An anonymous reader writes "In a blog post, Patrick Galbraith, an ex-core engineer on the MySQL Server team, raises the question: "What is the official branch of MySQL?" With Monty Widenius having left Sun and forked off MySQL for MariaDB, and Brian Aker running the Drizzle fork inside of Sun, where is the official MySQL tree? Sun may own the trademark, but it looks like there is doubt as to whether they are still the maintainers of the actual codebase after their $1B acquisition of the code a year ago. Smugmug's Don MacAskhill, who is the keynote at the upcoming MySQL Conference, has commented that he is now using the Percona version of MySQL, and is no longer relying on Sun's."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger.

Good Ol' Charlie Brown Timothy Geithner, as illustrated by the inimitable Drew Friedman for the New Republic.

Researchers have built a chip with the equivalent of 200,000 neurons and 50 million synapses in an effort to mimic a human brain in silicon. I, for one, welcome our simple-minded overlords. From Technology Review:

Although the chip has a fraction of the number of neurons or connections found in a brain, its design allows it to be scaled up, says Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at Heidelberg University, in Germany, who has coordinated the Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States project, or FACETS.

The hope is that recreating the structure of the brain in computer form may help to further our understanding of how to develop massively parallel, powerful new computers, says Meier...

FACETS has been tapping into the same databases. "But rather than simulating neurons," says Karlheinz, "we are building them." Using a standard eight-inch silicon wafer, the researchers recreate the neurons and synapses as circuits of transistors and capacitors, designed to produce the same sort of electrical activity as their biological counterparts.

Building A Brain On A Silicon Chip (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)

Following the recent debates on copyright extension, there's a bit of good news. It appears that the Council of the European Union rejected yet another attempt to extend the copyright on sound recordings from 50 to 95 years. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like this is (by any means) the end of such proposals. In fact, it's been made clear that this rejection is just a step in the process towards copyright extension. Of course, a bunch of recording industry lobbyists are complaining about how unfair this is, but they fail to explain how it could possibly be seen as fair to retroactively change the deal made with the public to take away the public domain. The entire purpose of copyright is to put in place a limited-time monopoly to act as incentive to create new works. Obviously, that incentive worked, or the content wouldn't have been created. Unfortunately, the recording industry now wants people to believe that copyright is some sort of welfare system for musicians, whereby they should continue getting paid for work they did over 50 years ago. It's a total distortion of the purpose of copyright law -- and one that will cost consumers dearly, and pay musicians little, but enrich the recording industry tremendously. Yet, because of some sob stories about how musicians need this, politicians across Europe have been leaping on board.

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Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger. If you've never heard of Jobriath Boone, don't worry, you're not alone. Obscure even by "rock snob" standards, Jobriath was the first really openly gay rock star. David Bowie and Lou Reed flirted with bisexuality, nail polish and make-up, of course, but Jobriath was in his own words, "a true fairy." He wasn't just "out of the closet" he was out like a police siren with the volume turned up to eleven! I've been a Jobriath freak for about 20 years when I stumbled upon his first LP at a New York City flea market. "What is THIS?" was my initial reaction to the cover, obviously influenced by the artwork for David Bowie's "Diamond Dogs." Clearly from the image on the cover, Jobriath was a 70s glitter rock wannabe. Make that perhaps a "neverwas," for aside from a massive advertising campaign that saw his image on 250 New York buses and a 40 foot high poster in Times Square, two solid LPs (recorded with the likes of Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and Peter Frampton) and a memorable "Midnight Special" performance, Jobriath was a massive flop at the time. Too gay for mid-America in 1974? For sure, but that hasn't stopped Jobriath's Broadway showtunes meets glam rock oeuvre from being rediscovered by fresh ears this decade. Championed by Morrissey, Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys and singer-actress Ann Magnuson (who once told me that I was "the only straight guy in the world who's ever even HEARD of Jobriath" back in the early 90s), the tiny cult of Jobriath got a lot of new members when the CD compliation "Lonley Planet Boy" was released in 2004. His life was also a major part of the inspiration for Todd Haynes' "Velvet Goldmine" although few people realize that fact (the Maxwell Demon album covers are direct homages to the original Jobriath records). Admittedly, his music isn't for everyone --some people just HATE it-- but for those of you who embraced the equally obscure Klaus Nomi, you'll probably love Jobriath. "I'maman" on The Midnight Special "Rock of Ages" on The Midnight Special "I'm Ready for my Close-Up" an informative Jobriath article from MOJO. Why You Should Like Jobriath

Ian Lamont writes "IBM has filed a patent application that covers offshoring employees. Application 20090083107, dated March 26, 2009, is a 'method and system for strategic global resource sourcing.' Figure 2 gives a pretty good idea of what's involved — it shows boxes labelled 'Engineer,' 'HR,' and 'Programmer' with crossing arrows pointing to cylinders labelled 'India,' 'China,' and 'Hungary.' The article speculates that IBM may apply the methodology to its own staff — it reportedly plans to lay off thousands of employees and has even started a program to have IBM workers transfer to other countries at local wages."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dr Pete writes "Financial Times has an interesting piece about Lars Bak and Kasper Lund the authors of the V8 virtual machine in Google's Chrome browser. 'Chrome attracted more than 10 million users in its first 100 days. Although that's an impressive number, it still only translates into about 1 per cent of browser usage online. It will be a while before it can compete with Firefox, Internet Explorer and others. In December last year, Google announced that Chrome was now out of its development, or Beta, phase and is ready to be shipped as a pre-installed browser on some PCs. This could rapidly increase the number of users. Moreover, the European Commission's antitrust battle with Microsoft over, among other things, how its own browser, Internet Explorer, is integrated into its Windows operating system may give competitors such as Google a chance to claim ground.'" Interestingly enough Google Chrome is currently fighting it out with Safari as the #3 web browser on Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JJ sends in the rather amusing news that the TSA's SimpliFLY promotional campaign (which only existed during the 2007 holiday season) may actually violate the trademark of the Salt Lake City International Airport, which uses the term for its telephone help line. From the details, it seems pretty clear this is a pure money grab by the SLC airport, as the marketing director seems quite clear that filing a lawsuit against the TSA was just a way to begin "negotiations." Of course, SLC may find that it has an uphill road to climb, as it needs to explain how the TSA was using the term "in commerce" to show that it's a trademark violation. In the meantime, folks in the marketing department at SLC airport may find that they need to go through a bit of extra scrutiny next time they go through airport security.

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basementman writes "I recently purchased a 10 inch white MSI wind. As you can see it's a small computer and it's good for what I use it for. I get a lot of comments from women saying it is 'cute' or 'adorable.' Not the good kind of cute that will get me the attention I want though, the kind of cute that says they think I have a different presence than I actually want to portray. So how can I make my netbook more manly, or at least have some witty line to respond to the their comments?" Hopefully basementman didn't get a netbook with the hopes of it getting him some action, but what cool mods (or witty one-liners) have others used to salvage their dignity from hardware that is "a good size"?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Surprised it took this long for someone to do this one (via). #

Google mapp'd locations of those beautiful manhole covers found all over Japan (via). #

A testing tool for web designers that, "tests your website designs across 17 different Windows browsers right from your Mac desktop in seconds." A paid Litmus account is required to fully test all possible browsers, but this looks like a nice alternative to multiple VMs. Auto plug-ins for Coda and TextMate. #

Well, it looks like the ongoing patent battle between TomTom and Microsoft has come to a quick end, with TomTom caving. The company is paying Microsoft to "license" its patents, while dropping its own patent lawsuits against Microsoft. This really isn't too surprising. Microsoft's obviously got plenty of money to spend on just such a legal battle (exactly what the company counts on to get companies to pay up), so at some point, the calculation on TomTom's part has to be whether it's cheaper to fight or to just pay up. In this case (like so many), the company obviously felt it was cheaper to pay up, rather than fight what it believed were highly questionable patents. That's too bad -- but shows just why the patent system is so widely abused. It's almost always cheaper to simply pay up rather than fight -- which is exactly the sort of situation that Microsoft counts on, as it hypes up it's "successful patent licensing program," failing to concede that most of that licensing is done at the end of a large and very pointy stick.

What's still unclear, however, is how this settlement deals with the questions that were raised over GPL'd software used by TomTom. As we noted, the GPL license that covers components of TomTom's software forbid it from putting any restrictions on the distribution of the software. A deal with Microsoft could violate the GPL and cause trouble for TomTom down the road. Perhaps the company is betting that any legal battle on that front would be cheaper than fighting Microsoft's patent lawyers in court.

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Surrounded writes "It appears TomTom bowed to the pressure and settled with Microsoft over the recent patent infringement claims from the Redmond software giant. In the agreement, TomTom will pay Microsoft for coverage under the eight car navigation and file management systems patents in the Microsoft case. Also as part of the agreement, Microsoft receives coverage under the four patents included in the TomTom counter-suit. TomTom also has to remove functionality related to two file management system patents (the 'FAT LFN patents')."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TechDirt has an interesting look at some of the questions arising about the copyrightability of Twitter messages. I haven't seen any actual copyright lawyers weigh in yet, but it certainly will be interesting to watch the feathers fly until someone nails down the answer. "[...] it seems like there would be two issues here. The first is whether or not the content is covered by copyright — and, for most messages the answer would probably be yes (there would need to be some sort of creative element to the messages to make that happen, so a simple 'hi' or 'thanks' or whatever might not cut it). But, the more important question then would be whether or not ESPN could quote the Twitter message. And, there, the answer is almost certainly, yes, they could, just as they could quote something you wrote in a blog post."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I love this gorgeous set of computer speakers, with masonitecomponents cut out on a laser cutter and veneered. And the B3N drivers he used look sweet.

B3 Mini Array Computer Speakers DIY

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In a five part New York Times online series, documentary filmmaker and blogger Errol Morris tackles the fascinating mystery of this Civil War-era photograph. From the article, titled "Whose Father Was He?:

No name — but a soldier brave, he fell.
We shall find her, without a name;
This picture, sometime, will tell whence he came.
— Emily Latimer, “The Unknown”

The soldier’s body was found near the center of Gettysburg with no identification — no regimental numbers on his cap, no corps badge on his jacket, no letters, no diary. Nothing save for an ambrotype (an early type of photograph popular in the late 1850s and 1860s) of three small children clutched in his hand. Within a few days the ambrotype came into the possession of Benjamin Schriver, a tavern keeper in the small town of Graeffenburg, about 13 miles west of Gettysburg. The details of how Schriver came into possession of the ambrotype have been lost to history. But the rest of the story survives, a story in which this photograph of three small children was used for both good and wicked purposes.

Whose Father Was He? (Part One)

One aspect of Make: Outreach that we're particularly excited about is the Project Pack. As those of you in the maker community know, MAKE magazine and Make: television celebrate the do-it-yourself approach towards technology, and events like Maker Faire and Make: Day present a means of engaging with others interested in doing the same.

But chances are you know someone who looks at all things DIY as unfamiliar, or even daunting and intimidating. This is where the Project Pack comes in handy. You can find it, along with the Outreach Toolkit, by clicking on the Outreach Tools tab at the top of the Make: Outreach website.

The Project Pack is a PDF file containing full instructions for four simple, cost-effective projects, each inspired by a project featured in Make: television's Maker Workshop, and perfect for incorporating the MAKE message into everyday situations.

If you don't have room for a full-sized Portable Trebuchet from Make: television Episode 106, check out the Desktop Trebuchet project in the Project Pack, which uses some pencils, rubber bands, and paper clips.

If you were a fan of the Mini Robots that John Park built in the Maker Workshop on Episode 108 of Make: television, but want to start at the basics of robotics and circuitry, check out the instructions for a Simple Motor.

If you were fascinated by the Cigar Box Guitar from MAKE magazine, Vol 04, or Episode 110 of Make: television but aren't quite ready to hack a tape deck into an amplifier, check out the simple Recycled Instruments project.

All of these projects were designed with the idea that DIY is an empowering process, which will encourage the maker spirit in both experienced makers and those who are building these projects for the first time. Strong partnerships make for great outreach, and the Project Pack is perfect for instructing and inspiring participation in creative activities.

So check it out, and if you build any of the projects, let us know how it went!

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Google is today launching a free, ad-supported music service in China, with the backing of more than 140 record labels, including the Big 4. The service sounds like exactly the sort of thing that people have been calling for since the Napster days: a search engine linked to a trove of music files, supported by advertising. Google's wanted to add some sort of music search to its Chinese product for some time, as it's been at a significant disadvantage to rivals like Baidu, which have the feature to thank for much of their success. The record labels say this is the first attempt to monetize online music in China, and mirrors moves by some movie studios to compete with piracy there with new products and services, rather than through lawsuits and lobbying. These efforts always give a nod to the rampant piracy going on in China -- acting as if it's a completely different environment than the rest of the world. So is the lesson here that only if piracy, or at least the labels' and studios' perceptions of it, gets "bad enough", will they do something positive, rather than sue people or try to get laws strengthened in their favor? Or is it only because those aren't viable options in China that companies try something different there? The fact that the labels are moving forward with this plan in China, given its reputation as the wild west of copyright infringement, undermine their contention that they can solve the supposed piracy problem with legal or technological means elsewhere. Furthermore, it exposes the reality that what's staring them in the face is a tremendous opportunity, not a problem.

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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Writing in the Atlantic, Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF, takes a hard look at the econopocalypse and decides that the root of America's (and Europe's) economic woes is the cozy relationship between super-powerful bankers and government -- oligarchy. So, he says, we cannot fix the economy until we break up the banks, curb executive compensation in the finance sector, and turn it into "just another industry."

Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit—and, most of the time, genteel—oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise...

The government needs to inspect the balance sheets and identify the banks that cannot survive a severe recession. These banks should face a choice: write down your assets to their true value and raise private capital within 30 days, or be taken over by the government. The government would write down the toxic assets of banks taken into receivership—recognizing reality—and transfer those assets to a separate government entity, which would attempt to salvage whatever value is possible for the taxpayer (as the Resolution Trust Corporation did after the savings-and-loan debacle of the 1980s). The rump banks—cleansed and able to lend safely, and hence trusted again by other lenders and investors—could then be sold off.

Cleaning up the megabanks will be complex. And it will be expensive for the taxpayer; according to the latest IMF numbers, the cleanup of the banking system would probably cost close to $1.5trillion (or 10percent of our GDP) in the long term. But only decisive government action—exposing the full extent of the financial rot and restoring some set of banks to publicly verifiable health—can cure the financial sector as a whole.

This may seem like strong medicine. But in fact, while necessary, it is insufficient. The second problem the U.S. faces—the power of the oligarchy—is just as important as the immediate crisis of lending. And the advice from the IMF on this front would again be simple: break the oligarchy.

The Quiet Coup (via Making Light)

This image is one a very odd series of photos. Well, odd if you're not familiar with video production. These photos are actually entries in a contest sponsored by the makers of color bars, gray scales, and other charts used to calibrate digital cameras. My friend Chris Courtney sent me a link to the contest because he's entered with this photo of his wife Nicole. Out of context though, the "Charts In Action 2009" page looks, as I said, rather odd.
Charts In Action Contest 2009

BB pal Ken Goldberg, UC Berkeley engineering professor and artist, curates a fantastic free lecture series called the Art, Technology, & Culture Colloquium. At a recent event, Ken interviewed multimedia art pioneer Laurie Anderson. The audio of the interview is now available online:

This event was held in conjunction with Anderson’s newest performance, “Homeland,” which includes songs and stories that create a poetic and political portrait of contemporary American culture. Conceived as one long piece of music, “Homeland” moves through many worlds, from Greek tragedy to American business models, addressing the current obsession with fear, violence, and security.

Laurie Anderson in conversation with Ken Goldberg

Combating the stigma that investigative journalism is dead or dying, the Huffington Post has just launched a new venture to bankroll a group of investigative journalists to take a look into stories about the nation's economy. "The popular Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said. The Huffington Post Web site is a collection of opinionated blog entries and breaking news. It has seven staff reporters. Huffington said she and the donors were concerned that layoffs at newspapers were hurting investigative journalism at a time the nation's institutions need to be watched closely. She hopes to draw from the ranks of laid-off journalists for the venture."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger.
PEOPLE OF AMERICA, LISTEN UP: From the fine folks who brought you "Tim and Eric Awesome Show -great job!," "Superjail" and "Look Around You," at long last, "The Mighty Boosh" have a berth at Adult Swim!!! Thrill to the psychedelic adventures of Vince Noir, "rockstar" --raised in a forest by Bryan Ferry, can talk to animals, a big Gary Numan freak-- and Howard Moon, "generic-looking" unpublished novelist and delusional "intellectual." The Boosh have landed in the US of A!!!! It's next to impossible to describe the riotous bubble gum confection of the audio-visual strangeness that is The Mighty Boosh, but, in brief, Howard and Vince, along with their friends Naboo the Enigma, mystical shaman and pot dealer, and Bolo the gorilla go on various surreal journeys. Along the way they meet meet killer kangaroos, violent hitchhikers, "mod wolves," and a hermaphroditic "merman" (with a "mangina"). Many of the episodes erupt into bizarre and elaborate music videos with inventive dance choreography. If any of this is starting to sound like something you might enjoy, grab yourself some herbal "entertainment insurance" (if you know what I am talking about, and I think you do --The Boosh are God's gift to stoners) and start watching The Mighty Boosh, Sunday nights on Adult Swim. I have two favorite episodes: "The Priest and The Beast" (series 2, ep 2) where the boys go on a mystical journey to find "the New Sound"-- a comedic "Holy Mountain" meets a Carlos Santana concept album from 1973 (If that statement makes no sense, don't worry about it) and the series two closer (ep 6) "The Nightmare of Milky Joe," of which, my wife Tara remarked "There is 'Eraserhead' and then beyond 'Eraserhead' there is but 'Milky Joe.'" (Another friend said "These guys certainly carried that through to the end with the utmost conviction!" which is too true about this one, 'nuff said).

As you likely know, Make: Online is made possible by ads and sponsorship. Getting these advertisers is an important part of keeping Make: Online in business and in a position to offer the content and features that we we want, and that YOU want. We also like the idea (as does our advertising partners, Federated Media) of targeting advertisers that sell goods and services you might actually want to buy. To get to know more about our readership, we do periodic surveys.

Yeah, we know. Surveys! Joy! To make it more... uh... fun, we have a drawing. Just fill out this short Make: Online Reader Survey. As a thank you, we will be giving away to 10 Maker's Notebook to randomly-chosen readers who complete it.

Important: Make sure you leave your email address at the end of the survey if you want to be in the drawing (your email address is for giveaway purposes only.) Thanks!

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Michael Scott points us to the news that a popular fansite of Britney Spears, called BreatheHeavy.com, has received a legal nastygram ordering the site to shut down, claiming that it infringed on numerous Britney copyrights by "posting Britney song lyrics, photos, videos and audio clips without permission." However, the owner of the site, Jordan Miller, claims that the nastygram has nothing to do with copyright, but is really about how Britney's father, Jamie Spears, is upset with Miller's site for criticizing the business structure of the Spears' family. If true (and, obviously, this is just one side of the story), it does seem like yet another attempt to use copyright to simply shut up a critic. Not surprisingly, that plan already seems to be backfiring, as this little mess is drawing a lot more attention to the story, rather than forcing it to go away.

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Kylar writes "For those of you who have already discovered Michael 'Rands' Lopp's blog Rands In Repose, I congratulate you, as you are clearly an intelligent audience. For those of you who haven't, or for the less discerning (or, perhaps less blog-oriented), this book provides an excellent entry into the writings of Rands. Containing edited selections from his blog as well as new material, Rands uses many anecdotes and stories to convey a startling amount of deep wisdom into the facets of the Silicon Valley programmer, and a bevy of tools that are helpful in attempting to herd, er, manage them." Read below for Tom's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNet is reporting that a free Skype client will finally be landing on the iPhone this week. Unfortunately some are saying that it seems many of the "critical" pieces of functionality are still missing. While the Skype engineers claim their native client will offer better audio quality (because there is no need to route through another server and transcode audio) they are still missing text messaging, file transfers, and integrated voice mail. Since the iPhone does not allow for multiple programs running concurrently, many are expecting existing multi-function apps like Fring and NimBuzz to continue their reign at the top.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CNet is reporting that a free Skype client will finally be landing on the iPhone this week. Unfortunately some are saying that it seems many of the "critical" pieces of functionality are still missing. While the Skype engineers claim their native client will offer better audio quality (because there is no need to route through another server and transcode audio) they are still missing text messaging, file transfers, and integrated voice mail. Since the iPhone does not allow for multiple programs running concurrently, many are expecting existing multi-function apps like Fring and NimBuzz to continue their reign at the top.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Rob has the details on this 8-bit bit of bling, specifically an 18k gold ring cast from a 1981 Atari chip.
"1981 Atari Ring"

You may recall (of course) that Warner Music and Google are in a fight over YouTube. Warner Music is demanding that Google pay more than Google thinks is reasonable, so now all Warner Music Group videos have been pulled from YouTube. Of course, this is actually pissing off numerous Warner Music musicians, who realize that YouTube (even if not paying directly for their videos) benefits their careers greatly. One such artist is Amanda Palmer -- who is signed to Roadrunner Records, a subsidiary of WMG. She was one of the first to complain about Warner pulling her videos from YouTube. Now she's going even further. Rose M. Welch sends in a link to a YouTube video of a recent Amanda Palmer concert where she first tells the camera operator to make sure he puts the video on YouTube so she can watch it, and then sings a song to her record label, demanding they drop her: Yup. That decision to demand a few extra pennies from Google while pissing off your artists, sure makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

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Wired is reporting that Google has a launched a new music download service in China to better compete with the leading search company there, Baidu.com. Offering some 350,000 songs, a number set to rise to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.1 million in the coming months, the library includes both Chinese and foreign artists signed by Sony Music, EMI, and Universal Music. Proponents of the new service are also hoping it will combat illegal music downloads simply by offering higher quality songs for download. There are no immediate plans to expand this service beyond China.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ideas come when you upset your routine. Your brain, now accustomed to dealing with new places, people, cities, concepts, tries to find the patterns that are familiar, fails to find them, copes anyway, and thus activates your creativity. Once relaxed, that newly stimulated creativity is available for other tasks.

For example -- this morning I left my hotel at 5AM to make a 7AM flight at SLC, to find it had snowed about a foot overnight and my rental car was covered with a huge amount of the stuff. So I wiped off as much as I could with my hands, trying to use the sleeve of my ski jacket as much as possible, but in the process my hands got incredibly cold. Too lazy to dig the gloves out of my ski bag, stuffed with all kinds of stufffff. Now I could see, so I skidded the car across the very wide street to a gas station to fill up, where I used their squeegee to wipe off the remaining snow. Filled up the tank, and drove a few blocks to get on I-80W to the airport. As I was getting on the freeway I realized I didn't have headlights. But I'm now in the middle of a huge cloverleaf, there's no place to pull over, so I decide to risk it, the airport is just a few exits down the highway. As I'm driving I realize now I have a little bit of headlights. Weird! Then a little more and then more, and then finally I realize what happened. When I knocked the snow off, they covered the headlights. This car, a Mercury Marquis, wasn't designed for snow?

Anyway it's been a long time since I had a snow driving adventure. I'm sure this will give me some ideas -- what they are -- don't know yet.

Mark sez, "This printed linomation (hand carved animation using Linoleum prints), was done using 296 individual pieces of carved linoleum which are 10 cm square each. This is a project for The Art of Lost Words. It's all about words in the English language and artists' interpretations of words that are not used so much anymore, and there are some pretty strange ones. I chose the word dehisce from a list of .ost words. 'Dehisce' means 'release of material by splitting open of an organ or tissue; the natural bursting open at maturity of a fruit or other reproductive body to release seeds or spores or the bursting open of a surgically closed wound.' It's made to a loop so it can go on forever! For YouTube I decided to loop it three times to show the gist of the looping. My friend Adam Dedman created the sound for the linomation."

Dehisce Linomation Print - Hand Carved Animation (Thanks, Mark!)

Just as politicians and the police have been increasingly cracking down on drivers who are using mobile phones for texting and emailing while driving, a police chief in the Seattle suburb of Federal Way has issued an apology for hitting another car while checking his Blackberry. Apparently it was a minor accident, that occurred when the chief, Brian Wilson, was stopped at a traffic light in an unmarked police car. He started checking his Blackberry and took his foot off the brake, allowing the car to roll forward into another vehicle. The chief says he takes full responsibility for the accident and is mortified... Of course, it sounds like no legal action will be taken even though Washington was the first state to enact anti-texting while driving laws.

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On today's date, 1858, Hymen Lipman was granted a patent for attaching a piece of rubber to the end of a pencil. While it was certainly a stroke of genius, the courts didn't think it to be as groundbreaking as one might think. From Smithsonian:

Unfortunately for Lipman, the patent would later be revoked, when the U.S. Supreme Court rules in 1875 that a pencil with an eraser is just a pencil with an eraser and not a new invention.

Hymen L. Lipman makes his mark in pencil history

For more than you ever wanted to know about the history of the pencil, don't miss Henry Petroski's book The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstances.

This month's Scientific American Mind surveys the possible physiological and psychological benefits of LOLing. From SciAm Mind:

Norman Cousins, the storied journalist, author and editor, found no pain reliever better than clips of the Marx Brothers. For years, Cousins suffered from inflammatory arthritis, and he swore that 10 minutes of uproarious laughing at the hilarious team bought him two hours of pain-free sleep.

In his book Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient (W. W. Norton, 1979), Cousins described his self-prescribed laughing cure, which seemed to ameliorate his inflammation as well as his pain. He eventually was able to return to work, landing a job as an adjunct professor at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he investigated the effects of emotions on biological states and health.

The community of patients inspired by such miracle treatments believes not only that humor is psychologically beneficial but that it actually cures disease. In reality, only a smattering of scientific evidence exists to support the latter idea—but laughter and humor do seem to have significant effects on the psyche, even influencing our perception of pain. What is more, psychological well-being has an impact on overall wellness, including our risk of disease.

Laughter relaxes us and improves our mood, and hearing jokes may ease anxiety. Amusement’s ability to counteract physical agony is well documented, and as Cousins’s experience suggests, humor’s analgesic effect lasts after the smile has faded.

Cheerfulness, a trait that makes people respond more readily to laugh lines, is linked to emotional resilience—the ability to keep a level head in difficult circumstances—and to close relationships, studies show. Science also indicates that a sense of humor is sexy; women are attracted to men who have one. Thus, in various ways, life satisfaction may increase with the ability to laugh.

"How Humor Makes You Friendlier, Sexier"

Barence writes "Mozilla has revealed how it plans to integrate plain text commands directly into future versions of Firefox. Dubbed Taskfox, the move sees Mozilla's Ubiquity project become part of the browser itself, allowing users to type commands directly into the address bar. You can, for example, type 'map cleveland street london' to bring up a Google Map of that location, or 'amazon-search the great gatsby' to find that book on Amazon, without visiting the website directly. 'The basic idea behind Taskfox is simple: take the time-saving ideas behind Ubiquity, and put them into Firefox,' the Taskfox wiki claims. 'That means allowing users to quickly access information and perform tasks that would normally take several steps to complete.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jerome Marquis Blanchett robbed a man in a hotel bathroom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Friday. Problem is, the man he robbed is a retired police chief. Not only that, but the retired police chief was at the hotel for a police officers' convention where 300 other cops were gathered. From the Associated Press:

When (Blanchett) fled, Comparetto and some colleagues chased him. They arrested (the) 19-year-old... of Harrisburg as he was trying to leave in a taxi.

When a reporter asked Blanchett for comment as he was led out of court, he said, "I'm smooth."

"'Dumbest criminal in Pennsylvania' arrested"

I found this really interesting video on YouTube that was filmed by Tom Swindell. Felix Thirn created the amazing mechanical piece of art featured in the video. Other credits go to the Director Tom Mansfield, and Editor Chris Barnet. Great work!

More about Felix's Machines

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One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from writers is, "How do I convince my publisher to release my book under a Creative Commons license?" It's a hard question to answer well, and luckily from now on I don't have to, because this amazing post at Digital Foundations has done a totally kick-ass job at it:

4. Pitch it with facts

Use case studies to argue with facts. It also helps for them to see that other reputable publishers have licensed books Creative Commons. O’Reilly has some a study on an Asterisk book that we used very effectively.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/06/free_downloads.html

The Asterisk book sold 19k copies over two years (about what comparable books from O’Reilly were selling), but was downloaded 180,000 times from *one* of the 5 sites that mirrored it.

Also consider google as arbiter:

Results from google search breakdown of references to the two books in the oreilly case study (at the time of negotiation, early 2008): asterisk: 139,000 references in 2 years (2005-2007), or 70,000 per year

understanding the linux kernel, 42,000 references in 7 years (2000-2007), 6,000 per year

So there was 10x the press/blog/reference/hits for the CC licensed book.

HOWTO Negotiate a Creative Commons License: Ten Steps (via O'Reilly Radar)

A few weeks back, someone pointed me to a Twitter message where one Twitter user was (jokingly) accusing another of copyright infringement for repeating a message. While the situation was amusing, you knew it was only a matter of time until the question became more serious. Mark Cuban put up a blog post this weekend asking about the copyrightability of Twitter messages. His question revolves around whether or not it's copyright infringement for someone like ESPN to repeat what he wrote in a Twitter message, which he would have preferred they didn't quote.

I'm certainly no copyright lawyer -- so perhaps some could chime in in the comments -- but it seems like there would be two issues here. The first is whether or not the content is covered by copyright -- and, for most messages the answer would probably be yes (there would need to be some sort of creative element to the messages to make that happen, so a simple "hi" or "thanks" or whatever might not cut it). But, the more important question then would be whether or not ESPN could quote the Twitter message. And, there, the answer is almost certainly, yes, they could, just as they could quote something you wrote in a blog post.

If you ran down the fair use test, it's difficult to see how a public Twitter message wouldn't easily qualify. If it's ESPN, it would be for commercial use, but not in the sense of "selling" the content. Plus, it's for journalistic reasons, which is often given a fair use pass. Second is the nature of the copyrighted work -- which, being a Twitter message, I would guess most judges would assume it's expected that the content can (or even should) be repeated. The third test fails, since it would be the entire message, but the fourth test, on "the effect on the potential market for the copyrighted work" would almost certainly point towards fair use. Since the four factors aren't weighted equally, I think the only clear "failure" is the weakest and least important of the four tests (how much of the content was used -- which is way outweighed by the other factors), it's hard to see how this isn't a perfectly reasonable use.

But, of course, with copyright designed for a world before everyone had a printing press, we're going to come across more such questions in the future -- and I'm sure there will be a few lawsuits along the way.

For example... while it's not a copyright lawsuit, Courtney Love has been sued for libel due to her Twitter messages. Apparently, she's been Tweeting in anger against her former fashion designer -- Dawn Simorangkir -- and Simorangkir is now suing for defamation. The messages themselves may prove to be defamatory (assuming they're not true), calling the woman:

a "nasty, lying, hosebag thief"; having "a history of dealing cocaine"; having "lost all custody of her child"; and, being guilty of "assault and burglary"

There's also the message claiming that the designer would be "hunted til your [sic] dead," which seems more like a threat than libelous. Of course, one could argue that the legal filing by the designer is also potentially libelous, stating:

"Whether caused by drug-induced psychosis, a warped understanding of reality, or the belief that money and fame allow her to disregard the law, Love has embarked on what is nothing short of an obsessive and delusional crusade to destroy Simorangkir's reputation and her livelihood."

I would imagine that, if Courtney Love were not in a drug-induced psychosis, she might find that claim objectionable.

Still, you have to wonder if there were a better way to handle this. For example, filing the lawsuit seems to call more attention to the falling out between the two, perhaps leading many more people who might be interested in Simorangkir's work to think twice. While Love, as a celebrity, does have a certain reach, it seems like Simorangkir could better respond just by laying out the facts of the situation and telling her side of the story in a calm and clear manner, which compared to some rantings on Twitter would probably give people a good counterbalance without needing to involve the courts.

Either way, as these two stories demonstrate, we're in for a long series of lawsuits and legal threats having to do with Twitter messages.

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Douglas Repetto writes:

The 1,618,033rd dorkbot-nyc meeting will take place at 7pm on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at Location One in SoHo.

Featuring the divine and proportionate:

Erik Sanner: Paintings that Move, Spring Planting, and How to Enjoy Traffic Cones

Why make art when every day we encounter strikingly beautiful, impenetrable objects of infinite interpretation? The aesthetic practice of traffic cone viewing is as rewarding as visiting a gallery or museum. However, by simultaneously engaging in traffic cone appreciation and collaborative artmaking, I believe we can each experience a unique "hey!" moment.

Daniela Kostova & Olivia Robinson: Waste to Work

Waste to Work explores the transformation of labor into electric power, using sweat as the link. Sweat is the perfect medium: it is an electrolyte that can be used to make galvanic batteries - "waste" that can be harvested from our labors - and remains an extremely personal commodity that holds our scent, essential salts, fats, pheromones. This project has multiple phases: building sweat batteries and sweat harvesting suits.

Breck Baldwin & Splinter: The Towel

The Towel is a scratch built model airplane consisting of foam, trash, $100 worth of motor/prop/rc gear etc and 3 hours building time. It flies great and its primary goal is to channel everyone's inner 8 year old. It also serves as the foundation for an excellent night flier (to be demonstrated), aerial video vehicle and has excellent repairability and crash tolerance.

Dorkbot-NYC meeting When: 01 April 2009, 7-9pmWhere: Location One, Greene st north of Canal$$$: $FREE$ Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this!

We've been working hard on the new dynamic Slashdot project (logged in users can enable this by enabling the beta index in their user preferences). I just wanted to quickly mention that there are keybindings on the index. The WASD and VI movement keys do stuff that we like, and the faq has the complete list. Also, if you are using Firefox or have Index2 beta enabled, you can click 'More' in the footer at the end of the page to load the next block of stories in-line without a page refresh. We're experimenting now with page sizes to balance load times against the likelihood that you'll click. More features will be coming soon, but the main thing on our agenda now is optimization. The beta index2 is sloooow and that's gotta change. We're aiming for 2 major optimizations this week (CSS Sprites, and removing an old YUI library) that I'm hoping will put the beta page render time into the "Sane" time frame (which, in case you are wondering, is several seconds faster than that "Insane" time frame we're currently seeing).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "Summary: Amid the latest "sexting" controversy, here is a proposal for a scientifically objective method to determine whether a picture constitutes child pornography. This is a harder problem than it seems, but not for the reasons you'd think. And it raises questions about how the same scientific principles could be applied to other matters of law." Hit the link below to read the sextiest story on Slashdot today.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zebranalogic's Circular Oscillator design reaches new heights of cylindrical synthesis - and wow, it sounds kind of angry about it :( I suppose that's just the squarewaves talkin' … and growling. Either way, it's quite a jump from the Circular Oscillator VII and I'm guessing assembly must be a bit tricky for the PCB/knobs at the unit's mid-length. Nicely done.

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Keith found a New Scientist story about fractals and quantum theory. The article says "Take the mathematics of fractals into account, says Palmer, and the long-standing puzzles of quantum theory may be much easier to understand. They might even dissolve away."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I love that this guy's project blog is called Scoop My Cat Box, and the subtitle is: "One man's quest to offload his responsibilities onto the internet." So far, he's working on two projects, the titular robo cat box, and an Arduino and ultrasonic range-finder-based water dish that lets you know, over the innerwebs, how much is (or isn't) in your cat's dish. I love the last line of the video: "In no time, your friends will know exactly how much you neglect your cat."

Ultrasonic cat dish

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With the latest plan laid out last week on how to "save Wall Street" ("the Geithner plan"), there's a lot of back and forth over whether or not this is a good plan or not -- and while Planet Money had a decent "is it good or bad?" show, the folks there didn't get too deep into it (and even claimed that no one really thought the plan was all that dangerous (just that it could slow down the recovery). However, the more I read up on it, the worse and worse it seems. Simon Johnson has a long, but worthwhile writeup at The Atlantic, where he delves into how Wall Street has effectively taken over Washington DC, such that it helped both create the mess, and then set things up so that the "recovery plan" only benefits those who caused the problems in the first place. This echoes a piece by Andy Kessler last week, where he pointed out that we're effectively handing money to those who brought the collapse upon us -- and suggests that the better response is to simply stymie the plans of the hedge funds -- flooding the markets where they're looking to buy, rather than subsidizing them.

Then, there's Umair Haque, who basically makes the same points, but suggests that this is an outright looting of taxpayer money by putting most of the risk on taxpayers, and encouraging the hedge funds to make increasingly risky loans (you know, like the ones that got us into this mess in the first place). The root of all of these stories is that the government seems to think that the only way to fix the problem is to reinflate the bubble, rather than letting the bubble deflate and moving forward from there. The problem with reinflating the bubble isn't just that it puts off the inevitable (though, it does), but that the inevitable is that much worse when it comes.

It's what we've done for the past couple decades -- effectively building an even shakier house of cards, and every time the cards start to fall... we just reinforce it with another layer of shaky cards to prop it up. At some point, the cards do have to fall, and propping it up with more leverage isn't going to help that.

Even if, as Richard Posner suggests, the current plan is about the most politically feasible, it's still problematic. The politics of the situation is troubling. On one side, you have populist anger, making it difficult to do certain necessary things. On the other, you do still have the influence of the bankers, who view the world as being one where we need to keep propping up that house of cards.

Why is it that no one is talking about carefully taking down the house of cards while building a sturdy house next door?

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Here's an animated trailer for the anime series "Cat Shit One." Production: Studio Anima, Director: Kazuya Sasahara. Original Manga (released in the USA as "Apocalypse Meow"): Motofumi Kobayashi. Our pal Danny Choo has a related post here, and describes it as "Metal Gear Solid meets fluffy animals."

Video Link (Thanks, Jeremy Bornstein!)

Unidentified '80s radio jingle singers are the new girls-playing-ukeleles on Boing Boing! Andrew Swant says,

My creative partner, Bobby Ciraldo, gave me your email address (we made the "What What In the Butt" video and Leslie Hall's "Zombie Killer" video). A friend just came across this video and it made us laugh out loud. I figured I should send it to Boing boing in case you have any slow news days coming up. Or maybe this wouldn't be funny to most people and we just have a weird sense of humor? It's pretty long, but luckily the best stuff is at the beginning.

Rainbow Bread (YouTube). You can see where they've identified the singer in the comments, the story's pretty neat.

Manhattan area makers, get your reassembly on -

Make:NYC Meeting 12 - Wednesday April 8th, 6:30PM

Is it just me or is it getting warm outside? Celebrate spring with us at the next Make:NYC meeting!

Challenge: Reconstruct the beast!

Teams will get a box full of parts from a disassembled item. Item must be reconstructed in working order -- or else! ... or else you can help each other and I'm sure we'll get it figured out.

Show and Tell

Meet your fellow NYC Makers and show off your creations! Bring your gadgets, gizmos, sketches, ideas, anything you'd like to put in the spotlight. We encourage NYC Makers to collaborate on and discuss DIY projects. If you're planning to bring a project, drop us a note at meetings@makenyc.org.

If you'd like to attend we have plenty of space for everyone, but please RSVP!

Location:

Bug Labs
598 Broadway at Houston
4th floor
New York, NY 10012

6/B/D/F/V to Bleeker-Lafayette
R/W to Prince

Meeting time is 6:30PM.

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An anonymous reader writes "The Walt Disney Co and Hulu.com have restarted talks over offering shows from Disney's ABC television network on the online video distributor owned by NBC Universal and News Corp, paidContent.org reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources." The real question to me is when will they stop screwing around with Boxee users?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Did you know that you can get Make: Online delivered to your inbox each day? Feedblitz, the service that we use, does a really nice job of formatting the content. You get the entire day's worth of web content in a single digest email.

Make: Daily Mail gives you an internally-linked "What's In This Issue" table of contents, content ratings and recommendations, through Outbrain, and the ability to email individual items. You can even have the articles spoken to you, by machines of loving grace (with slightly funky inflections). Apps like Flickr slide show, YouTube and Vimeo vids play right in the email.

To sign up for Make: Daily Mail, enter your email address in the field on the right "rail" of the site, right below the iTunes Podcast link, or click here to go to the Feedblitz sign-up page.

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Dan Kaminsky writes "We may not know what the Conficker authors have in store for us on April 1st, but I doubt many network administrators want to find out. Maybe they don't have to: I've been working with the Honeynet Project'sTillmann Werner and Felix Leder, who have been digging into Conficker's profile on the network. What we've found is pretty cool: Conficker actually changes what Windows looks like on the network, and this change can be detected remotely, anonymously, and very, very quickly. You can literally ask a server if it's infected with Conficker, and it will give you an honest answer. Tillmann and Felix have their own proof of concept scanner, and with the help of Securosis' Rich Mogull and the multivendor Conficker Working Group, enterprise-class scanners should already be out from Tenable (Nessus), McAfee/Foundstone, nmap, ncircle, and Qualys. We figured this out on Friday, and got code put together for Monday. It's been one heck of a weekend."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Carl gives an old-fashioned marble a shot of electric oomph with this upgrade -

Arduino with motor shield controlling a continuous rotation servo. The wheel turns when marbles are detected by the infrared phototransistor and LED pair next to the wheel.

Full set here, includes Arduino source and demo video.

Neat - I'm guessing it would only take a bit more power and leverage to quickly turn this into an 'outdoors only' toy. Check out more project pics in the Flickr set.

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A group of German amateur radio hobbyists has successfully bounced a radio signal off the planet Venus, over 31 million miles (50 million km) away, and received it back on Earth (Earth-Venus-Earth = EVE). Peter Guelzow (DB2OS), President of AMSAT-DL, writes:

On March 25th, 2009, a team from the German space organisation AMSAT-DL reached another milestone on its way to its own interplanetary probe towards planet Mars.

The ground station at the Bochum observatory transmitted radio signals to Venus. After traveling almost 100 million kilometers, and a round trip delay of about 5 minutes, they were clearly received as echoes from the surface of Venus.

Receiving these planetary echoes is a first for Germany and Europe. In addition, this is the farthest distance crossed by radio amateurs, over 100 times further than echoes from the moon (EME reflections).

For receiving the EVE signals, an FFT analysis with an integration time of 5 minutes was used. After integrating for 2 minutes only, the reflected signals were clearly visible in the display. Despite the bad weather, signals from Venus could be detected from 1038UT until the planet reached the local horizon.

The 2.4 GHz high power amplifier used for this achievement is described in the current AMSAT-DL journal.
This represented a crucial test for a final key component of the planned P5-A Mars mission. By receiving echoes from Venus, the ground and command station for the Mars probe has been cleared for operational use and the AMSAT team is now gearing up for building the P5-A space probe.

For financing the actual construction and launch, AMSAT-DL is currently
in negotiation with the DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) amongst others, to obtain financial support for the remaining budget of 20 Mil Euros.

AMSAT-DL wants to show that low-cost interplanetary exploration is possible with its approach.

AMSAT-DL

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We've already discussed a few times how silly it is to claim that investigative reporting somehow "goes away" if newspapers go away. There are still plenty of sources of journalism, and the ability to make use of new online tools, including things like Wikileaks, suggests that corruption should be a lot more difficult to get away with in the future, rather than easier. But, still some old school newspaper folks insist that investigative journalism will die. And yet... we keep hearing of new investigative journalism operations. The latest is that the Huffington Post has put together an initial $1.75 million from some donors to create an investigative journalism arm. It's hardly the first, either. There are a growing number of online-only outfits focused on investigative journalism -- and it's likely that many will be a lot more efficient and better at what they do than newspapers who never put all that much money towards investigative journalism in the first place.

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As far as downloaded files are concerned, the latest version of OS X seems to have taken a cue or two from Redmond. Eric Meyer figured out a fix for this that will allow you to selectively disable the downloaded file warnings for certain file types. Here's his take on the problem:

One of the things that I've found mind-bendingly annoying about Leopard (besides its complete refusal to allow classic window management) is the "this file was downloaded from the internet, are you sure you want to open it?" dialog box. Yes, damn it: I just downloaded the file with the express intent of opening it. Stop bothering me. Keep it up and I might mistake you for PC.

Assuming you can use good judgement without the need for an alert box, the solution is a simple XML preferences file edit. You can disable the nag on text, html, images, or whatever file types you commonly download and open.

Selectively Disabling Downloaded-File Warnings in Leopard

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• The wonderful Steve Wozniak autographed a hackintosh.
• Lego's business cards aren't like anyone else's.
• There was a Super-Secret Spy Lens for DSLRs from Photojojo.
• 15 Vintage Household ads in which women are not entirely condescended to were uncovered.
• Recently reviewed were Sony's Vaio P (Verdict: spectacular but slow), Asus' Eee Top PC (Verdict: Suprisingly good), and the Moto Tundra cellphone (Verdict: Well-armored but very basic for the price.)
• Guess what the Big Ass Fans corporation manufactures?
• Joel wondered How best to turn fruit into shot glasses without a specialized tool? and wished this tiny trackball was available in North America.
• Hyungkoo Lee objectified the human form. It's art.
• Netflix needs even more new features.
• Concord's C1 Quantum Gravity watch looks the bomb.
• Purisme milked the rich with a $600-ish carbon fiber bangle.
• Ulysse Nardin's extravagant Chairman cellphone shows off its angles.
• The gaming computer you dreamed of in 1983 is finally available. And it runs NES carts, too!
• There were emanations.
• Microsoft's best anti-Apple ad yet got 'em hopping.
• The brakes on a new Jet-Ski let it stop and turn on a dime.
• The "Geek Aquad" will help you with your new camera, but not your English paper.
• The Legend of Zelda theme was played on Tesla coils.
• Peek Pronto adds push email and a 50% speed increase to the messaging handheld's feature list.

For years, there have been claims of widespread "cyberspying" of various governments by other governments, but little evidence to back it up. Over the weekend, reports broke of a massive network, dubbed "GhostNet," that was based in China, and tapped into computers of multiple foreign nations, mainly via foreign embassies. The Chinese government denies that it has anything to do with the network -- though, the spying did include tapping into Tibetan computers. While it still seems like the threat of a damaging online attack may be overblown -- online espionage is only going to become a bigger and more important part of any government's arsenal in the coming years. That's why reports like this one probably shouldn't be much of a surprise.

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jammag writes "Setting aside the now tired debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the 'better' Linux desktop, Bruce Byfield compares their disparate development approaches and asks, not which desktop is subjectively better, but which developmental approach is likely to be most successful in the next few years. 'In the short term, GNOME's gradualism seems sensible. But, in the long-term, it could very well mean continuing to be dragged down by support for legacy sub-systems. It means being reduced to an imitator rather than innovator.' In contrast, 'you could say that KDE has done what's necessary and ripped the bandage off the scab. In the short term, the result has been a lot of screaming, but, in the long term, it has done what was necessary to thrive.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I really like this little sumo bot based on the ever-popular Arduino micro-controller. The bot features line sensing, obstacle detection, and a nice interface board for the geared motors. Check out the web site for more information and the source code.

Features:

• Weight: 332 g
• Size: L=10cm W=10cm H=12cm
• Sensors: Dual Front telemeter ranging, Dual Surface IR line sensing
• Brain: Finite state machine baesd on Arduino duemilanove
• Traction: Dual Solarbotic geared motor
• Power supply: 6 AAA 800mAh NiMh Rechargeable battery

More about the Arduino Minisumo 01

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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Salon's Katharine Mieszkowski went out foraging with the authors of The Scavengers' Manifesto, a book that explains how to live off the fat of the city: freegan, dumpster-diving wild-herb-harvesting life that lets you enjoy the good things without spending a penny. The econopocalypse means good finds for the pair, but it makes everything a little...grim.

Rufus is motivated in her scavenging less by any environmental ideal than by a deep abhorrence of waste: "I hate it when I see really good stuff in garbage cans. Just chucking stuff away? Junking it? That makes me really mad. It's going to go to a landfill, and some person, poor or not poor, could have had it." In their book, the couple outline a scavenger code of ethics, which includes the admonishments to "obey the law" and "don't eat gross things."

But Rufus and Lawson are acutely aware that scavenging is by definition a fringe activity feeding off the fat of the consumer culture it depends upon. After all, if everyone did it, there would be nothing but scraps left to fight over. But they're confident there's enough to go around for many more people who could be converted to their never-pay-retail mentality. Still, they recognize that the idea of wearing, eating or living with someone else's castoffs is not for everyone, which is OK, too. "We're not saying we're better than regular consumers. We're simply trying to remove the stigma from being scavengers. If you want to be wasteful, be wasteful, and I'll scavenge," says Lawson.

At the end of our afternoon of scavenging, we go just a few blocks past Lawson and Rufus' house to an oak-lined field in Tilden Park, a more than 2,000-acre oasis in the hills. The field is carpeted with so-called Miner's lettuce, a leafy native plant, which is the object of our urban foraging.

Taking in the trash

The Scavengers' Manifesto

olddoc writes "In the days of 512MB systems, I remember reading about cosmic rays causing memory errors and how errors become more frequent with more RAM. Now, home PCs are stuffed with 6GB or 8GB and no one uses ECC memory in them. Recently I had consistent BSODs with Vista64 on a PC with 4GB; I tried memtest86 and it always failed within hours. Yet when I ran 64-bit Ubuntu at 100% load and using all memory, it ran fine for days. I have two questions: 1) Do people trust a memtest86 error to mean a bad memory module or motherboard or CPU? 2) When I check my email on my desktop 16GB PC next year, should I be running ECC memory?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We added a lot of new products to the Maker Shed this week. One of my favorite items is the XBee wireless module. Over the next few weeks we will be adding even more cool products, and building more kits. Are there any products from the Maker Shed that you would like to see us build? If so, leave your suggestions in the comments. Thanks!

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Four weeks in a row, the clicking and clacking blogging brothers talk about the reboot of journalism, the news of the week, and a new $1.75 million fund for investigative journalism that Jay is advising.

http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/clickClack09Mar29.mp3

Hope you enjoy!

The Texas Board of Education — as discussed here last week — has voted on the guidelines for textbooks in that state, which represents a large enough market to have influence nationwide. The good news is that the board dropped a 20-year-old requirement that both "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories be taught; score one for the teaching of evolution. The not-so-good news is that in a "compromise," the board also voted to require that students "in all fields of science, analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations... including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student." Score one for the Discovery Institute. A Republican board member explained that the words "strengths and weaknesses" have become "code for creationism and [the similar theory of] intelligent design. So by being more clear in the language and using words that aren't seen as code words, we were able to get all of the 15 board members to agree that this is how we'll teach all sides of scientific explanation, using scientific evidence." Reporting on the Texas vote is all over the map, as a US Today blog summarizes. Some reports claim that an amendment was passed that preserves a requirement that students study the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of common ancestry and natural selection. Other reports claim that the board also adopted language that would have students study the "different views on the existence of global warming."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ponca City, We love you writes "According to a new study, people who played fighting games on their PCs became up to a 58 percent better at perceiving fine contrast differences, an important aspect of eyesight. The breakthrough is significant because it was previously thought that the ability to notice even very small changes in shades of grey against a uniform background could not be improved. Contrast sensitivity is the primary limiting factor in how well one sees. Volunteers in the study played intensively for 50 hours over nine weeks with either Unreal Tournament 2004 and Call of Duty 2, and the results were compared with another group who played The Sims 2, which is richly visual but does not require as much hand-eye coordination. The improvements lasted for months after game play stopped. The new finding suggests action video games could be used as training devices as a useful complement to eye-correction techniques, since gaming may teach the brain's visual cortex to make better use of the information it receives."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.