Late last year, Psion kicked off an attempt to reclaim the "netBook" trademark the company had largely abandoned years earlier, now that it was suddenly popular for reasons that had nothing to do with Psion's old discontinued netBook product. After making a big stink about it, both Dell and Intel moved to have Psion's trademark cancelled as abandoned. However, Psion is fighting back, not just with a response to the request to cancel, but with a lawsuit against Intel on a number of different fronts. Psion is claiming unfair business practices and also challenging Intel for "cybersquatting" on the netbook.com domain name. Of course, given that Psion was selling its product long before Intel had the name, you have to wonder how that's cybersquatting? Shouldn't Psion have tried to acquire the name back when it actually mattered? In the end, it seems like Psion is spending an awful lot of money to try to get the goodwill put into the "netbook" name by others over the past year and a half. It's a pretty obvious abuse of trademark law that hopefully a court will slap down.

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Jammie Thomas, the defendant in Duluth, Minnesota, RIAA case Capitol Records v. Thomas, has served her expert witness's report. The 30-page document (PDF), prepared by Prof. Yongdae Kim of the Computer Science Department of the University of Minnesota, attacks the reports and testimony of Prof. Doug Jacobson, the RIAA's expert, and the work of the RIAA's investigator, Safenet (formerly known as MediaSentry). Among other things, Dr. Kim termed MediaSentry's methods 'highly suspect,' debunked Dr. Jacobson's 'the internet is like a post office' analogy, explained in detail how FastTrack works, explored a sampling of the types of attacks to which the defendant's computer may have been subjected, accused Jacobson of making 'numerous misstatements,' and concluded that 'there is not one but numerous possible explanations for the evidence presented during this trial. Throughout the report I demonstrate possibilities not considered by the plaintiff's expert witness in his evaluation of the evidence...' Additionally, he concluded, 'MediaSentry has a strong record of mistakes when claiming that particular IP addresses were the origins of copyright infringement. Their lack of transparency, lack of external review, and evidence of inadequate error checking procedures [put] into question the authenticity and validity of the log files and screenshots they produced.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Archeologists in Siberia have found several elongated skulls in the forest. They're from the 4th century A.D.

The most likely explanation was that ancient communities deliberately deformed the skulls of infants, possibly with the intention of increasing their mental abilities.

Strange Elongated Skulls Discovered

A few folks have been writing in about the latest in a long line of lawsuits against the RIAA, this one focusing on how its entire lawsuit strategy has been a legal sham. This particular lawsuit isn't really all that different than some of the previous lawsuits against the RIAA, and unfortunately, judges haven't been all that accommodating to such lawsuits, so I'm not really expecting it to go very far. However, within the lawsuit, there is a pretty good explanation of why the RIAA and the major record labels have been conducting this braindead, short-sighted and self-defeating legal campaign all along. It's had nothing to do with "educating the public" or "protecting artists' rights" as representatives have claimed in the past. No, it's all been about one single thing: protecting a monopoly on distribution and channel relationships.

In the old business model, the record labels made their money because they had near total control over the production of content, the distribution of content, and all channel relationships with retailers. The internet and new digital technologies broke all of that down. It made it easier for anyone to produce content, distribute content or even build channel relationships themselves. What the record labels got upset about wasn't "file sharing" per se -- but the fact that file sharing went around all of their channel relationships and effectively killed the one major scarcity they controlled.

So, don't believe the entertainment industry lawyers who laughably claim that the RIAA's legal maneuvering has nothing to do with business models. It's always been about business models. The lawsuits were just a way to try to stuff the genie back in the bottle, and prevent these alternative channels and means of distribution and promotion from seeing the light of day.

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Orange Crate Art's Michael Leddy spotted this funny ironic list of "Ways To Be Cool."

darthcamaro and several other readers have noted that the Linux Foundation has bought Linux.com from Sourceforge Inc. (Slashdot's corporate parent). The Linux Foundation (employer of Linus Torvalds) will take over the editorial and community stewardship for the site; Sourceforge will continue to supply advertising on it. "[Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim] Zemlin says the Linux Foundation wants to build a collaborative forum where Linux users can share ideas and get information on the Linux operating system. A beta of the site will be released in the next few months. ... Linux.com is being redesigned as a central source for Linux software, documentation and answers regardless of platforms, including server, desktop/netbook, mobile and embedded areas." What do you think should be on Linux.com?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Fractional Horsepower" is a very powerful idea. It says that sometimes you can make a new product by taking an old product and scaling it down.

The originator of the concept, in my experience (he may have borrowed it from someone else) is Steve Jobs, who described the Apple II as a fractional horsepower computer. In those days computers were big, Jobs believed and many of us agreed that a lot could be gained from taking the big idea and making it small.

If you look at the history of computers and publishing (the two things I care most about, professionally) you can see that the trend is going, inexorably, that way. Things keep getting smaller, and every time they do, huge power is unleashed. Maybe it's like nuclear fission, there's this huge power holding the nucleus of an atom together, making all those protons stick together, then it's unleashed, boom (another Jobsism) a big explosion.

We like netbooks because they're smaller than laptops. We like iPods because they do what stereos do but fit in a pocket.

I wrote, many times about Fractional Horsepower HTTP Servers, and today they're a reality. Every device that can be configured through a browser has a little HTTP server in it. Each of them has a single user, they sit idling most of the time waiting for you to do something. My printer has one, my receiver has one. Look around, they're everywhere.

The other day I wrote a piece called A billion Twitters. In this environment a lot of people just skim, and I think they didn't read it because it seemed to be saying that there would be billions of Twitter users. I don't doubt this, but that's not what the piece was saying.

I am pretty sure the same logic that led us to personal computers will lead us, inevitably, to personal Twitters. Yes, there are huge advantages to scaling up, not down -- and that was true in the earlier shifts too. We loved our Apple IIs, but banks and airlines needed massive computer resources to do book-keeping and reservations. And we love our search engines, and web apps, all of which are made possible by scaling up.

As a thought exercise, I tried to imagine places I would put a Twitter if I had the power to do so. I would certainly put one here on my website, to enable Twitter-like micro-publishing among members of the community, in a sense to define what it means to be a member of this community. I don't imagine either the blog or the comments going away, in fact I am sure they would be enhanced by our own Twitter. We could try to organize a community on the main Twitter, but the comments that are relevant to this community would scroll off far too fast.

I suggested to Craig Newmark that he consider adding Twitter-like functionality to Craig's List. He asked what that would mean. I said I didn't know. It was part of the thought exercise. I posed the question on Twitter this morning and got back a huge number of comments. I wonder if the same will happen here? We'll see.

It's hard to imagine that Twitter is so unlike everything that came before that it won't go both ways as every other publishing technology has -- both up and down. I'd like to try putting a Twitter on my netbook and see what happens. Probably nothing, but you never know! That's how creativity works, play what-if and relax all the constraints and challenge your mind to make sense of it. Most things never do make sense, but every so often there's a winner. RSS was such a thing, as were blogs and podcasts. What if there were an XML rendering of this blog? What if everyone had their own website? What if radio didn't require air waves? What if everyone could have their own Twitter?

Dutch design firm Platform 21 has a new initiative to encourage fixing stuff instead of dumping it. It's a fine complement to Mister Jalopy's Maker's Bill of Rights. GOOD's Andrew Price has the details on Platform 21's Repair Manifesto.

**$tarDu$t** recommends a Washington Post Security Fix blog post dissecting the Tigger.A trojan, which has been keeping a low profile while exploiting the MS08-66 vulnerability to steal data quietly from online stock brokerages and their customers. An estimated quarter million victims have been infected. The trojan uses a key code to extract its rootkit on host systems that is almost identical to the key used by the Srizbi botnet. The rootkit loads even in Safe Mode. "Among the unusually short list of institutions specifically targeted by Tigger are E-Trade, ING Direct ShareBuilder, Vanguard, Options XPress, TD Ameritrade, and Scottrade. ... Tigger removes a long list of other malicious software titles, including the malware most commonly associated with Antivirus 2009 and other rogue security software titles... this is most likely done because the in-your-face 'hey, your-computer-is-infected-go-buy-our-software!' type alerts generated by such programs just might... lead to all invaders getting booted from the host PC."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yahoo got into a lot of PR trouble (and some Congressional scrutiny) a few years back for its cooperation with the Chinese government in handing over info on some users. Folks at Yahoo have certainly suggested in the past that this was a mistake on the company's part, and it looks like it's acting differently this time around... in Belgium. There, a court has fined Yahoo for failing to hand over information on a user accused of illegal activities. Yahoo's response is that, as a US company, all such requests should go through the US. This makes a lot of sense for a variety of reasons (otherwise, Yahoo would be responding to requests from tons of different countries), but many may cynically point out that Belgium is a much smaller market to "fight" than China. On the whole, though, it seems that Yahoo is making the right move. If the data was being hosted in the US, then it only seems reasonable to suggest that the data is under US jurisdiction, not Belgium's.

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The weekly Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those slightly off to the side). Each Tuesday, we look at retro-tech, "lost" technology, and the make-do, improvised "street tech" of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. "Lost Knowledge" is also the theme of MAKE Volume 17 (due on newsstands March 10, 2009)

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In this week's column, we look at the Antikythera mechanism, the over 2,000 year old "computer" found off the coast of a Greek island at the turn on the 20th century. In Volume 17 of MAKE, it is extraordinarily fitting that Bruce Sterling should write about this computer in his "Hands On" column. It was Bruce, and fellow cyberpunk sci-fi godfather William Gibson, who fully pressurized the boilers on the steampunk movement with the publication of their 1990 book The Difference Engine. It provided the conceptual yeast which gave rise to the steampunk literary genre, and by extension, the steampunk makers movement. The idea was this: What would have happened to the future if British mathematician Charles Babbage had been successful in building his analytical engine, and the computer revolution had arrived a hundred years earlier.

So, now imagine if the Antikythera Device had been a common appliance of the time around 100 B.C. (assuming that it wasn't), and the computer revolution had arrived several thousand years earlier. Here's the beginning of Bruce's column:

Hands On: The Kosmos in a Box

Bruce Sterling

We call it the Antikythera Device, or sometimes "the world's oldest computer." That's not what the machine's maker called his box. He would never have wanted it lost in a Roman shipwreck, near the obscure, rocky island of Antikythera.

If that maker saw his high-tech gizmo now, boy, what a comedown. It sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean under a tonnage of pottery, statues, and furniture. It was smashed to pieces. Its stout wooden frame flaked away like wet paper. It was also severely corroded. Fossil dinosaurs have been found in better shape.

Once, there was room to claim that modern ideas about this machine's complex functions might be far-fetched. However, in 2005 the machine's fragments were digitally CAT-scanned, revealing that the Greek maker carved specific instructions inside.
Those scales and labels eliminate any doubt: we've got a crank-driven, precisely geared bronze orrery.

The Antikythera Device predicts the position of the sun and the phases of the moon, and it probably tracks all five visible planets. It also predicts eclipses, and, as a final throw-in bloatware feature, it will tell you whenever the Greek Olympic games occur. All this in a single mechanism from 85 B.C., or very near it.

To understand the huge extent of the lost knowledge here, we need to grasp what this lost object once meant -- not to us who found it, because for us it's mind-blowing -- but within the context of its own time and place. All we've got is a few hints. We'll have to blue-sky it a little.

Bruce goes on to weave a fun speculative tale of a student from the Rhodes Academy who's built this device as his graduate project. It's a "pocket universe from a university," it encodes the students education, the box *is* "his working diploma, a physical proof of the
ordeal he had been through."

Read the rest of the piece in MAKE Volume 17. If you're already a subscriber, but haven't received your issue yet, you can read the Digital Edition here.

Wikipedia has an excellent entry on the Device. Here's an excerpt, on the function of the mechanism:

Function

The device is remarkable for the level of miniaturization and for the complexity of its parts, which is comparable to that of 18th century clocks. It has over 30 gears, although Michael Wright (see below) has suggested as many as 72 gears, with teeth formed through equilateral triangles. When a date was entered via a crank (now lost), the mechanism calculated the position of the Sun, Moon, or other astronomical information such as the location of other planets. Since the purpose was to position astronomical bodies with respect to the celestial sphere, with reference to the observer's position on the surface of the earth, the device was based on the geocentric model.^[10]

The mechanism has three main dials, one on the front, and two on the back. The front dial has two concentric scales. The outer ring is marked off with the days of the 365-day Egyptian calendar, or the Sothic year, based on the Sothic cycle. Inside this, there is a second dial marked with the Greek signs of the Zodiac and divided into degrees. The calendar dial can be moved to compensate for the effect of the extra quarter day in the year (there are 365.2422 days per year) by turning the scale backwards one day every four years. Note that the Julian calendar, the first calendar of the region to contain leap years, was not introduced until about 46 BC, up to a century after the device was said to have been built (and the leap year was implemented with errors until the early first century).

The front dial probably carried at least three hands, one showing the date, and two others showing the positions of the Sun and the Moon. The Moon indicator is adjusted to show the first anomaly of the Moon's orbit. It is reasonable to suppose the Sun indicator had a similar adjustment, but any gearing for this mechanism (if it existed) has been lost. The front dial also includes a second mechanism with a spherical model of the Moon that displays the lunar phase.

There is reference in the inscriptions for the planets Mars and Venus, and it would have certainly been within the capabilities of the maker of this mechanism to include gearing to show their positions. There is some speculation that the mechanism may have had indicators for all the five planets known to the Greeks. None of the gearing for such planetary mechanisms survives, except for one gear otherwise unaccounted for.

Finally, the front dial includes a parapegma, a precursor to the modern day Almanac, which was used to mark the rising and setting of specific stars. Each star is thought to be identified by Greek characters which cross reference details inscribed on the mechanism.

The upper back dial is in the form of a spiral, with 47 divisions per turn, displaying the 235 months of the 19 year Metonic cycle. This cycle is important in fixing calendars.

The lower back dial is also in the form of a spiral, with 225 divisions showing the Saros cycle; it also has a smaller subsidiary dial which displays the 54 year "Triple Saros" or "Exeligmos" cycle. (The Saros cycle, discovered by the Chaldeans, is a period of approximately 18 years 11 days 8 hours -- the length of time between occurrences of a particular eclipse.)

The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, with experts from Britain, Greece and the United States, detected in July 2008 the word "Olympia" on a bronze dial thought to display the 76 year Callippic cycle, as well as the names of other games in ancient Greece, and probably used to track dates of the ancient Olympic games. According to BBC news:

"The four sectors of the dial are inscribed with a year number and two Panhellenic Games: the 'crown' games of Isthmia, Olympia, Nemea, and Pythia; and two lesser games: Naa (held at Dodona) and a second game which has not yet been deciphered."

Decoding the Heavens: A 2,000-Year-Old Computer--and the Century-Long Search to Discover Its Secrets
I just got my review copy of this book and am very excited to read it. Here's the blurb from the book's companion site:

In 1900 a group of sponge divers blown off course in the Mediterranean discovered an Ancient Greek shipwreck dating from around 70 BC.

Lying unnoticed for months amongst their hard-won haul was what appeared to be a formless lump of corroded rock. It turned out to be the most stunning scientific artefact we have from antiquity. For more than a century this 'Antikythera mechanism' puzzled academics. It was ancient clockwork, unmatched in complexity for 1000 years - but who could have made it, and what was it for? Now, more than 2000 years after the device was lost at sea, scientists have pieced together its intricate workings and revealed its secrets.

In Decoding the Heavens, Jo Marchant tells the full story of the 100-year quest to understand this ancient computer. Along the way she unearths a diverse cast of remarkable characters - ranging from Archimedes to Jacques Cousteau - and explores the deep roots of modern technology not only in ancient Greece but in the Islamic world and medieval Europe too. At heart an epic adventure story, this is a book that challenges our assumptions about technology transfer over the ages while giving us fresh insights into history itself.

The site offers some brief tidbits from each chapter:

Chapter 7: Mechanic's Workshop

October comes and Wright arrives in Athens with his finished model, grimly triumphant as his competitors complete their imaging. On the day of his talk he demonstrates the workings of his device to a small but captivated audience. He turns the handle on the side like a magician and there's a hush as time passes before everyone's eyes, just a soft clicking sound as the Moon traces undulating circles through a miniature sky, cycling from black to silver as the golden Sun glides slowly round and the planets meander back and forth, their seemingly random paths guided by a hidden clockwork order. Wright sees three decades of his life passing as the heavenly cycles run their course, from the young curator who was once captivated by Price's work and wished it were his own, to the man he is now, standing here with the Antikythera mechanism finally recreated and working again for the first time in 2,000 years.

Chapter 8: The New Boys

There was silence. The surface images from Tom Malzbender's team had been stunning, but everyone knew that for the project to be a success they needed to see inside; they needed to see the internal workings. Andrew Ramsey tapped his computer keyboard to scroll down through the depth of the fragment. At first all they could see was a blur, but then a crackling sharp gearwheel emerged from the fuzz, as if being hauled up out of grey sand. It was better than any of them had dared hope. The letters 'ME' had been scratched into the side of the wheel. It was like a signal from the past, an 'I WOZ ERE' from 2,000 years ago. Suddenly, they felt a direct, almost physical conncection with this ancient machine, and with whoever had carved those letters so long ago. Then Tony Freeth started to laugh. 'Somebody email Mike and tell him we've found a gearwheel with his initials on!

For up-to-date news and research findings related to the Antikythera Device, check out the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project. For instance, they have a piece on a recent article in the journal Nature about new findings that suggest Corinth (or a Corinthian colony) as the possible place of origin of the Device:

The research team has also deciphered all the months on the Mechanism's 19-year calendar, revealing month names that are of Corinthian origin, probably from a Corinthian colony of the western Hellenic world - overturning the previous idea that the Mechanism was from the eastern part of the Mediterranean. For the first time we have direct evidence of its cultural origins.

Additional research has also transformed our understanding of the Mechanism's sophisticated eclipse prediction dials. These results have extended the previous work of the AMRP on the complex structure of the Mechanism's gears and dials and have added new and intriguing cultural and social dimensions.

More:

• Lost Knowledge: Village tech in West Papua, Indonesia
• Lost Knowledge: Neon lights
• Lost Knowledge: Reanimating Dead Media
• Lost Knowledge: Manual typewriters

From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

Buy your copy in the Maker Shed
Subscribe to MAKE
Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)

In Volume 17, MAKE goes really old school with the Lost Knowledge issue, featuring projects and articles covering the steampunk scene -- makers creating their own alternative Victorian world through modified computers, phones, cars, costumes, and other fantastic creations. Projects include an elegant Wimshurst Influence Machine (an electrostatic generator built entirely from Home Depot parts), a Florence Siphon coffee brewer, and a teacup-powered Stirling engine. This special section also covers watchmaking, letterpress printing, the early multimedia art of William Blake, and other wondrous and lost (or fading) pre-20th-century technologies.

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Michael Jantzen designed a house (using Google SketchUp) with nine-square feet of floor space. It has room for a lavatory, sink, heater, bed, chair, fold-down table, and storage. Where does the bed go? In the loft, which is part of the overhanging porch.

"I came up with the size by asking myself how what the absolute minimum amount of space would be needed for someone to live. I did a quick calculation in my head of the amount of space I took up while laying down and came up with nine square feet."

Nine Tiny Feet 3D model

igrigorik writes "The generality and simplicity of Google's Map-Reduce is what makes it such a powerful tool. However, what if instead of using proprietary protocols we could crowd-source the CPU power of millions of users online every day? Javascript is the most widely deployed language — every browser can run it — and we could use it to push the job to the client. Then, all we would need is a browser and an HTTP server to power our self-assembling supercomputer (proof of concept + code). Imagine if all it took to join a compute job was to open a URL."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've already expressed my concerns with the legal issues surrounding Google's book scanning settlement with various publishers and authors, but the news keeps getting worse. One of the few "good things" that many people pointed to in the settlement was that it would create something of a new "Ebook store" where you could purchase the digital versions of books. Except... not so much. Michael Scott points us to the news that you won't actually be able to purchase the books from that "bookstore." Instead, you'll only get to download a little bit at a time. You never get the full book at once, but bits and pieces -- while the rest remains on Google's servers. Thus... should Google ever change the program, you would lose access to what you had "bought." And, this isn't just an academic suggestion. Just three years ago, when Google launched its video hosting service, it included a similar DRM, which it ended up discontinuing. So, the legal details are troubling, and the technical details are troubling. What's actually good about Google's book agreement again?

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Visual Studio Team System helps teams of every size collaborate better for faster app development. Learn More at microsoft.com/defyallchallenges/team

An anonymous reader writes "Companies using software other than Microsoft's are unable to bid at many Portuguese public tenders. This is due to the use of Silverlight 2.0 technology by the company, Vortal, contracted to build the e-procurement portal. This situation has triggered a complaint to the European Commission by the Portuguese Open Source Business Association; the case is unofficially known in Portugal as 'Vortalgate.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Two fish with human-looking "faces" apparently live in pond behind a home in Chongju, South Korea. They are reportedly hybrids of a carp and a tangerine fish. Weird Asia News has more info and a Korean TV news report:

The fish live in a pond behind the home of a 64-year old South Korean man and have been there since 1986, although they have never attracted such public attention before.

“My fish have been getting more and more human for the past couple of years,” said the owner of the unusual fish species.

"Strange Humanoid Carp Found in Pond"

I guess I really should salvage my old VCR. There are some useful components in there! (Via Why, That's Delightful!) Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

It's fun to watch this guy test out and then peel off this great zombie makeup from George Romero's Day of the Dead. Zombie make-up

Technorati Tags: zombies

After Warner Music got greedy and demanded money from YouTube that the company is under no legal obligation to pay (safe harbors, people), Google and YouTube demonstrated to Warner Music how little leverage the record label has by taking down all Warner Music videos. This is making plenty of Warner musicians quite angry with Warner Music for pissing off their fans and in some cases breaking the artists' own websites. So, rather than back down and admit that it overplayed its hand, Warner Music is pulling out the old school strategy it has used for years to win such arguments: trot out some well-known musician to whine about how it's just not fair that he's not getting the "respect" he deserves.

This time around, it's Neil Young, who has taken to his own website to claim that he and Warner Music aren't getting the proper respect from YouTube, and that YouTube needs to pay up to provide that proper respect. And what about all the musicians who Warner Music's policy is harming right now? What about all those musicians whose fans are pissed off that they can't see videos with the music they like? The problem isn't that YouTube isn't respecting Warner Music -- it has no legal obligation to do so. The problem is that folks like Neil Young and the execs at Warner Music don't respect their fans at all, and fail to realize they want to access their music through YouTube, and doing so provides those musicians with a great benefit in terms of better connecting with their fans and opening up new opportunities to create valuable relationships that will pay much more money in the long run.

In the meantime, when you look at the actual statement on Neil Young's site, it seems like a a pretty blatant copy of the NY Times. We're guessing he didn't pay the NY Times anything. So why isn't anyone demanding that Neil Young "respect" the NY Times?

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waderoush writes "If you thought Mosaic was the first graphical Web browser, think again. In their first major interview, three of the four Finnish software engineers behind Erwise — a point-and-click graphical Web browser for the X Window system — describe the creation of their program in 1991-1992, a full year before Marc Andreessen's Mosaic (which, of course, evolved into Netscape). Kim Nyberg, Kari Sydänmaanlakka, and Teemu Rantanen, with their fellow Helsinki University of Technology student Kati Borgers (nee Suominen), gave Erwise features such as text searching and the ability to load multiple Web pages that wouldn't be seen in other browsers until much later. The three engineers, who today work for the architectural software firm Tekla, say they never commercialized the project because there was no financing — Finland was in a deep recession at the time and lacked a strong venture capital or angel investing market. Otherwise, the Web revolution might have begun a year earlier."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Frostie dancing to Ray Charles' "Shake Your Tail Feather." I really do believe this bird is dancing! (via Dan Lyons)

This pink dolphin has been hanging around an estuary in Louisiana. From The Telegraph:

Regina Asmutis-Silvia, senior biologist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, said: "I have never seen a dolphin coloured in this way in all my career.

"It is a truly beautiful dolphin but people should be careful, as with any dolphins, to respect it - observe from a distance, limit their time watching, don't chase or harass it

"While this animal looks pink, it is an albino which you can notice in the pink eyes.

"Pink dolphin appears in US lake" (Thanks, Gabe "TuneUp" Adiv!)

Good idea, no? Making remotes easier to use

mtrachtenberg writes "Premier Election Solutions' (formerly Diebold) GEMS 1.18.19 election software audit logs don't record the deletion of ballots, don't always record correct dates, and can be deleted by the operator, either accidentally or intentionally. The California Secretary of State's office has just released a report about the situation (PDF) in the November 2008 election in Humboldt County, California (which we discussed at the time). Here's the California Secretary of State's links page on Diebold. The conclusion of the 13-page report reads: 'GEMS version 1.18.19 contains a serious software error that caused the omission of 197 ballots from the official results (which was subsequently corrected) in the November 4, 2008, General Election in Humboldt County. The potential for this error to corrupt election results is confined to jurisdictions that tally ballots using the GEMS Central Count Server. Key audit trail logs in GEMS version 1.18.19 do not record important operator interventions such as deletion of decks of ballots, assign inaccurate date and time stamps to events that are recorded, and can be deleted by the operator. The number of votes erroneously deleted from the election results reported by GEMS in this case greatly exceeds the maximum allowable error rate established by HAVA. In addition, each of the foregoing defects appears to violate the 1990 Voting System Standards to an extent that would have warranted failure of the GEMS version 1.18.19 system had they been detected and reported by the Independent Testing Authority that tested the system.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lots of folks in the newspaper business say that Howard Owens is a guy who really gets the online news business -- and recognizes the challenges and opportunities. I don't know much about him, but I hear such good things from people who I trust, that I have to admit that I'm perplexed by Owens' recent post where he defends GateHouse Media's lawsuit against the NY Times. As you may recall, GateHouse sued the NY Times for effectively aggregating local stories from GateHouse sites and putting them on its own page. These stories all included links back to the original, and didn't include the entire content, but did include the headline and the lede -- which most people (outside of newspaper people) consider to be perfectly reasonable fair use. The NY Times eventually settled in a way that seemed bad for everyone. Owens worked at GateHouse (and was quiet about the lawsuit at the time). He left soon after, and there was some talk that it may have been because he disagreed with the lawsuit -- but that appears to not be the case.

Instead, he has written this lengthy defense of the lawsuit. But rather than vindicate GateHouse, it seems to represent a lot of what's wrong in the online newspaper business these days. When someone who "gets it" like Howard Owens does, and then declares that "I don't know what more we could have done" after describing the various legal threats Gatehouse tossed up against the NY Times, it makes me shake my head.

What more could you have done? You could have competed more effectively. Owens complains about "substitute home pages," where the Boston.com was trying to take away GateHouse's readers. There's a pretty straightforward response to that: if that's all it takes to take away your community, you've failed your community. If the entire value of your site was in providing the headlines and ledes, and someone else copying those headlines and leads causes you to lose the community, you haven't been providing enough value to that community, and you deserve to lose it. Newspapers have neglected their biggest asset, their own communities, for way too long, and this is another example of that. If GateHouse provided a better service where the value went beyond the headline and the lede, there wouldn't be concerns about how such "copying" would take away from GateHouse.

As we've pointed out repeatedly, there are a bunch of sites out there that copy all our content. Not just the headlines and the ledes, but all of the content. Some are pure spam sites. Some are aggregation sites. Some are trying (and failing) to prove the point that we'd get upset if someone copied our stuff. But, that's not what happens -- because this site has much more than just the content. It has the community. It has the Insight Community, where we actually help the community make money. Some of our community members made five figures in 2008. What newspaper has done that for their community? Our community has great ongoing discussions all the time. These other sites can't replicate that. All they can do is end up sending us more traffic.

So, I'm sorry, but the idea that GateHouse Media couldn't do anything else is ridiculous. It's a sign of all that's wrong with online newspapers today. They don't look at all of the amazing things they can do. They just throw up their hands and wonder what they can do, beyond charging people or suing.

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If you're going to be in the Bay Area this Sunday, and want to be considered for a maker slot at this year's Bay Area Maker Faire (May 30-31, 2009), come by The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. The museum is right across the street from where O'Reilly's ETech Conference is being held, so if you're there, why not plan to pop over and show us something cool that you make or craft!

Calling All Makers - Auditions for Maker Faire 2009 to be held on Sunday, March 8

In preparation for this year's event, a team from MAKE magazine (www.makezine.com) will be scheduling 15-minute appointments at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, March 8th, from noon to 4pm, to preview, and meet with, potential makers, crafters and inventors from the area.

"We're looking for anyone who has something fun to share, something they've made with their hands," explains Dale Dougherty, Publisher & Editor of MAKE magazine. "It can be practical or impractical--it could be something simple like a creative costume or maybe some handmade jewelry. Or it could be something wild like a bike with ten wheels, or a dog-powered lawn mower. Whatever it is, the more creative and imaginative, the better!"

Audition Details:
When: Sunday, March 8th, 2009 (noon - 4pm)
Where: The Tech Museum of Innovation 201 South Market Street San Jose, CA 95113-2008 (408) 795.6225
Admission: FREE
Contact for Auditions and to schedule a 15-minute appointment: Sherry Huss, (707) 827-7074 or sherry@oreilly.com

For more information, see makerfaire.com for general information, and Call for Makers for more information on how to submit your entry form.

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Al writes "The first touch-screen flexible e-paper has been developed by a team from Arizona State University and E-Ink (the company that makes the technology for Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader). Jann Kaminski and colleagues at ASU's Flexible Display Center say the main challenge is that most touch-screen technologies do not respond well to being flexed. So they used an inductive screen, which relies on a magnetized styluses to induce a field in a sensing layer at the back of the display. The first adopters for the technology are likely to be the US Army. Watch a video of the device being tested."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PMA 2009: Pentax has released the X70 superzoom with 24x optical zoom. With a 26mm - 624mm (35mm equiv.) zoom range this superzoom camera sports a 12 MP sensor, 2.7 inch LCD and includes manual and auto features such as Image Stabilization, Auto Picture Mode, HD video recording and P/A/S/M exposure modes. In addition, it can deliver 11 fps of continuous shooting, and its fast Face Detection can detect up to 32 faces in 0.03 seconds.

Subscriber John Schuch writes:

Threads on the MAKE forums often touch on hall effect sensors for measuring current, position, speed, etc. I just got this link in an email this morning and think it's pretty cool. Gotta love free technical training.

This is a sponsored tutorial on Digikey, sponsored by Honeywell, and promoting Honeywell's line of magnetic sensors, but there's still good info here. And the narrator sounds vaguely like Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck, if Joe Buck were a deep geek.

Magnetic Sensors

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While some keep insisting that the government needs to step in, in a big way, to fix the financial crisis, Paul Kedrosky posits an interesting and worthwhile theory, as well: lots of folks within the industry are scrambling to fix things every day, and if we just gave them a chance they might get stuff done. He's not saying this is definitely happening, but he uses the Y2K crisis as an analogy. Many people were totally freaked out about it, insisting that there was no possible way all the problems could get fixed in time. But they did. They did because a lot of people worked really hard to get things done and solve most of the problems. And he's wondering if the same sort of thing is happening today with the financial markets:

I hear too many naive projections, too many scenarios constructed via extrapolating early failures forward and assuming the same thing can happen in the same way, so systemic collapse is ahead. While that is possible, and this time is different (tm), it's at least worth wondering what if the Y2K lesson matters more than we might have thought. Government aside, independent and fiercely survival-minded actors are doing what they can throughout the economy and the financial system to mitigate the risks they face from the current depression. Credit default swaps are being netted and torn up; banks are trying to unwind swaps and other derivatives. Some financial institutions are accidentally healing, at least a little, under the flood of savings pouring into them from petrified and security-seeking citizens. There are myriad other examples, but the point is that the bell has been rung, people are acting, and communication networks are afire -- and history says these are circumstances in which people can, by protecting themselves, surprise us all with the outcome.

It's definitely a point worth thinking about. We've been told over and over again that only the government can help us out of this mess, but people seem to think that the rest of the financial world is sitting around picking their noses as the world collapses -- and there's little reason to believe that's actually true. In fact, if you listen to this week's This American Life "Act 2" (starting about 45 minutes in) covers a couple of entrepreneurial guys who are doing their part: buying up "toxic" mortgages on their own and restructuring them -- and they're making decent money doing so. While even they're a bit skeptical about that on a larger scale, as Kedrosky noted, the same was true of the individuals working on solving the Y2K crisis as well.

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PMA 2009: Panasonic has today broadened the perspective of the Micro Four Thirds system with the announcement of the Lumix G Vario 7-14mm F4 ASPH ultra wide-angle zoom. This new lens takes full advantage of the short  back focus distance of Micro Four Thirds to reduce the size and weight dramatically compared to similar  lenses, to just 70mm x 83mm and a mere 300g. Two Aspherical elements and four Extraordinary Dispersion glass elements are used to reduce distortion and chromatic aberration, and a built-in petal-shaped lens hood protests against flare from stray light.

PMA 2009: Panasonic has today announced a new image-stabilized Micro Four Thirds superzoom lens to accompany the DMC-GH1 body. Designed specifically for video as well as photo use, the Lumix G Vario HD 14-140mm F4.0-5.8 ASPH Mega OIS incorporates a new silent focusing system which allows continuous AF during movie recording and a stepless aperture control. The 28-280mm equivalent focal length range is achieved in a body that is about 10% smaller and lighter than the company's previous equivalent for Four Thirds. Distortion and chromatic aberration are minimised using four aspherical and two Extraordinary Dispersion glass elements, and the aperture uses 7 rounded blades for smoothly blurred backgrounds.

PMA 2009: Five months after the launch of the Lumix DMC-G1 Micro Four Thirds camera, Panasonic has unveiled an HD version of the same in the shape of the Lumix DMC-GH1. The 12.1 megapixel camera’s Live MOS sensor can record up to 1080/24p or 720/60p high definition videos, with continuous AF and a built-in Dolby Digital Stereo Creator for quality sound recording. This is further supported by Panasonic’s designed-for-video Lumix G Vario HD 14-140mm lens, which is also announced today. The camera includes a new Face Recognition feature that remembers individual faces, and offers four different aspect ratios with the same angle of view using a system similar to that in the company's DMC-LX3 compact.

PMA 2009: We've been lucky enough to get a brief look at Panasonic's new HD video-capable DMC-GH1 Micro Four Thirds camera, and have put together a short hands-on report detailing the changes from the DMC-G1, and specifically how the camera's new video functionality is supported.

Miracle Jones writes "A recent memo from the 'Author's Guild' to the writers and publishers that it supposedly represents shows that only $45 million of the $125 million dollar settlement with Google will be paid to writers, and that the most a writer can receive for a book is $300. Many people speculate that Google's monopoly over all of out-of-copyright works will result in a brutal monopoly that will hurt both writers and readers, and that the 'Author's Guild' had no right to make the deal in the first place. How will it all shake down? Should writers be paid at all for their work? Will Google be any good at the publishing racket?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently on Offworld we took the first look at the latest from Minotaur China Shop creators Flashbang, with their underwater squid flagellator Blush (above), saw a community effort to bring classic Konami shooter Contra to LittleBigPlanet, and watched the first public video footage of WiiWare adventure Night Game, from the creator of freeware hit Knytt Stories. We also heard first details of a SXSW-related chiptune showcase, saw Spore open an API to developers and get a creature-builder university, danced to a fantastic Space Invaders mash-up music video, noted our favorite new LittleBigPlanet costumes, and saw the first synth for DIY handheld game kit Meggy Jr RGB. We also saw vacation snaps of Mario in rock-formation, coveted a Phoenix Wright coffee mug, saw how accurately a 1982 feature predicted the games of today, folded a new papercraft arcade, played a new literally and unabashedly linear RPG, mourned the loss of an initiative to bring Xbox Live functionality to the iPhone, and got the first details of an upcoming PopCap game that pits plants versus zombies.

Larry Lessig has keen analysis and a call to action on Rep John Conyers' plan to allow publishers to charge taxpayers for access to taxpayer-funded research:

The Huffington Post is running a piece about H.R. 801, the latest version of John Conyers' awful idea. The law would forbid entities like the NIH from requiring that recipients of government grants make the product of their research openly accessible. (The current practice requires articles be freely accessible after 12 months.) Instead, Conyers' proposal would require that after the American taxpayer has paid for the research, the American taxpayer must pay publishers to get access to the product of the research.

The first important word to emphasize in the last sentence is "publishers." For unlike the ordinary market for creative work, here, the author isn't paid for his work through the copyright system. It is the government (indirectly) paying for the research that the author (a scientist) creates. Scientists write articles as part of their job; other scientists peer-review those articles (usually for free); and journals then publish those articles without paying the author anything. Those journals, however, then charge libraries across the world an increasingly high rate to get access to the research in those journals. As the industry has become more concentrated, those rates have skyrocketed -- rising much faster than inflation.

The "open access movement" was born to create an alternative to this. Even if restrictive copyright was a necessary evil in the days of dead-tree-based publishing, it was still an evil. High costs restrict access. The business model of the scientist is to spread his or her knowledge as widely as possible. Open access journals, such as, for example, those created by the Public Library of Science, have adopted a different publishing model, to guarantee that all all research is freely accessible online (under the freest Creative Commons license) immediately, to anyone around the world. This guarantee of access, however, is not purchased by any compromise in academic standards. There is still a peer-review process. There is still even a paper-based publication.

John Conyers and Open Access

Rebecca Jeshke from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Most Americans know very little about how the law protects them from searches, seizures, and surveillance. EFF launched Surveillance Self-Defense today -- a practical, online how-to guide for protecting your private data against government spying. The guide includes tips on assessing the security risks to your personal computer files and communications, strategies for interacting with law enforcement, and articles on specific defensive technologies such as encryption that can help protect the privacy of your data."

Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) exists to answer two main questions: What can the government legally do to spy on your computer data and communications? And what can you legally do to protect yourself against such spying?

After an introductory discussion of how you should think about making security decisions — it's all about risk management — we'll be answering those two questions for three types of data:

First, we're going to talk about the threat to the data stored on your computer posed by searches and seizures by law enforcement, as well as subpoenas demanding your records.

Second, we're going to talk about the threat to your data on the wire — that is, your data as it's being transmitted — posed by wiretapping and other real-time surveillance of your telephone and Internet communications by law enforcement.

Third, we're going to describe the information about you that is stored by third parties like your phone company and your Internet service provider, and how law enforcement officials can get it.

In each of these three sections, we're going to give you practical advice about how to protect your private data against law enforcement agents.

The SSD Project (Thanks, Rebecca!)

Fredrik Neij, one of the PirateBay admins currently on trial in Stockholm, admitted that he was hupping his servers from the courtroom while the lawyers were making closing arguments:

- A server was down and I restarted it, Neij tells expressen.se. He is one of the four founders of The Pirate Bay that stand accused of “complicity to making copyrighted material accessible” (yes, that’s the charge). That didn’t stop him from taking care of a server mishap in the middle of the trial’s closing argument.

Thepiratebay.org was down during the best part of Monday, which had a good deal of file-sharing folks worried that the website might be down for good this time. Thankfully for them, he had his trusty laptop at hand and could restart the server remotely, so that eager fileswappers could get back inside.

-We have Internet access [in the court room] so it was no problem, Neij told Expressen today (Tuesday);

-Besides, I’m keeping up with the coverage of the trial.

The farcical battle between a sadly incompetent prosecution vs. knowledgeable and sometimes loud-mouthed defendants is almost at an end, and the fact that Neij manages thepiratebay.org’s servers remotely during the trial is just one of several examples that point out the huge gap in technical know-how that the sides have exhibited.

Pirate Bay Defendant Restarts Server Remotely during Trial (Thanks, Claire!)

Hugh Pickens writes "Satellites have shown how the Arctic sea-ice has been shrinking in recent years, but a three-man scientific team making an expedition to the North Pole should give scientists a better idea of how thin the ice is becoming. 'We're making the surface journey because that's the only way we have of gathering these direct observations of how thick the snow and the ice is,' said team leader Pen Hadow, who in 2003 became the first person to trek solo and without support from Canada to the North Pole. 'That's what the scientists really need to know.' There is more at stake for the British team than achieving some invented personal goal: 'The journey's going to be about 700 miles in distance, taking about three months,' said Hadow. 'In the earlier phases, the temperatures are about minus 50 degrees ... And we're towing sledges with our camping equipment and our survey equipment — almost twice our body weights — for most of the distance.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make: Day is less than two weeks away and we're happy to announce the final list of Makers!

- Bakken Museum
- Build your own one-string guitar
- Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center
- FIRST Robotics in Minnesota
- Geek Squad Agents and Tech Tips
- Tim Kaiser, featured on Episode 6 of Make: television
- Keston and Westdal
- The LED Obi - wearable technology
- Make: television episodes and projects. With John Park and Bill Gurstelle!
- Scott Olson - Inventor of Rollerblades, Rowbike and Kong Pong,
- Kyle Phillips - Multi-touch Surface
- Savage Aural Hotbed
- Hands on Scratch programming demo - St. Thomas Academy Experimental Vehicle Team
- Studio Bricolage, 3-Story Paint Pendulum and a Dryer Symphony
- 3D Printers from Stratasys
- Tripoli Minnesota
- Twin Cities Robotics Group
- Asia Ward - Animatronic Sculptures

Make: Day takes place on March 14th at the Science Museum of Minnesota from 10am - 3pm. Stay tuned to makezine.tv, we'll have more updates throughout the week!

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Announcing our new bundles available exclusively in the Maker Shed. William "Bill" Gurstelle is an award-winning writer, licensed engineer, bestselling author and professional speaker (not to mention MAKE Magazine contributing editor and producer on Make: television). We like the guy, we like the way he thinks. We think you'll like him too, which is why we've created the Ballistic bundle.

The Ballistic Bundle includes:

• Backyard Ballistics $16.95 value
  
• Whoosh! Boom! Splat! $16.95 value
  
• Make Vol. 3 $14.99 value
  
• Barrage Garage Vol. 1 DVD $19.99 value

All for the discounted price of $48. That's an amazing 46% off the price if you purchased these items individually. Take advantage of this amazing deal before it's too late.

More about the Welcome to MAKE bundle in the Maker Shed

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PMA 2009: Casio has introduced the Exilim EX-Z29 entry level compact camera. Sporting a 10.1 Mp sensor, 2.7 inch LCD and 3x optical zoom (37.5 to 112.5mm equiv), it includes an Easy Mode, widescreen video recording and customizable focusing frames and menu screens. Priced at $149.99, the camera will be available in black, pink, blue, silver and purple.

Every so often we have a story about how audiophiles freak out about how awful MP3s sound, and how they're "ruining music." We tend to joke about those stories, and then the audiophiles come out in the comments and scream about how we're totally clueless and if we only spent six figures on our own stereo system, we'd feel the same way. So, I'm sure they're going to be upset to hear that a growing number of young folks actually prefer the sound of MP3s to other, much higher "quality" systems. The theory is that they're so used to hearing the sound associated with MP3s, they are more comfortable with it and prefer it. In fact, the article notes, some believe the same is true of those who believe that vinyl's sound quality is so much greater than other formats: much of it is actually because they're so used to the sound quality associated with vinyl.

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jonr writes "'I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965. At that time, I was designing the first comprehensive type system for references in an object oriented language (ALGOL W). My goal was to ensure that all use of references should be absolutely safe, with checking performed automatically by the compiler. But I couldn't resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years. In recent years, a number of program analysers like PREfix and PREfast in Microsoft have been used to check references, and give warnings if there is a risk they may be non-null. More recent programming languages like Spec# have introduced declarations for non-null references. This is the solution, which I rejected in 1965.' This is an abstract from Tony Hoare Presentation on QCon. I'm raised on C-style programming languages, and have always used null pointers/references, but I am having trouble of grokking null-reference free language. Is there a good reading out there that explains this?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Have you noticed how old plastics yellow in the sun? Well, now there is an easy way to restore the original color!

Retr0brite is an easy-to-make open-sourced gel that un-yellows the flame retardants found in ABS plastic. It started as a chance discovery that hydrogen peroxide partially helped banish the yellow... but then it was refined in to an easier-to-use and more powerful version by a variety of retro computer enthusiasts, chemists, and engineers.

The recipe is a simple mix of hydrogen peroxide and oxi laundry booster, plus something to gel it so that it can stay attached to the plastic while it works. The actual bleaching process uses UV light (either a special light, or just leave it in sunlight) to activate the reaction, causing hydrogen to bond with bromine free radicals & undo the damage.

The Science behind this.
Gallery of more examples.
(there seems to be some confusion on the spelling - it's also known as Retr0bright)

[via waxy]

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Ethan Marcotte combines the rigidity of grid-based design with the fluidity of the web. Eureka moments ensue. A must read for anyone building flexible systems. #

Ethan Marcotte combines the rigidity of grid-based design with the fluidity of the web. Eureka moments ensue. A must read for anyone building flexible systems. #

Garth Johnson of ExtremeCraft.com is writing a book called 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse . Submissions are open until March 13th. From the site:

We are seeking submissions for 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse, an upcoming book by Garth Johnson of ExtremeCraft.com, which will feature 21st Century craft and design, all made with recycled, upcycled, repurposed and reused items. We are looking for the best examples of paper and book arts, jewelry, clothing, home and personal accessories, furniture, art, and miscellanea for possible publication. We invite designers, artists, visionaries and crafters of all stripes to submit their work.

And today Garth writes (because he extended the deadline):

I'm accepting entries for the book through Friday, March 13th (yes....Friday the 13th). I'm getting close to 1,000 images that I really love, but I would especially like to have more images in the paper, interiors/environments and mancraft/geekcraft categories. Feel free to submit in any category, though, and feel free to submit as many photos as you'd like. Remember, I'm looking for an image size of at least 1450x1700 pixels. Make sure you upload (or fax) a signed Grant of Rights form and upload an image list with the title and materials of each piece.

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An anonymous reader writes "Pages at ireport.com and extortionletterinfo.com have been documenting and researching the activities of George P. Riddick III, previously known for his lawsuits against IMSI and Xoom at the turn of the century. In 2007 he issued a largely-ignored press release claiming the majority of clip art online infringes a copyright and has ranted about how Microsoft and Google are stealing from him. In recent months, he's apparently made a business model of going after web site operators who were using clip art they believed to be legally licensed or public domain, telling them they're infringing clip art collections he hasn't offered commercially in years and making outrageous settlement demands. He seems to have tested the waters on this some years back, but emboldened by the passage of the PRO-IP act, he's gone aggro with it. A few dodgy anonyblogs had popped up to 'out' him as a copyright abuser, but these recent ireport.com and extortionletterinfo.com reports go much deeper in documenting and researching Riddick's recent one-man campaign to be the RIAA of clip art."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "After being down for a couple of hours, the Apple store reopened this morning. All of the speculation has turned out to be a reality with Apple dishing out many new products and among them are; iMac 20", three iMac 24" models, two Mac Mini models, and two Mac Pro models — with one including an ATI Radeon HD 4570 graphics card. Also as rumored, there was the new Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule in 1TB. The Mac Pro is the granddaddy of them all. The lower-end Quad Core system includes a 2.66Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor, 3GB of memory, 640GB hard drive, 18x double-layer Superdrive, and a NVIDIA Geforce GT 120 with 512MB of memory priced at $2,499. Finally, we have the 8-core system which includes two 2.26Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, 6GB of memory, 640GB hard drive, the 18x double-layer Superdrive, and of course the NVIDIA Geforce GT 120 with 512MB of memory priced at $3,299."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lauren Weinstein has an interesting discussion going on his blog, noting a series of recent incidents where Google has done a spectacularly poor job in communicating with the public -- something I've been critical of the company about, as well. The company can be notoriously secretive at times, even when being a lot more transparent would help. Even worse, the company is quite difficult to contact on many issues, unless you happen to know people there already. Its response times, if you go through the "official channels," are absolutely ridiculous (if they respond at all). Weinstein's suggestion, then, is that Google should set up a small team to play an ombudsman role -- basically acting as the public's "representative" within the company. This wouldn't be a "customer support" role (which is often focused on fixing problems directly) as much as a helping hand within the company. The team could take up issues sent in by the public, find the proper folks within the company and get a real response. While the company may fear that such a group would be overrun by complaints, you would think that it could pretty quickly classify the incoming requests into real issues vs. bogus ones, and concentrate on the real issues. Having such a group could certainly help ease the growing view that Google is something of a monolithic entity that walls itself off from the public that uses it.

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Another compelling artifact from Ranjit's adventures in musical instrument making - Instrument-a-day 24: Mobius Music

It's a familiar tune played upside-down and backwards, and then just backwards, and then upside-down and backwards again. Over and over, forever.

Looks like he's using a DIY music box kit. Hmmm, anyone decipher the identity of the original "familiar" tune?

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O'Reilly GMT has posted a Flickr set from the recent Makers and Hackers event:

Makers and Hackers was a stupendously good day, taking place aimultaneously in London and Sheffield, organised by Tinker.it and Folksy, respectively.

Makers and Hackers, London, Feb 28th 2009 - a set on Flickr [via Craig Smith on Twitter]

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Kleiba writes "The highest German Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, Federal Constitutional Court) ruled that electronic voting machines like Nedap ESD1 and ESD2 are not permissible in Germany. Der Spiegel, a well-known German newspaper, is featuring article on today's decision (in German; Babelfish translation here) which was the result of a lawsuit by physicist Ulrich Wiesner and his father Joachim Wiesner, a professor emeritus of political science. The main argument against the voting machines in the eyes of the Court is that they conflict with the principle of transparency. 2009 is a major election year for Germany, with parliamentary elections in the fall." Reader Dr. Hok writes "Voting machines are not illegal per se, but with these machines it wasn't possible to verify the results after the votes were cast. The verification procedure by the German authorities was flawed, too: only specimens were tested, not the machines actually used in the elections, and the detailed results (including the source code) were not made public. The results of the election remain legally valid, though."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

C'mon, tell me that doesn't make you go "awwww" and wanna cavort with butterfly swarms and woodland creatures.

Get the hi-res template here. [Via the MAKE Flickr pool]

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Flash video embed above, click "full" icon inside the player to view large. You can download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are the archives for Boing Boing Video.

---

The legendary Les Claypool of Primus fame visited Boing Boing Video's new studios recently to kick out some "unplugged" jams and talk to us about his new album and forthcoming tour, which kicks off tomorrow night. The Colonel's new studio album, Of Fungi and Foe, hits the streets on March 17th, and his "Oddity Faire" tour is described as a "mutated mini fest" featuring freaks and odd performers in addition to Claypool's musical backing -- Mike Dillon [Percussion], Paulo Baldi [Drums] and Sam Bass [Cello].

Some of the acts traveling with Claypool in this tour will be familiar to Boing Boing readers and viewers. They include Yard Dogs Road Show, Mutaytor, Saul Williams, Secret Chief 3, Devotchka, and O'Death.

BB Video pal Matty Kirsch, a longtime Primus fan, hosts this sitdown. My favorite part of the episode is at the end, when Les obligingly takes a slew of requests from Matty for the bass lines from classic Primus songs. Very Chris Farley.

Claypool's creative legacy includes the faux fest movie "Electric Apricot," and we talk with him about his past collaborations with animators and multimedia artists. Perhaps the best known of these collaborations is his work with the South Park guys (he wrote the show's theme), and we take a look at some of the weird, surreal, cool music videos he's produced and released online.

Below, a short promotional video produced by Claypool with a peek ahead at the "Oddity Tour."

(Thanks, Leanne Lajoie, Jason McHugh, and very special thanks to Boing Boing Video's video distribution partner Episodic.)

We recently discussed the perspective that the harrowing of Wall Street was caused by over-reliance on computer models that produced a single number to characterize risk. Wired has a piece profiling David X. Li, the quant behind the formula that enabled the creation of such simple risk models. "For five years, Li's formula, known as a Gaussian copula function, looked like an unambiguously positive breakthrough, a piece of financial technology that allowed hugely complex risks to be modeled with more ease and accuracy than ever before. With his brilliant spark of mathematical legerdemain, Li made it possible for traders to sell vast quantities of new securities, expanding financial markets to unimaginable levels. His method was adopted by everybody from bond investors and Wall Street banks to ratings agencies and regulators. ... [T]he real danger was created not because any given trader adopted it but because every trader did. In financial markets, everybody doing the same thing is the classic recipe for a bubble and inevitable bust."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

The tableTalk project aims to emphasize social interactivity by way of illuminating common space -

We see our prototype as a cultural piece and not as a problem solving gadget. We want our technology to be secondary, or on the periphery to the bigger picture, giving the participants a visually exiting table. But if you sit at the table for a longer time you will hopefully understand how the table works.

The effect that we are aiming for is not to disturb the already existing social patterns but rather to give them an extra dimension if you choose to pick up on it.

I'm guessing this could also serve as a subtle way to let someone know when they're dominating the conversation ;)

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PMA 2009: Canon has announced a new AF fix for the EOS-1D Mark III and EOS-1Ds Mark III. This is in addition to the sub mirror fix issued earlier by Canon, and requires returning the camera to Canon for service. New firmware for the 1D Mark III and 1Ds Mark III has also been released to fix issues with live view, USB communication, and to update camera error codes. This brings the versions up to 1.2.5 and 1.1.4 respectively, and is available for download now.

A year ago, David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, who is now much more well known as the executive producer of the TV show The Wire, complained in the pages of the Washington Post about how awful it was that newspapers were giving away their content for free online. He was confusing value and price -- something that many people do these days. And now he's back with another editorial, where he is again quite confused. The editorial picks up on similar complaints that the newspaper industry's current troubles make it much more difficult to hold public officials accountable. In this case, he's complaining about attempts by the Baltimore Police Department to keep the names of officers involved in violent altercations secret.

It's an interesting opinion piece, but it pretty easily undermines its own reason for being. He's talking about a specific story involving a specific police officer, where the police has refused to give out the information identifying the officer. As Simon points out, however, by law that information needs to be made available to everyone, not just reporters. And, in fact, Simon did get the information -- and Simon is not a reporter any more. You know who didn't get the information? The reporters at the Baltimore Sun. So... Simon is complaining that without a strong newspaper business, this information will remain hidden, even though he admits that legally the information needs to be available to non-reporters (like himself) which enabled him to get the information, and that the supposedly necessary newspaper reporters failed in getting the info.

In other words, he just totally debunked his own point. In this case, he was acting as a "citizen journalist," digging up a piece of information because it was of great concern to him. Other citizen journalists could and would do the same thing. Yet, the supposedly very important "newspaper journalists" didn't care enough to follow through and get the info. I'd say he just made a really strong point for why a concerned citizenry is a lot more effective at getting this particular bit of information and publicizing it than the press that he wishes would do it.

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This incredible dodecahedral "Petaminx" twisty puzzle was all hand-cast, hand-assembled, and hand-colored (okay, "hand-stickered," but still...).

The Making of the Petaminx

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Salim sez, "In the 1920s the British military used these vast concrete parabolic 'sound-mirrors' to detect approaching aircraft. The 'Listening Ears' at Denge have recently been designated as a historical preservation site by English Heritage, the government quango in charge of protecting national landmarks. From Wikipedia:"

Acoustic mirrors did work, and could effectively be used to detect slow moving enemy aircraft before they came into sight. They worked by concentrating sound waves towards a central point, where a microphone would have been located. However, their use was limited as aircraft became faster. Operators also found it difficult to distinguish between aircraft and seagoing vessels. In any case, they quickly became obsolete due to the invention of radar in 1932. The experiment was abandoned, and the mirrors left to decay. The gravel extraction works caused some undermining of at least one of the structures.

Denge sound mirrors (Thanks, Salim!)

Vimeo user barnone created a hybrid Monome/Thingamakit - the Bleepnome. There's a lot going on in the above setup! He clarifies a bit -

Yeah the bleepnome has 2 photocell tenticles and 2 led tenticles. So it reacts to light on the monome to change either pitch or modulation. The multiscreen aspect of SevenUpLive lets me control the 40h lights from the 128. Mr Weevil is the redfaced box to the right which I just picked up used and feel extremely lucky as it's a bugbrand audioweevil08 and they only made a few custom. So the combination of Spectralis, Bleepnome mixed and put through the AudioWeevil creates the madness. This is after just a few moments of experimentation. I can't wait to try to create a real track with it.

Very cool kit mash-up. For the curious, the Spectralis is a synth/sequencer/filter bank, and the AudioWeevil08 from BugBrand is ... well ... awesome!

In the Maker Shed:

Thing-a-ma KIT

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... I think we're going to be okay. Brennon Williams (whose work we've blogged about before) is a teen who's passionate about science. Really passionate. He's published a print science zine, runs several science-related blogs, and sends email to all of his science and tech heroes (who he calls his "pop stars"). Some of them write back.

In the above video, he addresses an assembly at his school, on the subject of "From Passion to Action." He talks about his great love of science and where it's taken him, and he tells the other kids to research whatever they're passionate about and to share their findings with others, to not be afraid to reach out to their experts, their "pop stars" (whomever they may be), to make their work/findings free and readily available*, and to just go for it -- don't worry about knowing everything or being perfect, learn from your failures. Did I mention this speaker, this accomplished amateur scientist, with a science magazine, blogs, and pretty decent public speaking chops is 14 years old!? As I said, If Brennon Williams is our future, I think we're going to be okay.

Here's Part II of his presentation, if you're interested.

*This young man is already smart enough to understand Tim O'Reilly's notion that "obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."

BW Science Labs

More:
Night sky in a shoe box

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PMA 2009: Kodak has announced the EasyShare Z915 digital compact camera. This 10 Mp camera offers a 10x image stabilized optical zoom lens and a 2.5 inch LCD. It also includes a Smart Capture mode that automatically analyses scenes and adjusts the camera settings accordingly. Priced at £179.99, the Z915 will be available from May 2009 in red, blue, black and gray.

Make subscriber Nic used Arduino plus Parallax RFID reader/tags to make his Squeezebox network music player a bit more physically intuitive/interactive.

I'm not the first to think of controlling music with RFID, somebody made a pretty neat player called PlayStand way back in 2002. But its RFID reader was plugged directly into the PC. I didn't want a PC in my living room, I wanted the player to be totally self contained, which seemed possible since the Squeezebox was already responsible for playing the MP3s. All I needed to do was trigger a song to start playing once it saw the tag. Problem was that my server is in another room and I don't have an ethernet drop in my living room. There are ways of making Arduinos work with Wifi, but they are all really expensive, so after a bit of looking around I remembered that the Squeezebox itself could act as a bridge. So the arduino actually connects via ethernet to the Squeezebox, sending commands to a little PHP script I have running on the same server as the SqueezeCenter. That script provides a management interface to map RFID tags to particular URLs, so after configuring it, when it gets a message that new RFID is in place it triggers a playlist to start. You could use this same system to perform other actions that can be performed via a script, such as having a coaster both stop the music and post a tweet that you are off to work or somesuch. But I'm just using it for music.

Those representational photo coasters seem an interesting idea - sort of breaks the idea of album art down to it's bare minimum. Source code and more detail available on Nic's blog.

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I just finished my review copy of Tommy Kovac's collection of his Skelebunnies toon, just out from Slave Labor Graphics, and I'm here to tell you that it is juvenile, scatological, offensive, and very, very funny. Here's the basic premise: one day, two cute bunnies are frolicking in a picturesque wood, when a demon appears. He is so sickened by their saccharine romping that he vomits extremely bilious bile over them, skeletonizing them in seconds. To the demon's dismay, the bunnies continue to romp, though they are now the living dead, walking skeletons with Care Bear sensibilities (they are wont to ride a horribly burned My Little Pony as they go about their duties). Satan appears, is likewise appalled, but realizes that the bunnies' vile sweetness has its uses when it comes to sowing evil. For the rest of the strips, that's just what they do: romp, frolic, and commit disgusting acts of pure, unadulterated evil.

Skelebunnies is totally unredeeming, it's pure filth, and I reveled in it. Perhaps you will, too!

Skelebunnies Volume One

Tommy Kovac's site

An anonymous reader writes "PlayingWithWire profiles two open source tools for Web development, comparing Joomla! and WordPress through the lens of usability. The article has apparently upset a few people at the Joomla! forum, but it does bring up a good point. Many open source projects are developed by engineers for engineers — should they focus more on usability? PlayingWithWire makes a bold analogy: 'If Joomla! is Linux, then WordPress is Mac OS X. WordPress might offer only 90% of the features of Joomla!, but in most cases WordPress is both easier to use and faster to get up and running.'" The article repeatedly stresses that blogging platform WordPress and CMS harness Joomla! occupy different levels of the content hierarchy. How fair is it to twit Joomla! on usability?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNN's Peter Wilkinson has been running the numbers on AIG's record-smashing $62 billion quarterly loss, the largest corporate loss in history (AIG lost about $460,000 per minute in the last quarter). In addition to being sufficient to carpet an area the size of Baghdad in $1 bills, $62 billion is enough to:

1. It could pay off the combined national debts of China, Australia, Mexico and Ukraine, according to 2008 estimates by the CIA Factbook, and still have plenty left over for a good night out.

3. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II might not be moving any time soon, but the money could buy 46 Buckingham Palaces, according to a 2008 estimate of its market value by the Daily Telegraph newspaper. And still leave some remaining to buy her weekend retreat, Windsor Castle.

9. AIG lost $460,000 per minute -- which would pay about half the annual pension of former RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin.

What would AIG's $62 billion loss buy?

(Image: Money squircles 1, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Greefus Groinks's Flickr stream)

With a lawsuit underway after the Associated Press accused artist Shepard Fairey of copyright infringement over his iconic Barack Obama poster (Fairey initiated the actual lawsuit, asking for a declaratory judgment that his image did not infringe, but that was after the AP publicly stated they were going to go after him for infringement), many are looking over the legal issues, and examining whether or not Fairey's use is fair use. In our initial post on the subject, it seemed pretty obvious that it was fair use, in large part because the AP didn't even realize it was an AP photo until someone else pointed it out -- suggesting that it was a transformative work, which represents a big part of the "test" for fair use.

However, law professor Peter Friedman, has a very interesting look at some of the relevant case law, pointing out that courts have clearly said that the elements of a photograph that are copyrightable are only those elements created by the photographer. He quotes some recent court rulings that have found that the copyright only covers those specific things (e.g., "posing the subjects, lighting, angle, selection of film and camera, evoking the desired expression, and almost any other variant involved"), but elements beyond that are not covered by copyright. Friedman then points out that Fairey's image uses none of those supposedly copyrightable elements.



Basically, Fairey used Obama's pose -- which was not set up by the photographer, thus not covered -- and changed pretty much everything else about the image. So, he's wondering, what in the iconic image actually is covered by copyright?

Fairey's poster was not a copy of the photograph. It used one element, the angle of Obama's face, and changed everything else from the photograph. I doubt the choice of the angle was a creative choice on the part of the photographer. First, I would be surprised if the angle was not forced on him by the place the photographic pool was required to be, and, second, the angle is so generic that I can hardly imagine it represents the kind of creative decision that amounts to originality. If Fairey had simply painted a copy of the photograph, I'd agree that it was an infringement. But he didn't. He changed everything except the angle of the head. And surely the choice of subject matter for the photograph was not a creative one.

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PMA 2009: Adobe has released Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Camera Raw 5.3. These are final versions of updates which were originally posted as release candidates on the Adobe Labs site, and are now available for immediate download. Both provide additional Raw support for Nikon D3X and Olympus E-30 DSLR’s. Lightroom is also now available in 8 new languages.

PMA 2009: Adobe has released Photoshop Lightroom 2.3 and Camera Raw 5.3. These are final versions of updates which were originally posted as release candidates on the Adobe Labs site, and are now available for immediate download. Both provide additional Raw support for Nikon D3X and Olympus E-30 DSLR’s. Lightroom is also now available in 8 new languages.

Announcing our new bundles available exclusively in the Maker Shed. This one is for any of our online readers that haven't subscribed to the print edition of MAKE. For a limited time we are offering a "Welcome to MAKE bundle" at an amazing discount.

The Welcome to MAKE bundle includes:

• (1) Year subscription to MAKE Magazine $34.95 value
  
• (1) The Best of MAKE $34.99 value
  
• (1) Maker's Notebook $19.99 value

All for the discounted price of $48. That's an amazing 46% off the price if you purchased these items individually. Take advantage of this amazing deal before it's too late.

More about the Welcome to MAKE bundle in the Maker Shed

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jamie found a blog entry by Paul Lamere, working for audio company Echo Nest, in which he experiments with detecting which songs use a click track. Lamere gives this background: "Sometime in the last 10 or 20 years, rock drumming has changed. Many drummers will now don headphones in the studio (and sometimes even for live performances) and synchronize their playing to an electronic metronome — the click track. ...some say that songs recorded against a click track sound sterile, that the missing tempo deviations added life to a song." Lamere's experiments can't be called "scientific," but he does manage to tease out some interesting conclusions about songs and artists past and present using Echo Nest's developer API.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These X-ray shoes make your skin go transparent and reveal the internal workings of your foot.

Or something.

Human internal organ anatomical drawing Keds shoe (via Street Anatomy)

The UK campaigning group NO2ID have spotted an incredibly sneaky and scary codicil in the new Coroners and Justice Bill: Clause 152 allows any Minister to take any information gathered for any purpose and use it for any other purpose. In other words, all the privacy protection built into British law just pops like a soap bubble under this principle. They've got a bunch of things they need you to do to stop this:

Write to your MP - www.WriteToThem.com makes it very easy - and tell him or her that you REFUSE CONSENT to having your information shared under any 'INFORMATION SHARING ORDER', and ask him or her to vote to have CLAUSE 152 removed entirely from the CORONERS AND JUSTICE BILL.

Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill - currently being debated by the UK Parliament - would allow any Minister by order to take any information gathered for one purpose from anywhere, and use it for any other purpose.

Your information, your family's information, arbitrarily used without your consent or even knowledge. The very reverse of 'Data Protection'.

An 'Information Sharing Order', as defined in Clause 152, would permit your information to be trafficked and abused, not only all across government and the public sector - it would also reach into the private sector. And it would even allow transfer of information across international borders.

Stop Clause 152! (via /.)

The Retr0brite Project is an open-source effort to develop the world's finest vintage computer polish, to whiten up the yellowing chassis of your old Amigas and such.

Dave from Manchester, UK, aka 'Merlin', the chemist behind the project, explains. “I came across the use of peroxide in July 2008 when Kristian95 told us about what people like AmigaGTI were doing with it over at a1k.org. I was intrigued by this, as I am a former industrial chemist. I am also a plant Safety Manager by trade and, purely by coincidence, around that time I read about a dust explosion that had occurred in the UK with a chemical called TAED, which is the booster in the ‘active oxygen’ laundry products.”

“This got me thinking, and after some really 'full-on', serious chemistry discussions with other EAB members, like Rkauer in Brazil, who is a plastics Engineer and my good friend Zetr0 from Kings Lynn, Norfolk, UK, who endured endless phone calls from me. We wrote some epic threads on English Amiga Board about the possible causes of the yellowing and eventually we arrived at the theory that it was the Bromine in the flame retardant that was the cause. We also knew that Ultra Violet light was another major factor. Having identified the culprit, the next stage was to try to develop and perfect a means of treating the plastic and reversing the yellowing without damaging the plastic. Being a former industrial chemist helped me tremendously, in understanding what was going on at the molecular level and to develop a treatment process to reverse the effect.”

“The problem was finally cracked in late July 2008 with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, a small amount of an “Oxy” laundry booster as a catalyst and a UV lamp. Proof of this concept was demonstrated on EAB by Tonyyeb from Hull, UK, Chiark from Leeds, UK and myself.

The “Retr0brite” Project (via /.)

These lovely cardboard bookcases are made from cardboard, using techniques employed in the design of sturdy cardboard seating. The link includes some notes on designing your own cardboard furnishings.

Look! More Cardboard Furniture Creations (via Cribcandy)

As we watch the newspaper industry struggle with trying to respond to changes in the market that were obviously on the way a decade ago, it's funny to see network television just waking up to the same issues. Apparently, they're just now (?!?) realizing that the advertisers who kept them in business all these years have many other options on place to advertise -- and the viewers who used to have three options for what to do on a weekday night (ABC, CBS, NBC) now have hundreds of channels, billions of internet websites, movie rentals, video games and many, many, many other options. Yes, the market has shifted -- but that shift began quite a while ago. The fact that the networks are just now realizing that maybe they need to treat the business slightly differently certainly seems like they're a bit late to waking up to reality.

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James Boyle, author of the amazing book The Public Domain, sez,

Just a note to say that I am giving a lecture March 10 at 6pm at London's RSA on my new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. The lecture hall is gorgeous -- Cory has been a frequent speaker there -- it has a fabulous series of paintings on the theme of "Progress" by James Barry, featuring earnest waistcoated men with theodolites and many scantily clad young women whose main hope appears to be that The Progress of Human Culture is going to give them something more substantial to wear than a precariously secured bedsheet. The mural is worth the price of admission alone (free but you must register). Following that I'll be giving the first Arcadia Lecture at Cambridge on Cultural Agoraphobia and the Future of the Library March 12. Hope to see UK BB'ers at one of these events...

The Public Domain: enclosing the commons of the mind (Thanks, Jamie!)

Wikipedia is offering an interesting feature: compile articles into books, and get it printed by "PediaPress." Alternatively you can get the book as a downloadable PDF or OpenDocument. Rad! I can imagine some pretty awesome/hilarious collections; what book would you make?

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Lest there be any doubt that District Judge Michael J. Davis, presiding over the Duluth, Minnesota, case, Capitol Records v. Thomas, really does 'get it' about the toxic effect the RIAA, its lead henchman Matthew Oppenheim, and their lawyers have had on the judicial process, all such doubt should be removed by the order he just entered (PDF). It removes control of the decision-making process from the RIAA, Oppenheim, and the lawyers. In the order Judge Davis spells out, in the clearest possible terms so that there can be no misunderstanding, that at the extraordinary 2-day settlement conference he has scheduled for later this month, each record company plaintiff is ordered to produce an 'officer' of the corporation, or a 'managing agent' of the corporation, who has corporate, decision-making, 'power.' The judge makes it clear that no one who has 'settlement authority' with any limits or range attached to it will be acceptable. This means that 'RIAA hitman' Matthew Oppenheim will not be able to control the settlement process as he has been permitted by the Courts to do in the past."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

About a month ago, Google dumped its program to try to help sell newspaper ads, admitting that it had been something of a failure. It wasn't a huge surprise why. Google entered the space assuming that it could reform the newspaper ad business the same way it revolutionized the online ad business. But it neglected to realize some of the massive differences in the markets. Meanwhile, the NY Times is noting that Yahoo's much more collaborative approach to newspapers is actually a shining success story for both Yahoo and its newspaper partners. Rather than trying to revolutionize the entire market, Yahoo is simply working within the process by which newspapers already sell print ads, to add targeted online advertisements as well. And it's working amazingly well.

In the meantime, with Google dropping its newspaper ad sales effort, it seems to be going to the other extreme: it finally started putting advertisements on Google News. For years, whenever angry newspaper insiders would complain about how Google News was somehow "profiting" off of their hard work, people would respond that Google didn't even put any advertisements on its news search engine. However, now that this has changed, pretty much everyone is expecting lawsuits to follow. Personally, I can't see how the newspapers would win such a lawsuit (and, think that they have much more important issues to spend money on), but given Google's willingness to cave to book publishers and authors, you can bet some newspaper publishers are hoping that Google will be forced to throw money in their direction as well.

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PMA 2009: As always, the PMA show started with a Sneak Peek event at which many of the manufacturers gave the press a chance to see and talk about the products they're showing at the event. Follow the link to see what we saw in a pre-show report.

The Platform 21 manifesto:

Platform 21

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KillerBob writes with an advance on the news from a year back that stem cells can be produced from human skin — discussed here. Now Canadian researchers have found a safe way to generate stem cells without using viruses to modify the genome, a process that can have its own dangers. "The ethical debate over embryonic stem cell use may soon be moot, thanks to a Canadian team of researchers who, together with a team out of Scotland, has found a safe way to grow stem cells from a patient's own skin. The revolutionary finding, described in a paper published yesterday by the international science journal Nature, means doctors may be one step closer to treating a multitude of diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

T-Mobile has announced that it's expanding its offer of a $50 per month unlimited voice service plan across the US, becoming the first of the country's four biggest operators to start to fall into line with the $50 voice ceiling. Given the constant price battles in the mobile industry, you'd expect the other major operators to follow T-Mobile, or lower the prices of their current unlimited offerings that also include text messages and data. But one interesting aspect of the T-Mobile plan is that it's only available to customers that have had T-Mobile accounts in good standing for at least 22 months, making it more of an effort to retain existing customers than attract new ones. This reflects the rapidly changing focus of the business from attracting new customers to also retaining current ones. One of the quandaries posed by US mobile operators was that, historically, they gave better deals and prices (especially on new handsets) to new customers than current ones, giving good customers an incentive to churn to a rival so they could get a free new device. This stance has changed over the last couple of years, as the industry standard contract length has grown from one to two years. Second, the T-Mobile offer reflects the company's standing in the market. Its quarterly net subscriber additions are falling, while the company's seeing a lot of competition at the low end of the market. This new plan is aimed at helping on both fronts.

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

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Guest blogger Paul Spinrad first wrote about meme warfare in Adbusters #11. 

In politics, I think there are two competing motivations for voters to support a cause publicly. One is to influence the majority to agree, to make changes that you believe in, and the other is to distinguish your opinions as superior to most other peoples'. These two motivations generally cause people to act in similar ways, but I've found some "tells" that reveal the underlying elitist motivation:

• Leaving up losing campaign stickers and signs long after the election is over. (I passed a Ron Paul window sign today...)
• Dressing and behaving at political demonstrations in a non-respectful way (partying, trying to "shock people out of their complacency," etc.).
• Saying that it requires superior knowledge or compassion to arrive at the views you hold.
• Saying that it makes you "uncomfortable" or "scared" that a group you don't identify with actually agrees with your view.

Under a democracy, the elitist motivation is self-defeating: If your true aim is to distinguish yourself from the masses, you really don't want your side to win-- your aim is better served when more people vote the other way, and then you can be disgusted with most peoples' stupidity and wash your hands of responsibility.

With religion, I think atheists have the same dissonance going on. If they really think the world would be better off without religion, they shouldn't hate religion and call believers fools. Any successful new belief system must appreciate the beauty of what it's replacing and strive for backwards-compatibility. If Matthew 1:1-16 hadn't explained how Jesus' lineage fulfills the prophecy in Isaiah 1:1-5, it wouldn't have gotten where it is today.

So I put it to declared atheists-- the ones who fly the flag about it, not the ones who are quiet or closeted: Do you think that most of humanity is A) hopeless and doomed to kill each other because of their stupid religious beliefs, or B) capable of coming to and benefiting from your views?

I think closeted atheists who participate in other religious activities are the future of atheism. They know that prayer feels good without a needing brain scientist to tell them, and they know you don't need God to want to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and provide homes for the orphaned. What if they simply stopped reciting the words that they didn't agree with during religious services, without calling attention to it? In many places I don't think they would be kicked out or turned upon and beaten just for that.

An atheism that's well-designed for broad appeal wouldn't need miracles. What miracles do for a belief system is ensure greater investment on the part of the adherent. If something's easily believable, it's easy to take or leave, but doubtful claims require a leap and then ongoing mental maintenance. If a group subscribes to some miraculous claim, it demands shared support, repetition, declarations, indoctrination, etc.-- all of which bind the group together. For a new atheism, the miracle-we-believe function would be served by the question of whether the whole scheme could actually succeed. If the "us" people say yes and are excited at the prospect while the "them" people view it as absurd, that's the identical, effective dynamic.

Meanwhile, I'm putting The Crooked Letter on my reading list-- it sounds great!

Via Rudy Rucker by way of Paul Di Filippo, this cartoon, in which Donald Duck bakes a plastic airplane. The trouble starts when Donald takes his plane for a spin and it starts to melt in the rain

rar42 writes "Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, currently being debated by the UK Parliament, would allow any Minister by order to take from anywhere any information gathered for one purpose, and use it for any other purpose. Personal information arbitrarily used without consent or even knowledge: the very opposite of 'Data Protection.' An 'Information Sharing Order', as defined in Clause 152, would permit personal information to be trafficked and abused, not only all across government and the public sector — it would also reach into the private sector. And it would even allow transfer of information across international borders. NO2ID has launched a Facebook group to challenge this threat to data protection."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PMA 2009: Sigma has also announced the availability of the 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM and 24-70mm F2.8 IF EX DG HSM lenses. Announced during Photokina 2008, both lenses will start shipping now and will be available in Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Sony mounts.

PMA 2009: Sigma has released an image-stabilized version of its budget telezoom lens, the 50-200mm F4-5.6 DC OS HSM. This  features the same new optical stabilization unit as seen on the 18-50mm F2.8-4.5 EX DC HSM also announced today, which is compatible with Pentax and Sony bodies with in-body anti-shake systems. The new lens also includes a number of user-friendly features rarely seen at this level, including a  hypersonic motor for fast, silent autofocus, and an internal-focusing design with a non-rotating front  element. It will be available in mounts for Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax DSLRs, and is designed for cameras with APS-C/DX sized sensors only.

PMA 2009: Sigma has unveiled a new large aperture image-stabilized standard zoom, in the shape of the 18-50mm F2.8-4.5 DC OS HSM. This lens features a new Optical Stabilization unit which Sigma claims will work on Sony and Pentax bodies with in-body stabilization systems. It also boasts a larger maximum aperture than the kit zooms typically supplied with most DSLRs, and incorporates Sigma's Hypersonic motor for fast silent autofocus. Designed for DSLRs with APS-C/DX sized image sensors, it will be available in Sigma, Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax mounts.