Bandcamp is selling Sophie Madeleine's terrific album, Love. Life. Ukulele. on a name-your-price basis (minimum $5, via PayPal). She has a lovely voice. Also check out her single, "The Stars."

pnorth writes "Malware writers that sell toolkits online for as little as $400 will now configure and host the attacks as a service for another $50, according to email offers cited by security experts. A technical account manager at authentication firm Vasco said that cyber crime is becoming so business-like that online offerings of malicious code often include support and maintenance services. He said 'it was inevitable that services would be sold to people who bought the malware toolkits but didn't know how to configure them. Not only can you buy configuration as a service now, you can have the malware operated for you, too.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These striking wooden bicycles hail from Freiburg in the Black Forest, Germany's so-called "green city." Here's a snip of text from Google Translate's best whack at the German writeup Tillwe's translation from the article:

In 2006 Marcus Wallmeyer (32) founded the "Waldmeister" (woodruff, but also "master of the forest") company. He already got various design prizes for his bicycles, unique works with a frame made from local wood. Thus the Waldmeister Bike 2007 won the "brand new award" of ispo, world biggest sports exhibition.

With his concept the creative bicycle freaks aims for bringing design and sustainability together. he also designs bicycle lamps.

Waldmeister: Design-Fahrräder aus Holz (Thanks, Kus!)

Joshuah Bearman says:

The guy peruses god knowsh how many clips of songs, historical performances, homemade bedroom noodling, high school band recitals, and low budget YouTube instrumental instructional videos, and combines them to form his own songs. The result is seven diverse -- and good! -- songs of various genres. That first one arranges some fairly active and original funk out of dozens of different instruments and melodies, including a guy with a mullet playing a theremin.

I Know it is a Bold Declaration, But The YouTube Mash-Up Just Took a Step Toward Art

Carlos Alejandro says: "Check out Rich Roat of House Industries' side blog."

A raccoon shimmied up a tree in plain view of my living room windows, stuck his head in a squirrel hole and couldn't get it back out. I made a butt shelf because he was just hangin' there twisting and turning and I needed to think about how to get him free without getting rabies or something. Next morning I drilled holes with a spade bit, joined the holes with a reciporicating saw and then chiseled the rest off. He climbed in the the hole and I climbed down the ladder.

Ten-Minute Raccoon Butt Shelf

eggegick writes "My wife has taken a number of college courses over the last three years and many of the classes used on-line materials rather than books. The problem was these required IE along with Java, Active X and/or various plug-ins (the names of which escapes me), and occasionally I'd have to tweak our firewall to allow these apps to run. I don't think any of these training apps would work with Firefox. All of this made me cringe from a security point of view. Myself, I use just use Firefox, No-Script, our external firewall and common sense when using the web. I have a very old windows 2000 machine that I keep up to date. To my knowledge I've never had a virus or malware problem. Her computer is a relatively new XP machine, and this point she feels here computer has something wrong. But now she prefers to use my old machine instead of hers since it seems to be more responsive. We plan to run the recovery disk on hers. Assuming the college course work applications were part of the cause, what recommendations do any of you have when having to run this kind of software? Is there a VMware solution that would work — that is have a Windows image that is used temporarily for the course work and then discarded at the end of the semester (and how do you create such an image, and what does it cost?)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot points us to a story about Scott Harris' ongoing attempt to get a patent on a way to market software. Harris is effectively trying to claim a patent on a "paradigm" of marketing software for other companies. For a variety of reasons this should be unpatentable, and so far (thankfully), the USPTO and the courts have agreed -- but Harris keeps trying to appeal, claiming that a company is no different than a machine -- and if a machine can be patented, so can the "paradigm" of the company.

Whenever we discuss patents around here, and say anything about patenting an "idea" or a "concept" the patent system supporters in the crowd are quick to yell and scream about how you can only patent "inventions" or the "reduction to practice" rather than the idea or the concept. But as anyone who's been watching the patent system over the past couple of decades knows, the definitions are being pushed, tweaked and stretched beyond recognition -- and Harris's attempts here are representative of that fact. It's great that they haven't succeed yet -- but plenty of other such twists on patent law have been happening for years.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

We've posted about artist Lockwasher's awesome robots and rayguns and other items made from found objects. Here are some pics from his Motor Art collection.

Motor Art [via Low-Tech Magazine]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

An anonymous reader writes "In response to Google's recently announced plans to expand the tracking of users, the international anti-advertising magazine Adbusters proposes that we collectively embark on a civil disobedience campaign of intentional, automated 'click fraud' in order to undermine Google's advertising program in order to force Google to adopt a pro-privacy corporate policy. They have released a GreaseMonkey script that automatically clicks on all AdSense ads."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First, thanks for all the interest in today's earlier piece. It's getting a lot of traffic and comments, all of which have been interesting. We've heard from lots of users and two Twitter board members.

A commenter named Jonathan asked what I meant by breaking out of Twitter. Here's what I said.

Thanks for asking -- I was wondering when someone would.

I don't know exactly what it means. If a real competitor came along that would create one possible answer, some of us would move there. Probably everyone would instantly get an account, if it were done right, some large number would stay there. If it had features that Twitter didn't have that were high value then it might suck a lot of the life out of Twitter.

It might mean lots of little Twitters. I'm starting one here on scripting.com, and in the first few hours of use it's already interesting. It wouldn't in any way be a replacement for Twitter. But it offers an alternative. Sort of like the difference between a blog and a big website, when blogs were just booting up in 1999 or so.

Or it could mean that Twitter voluntarily breaks itself up. Again I'm not sure what that means, but it could mean that Twitter stops having anything at all to do with the content of Twitter. Or it could split into two, CelebrityLand and LandOfThePeople. I don't see any of that as likely, but if I were part of their team, I would encourage them to look at doing to themselves what the competition is likely to do it. That can work out better, because then they get to do it on their own terms instead of the rougher treatment a competitor might offer.

Right now though, if Facebook offered a "lite" user interface that did just what Twitter does, plus a few nice extras, it would rule. Or if Google did, they would probably suck a lot of the energy out of Twitter. Not sure who else could do it.

Boing Boing has a post talking about a variety of rather ridiculous anti-internet laws being proposed in Italy. There's a proposal that would require bloggers to register with the government, and another that would require ISPs to block access to certain sites for publishing content it doesn't like. Nothing like repressive governments not wanting to allow freedom of speech to people.

However, even more interesting may be some of the details on the final piece of legislation mentioned in the post: banning any anonymous posting online. Despite all of the problems with bad laws in the US, at least (for the most part) there's been a respect for the right to anonymous speech. An anonymous (ha ha!) Techdirt reader sent in some other details about that anonymity bill. Specifically, the politician who put forth the legislation, posted the details via a Word document on her site, which allowed people to download it and see who created the document. Turns out it wasn't the politician -- but the president of the DVD production association. In other words, it certainly has appearances suggesting lobbyists from the entertainment industry wrote the law, and this politician just put her name on it. In some places people might call that infringement, or at the very least, plagiarism... But, apparently, the entertainment industry has no problem with politicians plagiarizing the legislation they hand over.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

narramissic writes "Two separate research teams have found that the the electromagnetic radiation that is generated when a computer keyboard is tapped is actually pretty easy to capture and decode. Using an oscilloscope and an inexpensive wireless antenna, the the Ecole Polytechnique team was able to pick up keystrokes from virtually any keyboard, including laptops — with 95 percent accuracy over a distance of up to 20 meters. Using similar techniques, Inverse Path researchers Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco picked out keyboard signals from keyboard ground cables. On PS/2 keyboards, 'the data cable is so close to the ground cable, the emanations from the data cable leak onto the ground cable, which acts as an antenna,' Barisani said. That ground wire passes through the PC and into the building's power wires, where the researchers can pick up the signals using a computer, an oscilloscope and about $500 worth of other equipment. Barisani and Bianco will present their findings at the CanSecWest hacking conference next week in Vancouver. The Ecole Polytechnique team has submitted their research for peer review and hopes to publish it very soon."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Gina Basso has curated an incredible science fiction film series that's just started at the museum. The series, titled "The Future of the Past: Utopia/Dystopia, 1965-1984" presents a rich history of cinematic futures: Westworld, Logan's Run, Soylent Green, A Clockwork Orange, Fantastic Planet, Stalker, Alphaville, Sleeper, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984 (the 1984 version). The series is tied to the current special exhibit, "Patterns of Speculation," on the architecture of the J. Mayer H firm. The movies are $5 or free with museum admission. It's rare for some of these to show on a big screen. I hope to catch several. And if you're not in the Bay Area, add these films to your movie rental queue. Every one of them is a must-see. Tonight is Logan's Run! From the series description:

Released from 1965 through the iconic Orwellian year 1984, these films present not-too-distant worlds that reflect extremes in the social, moral, and political trends of their time. These imagined tomorrows are more often dystopian than hopeful, with the world as we know it exhausted and collapsed. The resulting new architecture — glass domes, surveillance corridors, solitary structures — is the means of future survival and evokes a world of bleakness and sinister intent.

Future of the Past film festival (Thanks, Brad Steinberg!)

Brian O'Connor gave this recent presentation at DorkBot SoCal (March 8, 2009) on combining a homemade moisture sensor, an Arduino, and a Chumby to create a system for monitoring the health of his plants.

Video: Arduino + Chumby = Fun! with Brian O'Connor [Thanks, Thomas!]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!

Brittni Paiva plays "Glass Ball Slack Key" on ukulele.

• We reviewed the new iPod Shuffle. Read the verdict.
Charles Shopsin beheld an awesome forklift.
• The Trisaksri Ghost Repellant box unleashed a universe of Ghostbusters references.
• Researchers created quick-charging batteries from readily available materials
• More on the new Shuff: will third-party gear fix its interface flaws?
• Imperial officers prefer their red wine chilled.
• Joel unraveled a lethal-looking ethernet cord.
• Audiowood turntables: more beauty, less audiophile nonsense.
• The Mac Mini is now available in many colors, so long as you're prepared to pay $200 extra.
• A radio-controlled Mario Cart, complete with banana and upended Koopa Troopa, is yours for $30.

CWmike writes "While new federal CIO Vivek Kundra gave a speech here this morning on his vision for the US government's use of technology, the FBI conducted a search of the District of Columbia's IT offices — where Kundra worked until last week — and arrested an employee and another person who works for an outsourcing vendor, say reports. There was no indication that Kundra was connected in any way to the FBI's raid, which was part of a bribery sting operation. And if Kundra was aware of what was going on at his former offices or concerned about the raid, it wasn't evident during his speech at FOSE 2009, a trade show focused on government IT. The FBI would not comment on the reports. President Barack Obama last week appointed Kundra to be the federal government's first official CIO."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As various musicians are upset that YouTube refuses to pay more for helping to publicize their videos, it appears at least some musicians understand the massive value of YouTube. Reader Josh Austin tells us he was listening to a local radio show in Denver, where the DJs were interviewing the singer, Joe Bonamassa. In the course of the discussion he mentions just how valuable YouTube has been for him, saying:

All this digital stuff, now, it's actually really helped my audience, you know. We were playing little blues bars, and with the advent of YouTube all these college kids started coming out, because they'd check you out online, and instead of a hundred fans, there'd be thousands, and it's great! How can you complain about YouTube? It's a really good thing.

You can see the video embedded below, with the relevant section starting at about 2:45: So, for all those musicians complaining that YouTube doesn't "pay enough," I would imagine that the increased revenue Bonamassa gets from increasing his audience by an order of magnitude seems like a pretty decent "payment." And, to think, YouTube provided this promotional platform to him for free!

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Wired's Threat Level blog has the story of Torrent Droid, a new Android app that lets you scan DVD-case bar-codes with your phone, looks up the title, and remotely starts a torrent download of the title on your home machine. The use-case on Threat Level is a someone out shopping, shooting bar-codes of DVDs and having them ready to watch when he gets home, but I immediately thought of how useful this would be in conjunction with your personal DVD collection and a media-center PC under the TV. You could just barcode all the DVDs in your living room, have the Media Center torrent them, and box up the discs and stick them under the stairs. Yes, that's still illegal, but it'd be far more convenient than ripping the 1000-some DVDs currently cluttering up our tiny flat.

Alex Holmes says users can be out shopping, for example, at the local Wal-Mart buying diapers for little Johnnie. Johnnie's dad can hit Wal-Mart's video section, use the G1 Android phone camera to snap a picture of a DVD barcode and voila: Search results of where the flick could be pilfered for free would immediately be sent to Johnnie's dad, who could then download the vid to the webUI of uTorrent while he's combing the aisles carrying a crying baby searching for the right pacifier and diaper rash treatment.

Johnnie's dad arrives home, and the free flick of his choice is ready to view.

Android Program Scans DVD Barcodes, Starts BitTorrent Download

My friend Jonathan Koshi was a co-creator of Songbird, the open source media player. Koshi designed the original Songbird and now it's turned up as graffiti in Italy! Even better is that neither Koshi nor the Songbird team had anything to do with it. Songbird Ninja Graffiti

InlawBiker writes "Today, Amazon invoked the DMCA to force removal of a python script and instructions from the mobileread web site. The script is used to identify the Kindle's internal ID number, which can be used to enable non-Amazon purchased books to work on the Kindle. '...this week we received a DMCA take-down notice from Amazon requesting the removal of the tool kindlepid.py and instructions for it. Although we never hosted this tool (contrary to their claim), nor believe that this tool is used to remove technological measures (contrary to their claim), we decided, due to the vagueness of the DMCA law and our intention to remain in good relation with Amazon, to voluntarily follow their request and remove links and detailed instructions related to it.' Ironically, the purpose of the script is to make the Kindle more useful to its users."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

InlawBiker writes "Today, Amazon invoked the DMCA to force removal of a python script and instructions from the mobileread web site. The script is used to identify the Kindle's internal ID number, which can be used to enable non-Amazon purchased books to work on the Kindle. '...this week we received a DMCA take-down notice from Amazon requesting the removal of the tool kindlepid.py and instructions for it. Although we never hosted this tool (contrary to their claim), nor believe that this tool is used to remove technological measures (contrary to their claim), we decided, due to the vagueness of the DMCA law and our intention to remain in good relation with Amazon, to voluntarily follow their request and remove links and detailed instructions related to it.' Ironically, the purpose of the script is to make the Kindle more useful to its users."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filmmaker Rob Spence, who damaged one of his eyes as a child, is planning to install a tiny camera into the socket where the eye used to be. Then, he plans to record conversations with people about privacy, surveillance, and how we may be "sleepwalking into an Orwellian society." From the Associated Press:

A fan of the 1970s televsion series "The Six Million Dollar Man" (still at left -ed.), Spence said he had an epiphany when looking at his cell phone camera and realizing something that small could fit into his empty eye socket...

He said his subjects won't know he's filming until afterward but he will have to receive permission from them before including them in his film.

His special equipment will consist of a camera, originally designed for colonoscopies, a battery and a wireless transmitter. It's a challenge to get everything to fit inside the prosthetic eye, but Spence has had help from top engineers, including Steve Mann, who co-founded the wearable computers research group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts...

"As a documentary maker, you're trying to make a connection with a person," he says, "and the best way to make a connection is through eye contact."

"One-eyed filmmaker conceals camera in prosthetic" (via Boing Boing Gadgets)

Ynot_82 writes "The French national police force, the Gendarmerie Nationale, has spoken about their migration away from the Windows platform to Linux. Estimated to have already saved the force 50 Million Euros, the migration is due to be completed on all 90,000 workstations by 2015. Of the move, Lt. Col. Guimard had this comment: '"Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users," said Lt. Col. Guimard. "Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Corkscrew is an ingenious mechanical sculpture comprising almost 300 found objects which have been cast in bronze and assembled to create a priceless object trouves. The Corkscrew is not only an amazing sculpture, which dramatically emerges from its fabulous cabinet, but is quite simply a work of pure, mechanical genius which removes the cork from a bottle of wine and then pours the wine under its own power.

Rob Higgs bio

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

Kyle Phillips is an Interactive Designer here in the Twin Cities and we're all super excited to welcome him to Make: Day this Saturday! His project combines a custom-built, multi-touch surface table with software that configures and displays information from Digg.

Kyle writes,

"What Matters Most" is a multi-touch application exploring the media-viewing habits of Internet users. By aggregating information from digg.com "What Matters Most" displays the most popular media of the moment and shows what topics and stories people are showing the most interest in, the user is able to navigate topics, stories and comments and helps show what media we value most.

For more information, check out the video on Kyle's website:

Make: Day is this Saturday, March 14th from 10am -3pm at the Science Museum of Minnesota!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Make: television | Digg this!

Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Brandon has video of Parisian street artist Invader's latest guerilla mosaic installation. Invasion in progress: video of Space Invader's 763rd Paris invasion

T-Mobile has won damages and an injunction (via Phone Scoop) against several companies that were taking bulk quantities of its prepaid handsets, unlocking them, and then reselling them. The company calls such activity "prepaid phone trafficking," when it's really just exploiting a poor business model. As in other suits filed by other operators, it sounds like T-Mobile based this one on copyright or trademark claims, saying "Consumers are harmed and may be misled about the source and origin of their mobile phones... Because the phones may still carry T-Mobile's brand, consumers may believe they are purchasing handsets manufactured for T-Mobile and covered by original warranties." That's slightly counter-intuitive: T-Mobile says the unlockers made their money by buying handsets locked to the operator, then unlocking them so they could charge a higher price when they were resold. According to T-Mobile, the phones carried a higher price, weren't sold in original packaging and didn't come with manuals. They were also, presumably, accompanied by advertising playing up the fact that they could be used on any operator's network. All of this combined would seem to make it pretty clear to buyers that they weren't buying an original, "official" T-Mobile product. So where's the basis for the confusion claims?

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.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

angry tapir writes with this excerpt from Good Gear Guide: "One Laptop Per Child is set to dump x86 processors, instead opting to put low-power Arm-based processors in its next-generation XO-2 laptop with the aim of improving battery life. The nonprofit is 'almost' committed to putting the Arm-based chip in the next-generation XO-2 laptop, which is due for release in 18 months, according to Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC. The XO-1 laptop currently ships with Advanced Micro Devices' aging Geode chip, which is based on an x86 design."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In this video, a turtle attempts to have intercourse with a shoe. Sadly, the shoe just doesn't seem interested. (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

BoingBoing reader Marissa Frayer writes:

Perhaps print journalism foreshadowed its fledgling future long ago with its morbid jargon. Morgue. Gutter. Beat. Deadline. Dummy. Kill. Widow. Orphan. Are journalists all being strung along like dummies, beaten and downtrodden by deadlines, desperately clutching our clips and killed ideas, en route to a future in the gutter, as we abandon our readers? Or are we just headed for the morgue where the only organization left standing will be widowed Gray Lady?

I'm not entirely serious--just thought it was curious that our profession employs some awfully depressing jargon. I once spent the better part of the day in my company's morgue. It was the only place I could find silence and space to spread out and concentrate on the demands of a 280-page dummy. Needless the say the irony was not lost on me.

This is a statue of KFC's Colonel Sanders that has been at the bottom of the Dotombori River in Osaka, Japan for more than two decades. Fans of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team toss him in the river after a big win for the team. Apparently, they decided that the Colonel looks like one of the players on the team, Randy Bass. So they grabbed the statue and were throwing it into the air in honor of Bass when it accidentally went over a rail into the river. From Mainichi Daily News:

The Hanshin Tigers have not won the Japan Series since 1985, a fact attributed by some to the "Curse of Colonel Sanders."

The upper body of the statue was discovered at around 4 p.m. about 200 meters away from where it plunged into the water in 1985. When the figure was being pulled up by the crane on a salvage barge, construction workers could be heard to say, "It looks like a corpse." However, when Tigers fans such as the riverside project foreman saw the statue, they exclaimed, "It's the Colonel!"

"Tigers fans hope discovery of long-lost fast-food icon will lift 'Curse of Colonel Sanders'"

Muad'Dave writes "CNN is reporting that the crew of the International Space Station was forced to take refuge from a possible collision of the ISS with a piece of space debris Thursday. From the article: 'Floating debris from a satellite forced the crew of the international space station to retreat to a safety capsule Thursday, according to a NASA news release. .. The debris was too close for the space station to move out of the way, so the station's three crew members were temporarily evacuated to a the station's Soyuz TMA-13 capsule, NASA said.'" Update: 03/12 18:42 GMT by T : The original story incorrectly said the ISS had 18 crew members. Luckily for the three in the Soyuz, that was a mistake.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So Bernard Madoff is heading to prison, most likely for the rest of his life. Will it be hard time or a low-security lockup for rich felons? (Photo thumbnail via the Times of London)

Whatever. A bad guy, but only of the many we should hope will end up in jail in the next several years -- especially members of the Wall Street gang that stole billions and tanked the global economy. How much real investigating will be done of their crimes? How much justice will we see?

Madoff confessed his frauds. The bankers said, "We demand hundreds of billions more, some of which we'll keep as bonuses, or we'll guarantee a global depression."

Who's worse?

Earlier this year, we discussed a recent article about the impact of copyright on classical music, where it was noted that the music that is still considered the absolute best of that particular era mostly came from countries that did not have strong copyright protection. That article noted that there were a number of composers in France (strong copyright protection) who became rich, but that the music they produced has not stood the test of time. Meanwhile, Giles Thomas pointed us to a review of one chapter in Boldrin and Levine's Against Intellectual Monopoly that discusses how the introduction of copyright correlates almost exactly to the end of successful classical music composition in England. It is only a correlation -- the reasons could be many -- but it is worth noting.

Along those lines, a friend recently pointed me to a new research report on the emergence of musical copyright in Europe, by Frederic M. Scherer of Harvard, that highlights many of these same points. The report notes that there seems to be little indication whatsoever that copyright contributed to greater classical music output (it's intended purpose). And, it's not as if the author was looking to make that point -- he was actually trying to prove the alternative. As part of the research, he pointed out (a point that has been raised by Levine and Boldrin as well) that Giuseppe Verdi composed in an era both without copyright and with copyright -- but as soon as copyright came into play, he drastically slowed down his production of new works, since he could live off the royalties from older works instead:

The reduction in effort cannot be attributed to declining ability; some of Verdi's great operas are among the handful of late compositions. Rather, his correspondence makes clear, the higher "price" elicited for each opera made it possible to reduce effort along a classic backward-bending supply curve.

That, of course, is the exact opposite of what copyright supporters insist should happen. Even then, Scherer notes that he expected this decrease in production might be offset by Verdi's wealth attracting many more people into the field of composing as they, too, hoped to get wealthy. So, his initial expectations were that even if Verdi slowed down his production, others would pick up the slack thanks to copyright. No such luck in the data, however: "With my sample of 646 composers I attempted a statistical test, but I have to confess failure." There was no support at all for the theory in the UK (as noted above). There was some correlation in France, but Scherer notes that seems more likely to have been due to a different variable: the French Revolution and the establishment of the Paris Conservatoire, which quickly brought in and trained hundreds of composers.

So, once again, it has to be asked. If copyright is supposed to be increasing the creation of content, and the evidence suggests the opposite happens, why do people keep insisting that it actually works? Even worse, why does anyone believe copyright system supporters who declare self-righteously that without copyright, there would be no professional content production. As Scherer concludes in his paper: "The world would be full of glorious music even if copyright laws had not come into being."

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Famous Japanese pop artist Yoshitomo Nara says he enjoyed his stay in a NYC jail recently. He had been arrested for graffiti the day before his show opened at the Marianne Boesky Gallery. (The owner is the daughter of the even more famous "greed is good" criminal Ivan who served two years at Lompoc Federal Prison Camp for insider trading.)

Usually associated with his paintings and sculptures of doe-eyed figures, the Japanese artist had been caught tagging a graffiti portrait of two Japanese friends in the Union Square subway station.

Nara was optimistic about his two days in lockup, though, saying it was “a nice experience in my life,” and that the environment he found himself in was “like in the movies.”

(Via Japan Probe)

From Craft:

Silke Stoddard from the Martha Stewart Crafts Department created this softie based on her son's drawing.

I swipe my kids' art all the time.

Stuffed Toy From a Child's Drawing

A Philadelphia pet store received a shipment this week that they thought was an order of tropical fish and salt water. The package turned out to be a dead body meant for a medical research laboratory. Pets Plus owner Mark Arabia says that the fish he was expecting are probably dead by now. From the AP:

US Airways released a statement saying the problem was caused by a "verbal miscommunication between a delivery driver and the cargo representative." The airline said it's deeply sorry.

"Pet store expects fish shipment, but gets corpse"

TRNick writes "Is the future of gaming more or less free, perhaps funded by advertising or micropayments? A bunch of MMOs have pioneered the way, and now they are being followed by the likes of EA, Sony and id Software, each of which are offering some form of free gaming. But it's not just the big guys. TechRadar talks to a new generation of indie developers who are making names for themselves. 'I make most of my money from sponsors,' says one. 'We're all here because we love making games first and foremost,' says another. But can free games ever make enough money to fund the really ambitious, event games that get the headlines?" While paid games aren't likely to be on their way out any time soon, more and more developers and publishers are experimenting with cheaper pricing, and the results so far seem positive.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Via Pink Tentacle:

Marvelously deranged manga artist Shintaro Kago has set up a YouTube channel and started uploading bizarre animated shorts. Among them are his “Terror of golf course,” which shows a golfer’s unfortunate encounter with a peculiar hole on the putting green…

Our pal Drew Friedman painted this fine illustration for The New Republic. Drew writes:

"Godfather" parodies have been done a million times but I thought this analogy would work well with GOP chairman Michael Steele groveling to his Don, Rush Limbaugh.

The New Godfather

The "Eye-Pod" from Steam Gear Lab incorporates a hidden gen-1 iPod Nano and is a work of sheer genius:

The "eye-Pod" can be worn on the wrist via the leather cuff, or placed on its custom Victrola base.

All functionality of the iPod remain intact an a hidden USB cord retracts from the base to either a wall charger or your computer. There are hidden pressure plates that when touched send a strobing "static charge" into the quartz crystals on either side of the magnified viewing portal.

Steam Gear Lab has broken the chains of small electronics obsolescence. Behold! The Eye-Pod Victrola! (Thanks, SMarks!)

Forgetomori presents a photo gallery of the worst-dressed aliens ever.

6. The High Collar Look.

Here we see a pair of aliens wearing what seems most uncomfortable looking collars on their robes. The first is a drawing from Edith Fiore’s subject Linda (1989). The second appeared in a collection of Gray drawings probably taken from the Budd Hopkins collection and appearing in the Learning Channel documentary UFOs & Aliens: Search for the Truth: Alien Life Forms (2000)

This fashion was first seen among the Kanamits of the Twilight Zone classic “To Serve Man.” Another good example is the brainy aliens of Space 1999’s episode “War Games.”

Worst Dressed Grays List

An anonymous reader points out a story at Business Week which begins: "Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker says the Chrome browser is making the foundation behind Firefox rethink its reliance on revenues from Google. Since Google introduced its own Web browser, Chrome, the prospect that Google may not re-up the three-year contract set to expire in 2011 has Mozilla considering other search partnerships and ways to generate revenue, Baker said. 'There are probably other search engines that would pay us more money,' Baker says. Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN, Google's two main search rivals, come to mind, but Baker says smaller search engines wouldn't be discounted should such a situation arise. One player Baker won't identify 'offered a blank check to replace Google,' she says. Set to launch on certain Nokia phones in late spring, Fennec is the first Mozilla browser optimized for mobile platforms. If it gains traction with enough handset makers and mobile users, Fennec could represent another way to draw revenue from a partnering search engine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the coolest things at Maker Faire each year is the local rocketry groups who display their best rockets and swap stories with attendees.

We wanted that same opportunity at Make: Day, and that's why we're happy to welcome Tripoli MN!

Photos by Todd Schweim

The members of Tripoli MN will have a bunch of their rockets on display and share a brief overview of modern high power rocketry, propulsion and electronics. They'll also demonstrate the simulation programs used to predict things like max speed and altitude of a particular rocket and motor combination. These guys really know their stuff, go ahead and try to stump them!

Also learn how to join your local club to start building and flying rockets of your own.

Make: Day is this Saturday, March 14th from 10am -3pm at the Science Museum of Minnesota!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Make: television | Digg this!

It seems that with every new communications tool online, we get some politicians absolutely freaked out about how "terrorists" will use it to communicate, and how that must be stopped. In just the past few months, we've seen politicians freak out about terrorists supposedly using Second Life, YouTube and Twitter -- and how each of these need to be stopped. Every time this has come up, it has seemed pretty ludicrous for a variety of reasons. First, these are communication tools. They can be used for good or bad purposes -- but it seems pretty ridiculous to freak out over the fact that some might possibly use them for bad purposes. But, even more importantly, the idea that these tools would help "recruit" new terrorists seemed particularly silly. If someone is going to be convinced to become a terrorist based on a YouTube video, there's a bigger problem.

And, in fact, that's exactly what a new report is finding. The whole "freaking out about terrorists online" thing is totally overblown. The study found little evidence that terrorists were effectively recruiting people online, and even if they were, they found no conceivable way to stop such tools from being used by terrorists at all -- and pointed out how pointless it was to even try. At best, they would get some content taken down from a few websites, which would only serve to draw more attention to the content, which would quickly appear on other websites instead. But, of course, most politicians don't care. They need to create such moral panics so it looks like they're actually doing something to "protect the children" in order to get re-elected.

In the meantime, if they were really concerned about "terrorists" using technology, they might actually want to focus on getting the folks who hate us to use the technology even more. At least that's the feeling I get after reading this article about a Taliban leader and former Guantanamo prisoner, who's now obsessed with his iPhone. I have to admit, most of the article reads like an Onion-style parody ("'It's easy and modern and I love it,' Zaeef said as he pinched and pulled his fingers across the iPhone's touch screen last week. 'This is necessary in the world today. People want to progress.'"), but it does show that perhaps using enabling technology to allow people to better their lives, gets them a lot less focused on looking for ways to kill us.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Over at Dinosaurs and Robots, Kevin Kidney found an article from a 1954 issue of Popular Science on how to make an abstract mobile. I love the fact that PopSci had articles like this. I want to try making one!

ink writes "Mozilla has released the third beta for Firefox 3.1 (which may become Firefox 3.5). This beta includes the new location bar, Mozilla's new JavaScript engine Tracemonkey, new HTML5 features and many other enhancements. It looks the same on the surface, but there are many changes under the hood."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've just had a quick article on the wars between corporate IT and tech enthusiast employees published in the Harvard Business Review. I've been on both sides of that barricade, and while I understand the plight of IT, I think that it's against everyone's interest to give them to power to lock employees out of figuring out better ways of using their PCs and the Internet to get the job done.

The dirty secret of corporate IT is that its primary mission is to serve yesterday's technology needs, even if that means strangling tomorrow's technology solutions. The myth of corporate IT is that it alone possesses the wisdom to decide which technologies will allow the workers on the front line to work better, faster and smarter — albeit with the occasional lackluster requirements-gathering process, if you're lucky.

The fact is that the most dreadful violators of corporate policy — the ones getting that critical file to a supplier using Gmail because the corporate mail won't allow the attachment, the ones using IM to contact a vacationing colleague to find out how to handle a sticky situation, the incorrigible Twitterer who wants to sign up all his colleagues as followers through the work day — are also the most enthusiastic users of technology, the ones most apt to come up with the next out-of-left-field efficiency for the firm.

There has to be a way to bring those people inside the church, rather than going to war against them. I suspect the answer is in modern virtualization tools, which allow users to have a "clean" OS and environment that they use for in-compliance processing and work, and a "wild" sandbox where anything goes, each on separate network segments. Earning this setup would require demonstrating skill and desire to imagine new ways of getting the job done, and its use would be subject to regular, brief reports on lessons learned, techniques tried, failures and successes.

The High Priests of IT — And the Heretics

Glyn sez, "Musicians including Billy Bragg, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien and Blur's Dave Rowntree have said that fans should not be prosecuted for illegally downloading music from the internet. Bragg speaking as a key member of the Featured Artists Coalition, which was set up to give a collective voice to artists who want to fight for their rights in the digital world, said:"

"What I said at the meeting was that the record industry in Britain is still going down the road of criminalising our audience for downloading illegal MP3s,"

"If we follow the music industry down that road, we will be doing nothing more than being part of a protectionist effort. It's like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.

"Artists should own their own rights and they should decide when their music should be used for free, or when they should have payment."

I shared a stage with Bragg a couple weeks ago at the Convention on Modern Liberty -- he was fantastic on the subject of liberty and applauded when I said that I thought that the new global conversation online was the most inspirational "liberty" story I'd seen. He's the real deal.

Other musicians who support the cause include Annie Lennox, Robbie Williams, Peter Gabriel, while David Gray, Fran Healy from Travis, Pink Floyd's Nick Mason and Mick Jones from The Clash.

It's not a crime to download, say musicians (Thanks, Glyn!)

Jamie gave me a nice writeup of a mashup where the writer shares some random youtube mashup video that you maybe have seen before called the Mother of all Funk Chords. It's a pretty amazing artistic achievement and probably worth at least a quick glance of your time. But the larger point should be taken seriously. He says "If your reaction to this crate of magic is 'Hm. I wonder how we'd go about suing someone who "did this" with our IP?' instead of, 'Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment,' it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page. Because, this is what your new Elvis looks like."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jamie gave me a nice writeup of a mashup where the writer shares some random youtube mashup video that you maybe have seen before called the Mother of all Funk Chords. It's a pretty amazing artistic achievement and probably worth at least a quick glance of your time. But the larger point should be taken seriously. He says 'if your reaction to this crate of magic is "Hm. I wonder how we'd go about suing someone who 'did this' with our IP?" instead of, "Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment," it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page. Because, this is what your new Elvis looks like.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hannah Perner-Wilson made this simple tilt-sensing bracelet using pads of conductive fabric and a metal beaded charm. The charm dangles and moves, touching one or two of the pads at a time, which can indicate which way your wrist is facing! Great for body-reactive sound and visuals in dance performance.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

Nick Fitzsimons points us to a blog post by journalist/musician Rhodri Marsden complaining about everyone who keeps telling the music industry it needs to "find a new business model." According to Marsden, the people who say this do so without ever suggesting what that alternative business model might be. That is totally wrong, of course. It may be true of some, but plenty of us have spent years and years not just the explaining how such new business models work, but showing example after example after example after example of it working in practice. So, I'm sorry, but I find it rather silly to claim that such business models don't exist or that those of us who "smugly" claim the industry needs to find a new business model never suggest any.

Marsden then notes: "The fact that we're sitting here watching the music industry rapidly decline is a fairly big hint that no such model exists." But, of course, he's wrong about that as well. The music industry hasn't been rapidly declining at all. Every single aspect of the business is way up -- except for the part that's about selling plastic discs. The plastic discs with music on them business is in decline, but that's not "the music business." More music is being produced today than ever before in history. More people are making money from music today than ever before in history. The concert business has been setting records every year, despite the supposed "decline" in the industry. Even instrument sales have been going up. Sales of devices to listen to music, such as iPods, continue to rise as well. Basically every single part of the music business is doing fantastically well -- record levels -- except for the business of selling plastic discs.

So, sorry Mr. Marsden, but it very much is a business model problem. And, yes, there are tons of business models that work -- and many, many folks have been both laying out the fundamentals of those business models, as well as making them work. That you want to ignore them and pretend they don't exist or don't work is your problem, but don't claim that it's not happening. Open your eyes and look around at what's actually happening.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

An anonymous reader writes ""[The BBC] managed to acquire its own low-value botnet — the name given to a network of hijacked computers — after visiting chatrooms on the internet. The programme did not access any personal information on the infected PCs. If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law. But our purpose was to demonstrate botnets' collective power when in the hands of criminals." The BBC performed a controlled DDoS attack, "then ordered its slave PCs to bombard its target site with requests for access to make it inaccessible.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Argentinean identity and logo designer. Excellently solid stuff. #

Beautifully designed iPhone app by Garrett Murray (seriously, what can't this guy do?). Handy way of checking your Mint, Twitter and Feedburner stats (and I'm imagining more sites eventually). #

Maker Faire mainstays ArcAttack explain some of the hardware behind their powerfully musical singing Tesla coils. They go on to describe plans for a European tour and chat a bit about controlling their rig with shiny new tech from OpenLabs. Perhaps you thought transporting a hefty combo amp was tough? Moving this kind of gear overseas must present quite a unique challenge. [via Synthtopia]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!

Some anonymous person wrote in to say that Google has relaunched and rebranded GrandCentral as "Google Voice." The article says it will "revolutionize telephones. It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens." Sadly, the voicemail didn't integrate very nicely w/ my phone back in the day, so I guess I should give it a shot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our fellow dorks, nerds, makers and crafters at the University of North Texas (UNT) have formed an unofficial UNT Make chapter. They're throwing a launch party on April 17, 2009 and promise collaborative music, art, projects from local makers, and stuff to make and nerd out about. Lots of great music, too.

See the Facebook invite here.
UNT Make

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Announcements | Digg this!

First, so there are no misunderstandings, I am using Twitter, I will continue to use Twitter and I will recommend Twitter to others, as I have been for 2 or so years. This is not me slamming the door on the way out, something I dislike intensely. If you're leaving just go. But I'm not leaving.

There was an event a few weeks back that convinced me that it's time to break out, like jailbreaking an iPhone. I don't like the relationship Twitter-the-service has with Twitter-the-company. Yesterday I was talking with a Twitter board member, Bijan Sabet, someone who is becoming a personal friend, and said that it was good that the phone company wasn't part of the conversation. That's exactly how I feel about the company he is on the board of. Yet they are very much part of the conversation.

I pour a lot of effort into Twitter, and while I wasn't in the top tier of users, I was solidly in the second tier. I wasn't doing the things you have to do to get the most followers, or I didn't have a powerful media presence like Leo or Shaq to get me up there. People like Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis all viewed being at the top as a competitive thing, so they did what it took. Me, I just poured a lot of energy and creativity into it, and got the number of followers that comes from doing that. It's now approaching 20,000, which I am proud of, but it's not very much compared to the numbers of some people who did nothing other than be friends of Evan Williams to get hundreds of thousands of followers.

I first noticed this when I was on Ana Marie Cox's page on Twitter. All of a sudden she went from 3 or 4 thousand to over 60,000 in less than a week. She had no idea why. A thread opened, there were theories that it was a spam attack, but then Williams jumped in and said it was because she was on the Suggested Users page. The LA Times ran a story on it, and then pretty much everyone knew. Scoble and Leo were openly angry, understandably so. These guys worked really hard to be at the top, I watched them do it, and now they're not even close to the top. (BTW, Cox is no longer in the Suggested Users list.)

I don't have a quarrel with the people who got the boost, I think it's pretty clear none of them asked for it. I do think the company should have done this much more carefully. Now there's no way to put the toothpaste back in the tube. And the people who got the push have a problem if they are members of the press, because this gift they got from Twitter is worth money. It might be worth a lot of money. If one of them posts a pointer on a Twitter account it's going to get a lot of flow. And what if a reporter were critical of Twitter in a piece she wrote, would Twitter revoke her status?

TechCrunch uses their Twitter page to point to articles on their site, and every page has ads on it. So the gift from Twitter is worth dollars to them. It's hard to imagine them pulling punches when it comes to reviewing the company. But are they likely to be more kindly disposed to the company? It's hard to imagine when they're delivering so much free flow that doesn't earn them a warm space in your heart.

And what about Scoble, Leo, Guy and Jason? Did they say something to offend Twitter? Possibly. I can name one thing for each of them that the guys at Twitter probably don't like. But why should I have to even think about this? Until they tilted the table so heavily in favor of these people, I didn't. But it always bothered me that they could.

Why does the NY Times get the gift but the LA Times doesn't?

Why is Tim O'Reilly on the list, but not Jay Rosen?

Why TechCrunch and not GigaOm, PaidContent, SiliconAlley, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, VentureBeat, etc etc.

Think about it this way -- do you know who wrote Apache or PHP? Do any of them have the power to deliver so much flow to an installation of their software? Imho, that's exactly the relationship Twitter should have with its users. Or the phone company and users of phones -- they shouldn't jump into a conversation and say (for example) "We know someone really cool you would probably like to talk to. We're connecting you to them now."

Bijan says that Twitter is the little guy, but to me they look big -- huge -- when they have the power to move people up the ladder so quickly, and introduce doubt about their relationship with individual users. When being in favor with Ev means so much. That's screwing the whole thing up.

Bottom-line: This isn't the way the Internet works. The guys at Twitter should know this. I think they're living in a bubble, and creating one at the same time. No one likes someone who pops the bubble while it's still building. So be it. We need to get that power out of their hands, or they need to disclaim it. They're such a small guy, it's really puzzling why they would do something that alienates so many. Most people won't say it, for the obvious reason that their business interests prevent them from. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be said.

I've been doing a lot of research on the healthcare and pharmaceutical markets lately, getting a much better understanding of just how much damage patents have actually done to healthcare (contrary to the opinions of many). There's a lot of scary stuff, the more you dig into it -- but occasionally you come across a surprising story. For example, in the 1940s, the pharma company Merck basically agreed to give up its patent right to block others from making streptomycin, allowing others to create competing products, making it much easier (and cheaper) to treat tuberculosis patients. I would have thought that a similar story would be impossible today, but perhaps not. Against Monopoly points us to the news of a molecular biologist, Jay Keasling, who came up with a much more efficient way to create a malaria drug. And, while he did patent it, he negotiated with his university and drug companies to make sure that no one would gouge the poor with the drug. The drug is going into production and will be sold at cost by Sanofi-Aventis. Apparently such stories can still happen...

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

This enjoyably quirky documentary tells the tale of Thaddeus Cahill's Telharmonium, the monstrous forerunner of the analog synthesizer, making music before even the age of popular radio -

The Telharmonium was a 200-ton behemoth that created numerous musical timbres and could flood many rooms with sound.

Beginning with the first instrument, constructed in the 1890's, and continuing with the installation of the second instrument at Telharmonic Hall in New York, the rise and fall of commercial service, the attempted comeback of the third Telharmonium, and ending with efforts to find a home for the only surviving instrument in 1951, this documentary provides a definitive account of the first comprehensive music synthesizer.

It's a shame the video compression is so heavy on this one - though it might be oddly appropriate given the instrument's own technical challenges. Keep in the mind that the accompanying soundtrack is not actually a Telharmonium. Unfortunately no recordings exist of the instrument, though those who did hear it note the clarity of its sinewave voice. [via Oddstrument]

More:

Relay organ plays the sound of switching

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!

An anonymous reader writes "According to its own speed tests, Microsoft's Internet Explorer loads most websites faster than both Chrome and Firefox when looking at the top 25 websites on the Internet. 'As you can see, IE8 outperforms Firefox 3.05 and Chrome 1.0 in loading 12 websites, Chrome 1.0 places second by loading nine sites first, and Firefox brings up the rear by loading four sites faster than the other two browsers. Also, in case you missed it, IE loads mozilla.com faster than Firefox, and Firefox loads microsoft.com faster than IE, just for kicks.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Writing in next month's Wired, Joshua Davis presents a superb feature -- the first person account of Leonardo Notarbartolo, who was convicted of robbing the Antwerp Diamond Center vault of $100 million worth of inventory. Notarbartolo's story is colorful and fascinating -- and may even be true. It matches any heist flick for geekery and plot-twists:

Next, the King of Keys played out a hunch. In Notarbartolo's videos, the guard usually visited a utility room just before opening the vault. When the thieves searched the room, they found a major security lapse: The original vault key was hanging inside.

The King of Keys grabbed the original. There was no point in letting the safe manufacturers know that their precious key could be copied, and the police still don't know that a duplicate was made.

The King of Keys slotted the original in the keyhole and waited while the Genius dialed in the combination they had gleaned from the video. A moment later, the Genius nodded. The Monster turned off the lights—they didn't want to trigger the light detector in the vault when the door opened. In the darkness, the King of Keys turned the key and spun a four-pronged handle. The bolts that secured the door retracted and it swung heavily open.

Speedy ran up the stairwell. It was his job to stay in touch with Notarbartolo, but there was no cell phone reception down in the vault. Upstairs, he got a signal and dialed his old friend.

"We're in," he said and hung up.

The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist (via Schneier)

Love this finger-painter iPhone art by artist Jorge Colombo, done in the Brushes application. [Thanks, Tatia!]

iPhone Sketches

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

Skot Wiedmann of Motus Mavis explores unknown soundscapes via his mysteriously beautiful star-synth. The dual-wheel touchpad controls steal the show in this one. Around those free-spinning silver dials are what appears to be pressure sensitive pads - perhaps similar to the neoprene interface of the Continuum Fingerboard. Whatever the tech may be, the design is inspiration alone - certainly gets me thinking outside the 'box' … and usual panel arrangements. [via Califaudio]

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

The US Department of Homeland Security is studying lies, damned lies, and smells. They hope to prove that human body odor could be used to tell when people are lying. The department says they are already "conducting experiments in deceptive behavior and collecting human odor samples" and that the research it hopes to fund "will consist primarily of the analysis and study of the human odor samples collected to determine if a deception indicator can be found."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris Anderson, of DIY Drones, sends us word that ArduPilot 2.0 Beta has been released. It has built-in stabilization, making it a full-functional autopilot -- no third-party stabilization unit required. It uses the same $25 ArduPilot hardware, so all existing owners should be able to upgrade without issue. This is pretty amazing -- the functionality of a >$1,000 autopilot for less than $100! Go DIY Drones!

ArduPilot 2.0 Beta Code Released!

More:

• Do it yourself era... open source hardware
• ArduPilot - Arduino compatible UAV controller

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!

Just Posted: Our preview sample gallery from the Olympus E-620. London can be quite gray at this time of year, so we thought we'd capitalize on our time in the US by putting together a sample gallery with a final production version of the new upper entry-level DSLR from Olympus. We've included a mixture of ISO settings and a couple of shots using the camera's Pin Hole art filter.

We're seeing more and more consumer brands getting involved in the music business. In parts of Asia this sort of thing has become a lot more common, but we're seeing it more and more in the west as well, such as when Tag body spray started its own record label, or when Groove Armada signed with Bacardi, rather than a record label. Now, Raimund Ostrowski points us to this story about Kraft Canada, which, in an attempt to revive the Triscuits brand, had a musician in Toronto write a 30-second song for a commercial. The commission was then expanded into a full 3 minute song which is getting airplay on the radio and can even be bought at iTunes. While (understandably!) some may not like this sort of commercialization of music, it does show yet again the many other business models that can show up to help pay for the creation of music.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

One way to monitor the business end of a RC device is to tap into all of the servo outputs on the receiver and decode their respective PWM signals. A much simpler interface, however, both in terms of wiring as well as code, is to find the multiplexed PPM signal and digest the values for all of the channels from a single feed.

Jordi from DIY Drones has a nice tutorial and demo video which shows you how to intercept the raw PPM signal with an Arduino and just about any common Futaba receiver (and probably many others). His demonstration also shows how to probe an unfamiliar receiver so that you can discover the pin that's outputting PPM.

How to hack the PPM signal from any receiver (Futaba) with Arduino

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in hacks | Digg this!

Amadee Coral Reef New Caledonia in New Caledonia

Jeffrey sez, "Of all the ~15 thousand spherical panoramas on 360cities.net so far, this one nearly made me cry, it is so breathtaking. This is why 360 / spherical / qtvr photography exists. Images like this remind me why I became a 360 obsessed maniac 7 years ago. Yes, the CERN panoramas were nice. But I dare say, this one is even better... Photo is by Richard Chesher, one of our members. You can scroll down the page for more nearby underwater panoramas. Finally, an important 'easter egg' - for the super-psychedelic experience, be sure to right-click on the panorama and select either 'little planet' or 'stereographic' projection and zoom out."

Scuba diving is the closest I've ever come to religious ecstasy, to visiting an alien world, to becoming a weightless, disembodied spirit flying over a scene of perfect beauty -- and this captures that sensation neatly. Goosebumps.

Surrounded by stripy fish in the amadee coral reef (spherical panorama) (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

This Japanese ski resort toilet has everything: a vertiginous, trompe l'oeil mural, a pink toilet that washes your bum, AND an incomprehensible slogan for a brand of tinned coffee!

Georgia Max Coffee chose to redesign the toilets of a number of key ski resorts in Japan. The cubicles were fully wrapped on all sides, so that the person caught short would have a ski jumper’s view when they were sitting on the loo. The person could look down at their skis (simply printed on the floor of the cubicle) and see the steep ski jump slope ahead of them. The toilet paper holder carried the only brand messaging in the cubicle, reading: “Seriously kick-ass intensely sweet for the real coffee super zinging unstoppable Max! Taste-explosion!”

Georgia Max Coffee: Ski Toilets (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

MarkN writes "Video games are subject to a number of balance issues from which traditional games have largely stayed free. It can be hard finding players of comparable skill-level to create even match-ups, diverse gameplay options can quickly become irrelevant if someone finds a broken feature that beats everything else, and some online games make your ability to play competitively a question of how much time and money you've invested in a game, rather than the skill you possess. In this article, I talk about some of the issues relating to fairness and balance in games, in terms of the factors and strategies under the player's control, the game's role in potentially handicapping players, and the role a community of gamers plays in setting standards for how games are to be played. What are your thoughts on managing a 'fair and balanced' gaming experience?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Given how often credit-card data is leaked from retailers, payment processors or banks, most of us are familiar with the breach-notification letters card issuers send out -- and many of us probably don't pay a whole lot of attention to them, since they're often followed by a new card for us to start using. These notifications are required in many states by law, but they've become so common, and provide so little useful information, that some people wonder if they serve any use at all. Yes, argues another blogger, mainly because he says the notifications provide consumers with information regarding the source of the breach, giving them extra warning to change any other card number they've used there, or the opportunity to no longer patronize a particular business. But is that really the case? In my experience, the breach notifications I've received have never provided any specific information about the source of a breach, and neither banks or credit-card companies have ever been willing to disclose a source. And if the breach occurs at a company like a payment processor, with which consumers have no direct contact, they can't take their business elsewhere. For consumers, the notifications themselves may not help much, but they do have value in forcing companies that have lost data to disclose it to other players in the ecosystem. But the big risk of the notifications is if they're viewed as a security solution in and of themselves, such as if thinking that the shame of having to disclose a breach will guilt companies into better security. That hasn't worked, as the breaches continue unabated, so it's high time to find some new and effective solutions.

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.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

krebsatwpost writes "The Department of Homeland Security has named Microsoft's "chief trustworthy infrastructure strategist" Phil Reitinger to be its top cyber security official. Many in the security industry praised him as a smart pick, but said he will need to confront a culture of political infighting and leadership failures at DHS. From the story: 'Reitinger comes to the position with cyber experience in both the public and private sectors. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2003, he was executive director of the Defense Department's Computer Forensics Lab. Before that, he was deputy chief of the Justice Department's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property section, where he worked under Scott Charney, who is currently corporate vice president for trustworthy computing at Microsoft.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European government's penchant for regulation is well-documented: its generally fruitless battles against Google and Microsoft are but two examples. Now, though, it's taking on the really serious stuff: the quality of the espresso in the European Commission's offices. The NYT says the EC bought 21 high-tech coffee machines at 5,000 euros each for its headquarters, "as a perk to keep top officials and visiting dignitaries from having to line up in cafes on other floors of the star-shaped Berlaymont Building." The big bill attracted criticism as another example of wasteful spending, but a bigger problem emerged for Commission employees -- the coffee didn't taste good. The Italian company that made the machines plans to replace them with some modifications (apparently water softeners in the coffeemakers were partly to blame), and it will also train "coffee monitors" in "coffee tasting theory and sensorial techniques," "recipes and hints," and "ordinary machine maintenance procedures." I'm not sure if it's heartening or frustrating to learn that bureaucrats' penchant for wasting time, money and other resources is pretty much the same the world over.

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.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Kate Eltham, director of the wonderful Australian science fiction writers' workshop Clarion South sez, "We encountered a string of rotten luck in delivering the latest Clarion South workshop, the Australian version of Clarion Writers Workshop. Not only was our contract with our original university venue cancelled at short notice, requiring us to find a new and more expensive home, but we had a raft of unexpected cancellations from visiting teachers.

"We're proud of the way we handled these challenges to deliver another successful workshop in 2009, but financially it wiped us clean. We'd love your help and support to refill the coffers so that we can plan for our future workshops and put Clarion South on a more stable financial footing. Thank you! We're just a bunch of volunteers but we're incredibly passionate about Clarion South and would like to see it thrive and continue into the future." Donate to Clarion South (Thanks, Kate!)

Eileen Gunn sez, "This is a moving video of the house of a friend of mine being torn down on Capitol Hill in Seattle to make way for a light rail station. I drove by the house tonight and it was gone. I thought, 'At least I don't have to watch it being torn down.' But when I got home, I found she'd sent me an email: 'Life is so strange. Today, a complete stranger sent me this video of the demolition of my house on East Denny Way, and, of course, I couldn't not look.' So I watched it. I figured I owed a 100-year-old house that much. The video is by Brad Kevelin, on the CHS Capitol Hill Seattle blog."

Demolition: more photos and video (Thanks, Eileen)

We were just talking about how New Zealand was scrapping its plan for an artist resale right, when Michael Scott pointed us to the news (from last month) that Australia has just proposed an artist resale right. It's not clear how many times it needs to be explained that such things are bad for most artists before politicians will get it. The only artists such a "right" helps are those who are quite successful -- in other words, the ones least likely to need it. For new and upcoming artists, such a resale right creates quite a bit of harm. It acts as a disincentive for anyone to buy or sell their artwork, and limits the likelihood of their artwork becoming well known.

The problem is that, thanks to the rise of the copyright lobby, people really do think that "creation = permanent ownership" at this point. If you're going to create a resale right for art, why not for everything else? If I build a house, why shouldn't I get a percentage of the transaction every time it's sold? The argument is the same as for a resale right for art. Keep applying the argument in other sectors and you realize how dumb it becomes. As part of my job, I use a Lenovo laptop. That laptop helps me make money -- and therefore, under this reasoning, shouldn't I pay a percentage of any profits I make back to Lenovo? Of course not. Why? Because I paid Lenovo originally for the laptop and that was a completed transaction. The fact that I then went on to create value with the laptop is for me to benefit from, not Lenovo. The same is true with someone buying a piece of artwork. They paid for that artwork, and the reward for investing in that artwork and recognizing its potential is that it helps to add value to the artwork, which they profit from when they resell it. The artist made their deal, just as Lenovo made its deal. To come back later and demand a piece of the profits for value added later makes no sense.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Recently my boyfriend Alex had a video piece to exhibit in an all-white gallery, and he needed sound. There were limitations as to what could be drilled into for mounting things, but there were eye-bolts in place where speakers would likely go. I stitched up these little outfits for my grey desk computer speakers and, with a fabric strap and two D-rings, fashioned a hanging mount solution that worked quite elegantly in the space. Oh, and in case you're wondering, he used MATLAB.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!

Cigarra writes "There was much public debate going on during the last several months here in Paraguay, regarding the "liberation of Internet", that is, the lifting of the restriction on ISPs to connect directly to international carriers. Up until this week, they were forced to hire wholesale service from the State run telco, Copaco. During the last month, when the new regulation was almost ready, the real reason supporting the monopoly made it to the headlines: Copaco would fight for the monopoly, fearing VoIP based telephony. Finally, the regulator Conatel resolved today to end the monopoly, but a ruling on VoIP legal status was postponed for "further study". I guess this kind of "problem" arised almost everywhere else in the world, so I ask the international slashdotters' crowd: what is VoIP legal status in your country / state / region? How well did incumbent telcos adapt to it, and overall, just how disruptive was this technology to established operators?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tom Hunt a Berkeleyite since the 60s, who makes a living helping people keep their computers running, says Berkeley is a small town. If you look at the University as a factory, everything else is just a little place where everyone knows someone who knows everyone. I've now lived here 2.5 years and it's not unusual when I go out to meet two people I know. It's a small town with lots of creative people who like to use their minds. My kind of place.

Anyway -- there was a Laconica hackfest here a couple of Saturdays ago, at the open working space on Shattuck near Ashby. I had never been there, but I know a bunch of people who work there. Turns out a friend, Ken Sedgwick, was hosting the meetup even though he doesn't use Twitter or Identi.ca very much. But Ken knows how to package up Unix software so that it's easy to install and maintain. He's a consultant, that's one of the things he does for his clients.

So I went to the hackfest with a mission -- I wanted to create a Twitter that anyone one could install for themselves and host in Amazon's cloud. I have a theory that Twitter can be like Lotus Notes, a workgroup application that installs like shrinkwrap software did in the 80s. I want to learn about this, and hopefully -- if the theory is right, help start a billion Twitters to go with the billion weblogs we've got running now. Or something like that.

We had a dinner last night at China Village on Solano, eight people showed up, Ken told us where he was at. It sounded great, but he kept saying how much more there was to do. Even so he let us try out what he had, and it was a lot easier than most of the tech I have to crunch my head through (I was thinking of OAuth, which took two weeks). I was able to get my Twitter running in 10 minutes. Nothing to it! (Now, I have a little experience with EC2 and that probably helped. But it's still really easy. A tech type could get through it in no more than an hour.)

So here it is...

http://home.smallpicture.com/

This is going to be the Scripting News community Twitter if such a thing is possible. Create an account if you want. I have no idea if this is permanent or if we'll have to start over at some point. But I'm proud of the work that Ken did, and excited about the possibilities for the future.

I don't want to point to Ken's HowTo until he says it's okay. I think it is. But you never know, we'll do things in the right order. But know that Berkeley is humming, we're creating some good stuff. Glad I moved here.

The European Union has been interfering in the market for international mobile-phone roaming rates for some, taking the populist position that the charges were too high, and forcing caps on the wholesale rates operators charge each other, hoping to drag down retail prices. But the effect was, as we predicted, baloon squeezing: while intra-Europe roaming rates fell, operators looked to boost rates paid by people from outside Europe and their domestic rates. What makes this situation particularly ridiculous is that it was one manufactured by the EU itself. When Vodafone expanded across the continent by buying German operator Mannesmann in 2000, it was essentially prevented by EU regulators from introducing any roaming products that utilized its competitive advantage. The regulators said that if Vodafone cut any of its international roaming prices, it would have to offer the same price to its rivals -- removing any motivation for the operator to cut prices and introduce new services.

The EU continues to try to regulate itself out of this self-created mess, the latest move being that a European Parliament committee has voted to further cap roaming charges on text messages and mobile data. The plan moves forward to the whole Parliament, and will be considered on the cusp of peak travel season, so the politicans can brag to their constituents that in this time of economic misery, they're moving to cut their vacation costs. But what they're really doing is further impeding the market by removing any incentive for operators to compete with one another -- just as the EU regulators did back in 2000. This was a situation created by overzealous regulation: had the EU allowed the likes of Vodafone to create products based on its competitive advantage, it's likely the market would have brought prices down on its own, and without the balloon-squeezing effect. But once the EU began interfering, that became impossible, since it in essence outlawed competition. Interfering in the market even more may be politically useful, but won't create lasting competition that will benefit consumers in the long run.

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.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

longacre writes "A man on trial in New York for possession of a weapon has been acquitted after subpoenaing his arresting officer's Facebook and MySpace accounts. His defense: Officer Vaughan Ettienne's MySpace "mood" was set to "devious" on the day of the arrest, and one day a few weeks before the trial, his Facebook status read "Vaughan is watching 'Training Day' to brush up on proper police procedure. From the article,'You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street," Officer Ettienne said on Tuesday. "What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room." Except that trash talk in locker rooms almost never winds up preserved on a digital server somewhere, available for subpoena.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What do you get when you mix a glo-plug, a large binder clip, flash cotton, a momentary pushbutton switch, and a few other ingredients? One serious way to get someone's attention! Back in lucky MAKE Volume 13, Joel Johnson showed us how to shoot fireballs from the palm of our hands with the Orpheus Shooter. As Joel writes in the intro, "You can buy one from most magic shops for around $50, but if you build one on your own, you'll not only save a few bucks, you'll also learn how easy it is to add fire effects to any electronics project. (And what gadget couldn't stand a little more spurting flame?)" Word!

The super-fun Orpheus Shooter uses a minimum number of parts and can be pretty fully concealed in your hand:

The glo-plug is the only disposable part, usually bearing a rating of 50 ignitions, but Joel claims to pull at least twice that number from his. Plus, there are online sources like starlight.com that sell them for about $5 a pop. Here's the glo-plug glowing:

And here's the Orpheus Shooter project in our Digital Edition. For plenty more trickery, pick up a copy of MAKE Volume 13 in the Maker Shed!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Gadgets | Digg this!

While plenty of folks who dislike the patent system are fans of the term "patent trolls," I tend to avoid it unless it absolutely fits. Since, by it's very nature, it's derogatory, it tends to shut off conversation rather than encourage it. However, there's an interesting post over at Patently-O (which normally tends to be pretty pro-patent) from a law professor trying to define what are "troll patents" (rather than patent trolls). He makes a pretty sensible argument: if you have a scenario in which the patent clearly contributes nothing to society, it should be considered a problem patent. That is, it's a scenario where the "invention" in question would have happened at the same pace even in the absence of the patent in question. Here are his conditions to make that determination:

1. Is owned by someone that does not practice the invention.
2. Is infringed by, and asserted against, non-copiers exclusively or almost exclusively. By copying I mean any kind of derivation, not just slavish replication.
3. Has no licensees practicing the particular patented invention except for defendants in (2) who took licenses as settlement.
4. Is asserted against a large industry that is, based on (2), composed of non-copiers.

If those four conditions are met, then it means that the product on the market would have occurred either way, and the only thing the patent serves to do is transfer money from the company making the product to whoever holds the patent. Considering the very purpose of the patent system is to "promote the progress," it's quite clear that the conditions above mean that no progress has been promoted -- and, in fact, the opposite has occurred.

Of course, if we actually had an independent invention defense against patent infringement, this whole debate wouldn't matter nearly as much.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

MojoKid writes "The Japanese electronics manufacturer has just agreed to pay a staggering $31 million fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix prices in the sale of TFT-LCD panels sold to Dell, Inc. The United States Department of Justice made the proclamation, and details show that Hitachi has plead guilty to a one-count felony. The charge, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, blames Hitachi Displays Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., with 'participating in a conspiracy to fix the prices of TFT-LCD sold to Dell for use in desktop monitors and notebook computers from April 1, 2001 through March 31, 2004.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last Friday was the premier of our new live talk radio show, Make: Talk. It was really fun and we're looking forward to doing it again this Friday. In case you missed it, you can listen to the archived show below.

We also want to follow up each episode with Show Notes, links and info related to what came up during our conversation. Here (belatedly) are the notes to last week's show. From now on, we'll have these up soon after the webcast.

Make: Talk Show Notes, Episode #001, March 6, 2009

• MAKE, Volume 17, The Lost Knowledge issue
• Steampunk magazine
• Sturgeon's Mill
• Sturgeon's Mill on Make: Online
• William Blake: Patron Saint of Makers Check out Blake's relief-etching process as I attempt to recreate it.
• Capturing the Knowledge of Mill-Wrights
• The Wikipedia page on Electrochemical Machining
• RepRap site

Make: Talk, Friday, March 13th, 12:00pm PT, 3:00pm ET
This Friday, we'll continue our exploration of Make, Vol. 17, the "Lost Knowledge" issue. We'll chat with Heather McDougal, author of "Your Own Wunderkammer," a how-to on building Cabinets of Wonders. She'll explain how anyone can make a mini-museum of the awesome and the bizarre in their own home. For more on the subject, visit Heather's blog: Cabinet of Wonders. Also, the hosts of Make: Talk will present their favorite tricks, tips, and tools for makers, and we'll be giving away prizes!

And don't forget, this is live, call-in radio. The show runs for 45 minutes. Call in during showtimes and ask questions. The number is: (646) 915-8698. Me, Dale, and Mark hope you'll join us this Friday!

Make: Talk on Blog Talk Radio

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Makers | Digg this!

What will be the defining picture of today's economic crisis? The '30s had bread lines and the '70s had gas lines, but as Slate points out, "in many ways this economic crisis, despite its deepening severity, has been less visible than previous ones. You can't take a photograph of a collateralized debt obligation." So, like any smart media company these days, Slate is turning to the community for help capturing that iconic moment.

To do so, Slate has created a Flickr pool entitled Shoot the Recession that currently has more than 100 user-contributed photos in it. NPR's Planet Money has been doing this, too, but because Slate is more visual, it would seem that more people would be motivated. This is a smart move - it lowers the expense for Slate to report on the crisis and recognizes that people are motivated by things other than money (reputation being the big one here). But it is also smart because instead of reinventing the wheel, Slate loosely joins together another small piece of the web - Flickr. Though there is still a lot more Slate and its peers can do, this is a step in the right direction.

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

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story