better broadband in this country, we need to see more competition, not the strengthening of existing legacy players.

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If you're having a hard time justifying the relatively high price of speaker wall mounts, here's one approach to a DIY version using basic dowels + screws -

Whether for your new 5.1 surround sound system, your cramped media room, or when just wiring your home to fill it with music, it's best to get speakers off the ground, furniture, and other resonant surfaces, and up to ear level. And since non-powered speakers are actually not heavy at all, with less than $2.00 in materials and an hour of work, it's surprisingly simple to create custom brackets for mounting them on walls and ceilings.

- How To: DIY Speaker Wall Mounts

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Pardon a little indulgence on our part, but our maker-pal I-Wei Huang (aka CrabFu) sent us this proud papa video of his new son, er... ShrimpFu seeing one of dad's bots for the first time. You never forget your first robot baby-terrorizing. I don't know which one is cuter. Okay... the human offspring is somewhat cuter...

All things CrabFu on Make: Blog

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An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute are potentially one step closer to creating life. In an experiment they recently created enzymes that can replicate and evolve. 'It kind of blew me away,' said team member Tracey Lincoln of the Scripps Research Institute, who is working on her Ph.D. 'What we have is non-living, but we've been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The second episode of MAKE: television aired on public television on Saturday. If you missed it, the whole thing is available on the show's Web site. (Above is the "Maker Profile" from the episode.) Congrats to all my colleagues at MAKE: and Twin Cities Public Television who worked on the show. It really embodies the spirit of the magazine and Maker Faire. From the description of 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 cafe latte, and a stealthy technique to park anywhere for free!

"MAKE: television Episode 2: Aerial Kite Photography & Burrito Blaster"

The Boston Globe kindly shows us how to hallucinate using ping pong balls and a radio, as well as other fun perceptual tricks. How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio

We’ve had an amazing time during our stint as guest bloggers on the ever fabulous Boing Boing. In discussing our experience, we both noted how much we’d actually learned, and we don’t mean in terms of how or what to blog. We mean that the readers and commenters of this blog are smart and knowledgeable, and are generally cheerful in their sharing of this knowledge. So thanks for all the new links, new info, and new insights that we now have swimming around in our heads and on our Stickies.

It was also great fun reconnecting with long lost friends and coworkers, as well as meeting tons of new and interesting people. We hope you’ve all enjoyed our two weeks of blogging even just a fraction of how much we’ve enjoyed it ourselves. And, of course, thanks so much to Mark, Pesco, Xeni, and Cory for this fun-filled opportunity.

As our last offering, here’s a music blog we enjoy checking in on from time to time. Ska Blah Blah points to interesting documentaries and old footage of reggae and ska legends, as well as news about newcomers and the state of today’s reggae and ska scenes. We first heard about a fun band, The Aggrolites from a Small Talk podcast on Ska Blah Blah. And proprietor JJ Loy (also a Make author) recently introduced guest blogging to the site’s repertoire, so who knows, maybe we’ll land another guest blogging gig sometime in the future!

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

The folks at Macmillan digital in NYC produced this thigh-slapping contrafactual account of the internal workings of book publishing. I especially like the idea that "Second Life and World of Warcraft Avatars" constitute the bulk to digital publicity spending, and result in the majority of book sales.

From the Typewriter to the Bookstore: A Publishing Story

There's been plenty of discussion over the fact that Fox is going to end up making money from the movie Watchmen, despite having absolutely nothing to do with the film itself. ChurchHatesTucker alerts us to an open letter, over at HitFix, from one of the producers of the movie, pointing out how ridiculous this is from a common sense approach. Basically, Fox pretty much did everything possible to not let the movie ever go into production, and then Warner took incredible risks, spending a ton of money on a script that Fox (and others) hated, giving it to a director without a commercial hit at the time, and casting no brand name stars. The point that Lloyd Levin is making is that, no matter what the law says, from a basic common sense standpoint, it's ridiculous that Fox should get any money at all. You should read the whole thing, but here's an excerpt:

Larry and I developed screenplays at five different studios. We had two false starts in production on the movie. We were involved with prominent and commercial directors. Big name stars were interested. In one instance hundreds of people were employed, sets were being built - An A-list director and top artists in the industry were given their walking papers when the studio financing the movie lost faith.

After all these years of rejection, this is the same project, the same movie, over which two studios are now spending millions of dollars contesting ownership. Irony indeed, and then some.

Through the years, inverse of the lack of studio faith has been the passionate belief by many many individuals - movie professionals who were also passionate fans of the graphic novel - who, yes, wanted to work on the film, but more for reasons of just wanting to see the movie get made, to see this movie get made and made right, donated their time and talent to help push the film forward: Writers gave us free screenplay drafts; conceptual art was supplied by illustrators, tests were performed gratis by highly respected actors and helped along and put together by editors, designers, prop makers and vfx artists; we were the recipients of donated studio and work space, lighting and camera equipment. Another irony, given the commercial stakes implied by the pitched legal dispute between Fox and Warners, is that for years Watchmen has been a project that has survived on the fumes of whatever could be begged, borrowed and stolen - A charity case for all intents and purposes. None of that effort, none of that passion and emotional involvement, is considered in the framework of this legal dispute.

From my point of view, the flashpoint of this dispute, came in late spring of 2005. Both Fox and Warner Brothers were offered the chance to make Watchmen. They were submitted the same package, at the same time. It included a cover letter describing the project and its history, budget information, a screenplay, the graphic novel, and it made mention that a top director was involved.

And it's at this point, where the response from both parties could not have been more radically different.

The response we got from Fox was a flat "pass." That's it. An internal Fox email documents that executives there felt the script was one of the most unintelligible pieces of shit they had read in years. Conversely, Warner Brothers called us after having read the script and said they were interested in the movie - yes, they were unsure of the screenplay, and had many questions, but wanted to set a meeting to discuss the project, which they promptly did. Did anyone at Fox ask to meet on the movie? No. Did anyone at Fox express any interest in the movie? No. Express even the slightest interest in the movie? Or the graphic novel? No.

From there, the executives at Warner Brothers, who weren't yet completely comfortable with the movie, made a deal to acquire the movie rights and we all started to creatively explore the possibility of making Watchmen. We discussed creative approaches and started offering the movie to directors, our former director having moved on by then. After a few director submissions, Zack Snyder came onboard, well before the release of his movie 300. In fact, well before its completion. This was a gut, creative call by Larry, me and the studio... Zack didn't have a huge commercial track record, yet we all felt he was the right guy for the movie.

Warner Brothers continued to support, both financially and creatively, the development of the movie. And eventually, after over a year of work, they agreed to make the film, based on a script that, for what it's worth, was by and large very similar to the one Fox initially read and deemed an unintelligible piece of shit.

Now here's the part that has to be fully appreciated, if for nothing more than providing insight into producing movies in Hollywood: The Watchmen script was way above the norm in length, near 150 pages, meaning the film could clock in at close to 3 hours, the movie would not only be R rated but a hard R - for graphic violence and explicit sex - would feature no stars, and had a budget north of $100M. We also asked Warner Brothers to support an additional 1 to 1.5 hours of content incurring additional cost that would tie in with the movie but only be featured in DVD iterations of the film. Warners supported the whole package and I cannot begin to emphasize how ballsy and unprecedented a move this was on the part of a major Hollywood studio. Unheard of. And would another studio in Hollywood, let alone a studio that didn't show one shred of interest in the movie, not one, have taken such a risk? Would they ever have made such a commitment, a commitment to a film that defied all conventional wisdom?

Only the executives at Fox can answer that question. But if they were to be honest, their answer would have to be "No."

Shouldn't Warner Brothers be entitled to the spoils - if any -- of the risk they took in supporting and making Watchmen? Should Fox have any claim on something they could have had but chose to neither support nor show any interest in?

Look at it another way... One reason the movie was made was because Warner Brothers spent the time, effort and money to engage with and develop the project. If Watchmen was at Fox the decision to make the movie would never have been made because there was no interest in moving forward with the project.

All in all, what Levin is saying is effectively the same point we've made about the innovation market over the years: the "idea" is a very tiny part. It's all about the execution. Fox wanted nothing to do with the execution and wasn't even that interested in the idea. Warner put up all the risk, and now Fox gets rewarded because at one point it bought the rights to just the idea. Once again, we're seeing society overvalue the idea and vastly undervalue the execution.

Of course, it's no surprise to see Fox's response is the same as plenty of patent holders in the same situation (paraphrased, obviously): "Tough noogies. The law is the law, and we win, so suck it." Wouldn't it be nice if, just once, we got to see common sense match up with what the law allows?

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chromatic writes to tell us that O'Reilly has an interview with Guido van Rossum on the evolutionary process that gave us Python 3.0 and what is in store for the future. "I'd like to reiterate that at this point, it's a very personal choice to decide whether to use 3.0 or 2.6. You don't run the risk of being left behind by taking a conservative stance at this point. 2.6 will be just as well supported by the same group of core Python developers as 3.0. At the same time, we're also not sort of deemphasizing the importance and quality of 3.0. So if you are not held back by external requirements like dependencies on packages or third party software that hasn't been ported to 3.0 yet or working in an environment where everyone else is using another version. If you're learning Python for the first time, 3.0 is a great way to learn the language. There's a couple of things that trip over beginners have been removed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Matt of Liquidware brings us the elegant and able-bodied open source Illuminato - an Arduino compatible featuring 42 I/O pins, Atmega645 (2x code space of ATmega168) and chic white LED backlighting -

Great standout details on the board such as the side-mounted reset switch and symmetrical layout in black/gold. More videos, info, and insight to the development process over on his blog.

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Over at Morbid Anatomy, Joanna Ebenstein spotted a series of intriguing photos of medical curiosities from the National Museum of Health and Medicine and elsewhere. You may need a unicorn chaser after visiting.
National Museum of Health and Medicine Photogallery

Bibliodyssey posted a selection of magnificent Art Deco architectural designs by S. Charles Lee, including the two amazing movie theaters above. From the description of the Newsreel Theatre "Rio":

This design makes good use of a small urban lot by maximizing the advertising space. The design above the marquee is one unit, the design below another. The projecting marquee attracts the attention of both driver and pedestrian. The exterior could be of concrete, plaster, terra cotta, glass or plastic, the lettering in copper or white metal.

And from a note on the back of the Newsreel Theatre "Town" drawing:

"This spectacular design has been planned to care for a change in theatre patronage. It is meant to speak up to the people to come in and see what is inside, and is planned for a locality where the newsreel has become an attraction."

S. Charles Lee

jehovajerieh writes to us in the time-honored tradition of rampant Apple speculation, pointing to an article over on IBTimes suggesting that while the iPhone Nano may be on the way, the US might not be the first to experience this gadget bliss. "Despite limited information in the supplier channels and typical secrecy with new Apple products, insiders have confirmed that the iPhone nano is not yet in the testing labs at AT&T, Marshal says, leading him to believe that the launch will most likely be with a non-US carrier. 'Obviously, the best-case scenario here would be a China launch (~600mil+ wireless subscribers total in the country), but we have no definitive knowledge of this and are working on identifying the [locale] of launch and other pertinent details,' he said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Silberberg's documentary, Oh My God, It's Harrod Blank!, about art car artist Harrod Blank (whose amazing work we've shown at Maker Faire) is premiering at the Slamdance Film Festival on January 16th.

Sayeth the press copy:

An obsessively made documentary filmed over 16 years, exploring the creative life and adventures of director Silberberg's friend, the eccentric art car artist, film-maker, and entrepreneur Harrod Blank. Blank is captured from his youth growing up in the woods with chickens and working as a camera assistant for his father - the venerable film-maker Les Blank - to the creation of his first attention-getting art car, to his current multi-faceted career as creator and head of a nationwide art car movement.

Rarely does a film about an artist leave us with such a good feeling about life. This film goes far beyond a portrait of an artist, it covers home remedies for balding, attraction to black women, independent filmmaking, art cars, and most importantly it reminds us of the journey to discovering oneself that we all must take.

[Thanks, Sherry!]

Slamdance
Harrod Blank's Automorphosis

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I came across this video today of a iRobot create robot autonomously navigating a hallway using a standard laptop webcam. The guidance software centers the robot on the perceived vanishing point, which can be picked up from visual cues like wall and floor lines, allowing the robot to cruise in a direct path down the center of the hall.

For implementing higher level network task of maintaining connectivity in the deployed sensor network, the mobile node (iRobot Create) must navigate through the indoor environment. Using only the laptop camera as a sensor we implemented the navigation and localization system.

Navigation uses vanishing point extracted from the corridor walls and edges. Robust Navigation is credit due to Pratap Tokekar. I worked on localization with fiducial (cones) and helped the robot estimate its position by measuring range from the cone-landmarks.

More from Pratap's blog:

I was responsible for vision-based navigation of the robot within the hallways. I used the vanishing points from the parallel lines present indoors to compute the robot heading. This was then fed into a controller to control the direction of the robot for navigation. The computation was made robust to change in light conditions, false detections, occlusions by a layered filtering approach that included RANSAC and least squares filtering among others.

I'm impressed with how well this works, and it seems like it wouldn't be too painful to implement for a special-case hallway rover like this. Pratap's project report has a lot of details about how the vanishing point detection system works. Check it out if you'd like to implement something like this yourself.

If anyone has other examples of vanishing point guidance, please leave a comment.

Vanishing Points Based Navigation - Project Report Details (PDF)
Pratap Tokekar: Vision Based Navigation
Video: Vision based Navigation and Localization

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In order to prove how wonderful hydrogen fuel cell cars are, Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) decided to drive one from New York to Washington DC for his congressional swearing in. But the fuel cell car has a range of under 200 miles, and the trip for NY to DC is 300 miles. So here's what he did:

Massa drove one fuel cell car while a hybrid SUV [Chevy Tahoe] towing an additional SUV followed along. Once he got half way, he switched to new fuel cell car [which I assume was towed to the half way point sometime earlier so that it would be waiting for the environmentally-conscious congressman]. The empty fuel cell was then towed back by the first SUV. As he continued on his journey, the second SUV followed. Once Massa arrived in DC, the second SUV then towed the second fuel cell car back to NY.

Rep. Eric Massa's excellent fuel cell road trip

Dan writes in to point out that SAP's Business Objects subsidiary is apparently looking to abuse both copyright and trademark law to limit who can create training course and materials for its software. The company is sending out letters telling training and tools providers that it's copyright infringement to use any screenshots of their software and that it's trademark infringement to use the names of its programs. Both claims are blatantly false, of course, but appear to be how SAP/Business Objects is looking to corner the training market on its own software, forcing "authorized" training providers to pay them extra and blocking competitors out of the market. Using screenshots of software is clear fair use, and using a product's name in the course of a training manual is, in no way, trademark infringement -- as long as the training material doesn't imply that it's the "official" or "approved" training manual for the software. This is rather disappointing from a company that has built up a decent reputation in the last few years for being more open about these kinds of things.

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John Brownlee's mom gave him the Akribos XXIV DaVinci Skeleton Watch as a gift. He was thrilled, and posts his appreciation of the timepiece over at Boing Boing Gadgets. From Brownlee's post:

I hesitate to call it steampunk, through the degradation of the term by people like me, but my attempts at describing it otherwise only end up being laughably convoluted loop-de-loops around the term. It reminds me very strongly of Disneyland Paris' Space Mountain aesthetic, which is furnished after the spaceship design of Verne's De la Terre à la Lune... all burnished brass and exposed copper cogwork. But, of course, that's all very steampunk too.

Regardless, I am in love with the watch...

Akribos XXIV DaVinci Skeleton Steampunk Watch

Charles Platt says:

I'm fascinated by the conspiracy theorists challenging Barack Obama's citizenship. After front-page stories in The Globe this week and last week, there's now this ad which was refused by the major TV networks.

I'm reassured that the Web is facilitating a freedom of the press that didn't quite exist before. The more nutty theories, the better!

I like the narrator's voice. It sounds like 1970s Saturday Night Live.

For the last 26 years Graham Parker has been obsessed with solving Rubik's cube. He finally did it.

'I cannot tell you what a relief it was to finally solve it,' the 45-year-old from Portchester, Hampshire, said. 'It has driven me mad over the years – it felt like it had taken over my life.

'I have missed important events to stay in and solve it and I would lie awake at night thinking about it.

'I have had wrist and back problems from spending hours on it but it was all worth it. When I clicked that last bit into place and each face was a solid colour, I wept.'

He's probably happy he solved it, but I predict that he is going to go through a period of depression.

Man takes 26 years to solve Rubik’s Cube (Via Arbroath)

An anonymous reader writes "SANS' just-released list of the Top 15 most dangerous programming errors obscures the real problem with software development today, argues InfoWeek's Alex Wolfe. In More Than Coding Mistakes At Fault In Bad Software, he lays the blame on PC developers (read: Microsoft) who kicked the time-honored waterfall model to the curb and replaced it not with object-oriented or agile development but with a 'modus operandi of cramming in as many features as possible, and then fixing problems in beta.' He argues that youthful programmers don't know about error-catching and lack a sense of history, suggesting they read Fred Brooks's 'The Mythical Man-Month', and Gerald Weinberg's 'The Psychology of Computer Programming.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The community house at Westwood, with lots of solar thermal collectors on top

Here's a case study about a community in North Carolina building their own power. In part:

When most people think about solar strategies they generally consider using them in their own homes. But cooperative or community systems offer a lot of potential for substantially reducing energy consumption while providing convenient, reliable domestic hot water, space heating, or electricity for larger groups of people in a neighborhood or community setting. This approach is fairly routine in some European countries, but less common in the United States, although this is beginning to change with an increasing number of community-supported energy initiatives in some locations. This approach could--and probably should--be a primary strategy in community responses to peak oil everywhere.

Here's the neighborhood's homepage, and here's North Carolina Green Building analysis on the project. Let me know about any other projects seeking to make energy independence that you've found in the comments.

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San Francisco underground icon (literally) John Law will be appearing on the History Channel's Cities of the Underworld. Scott Beale writes on Laughing Squid:

Laughing Squid's own head of special projects John Law will be featured tonight and tomorrow on The History Channel show "Cities of the Underworld" hosted by Don Wildmon, a series where Don travels the world exploring subterranean structures.

The episode with John is about San Francisco and in his segment they explore San Francisco's Word War II bunkers and talk about the San Francisco Suicide Club. John, along with assistants John Hell, Katy Bell, CJ Desoda and Simone Davalos, "kidnapped" The History Channel crew taking them on a San Francisco adventure.

John Law on The History Channel's Cities of the Underworld

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buzzardsbay writes "Fresh off their annual market survey, eWEEK channel folks have compiled the list of tech vendors their readers think will fail, falter, or be sold off in 2009. It's important to note that these aren't the opinions of the magazine or its editors. The list comes from folks who work in IT, mostly technology resellers, who are out in the field selling, installing and maintaining this stuff. If there were ever canaries in the tech coal mine, they'd be these service and solution providers who live and die by the slightest shift in the markets. Some of the companies on this list, like Sun and AMD, are shocking because of their size. Others, like CA and Symantec, not so surprising." What other companies are headed for implosion, or should be if all were right with the universe?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When we talk about problems with copyright and royalty systems, sometimes people suggest that we should make an exception for the collections societies like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC that get performance royalties for songwriters, saying that since the money goes to the songwriters, rather than the labels, it's okay. However, ASCAP and the others cause significant problems. We've already discussed how they create problems, and how their views are outdated and damaging for songwriters.

However, it keeps getting worse, as they get more and more desperate to collect money -- and they're doing so in a way that harms songwriters much more than helps them.

ASCAP and BMI have been aggressively targeting venues that hold open mic nights, and demanding they pay huge fees. Many venues have given up and simply stopped allowing any musicians to play at all. In fact, one made every musician sign a waiver that they would only play original songs, and ASCAP told him it didn't matter because there was no way to know if the singers were really avoiding copyrighted music, so he still needed to pay up for a license. Those that pay up then often feel they need to charge a cover fee, so attendance dwindles.

It's basically making it more difficult for the next generation of musicians to get started, and ASCAP is so blind to this they don't even know what they're talking about. In response to the article, an ASCAP representative claims:

"What gives anyone the right to use someone else's property, even though they're not making money on it? I can guarantee you the phone company's going to charge you whether you're making money or not."

First off, this shows an ignorance of what is and is not "property." It also shows no concept of the larger picture of how using copyright to limit singers from appearing is harming artists. As for the non sequitor about the phone company... it's not clear what that has to do with anything.

It's time for musicians to start realizing that these societies do not have the songwriters' best interests in mind.

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The 2009 Independent Games Festival comes to San Francisco in March. This is where you'll find the highest concentration of artistry, passion, and innovation in the games industry. Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Brandon created an incredibly in-depth guide to the games that will be celebrated at the festival. From Boing Boing Offworld:

Braid, World of Goo, Darwinia, Everyday Shooter, Crayon Physics, Audiosurf -- all truly became names of their own following IGF successes. In the spirit of looking forward, then, and because Offworld's initial mention of the 2009 winners amounted to little more than a rote list of names, I've taken the time to sit down with all of this year's finalists and try to contextualize each entry (bar those cases where my hardware unfortunately failed me).

Inside you'll find as many video demos as I could muster, links and mentions to those games currently available to try for yourself, and an independent summary of each of the 22 finalists this year.

The Offworld Guide to the 2009 Independent Games Festival

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on a sneaky new approach to getting the immune system to fight cancer. An implant releases a 'molecular perfume' irresistible to messenger immune cells, which enter the implant where they are given a sample of the cancer's 'scent' and a disperse signal that sends them scurrying to the nearest lymph node. There they convince other immune cells to start attacking anything that matches the sample they picked up."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Above are Antennarius maculatus, warty frogfish. They scurry around on the ocean floor, "walking" on their pelvic fins. Dark Roasted Blend has a host of fun frogfish pictures and also a curious video of one in motion, while Zubi's Frogfish Pages has everything you always wanted to know about the creatures but were too polite to ask. Weird "Walking" Frogfish (Dark Roasted Blend), Zubi's Frogfish Pages (frogfish.ch)

A documentary filmmaker whose work we've been following for Boing Boing's video projects sent us this note today:

A man I knew was gunned down last week in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. He was an editor and journalist, and he was murdered because he told the truth in a place where the truth runs you afoul of murderers. For those of us who knew him, and know Sri Lanka, his death was not a matter of how but when. He knew it too, and before he died he wrote the piece that I have attached here. I am asking you all to take just a few minutes to read it. As a favor. Thank you.

Here are the first few grafs of the piece, which were the last words written for publication by Lasantha Wickrematunge of The Sunday Leader:

No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.

I have been in the business of journalism a good long time. Indeed, 2009 will be The Sunday Leader's 15th year. Many things have changed in Sri Lanka during that time, and it does not need me to tell you that the greater part of that change has been for the worse. We find ourselves in the midst of a civil war ruthlessly prosecuted by protagonists whose bloodlust knows no bounds. Terror, whether perpetrated by terrorists or the state, has become the order of the day. Indeed, murder has become the primary tool whereby the state seeks to control the organs of liberty. Today it is the journalists, tomorrow it will be the judges. For neither group have the risks ever been higher or the stakes lower.

Why then do we do it? I often wonder that. After all, I too am a husband, and the father of three wonderful children. I too have responsibilities and obligations that transcend my profession, be it the law or journalism. Is it worth the risk? Many people tell me it is not. Friends tell me to revert to the bar, and goodness knows it offers a better and safer livelihood. Others, including political leaders on both sides, have at various times sought to induce me to take to politics, going so far as to offer me ministries of my choice. Diplomats, recognising the risk journalists face in Sri Lanka, have offered me safe passage and the right of residence in their countries. Whatever else I may have been stuck for, I have not been stuck for choice.

But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.

And Then They Came For Me (Sunday Leader)

See also this page where news about his death, and remembrances by colleagues at the paper, have been posted: "A deadly drive to work."

And here, news about protests following his killing.

Researchers at the Southern Nevada Water Authority analyzed tap water from 19 US water utilities. New Scientist shares the list of the top 11 detected compounds, fortunately all of which were "found at extremely low concentrations." According the Environmental Protection Agency, there's no cause for alarm but there could be risk "especially for the fetus and those with severely compromised health." Here are the top 5:

• Atenolol, a beta-blocker used to treat cardiovascular disease

• Atrazine, an organic herbicide banned in the European Union, but still used in the US, which has been implicated in the decline of fish stocks and in changes in animal behaviour

• Carbamazepine, a mood-stabilising drug used to treat bipolar disorder, amongst other things

• Estrone, an oestrogen hormone secreted by the ovaries and blamed for causing gender-bending changes in fish

• Gemfibrozil, an anti-cholesterol drug

Top 11 compounds in US drinking water

Autistic savant Daniel Tammet holds a European memory record for reciting Pi. Tammet's book Born On A Blue Day is a memoir while his brand new book, Embracing the Wide Sky, is a deeper look into how his mind seems to work. From an interview in Scientific American:

I have always thought of abstract information—numbers for example—in visual, dynamic form. Numbers assume complex, multi-dimensional shapes in my head that I manipulate to form the solution to sums, or compare when determining whether they are prime or not.

For languages, I do something similar in terms of thinking of words as belonging to clusters of meaning so that each piece of vocabulary makes sense according to its place in my mental architecture for that language. In this way I can easily discern relationships between words, which helps me to remember them.

In my mind, numbers and words are far more than squiggles of ink on a page. They have form, color, texture and so on. They come alive to me, which is why as a young child I thought of them as my “friends.” I think this is why my memory is very deep, because the information is not static. I say in my book that I do not crunch numbers (like a computer). Rather, I dance with them.

Inside the Savant Mind: Tips for Thinking from an Extraordinary Thinker

For many years, we've discussed how the fashion industry is a great example of an industry that is more innovative, more prolific and more dynamic due to the lack of intellectual property protection. In fact studies have repeatedly shown that it's the very lack of copyright over clothing designs that has made the overall industry so successful. It encourages continued innovation and adaptation, while the fact that there are knockoffs actually helps to increase the value of original authentic designs, while permeating design concepts throughout the fashion world.

However, that hasn't stopped designers from trying to gain copyright advantages over clothing designs, and one ongoing case suggests how ridiculous this concept could be. An online publication is being sued by two French fashion designers, not for creating knockoff clothing, but for daring to post photos online of the fashion designers clothing lines, which they demonstrated at a fashion show. The website sent its own photographers to the show (so it's not a case of them reposting someone else's photos). A French court sided with the designers (French design protectionism shows up again...), and now the case has moved to the US to see if the designers can collect.

The fact that the case has gotten as far as it has is pretty ridiculous. It's nearly impossible to see how posting photos you took yourself at a fashion show could violate someone else's copyright on clothing, but that's what we get in this world where too many people consider copyright something that provides full and total ownership of a concept, rather than a limited monopoly solely for the incentive to create. While the case right now hinges around the traditional four factors test for fair use, you have to wonder why we've never established a simpler test for copyright cases: if the creator knew the infringing action would occur, would they not have created the "content" in the first place? In this case, that seems laughable...

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At long last, Joel, Rob, Brownlee, and the Boing Boing Video team (myself included) have departed CES and arrived at our respective homes. While we bathe in espresso this morning, and shake off the accumulated Vegas cruft, here's a recap of our video coverage produced from the floor of the annual electronics show last week. I hope you enjoy watching our "work" as much as we enjoyed all that "hard work" together producing them. Do also check out this blog post from Q-Burns Abstract Message, whose work we used in those episodes. He runs a label called Eighth Dimension Records, and we featured other artists from that label, too. - XJ

CES Videos on Boing Boing Gadgets:
* CES Video: Asus Netbookstravaganza, with Bamboo, Gold Lamé, and Lamborghini (MP4)
* CES Video: Palm Pre Hands-On with Joel and Brownlee, post-review huddle with Ars Technica (MP4)
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day Two (MP4)
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day One (MP4)

Or, watch them on YouTube with goofy annotations for maximum lulz:
* BB Gadgets @CES: Asus Netbooks, with Bamboo, Gold Lamé, and Lamborghini.
* CES: Palm Pre Hands-On with Boing Boing Gadgets, post-review huddle with Ars Technica
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Day 2 Report
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Day 1 Report

evan_arrrr! writes "From the article: Since the early 20th century physicists have known that light carries momentum, but the way this momentum changes as light passes through different media is much less clear. Two rival theories of the time predicted precisely the opposite effect for light incident on a dielectric: one suggesting it pushes the surface in the direction light is traveling; the other suggesting it drags the surface backwards towards the source of light. After 100 years of conflicting experimental results, a team of experimentalists from China believe they have finally found a resolution."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

evan_arrrr! writes "From the article: Since the early 20th Century physicists have known that light carries momentum, but the way this momentum changes as light passes through different media is much less clear. Two rival theories of the time predicted precisely the opposite effect for light incident on a dielectric: one suggesting it pushes the surface in the direction light is travelling; the other suggesting it drags the surface backwards towards the source of light. After 100 years of conflicting experimental results, a team of experimentalists from China believe they have finally found a resolution."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I read a great article a few years called "Where to Get a Good Idea: Steal It Outside Your Group". Sociologist Ronald Burt argues that creative ideas aren't magically created, but rather, they are well-known concepts re-applied in new arenas. Maybe that cool paper punch found in the stationary store will become the next best thing in pizza cutters - all it takes is someone to connect the two. My favorite quote in the article is "People who live in the intersection of social worlds are at higher risk of having good ideas."

To this end, I enjoy putting myself in that intersection of social worlds. I'll ask my taxidriver about how he does his job; learn the ins and outs of the starting a small business from my hairdresser friend. Matt Blaze famously applied this when he brought techniques that were well-known among the computer security community to the world of physical locks.

So, I come to one of my favorite little websites: Transmaterial. Every two weeks, it describes an innovative new physical material.

Now, you ask, new materials are useful, but how does that website help the DIY hobbyist?

I love it for two reasons:
1. It exposes me to new ideas outside of my usual sphere.
2. A lot of the new materials seemed to have been formed by the same kind of cross-discipline thinking.

For example, the surface of a Lotus leaf has zillions of tiny bumps to repel water more effectively than a flat surface can. Sure, that's interesting, but how is it practical? Kenya Hara created a new kind of humidifier by selectively applying a coating that mimics this response to a sheet of paper. The result is a pattern of thousands of tiny drops of water with a greater surface area than found on other humidifiers -- leading to more effective evaporation without the need for electricity. Biologists knew about this effect; it took a creative leap to find a use for it in the HVAC world.

So, there's my first post. I hope to bring you lots of other cool information, but I probably just gave up some of my favorite ideas.

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I love the people at Make and what they've done for the DIY community, so I jumped at the chance to guest blog here.

Just a quick introduction: I'm a hacker who loves how to understand how things work inside & out. At my job, I design electronic systems; at home, I usually tend to take them apart. I love learning, which is handy because I think that's one of the primary requirements of an engineer -- college gives you a great theoretical base, but technology marches on and there are always new techniques and devices to stay abreast of.

I'm probably best known for hacking one-time-use digital cameras and camcorders and making them reusable. For a couple of years (until the manufacturer fixed the security holes I found), this made cheap cameras available for all sorts of dangerous projects where the prospect of losing a more expensive would be too daunting. Tiny kids ran amok, taking pictures of anything and everything. The video camera's small size and light weight made it ideal for shooting a pilot's-eye view from model helicopters and planes; in Make 07, I showed how to put the camcorder in a model rocket (podcast).

More recently, I fulfilled a dream of building my own watch from scratch. First I made a Pong Watch - it's a smaller version of the classic game. Over the last year, I've been working on a more complicated version that will offer a variety of games, including Asteroids. I love this project because it's a mix of everything -- electronics, software, machining materials, a little bit of fashion, and a little bit of retro. More importantly, though, there was a lot of stuff I didn't know at the start of the project that I've had to learn to complete it.

So, thanks for the opportunity, and I'm looking forward to sharing with you interesting projects and ideas!

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I'd noticed how beautifully unique the manhole covers could be while in Tokyo. Turns out they're quite an art form (via). #

Ok, ok, I know some of you out there might be thinking "That mod isn't very cool!" but hey - they fit an XP compatible computer inside of an original Gameboy case. That's gotta be worth something! I found this interesting and thus am discussing it in today's article.

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PeterAitch writes "According to Reuters, Potsdam University in Germany is now teaching social skills as part of their IT courses. This is intended to 'ease entry into the world of work'. The 440 students enrolled in the master's degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection(s)." The class is taught by a superficial model, who will fall in love with the nerdiest student at the end of the semester after realizing that he is beautiful on the inside.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The next Make:SF meeting is Tuesday, January 13th at 6:30 PM

Location:
Instructables HQ 489 Clementina St. - 3rd Floor
San Francisco CA

To present contact Andrew at meetings [at] makesf [dot] org

Related sites:
http://www.makesf.org
http://www.meetup.com/makesf/
http://makesf.pbwiki.com/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/686701@N22/

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friendsOfDave is list of blogs, like an old-style blogroll, but with a difference. Every time one of the blogs in my list updates, an app on my server sends a link to Twitter, identi.ca and FriendFeed.

http://twitter.com/friendsOfDave

http://identi.ca/friendsOfDave

http://friendfeed.com/friendsofdave

This makes it easy for me to keep up with the blog posts, which come much more slowly than tweets, of people I think of as friends -- in the blogging sense -- people who I want to keep current with.

Here's a list of the people: .

This neatly solved the problem outlined in The First Church of Scoble, where I said I wanted to hear about Scoble, but not the full blast of his Twitter stream. To some extent this isn't even about Scoble the person, because people talking about Scoble (something he actively encourages of course) is all part of the Church effect. Unless he turns his blog into a firehose, we can have just-enough Scoble, along with some Doc, Jen, Betsy, Fred, Jay, Scott, Om, Lance, Rebecca, Gartenberg, et al.

I've had a few days of F-O-D, and I like. It went quiet over the weekend, but now it's Monday morning and things are picking up. Last week was CES so there was a lot of tech stuff, and I was worried there might be too much, but things are more balanced this week. I still need some more political blogs to add to flow, but I want to do that slowly too.

And part of the way I measure success is that the people in the group seem to be following the group. I think this is important. Maybe it will evolve into some kind of meta-publication. Or a conference? I have no idea. I do know they're all creative interesting people who are likely to have some cool ideas if there are any to be had.

Everyone can follow... The more the merrier, as usual.

On December 19th, it was announced that the RIAA was giving up on its legal strategy of suing individual file sharers, and instead was going to go with some mysterious agreements with ISPs (that no ISPs will admit to) to cut off those accused (not found guilty of) file sharing. In talking about it, the RIAA insisted that it had actually stopped filing lawsuits back in August. Of course, that was quickly proven to be not true leading the RIAA to clarify, saying that it hadn't started planning for any new lawsuits since August, but somehow couldn't stop lawsuits already in motion (this, of course, makes no sense).

Of course, now it's looking even worse, as on December 26th, well after it announced an end to the lawsuits, and insisted no more were going to be filed, a new lawsuit was served on an individual for file sharing. Apparently, the RIAA continues to have trouble with some rather basic facts. Saying you're not suing individuals anymore would be a lot more believable if, you know, you stopped suing individuals. Just saying...

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pilsner.urquell writes "A newly released NASA report warns that the world has forgotten the power of the sun, creating a technological society susceptible like never before to large infrastructure damage from solar storms. According the report, the world has grown so dependent on modern technologies without respect of what the sun can and has done, that it's risking major communications, finance, transportation, government and even emergency services disruptions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Check out this wonderfully disturbing piece by Jon Beinart! Via the AntiCraft

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The votes have been cast and the winners of the first five dpreview.com challenges have been announced. The response to the initial challenges has been incredible, and the standard of entries shows just how much photographic creativity and talent there is in the dpreview community. We'd like to thank everyone who enterered images and those who voted for helping us to iron out any wrinkles in this exciting new site feature. There's still plenty of challenges open and the second wave of voting starts soon, so please continue to try out the system as we prepare to move into the next phase of the Challenges Beta program, when the first user generated challenges will be announced.

An anonymous reader writes "'President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.' The plan includes having all conventional records converted to digital within 5 years. Independent studies are fixing this cost somewhere in the range of $75 to $100 Billion, with most of the money going to paying and training technical staff to work on the conversion. Early government estimates are showing 212,000 jobs could be created by this plan."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE: Flickr pool

Æther uses electricity to draw patterns in wood, with beautiful results -

did some experiments last night: wood + saline + high voltage supply + variac = fractal burn patterns. tried different kinds of wood with various effects. unfortunately my recollection of which types of wood are displayed are spotty. will update later. stay tuned for photos of my fractal wood burning coat rack.

Surely a technique other wood artists will be very interested in. - fractal wood burning on Flickr

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This art installation called "Beacon" creates a kinetic light space that has integrated AI so that it interacts with visitors and its surroundings. Consisting of hundreds of modified emergency beacon lights, the project aims to create an immersive space that is navigable to visitors by sensing their position from the motion of the lights. Check it out live at the Lightwave festival this month in Dublin, Ireland.

Beacon @ LightWave

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This month's Handmade Music event is shaping up to be a truly awesome hands-on showcase of sound maker bliss. Check out what'll be on hand -

• Bizarre sonic objects made from dismembered mannequin torsos and legs, transformed into a Theremin and maracas

  
  
  Mouse & the Billionaire's Gestural controllers, made with wood and 3D printers, shaping sound with movement

  
  
  Brian Kerr's Dynamic Musical Interfaces

  
  
  Rucyl Mills’ over-the-shoulder musical fashion with snakeskin and leather

  
  
  Notendo's prepared Nintendo NES

  
  Make:Television screening with more projects, plus a presentation by Phil Torrone.

  Plus -
  

  • Demos, short performances, chatting, meeting (ubergeeks and newcomers alike), science-fair style show-and-tell
    
  • Free beer provided by Pabst Blue Ribbon

  Handmade Music
  Free (+ free beer while it lasts)
  Thursday, January 15
  7:30-10:30pm (drop by for as long as you’d lie)
  3rd Ward, Brooklyn NY
  Directions to the Space

  More info @ CDM - Like a DIY NAMM: Handmade Music Preview

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This story just drips with irony!

2.5 years ago I had just signed the papers to buy a house in Berkeley, and based on past experience as a home owner, it was time to become a member of the Consumer Reports website. I figured if I'm going to be spending thousands of dollars on this house, it would make sense to go for the premium service, so I could access all the information on the site. Doing my part to support a non-profit that does good work. I even checked the box that said they should automatically renew me every year without requiring confirmation, that's how sure I was this organization, above all others, could be trusted.

No fault of theirs, my credit card number got out to some bad guys in Malta or Africa, and the credit card company detected it, contacted me as I was checking into a hotel in NY (by declining the charge, thank you very much) and after talking them into approving the charge (while dripping wet from a NY rainstorm) we agreed they should cancel the card and issue a new number.

So, when Consumer Reports tried to charge my annual fee, it was declined. They sent an email, I went to the website, entered the new number, clicked Submit. I then got an email thanking me for subscribing to the print magazine! Which is something I totally did not do, mean to do, want to do, under any circumstance. I am always trying to reduce clutter, and I hate getting magazines I never asked for in the mail, and I certainly don't want to pay for magazine clutter in my mailbox.

So I called their 800 number and asked nicely but firmly that they cancel this subscription that I did not want. I just want the website, thank you. The operator assured me it had been done, when I asked her to confirm what I had asked her to do.

All was good until the latest issue of Consumer Reports magazine arrived in the mail last week. I expect no matter what I do I will continue to receive the magazine, which I have been charged for and no doubt will not be refunded. I could make a case out of it, but it's just $26 and that values my time pretty cheaply. I know there's a recession, but I will have to settle for airing my issue publicly in this blog post.

While there are still arguments over the legality of the government's warrantless wiretap program, apparently there's been a separate court case looking at whether or not a warrant is needed if the authorities are just listening to your touchtone dialing, rather than the contents of the call itself. The feds felt that if it was just the touchtone beeps, then they didn't need any warrant at all -- but a court has now shot that theory down. The feds tried to claim that such data was not "content" which would trigger the need for a warrant -- but considering that with today's touchtone IVR systems, such data could include passwords, PINs, social security numbers and other private data, it seems perfectly reasonable to suggest a warrant is necessary.

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goran72 writes "The comet is swinging around the Sun and approaching the Earth. The photogenic Lulin has a bright tail and an "anti-tail". At its closest approach in February, Comet Lulin is expected to brighten to naked-eye visibility, reaching a magnitude of six."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "A Forrester Research report has found that companies use Microsoft Word for word processing out of habit rather than necessity and are beginning to consider other alternatives as the Web has changed the way people create and share documents. The report, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: The Microsoft Word Love Story," by analyst Sheri McLeish, suggests that businesses may still be using Word because it is familiar to users or because they have a legacy investment in the application, not because it is the best option." Microsoft surely knows that some other options are creeping slowly into the view of even the most Word-centric users, though. User I dream about smoking writes "Microsoft is testing new capabilities for Office Live Workspace, its online adjunct to Microsoft Office, that will make it a closer rival to online application suites such as Google Docs. Microsoft will start beta testing an updated version of Live Workspace later this year that allows users to create and edit new documents online."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Guilherme used Arduino, Braun hair removal device, XBee, servo, and casters to bring us - ratb0t!

One day my mother told me she had one hair-removal thing broken (Braun Silk Epil brand ), and she would bring it to me.
Of course I accepted, and I confess, I never tried to fix it :)

This made me think a lot on how could I twist it and use it to give life to a robot.

The most dificult part was to transform the front blades onto a wheel, I did it using pieces of bike air-chamber, rubber and hot glue.
I like the final result and works quite well!

Shame on me because I didn´t documented the building proccess.. I will try not to repeat it :)

If you have some interesting mechanical broken items I accept them :)

Next up he intends to make this nervous remote-controlled bot autonomous (thankfully, actual hair removal abilities have been removed) - ratb0t [via Hacked Gadgets]

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"Walleye" is an interactive light installation that can generate large-scale light patterns based on the movements of visitors in a space. The project is built with an array of phototransistors and incandescent bulbs spaced on a 10 foot grid where the bulbs face the transistors on a 1 to 1 mapping. The project is currently on display at the Beall Center for Art and Technology at UC Irvine.

Walleye

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Here's an interesting alternative design for a skateboard by Loren Kulesus. With this much space between wheels, it should make for some interesting shock absorption when doing tricks.

via Neatorama

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Hal Roberts writes,

I recently stumbled into a site where three chinese circumvention tools (dynaweb, gpass, firephoenix) are now publishing aggregate data and offering to sell individual data about the web browsing histories of their users. These tools together represent a big majority of the Chinese circumvention tool market, with a few million users in between them.

It's s pretty shocking finding merely that they are storing the data at all, let alone publishing and selling it. These tools are acting as virtual ISPs for their users. Selling the browsing histories of those users is like an ISP selling the browsing histories of its users, which is a big step beyond what companies like NebuAd and Phorm were / are trying to do. NebuAd and Phorm are at least adding a variety of pseudonymity and privacy layers to their tracking, whereas these tools are evidently directly storing (and selling) the full, individually identifiable browsing histories of their users. And the data about circumventing users is much more sensitive for obvious reasons than the data about most ISP users.

Popular Chinese Filtering Circumvention Tools DynaWeb FreeGate, GPass, and FirePhoenix Sell User Data (Thanks, Dan!)

It appears that one of the big stories over the weekend was some research that apparently explained the carbon footprint of a Google search. Basically, each search is the same as boiling a cup of tea. Of course, what's left out of the article is the fact that this is rather meaningless unless compared to what the alternatives are -- and whether or not those searches also end up increasing or decreasing carbon footprints in other ways. So, if by doing searches on Google, I don't need to drive all over town to find information or buy something -- then that would be a net positive. If a Google search helps me gain additional information that later lets me decrease my carbon footprint, that's also a net positive. Alternatively, doing Google searches could also increase my carbon footprint by making me do something else -- but looking at just the carbon footprint alone seems a bit meaningless. Furthermore, this seems to be taking a (mostly) fixed cost and assuming it's a marginal cost, which leads to some dangerous thinking. Yes, if fewer people did searches, Google wouldn't need so many computers, but not doing a search isn't going to suddenly save on the carbon footprint.

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ChazeFroy writes "The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month. If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months' time. Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of unleaded petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Even at $200,000 per automobile, they have already received 40 orders."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SparkFun has a really interesting article about what a prototype means. The article includes a lot of interesting information on the development cycle that started SparkFun Electronics and the progression of the BlueSMiRF module.

Clearing out various boxes here at SparkFun Electronics, we come across piles of old prototypes. You may ask, what's a prototype? It's a design that we, the engineers, screwed up. May we bestow upon you a few rules to laying out a PCB.

More about Sparkfun's article "What a 'prototype' means"

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Roboduino is an Arduino compatible micro controller that has some extra features that make it great for anyone making robots. I really like the power buses along side the pwm and analog pins so you can easily plug in a standard servo.

The Roboduino is a Freeduino (Arduino software compatible) microcontroller board designed for robotics. All of its connections have neighboring power buses into which servos and sensors can easily be plugged. Additional headers for power and serial communication are also provided. The kits come with the surface mount parts pre-soldered. Skill level: Beginner to intermediate.

More about the Roboduino

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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Rambus has had a ton of up and downs with its strategy of gathering patents, making sure industry chip standards are built around its patents and then demanding everyone pay up huge fees. There's been a back and forth over the questions concerning its questionable activities, but it had actually won the last few rounds. But, you can't keep reality down too long. Yet another judge has smacked down Rambus calling the company's actions "obstructive at best, misleading at worst," and saying that its patents were unenforceable. Rambus, of course, will appeal, so this is far from over.

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Goldenrod Foundation has created this nifty animated map to show how migratory birds use Plymouth Beach in Massachusetts.

Check out their interactive map showing the migratory path of some of the birds that pass through Plymouth. It is fairly amazing to see that the birds seem to fly to specific regions and towns in far flung locations. The birds then return to Plymouth after incredibly challenging flights, and may recharge before heading on to their destination, or may stay for their breeding cycle. Their resources page has lots of information and check out their Projects and grants pages as well.

How can you gather data from live wild animals who weigh less than a pound and travel tens of thousands of miles? How can that data be visualized so other people can understand? Does your community share birds with other parts of the world? What else do you share with those parts of the world? Have you got techniques for creating stunning wildlife photography? Share your ideas in the comments, and contribute your photos and video to the Make Flickr pool.

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"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/i3FTaGwfXPM&hl=en&fs=1&en&fs=1&rel=0&fmt=18
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It's a sad time for those of you who appreciate the high-tech of yesteryear. QRS has decided to stop manufacturing player piano rolls. It's actually amazing that they were still making them up until early 2009. Luckily for us there will always be plenty available on ebay.

The halt in production comes 108 years after the company was founded in Chicago, and 42 years since it moved to Buffalo. Rolls used in player pianos reached their peak in popularity in the early 20th century, when a roll of paper was able to reproduce music through perforations signifying notes played on the piano.

More about QRS halts production of player piano rolls

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This year, for the annual gadget Bacchanal known as CES (the Consumer Electronics Show), we did something a little different -- we took a MAKEcation! From the sidelines, we covered a few things that weren't being covered, and some things through a uniquely MAKE lens. Here's our wrap-up. If you saw tech, at the actual show, or via online coverage, that you got particularly jazzed about, head to comments and share some of your enthusiasm.

alt.CES - DIY full auto book scanner

This is just what I was hoping someone had built! Totally awesome. Now it just needs to add OCR and text-to-speech to convert to MP3s that you can listen to. Thanks to woyzeck in the comments for the link.

alt.CES - Scan books into audio files

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.

alt.CES - Mattel Mindflex

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

alt.CES - "Google makes an open source hardware router"...

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

alt.CES - Songsmith

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

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

alt.CES - Sony Vaio P dissected

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.

alt.CES - green "in" at CES

The Pharos Lens: one "green nutrition label" project Companies at CES may be starting to equate being green with making green...

alt.CES - Electro-Harmonix Voice Box

I've often considered Electro-Harmonix the coolest mainstream manufacturer of effects pedals and this new product is further proof. The Voice Box is both a vocoder and harmonizer unit with mic and instrument inputs. Along with built in reverb, tone control, and phantom power this unit provides "gender" changing options...

alt.CES - DIY 3D scanners roundup

Really like the new 3D desktop scanner by RealView. They have 3 models available. Unfortunately there isn't any word on price, but I am guessing they aren't cheap.

Read full story

alt.CES - Brainwave scanner toys

Toy trains 'Star Wars' fans to use The Force...

alt.CES - WowWee at CES

Amongst this year's toybots (e.g. Joebot -- think: male analog to the Femisapien and Roborover -- successor to the Tri-Bot), the Spybot looks interesting, a leaner, meaning (next gen?) version of the Rovio. And it's only $170. It doesn't appear to use TrueTrack nav. Let's hope the light is brighter and the camera is better than the Rovio.

Strange among this year's offerings is the Cinemin, a family of palm-top video projectors using TI's DLP technology. They're designed to plug into iPods, phones, and other media devices, to project their content. Will the next Robosapien be able to project Princess Leia's cries for help? The Cinemins will retail for between $300 and $400.

alt.CES - BUGLab modules

Bug Labs announced five new BUGmodules... Each BUGmodule represents a specific gadget function (e.g. a camera, a keyboard, a video output, etc.) that can be snapped to the BUGbase, a programmable Linux-based mini-computer with four available BUGmodule slots.

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bigearcow writes "ASCII art is nothing new, but this site takes it one step further by allowing you to embed another data file within the image. The resulting ASCII art remains printable (i.e. no special unicode symbols) — this means you can print the image out, hang it on your wall, and have it look like an innocent ASCII art when it's hiding a secret document of your choice." You'll need a small (200x200 pixel max) base image from which the ASCII art will be built.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Step back a bit from your computer and see if this dog's snout doesn't appear to be otherworldly.

Cool, huh? (Thanks, Claire!)

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

Justin Watt sez, "the latest cover of the Princess Bride DVD has an amazing ambigram." Indeed it does -- a suitably awesome cover for one of the finest movies ever made.

Do you know what an ambigram is?, Princess Bride DVD (Thanks, Justin!)

RobGoldsmith writes "Reaction Engines have designed a 'reusable spaceplane' to provide inexpensive and reliable access to space. The Star Wars-looking 'Skylon' reusable spaceplane has already been designed and the team are well into engine testing. They have taken some time out from building spaceships to talk about their background, their goals, and their recent engine tests. This article shows new images of their STERN Engine, an experimental rocket motor which explores the flow in Expansion Deflection (ED) nozzles. They also discuss their Sabre air-breathing engine technology. View the Skylon Spaceplane concept, The STERN Engine and much more in this in-depth interview with the team."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nixon's "Sunny Side Up" tees have a trompe l'oeil effect that will proudly declare your allegiance to unfertilized dinosaur ova to all and sundry. Plus, no one will be able to tell if you get egg on your shirt.

SUNNY SIDE UP (via Geisha Asobi)

A photographer who spent his whole life photographing and painting around his home neighbourhood of Elephant and Castle in London was arrested under anti-terror laws and jailed, his DNA and fingerprints taken. He was released after five hours, once his Member of Parliament intervened. Under current policies, his DNA will remain on file forever -- though the EU has ordered Britain to cease this practice.

With a studio near the 1960s shopping centre at the heart of this area in south London, he is a familiar figure and is regularly seen snapping and sketching the people and buildings around his home – currently the site of Europe's largest regeneration project. But to the police officers who arrested him last week his photographing of the old HMSO print works close to the local police station posed an unacceptable security risk.

"The car skidded to a halt like something out of Starsky & Hutch and this officer jumped out very dramatically and said 'what are you doing?' I told him I was photographing the building and he said he was going to search me under the Anti-Terrorism Act," he recalled.

Photographers criminalised as police 'abuse' anti-terror laws (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Julie Blackmon's series of luscious pigment ink prints, entitled "Domestic Vacations," are comic and antic photos of a home in glorious chaos. They're apparently inspired by the 17th century Dutch painter Jan Steen. As Nag on the Lake notes, "The Dutch proverb 'a Jan Steen household' originated in the 17th century and is used today to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings. The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, helped inspire this body of work."

Domestic Vacations (Thanks, Marilyn!)

freemywrld writes "According to the article on Ars Technica, Microsoft, Symantec and 20 other companies are being sued over patents covering 'systems for governing application and data permissions, as well as ensuring application integrity.' The patents were granted in the 90's to the Information Protection and Authentication of Texas (IPAT). From the article: 'A response from any of the defendants is still forthcoming, and it is unclear whether the authentication and permissions systems that IPAT's patent describes are precluded by prior art. Even if IPAT has a leg to stand on in court, however, it certainly didn't take the easy route to recovering any damages by suing 22 companies.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Most everyone I know loves a good inside joke. You know, the kind that makes fun of some stereotypical characteristic of some subset of human beings, yet applauds the lifestyle at the same time. I am no exception to this rule and have thoroughly enjoyed laughing at myself while reading Stuff White People Like.

I’ve recently discovered that I can enjoy the insider jokes of an even smaller subset of humanity, journalists. Journalists have a penchant for smugness, really reveling in the usage of large, unpronounceable words, and highlighting the great breadth of knowledge that is crammed into every square inch of their do-good, I'm-an-outsider mentality. I know this because I'm one of the often snide guilty parties.

Having previously worked in a newspaper newsroom for almost a decade, I especially take delight in the entries that editors Christopher Ortiz and David Young have posted about coffee, press passes, and free food. Here’s a snippet about the fact that journalists like to date other journalists:

Journalists like dating each other because only fellow journalists understand the phrase: “Not tonight dear, I’m on deadline.”

Attempts to date people outside of the newsroom who cannot name gubernatorial candidates, have a limited vocabulary and who don’t know who Hunter S. Thompson is will only lead to a return to dating journalists.

Bruce has warned me that this may all be a little too obscure for some people to see the humor in, but I have high hopes for people’s ability to enjoy making fun of reporters.

--Shawn

Stuff Journalists Like

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

We've covered creating a hackintosh PC and putting OS X on the Asus Eee before. Making OS X work on a PC usually involves downloading a patched version of the OS X installer and running a patched kernel. It works, but the potential exists that you'll run into problems with Software Update.

This hack is a bit different. Instead of hacking the kernel, you use a bootloader called BOOT-132. It basically runs before anything else starts up and, with a few kernel extensions, it makes the system resemble the boot process of a stock Mac to the retail, unmodified Apple kernel. This means you can install OS X on your Eee with the Leopard disks you own, without modification, and without downloading a big ISO off bittorrent. It also means you can run Software Update without worry, since you are using a legit, unmodified OS X kernel.

EEEMac Journey has the full step-by-step instructions for making this all work. You have to boot off of the boot-132 CD a few times during the install process, but once you're done, the machine will be set up to boot straight from the internal disk. I'm not sure if it'll work, but there's a good chance this process will work with other netbooks and Intel-based PCs with supported hardware.

EEE Boot: Installing OSX on an EEE PC 901 or 1000 with an original Apple Install Disk

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Our friends over at Willoughby and Baltic are hosting the Boston Arduino Users Group on January 15th, 2009 from 7- 9pm. If you are in the Boston area, you really should stop by and check it out. This is a great opportunity to meet other Arduino enthusiasts, solder something up, or just see what others are making with this amazing little micro-controller.

The Boston Arduino Users Group returns to Willoughby and Baltic on January 15th. Bring your boards and hop on over for a lively discussion about what is new on the Arduino front. Meredith will be giving a demo on how to hook up your Arduino to run a small unipolar stepper motor, and we'll have one of Jimmie's "Open Heart" kits for you to review. We've also got some soldering irons to use if you want to put something together on the spot. Arduino people unite!

More about the Boston Arduino Users Group at Willoughby and Baltic [Willoughby and Baltic]

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From the MAKE: Flickr pool

• Arduino shirt!
• Analog Computer Bouncing Ball
• Aged resistor macro

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One of the most fun gigs I have right now (next to getting to be a guest blogger on BB!) is working with the good people at Coverleaf, who produce digital editions of magazines. As part of my role there I get to read many magazine articles that I might not otherwise take the time to seek out, like this fascinating piece from the latest issue of Discover about a controversial archaeologist who says he's discovered massive ancient pyramids buried in some Bosnian hills. The image above is of one of these pyramid-shaped hills outside the small city of Visoko.

Pyramid Scheme by John Bohannon has a clearly skeptical take on Sam Osmanagich's bold claims that he has discovered the first-ever ancient pyramid in Europe and the largest valley of pyramids in existence. But Osmanagich is portrayed as a sort of national hero in Bosnia, and has apparently secured a great deal of government financing for his pyramid excavation project. Bohannon repeatedly tries to interview Osmanagich, including about his published claims of supernatural phenomena associated with the pyramids, but never is able to really pin him down. Osmanagich has been pursuing his excavation project and visions of national archaeological parks for several years, and it sounds like he has a significant following in Bosnia, but this is the first I had ever heard of any of this.

One crucial question seems to be whether flat plates of rock found at the dig site are handmade evidence of past civilizations or simply the natural remains of a 7-million-year-old lake bed. Wikipedia's not buying it, and frankly it all sounds pretty sketchy to me too. But clearly Osmanagich has convinced a lot of people that there's something to his pyramid theory.

There's some interesting clips on YouTube, like Osmanagich reflecting on the project, an enthusiastic ABC news story from 2007, what looks like a pretty large festival celebrating the start of last year's archaeological season at Visoko, and even a rap video of the "Bosnian Pyramid Community on the road."

The discussions I've read online about this seem to have fairly equal amounts of pyramid-believers and skeptics. I've been very impressed at the expertise that crops up in the comments section here, so I'm betting there are Boingers out there who can help me sort this one out. Is Osmanagich a rogue archaeologist who's seen a few too many Indiana Jones movies, or he is on to something with these pointy hills?

Pyramid Scheme

--Bruce

(Disclosure: I work on Coverleaf, the service that provides the digital edition of Discover and many other magazines.)

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

theodp writes "Last June, Google rolled out a new favicon, the small branding icon that graces your URL bar when you visit Google. Which, as it turned out, bore a striking similarity to Garth Brooks' Circle-G logo. Well, Google went back to the drawing board and has come back with a new favicon, which it says was inspired by — not copied from, mind you — its users' submitted ideas. Some are also seeing inspiration elsewhere for the new favicon, which consists of white 'g' on a background of four color swatches. Take the AVG antivirus icon, for instance. Or everybody's favorite memory toy, Simon. Or — in perhaps the unkindest cut of all — the four-color Microsoft Windows logo, shown here with a superimposed white '7'. Anything else come to mind?" What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The latest addition to WowWee's FlyTech line is the Lightstar, a simple, inexpensive flying blade (retailing for $20). They come in three different colors/infrared channels, so you can fly and remote-control three fliers at the same time.

WowWee Lightstar

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