Time Warner has been testing broadband plans with traffic caps for several months, and apparently it likes what it's seen, as it plans to soon expand the caps into four more markets. The company alleges it has to switch to capped plans in order to "support the infrastructure of the broadband business," even though the supposed bandwidth crunch ISPs cite when talking about these plans is little more than a myth. As the company's CEO notes, getting the cat back in the bag by getting consumers to switch from unlimited to capped plans is going to be very difficult. Previous studies have found that even light internet users would look to take their business elsewhere if their ISP introduced caps, mainly because they have absolutely no idea how much bandwidth they're consuming. That's a good thing, because the absence of mental transaction costs helped wired broadband take off, and laid the groundwork for all sorts of innovative internet services -- not to mention lots of revenues for ISPs. Compare this to the mobile world, where per-KB or per-MB pricing helped stymie the growth of data services.

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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Tom Igoe just sent me this really cool project that he made on the Arduino Mega and in Processing. He used (2) 8x8 LED matrices and an Arduino Mega to recreate Pong. Next, he ported the Arduino code over to Processing. He said it took 10 minutes to port the entire code. That's fast! You can see the LED matrices in action in my post from yesterday. Check out the link for detailed instructions of both projects, a video, and the source code. Thanks Tom!

When I start learning a new platform, I have a simple rule: If you don't know what to do with it, make pong. What I love about pong is that it's a simple rule set, easy to understand, and implementable on just about anything with a pixel display. You can generally implement it in a day or less on any platform. And it's a great example of engaging interaction. People understand what's going on right away, and, when implemented well, it's just challenging enough to keep you engaged for several minutes at least. That's good interaction, to me.

More about A Tale of Two Pongs: Arduino Mega

Update: You can now pre-order the Arduino Mega from the Maker Shed!

Related:

Arduino MEGA video featuring Tom Igoe

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Barence writes "A Google Street View car has been chased out of a British village by angry residents. The car was taking photographs of Broughton in Buckinghamshire for Google's when it was spotted by a local resident who warned the car not to enter the village then roused his neighbors, who surrounded the vehicle until the driver performed a U-turn and left. 'This is an affluent area,' protester Paul Jacobs said. 'We've already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike. I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger. Meet Mike Long, a Canadian performance artist from Hamilton, Ontario. Mike freaky danced and taped himself doing so for 366 days straight, mainly in his hometown, but he includes NYC, SF and various European locales in his work. He has great taste in music and some of these videos are hysterically funny, reminding me a lot of Spike Jonze's classic Fatboy Slim video. Here is his interpretation of the lover's rock classic "Uptown Top Ranking" by Althea & Donna:
Althea & Donna - "Uptown Top Ranking" from Mike Long on Vimeo. Mike says "I made a dance video, almost always in public places, every single day for an entire year. I am only here to make you smile and hopefully change the way you think about 'genres,' and show you what honest reactions to music look like.' He added "And to do something new." Mike told me that he next plans on releasing twelve books in one year. Three are already complete. When asked what he's writing about, Mike says, "Everything and nothing. Being and living. Wit and lowbrow culture. I will write about every topic I can think of." He seems to have a lot of energy! I believe he'll do it. Thanks Tara McGinley! Black Sheep "E.F.F.E.C.T." (NSFW, but hilarious) Captain Beefheart "Zig Zag Wanderer" Toots & the Maytals "Pressure Drop" Brainiac "Nothing Ever Changes" Screamin' Jay Hawkins "I Put a Spell on You" UPDATE: Some evil troll at YouTube narc'd on Mike and he got his account yanked. I changed the videos here to ones hosted on Vimeo, let's hope they're cooler than YouTube. I mean, what this guy did is truly hilarious. He meant NO DISRESPECT to any of these artists. Clearly he LOVES the music he danced to... but someone had to go and be a jerk. Here's a link to Mike's Etsy page An article about Mike Long's project

The Wired How-To Wiki has a piece on Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Your Old Gadgets. So far, it's mainly about the recycling part, but hey, it's a wiki, so you can add your own ideas for reusing old gadgets.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Your Old Gadgets

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We've been having a bit of a tech-crush here at MAKE, on pneumatic tube systems. We wrote about it in a recent Lost Knowledge column, talked about it on Make: Talk, and Dale went to Molly Wright Steenson's inspiring talk at ETech. In this San Jose Ignite video, entitled "It Really is a Series of Tubes," Molly presents a wonderful survey of pneumatic technologies of the 1800s, all in five minutes.

Now I'm REALLY in love.

Ignite

More:

• Lost Knowledge: Reanimating Dead Media
• Make: Talk episode 2 show notes and next episode

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Wired's Epicenter blog notes that a division of EMI has announced the first major record label blog. While it does appear to be true that this is the first such blog, the very fact that it's only happening now is somewhat stunning. What's even more amazing, really, is that EMI is promoting the fact that they're so far behind the times. Yes, they beat the other three major record labels, but just starting to blog now isn't exactly something to hype up. In fact, prior to this, I'd never even thought about the fact that the labels had no blogs -- but in calling that fact out, it simply reminds everyone how the major record labels are so far behind in embracing any type of modern technology. It's sort of like a horse and buggy manufacturer putting out a press release that it had installed telephones in its office decades after such things were common.

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CWmike writes "The Texas state Senate yesterday gave preliminary approval to a state budget that includes a provision forbidding government agencies from upgrading to Windows Vista without written consent of the legislature. Sen. Juan Hinojosa, vice chairman of the Finance Committee, proposed the rider because 'of the many reports of problems with Vista ... We are not in any way, shape or form trying to pick on Microsoft, but the problems with this particular [operating] system are known nationwide,' Hinojosa said during a Senate session debating the rider (starting at 4:42 of this RealMedia video stream). 'And the XP operating system is working very well.' A Microsoft spokeswoman said in response, 'We're surprised that the Texas Senate Finance Committee adopted a rider which, in effect, singles out a specific corporation and product for unequal treatment. We hope as the budget continues to go through the process, this language will be removed.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Glemie Dean Beasley, 69, hunts raccoons in Detroit and sells their pelts and meat. My old journalism school pal Charlie LeDuff profiles Beasley in today's Detroit News. All of Charlie's work is fantastic. From the feature (click image for full photo by Max Ortiz):

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.

While economic times are tough across Michigan as its people slog through a difficult and protracted deindustrialization, Beasley remains upbeat.

Where one man sees a vacant lot, Beasley sees a buffet...

He procures the coons with the help of the hound dogs who chase the animal up a tree, where Beasley harvests them with a .22 caliber rifle. A true outdoorsman, Beasley refuses to disclose his hunting grounds.

"This city is going back to the wild," he says. "That's bad for people but that's good for me. I can catch wild rabbit and pheasant and coon in my backyard."

"To urban hunter, next meal is scampering by" (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger. We constantly read about how network television is cutting back on expensive scripted dramas and sitcoms that can cost $5 million dollars an episode and up, in favor of more cheaply produced "reality TV" programming. Reality TV can still prove costly to produce, but it doesn't have to cost a lot to be entertaining... Television development executives of the world who are reading this post, I call your attention to five minutes of sublime entertainment that was made for the cost of a single can of Diet Coke (literally). This is my pal Lenora Claire's new webshow, "doNUTS" (produced in affiliation with World of Wonder):
Given the choice between an episode of "Grey's Anatomy," "Rock of Love" or "Don't Forget the Lyrics" on one hand or a smart, sassy woman with bright red hair and ginormous breasts interviewing shitfaced donut eating drunks, on the other, what would YOU want to watch? Each episode of "doNUTS" will see the lovely Ms. Claire interviewing the colorful night owl denizens of the finest 24-hour donut emporiums in Los Angeles. This is primo TV! Are you television exec types out there paying attention? (I personally think Lenora should do a "Pee-wee's Playhouse" kind of thing, a "wink wink" semi-raunchy/semi-sweet, semi-ironic show for "the kids." Little kids just love her, you should see it. So do "the gays." They love her, too. Sign this woman up, she's a demographic-spanning star ready for her close-up!) But "doNUTS" isn't the only notable thing Lenora's got on her plate these days. She's also a wildly popular Los Angeles-based art curator with red-carpet gallery events like her "Golden Girls Gone Wild" and Dolly Parton-themed group shows. Coming up is a Bettie Page exhibit with some very special surprises.
No matter where you turn, there she is. You might recognize her portrait by Marla Rutherford that is part of the current USA Network and Vanity Fair's "Character Project" advertising campaign.

She was also recently painted by the great Olivia.
And here she is eating glass. I think Tim and Eric should invite her on their show to do this. Lenora Claire's MySpace page Lenora Claire "Booty Baby" sculpture (NSFW) doNUTS on YouTube

TechCrunch has a story announcing that Digg's expected URL-shortener is now open for business.

I asked on Twitter if there was an API, and heard back that there is. I quickly write a driver for it for the OPML Editor, and hooked it into my TwitterRiver app, and now the Friends-of-Dave feed and the NY Times River all are running on the Digg shortener. They have, over the last few months been running on a variety of shorteners.

Digg, like BurnUrl, frames the page being linked to through the short URL. An example.

Last year, we wrote about yet another highly questionable patent lawsuit, involving famed guitar-maker, Gibson, claiming that Activision and pretty much every retailer who sold Guitar Hero violated its patent on "generating and controlling a simulated musical concert." The whole thing seemed pretty ridiculous (the patent itself seemed to describe something entirely different from what happens in Guitar Hero.

It took almost a year, but Colin Ross points out that, earlier this year, a California court didn't just toss out the lawsuit against Activision, but told Gibson that the lawsuit "bordered on the frivolous." This was especially true of Gibson's claim (I kid you not) that "the '405 Patent covers any system where a user controls something 'musical' with any device." Yes, really. The court wasted little time smacking down that idea:

By arguing that any sound made by any controller can potentially be musical, Gibson would have everything in the world -- from the buttons of a DVD remote, to a pencil tapping a table -- be an 'actual musical instrument' within the '405 Patent....

No reasonable person of ordinary skill in the relevant arts would interpret the '405 Patent as covering interactive video games.

The lawsuits against the retailers and other companies associated with the game are still ongoing, but hopefully will be tossed out on similar grounds shortly.

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Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscren" icon inside player to view large. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Today on Boing Boing Video, another game-related feature we shot during the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco: a conversation with Konami CEO Hideo Kojima at the San Francisco Apple Store, about his latest creation -- Metal Gear Solid Touch for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Previously:
* Jane McGonigal on Emotion, Gaming, and Dance.
* Jane McGonigal - Games Can Change the World.
* Jane McGonigal's Game Developers' Conference talk on Making Your Own Reality
* BBV @ GDC live stream archives, at Ustream.tv
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: offworld.com archive
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: boingboing.net archive

---

[ Credits and props for BBV Live @GDC09: Production Team -- Jolon Bankey, Derek Bledsoe, Daniela Calderon, Eddie Codel, Xeni Jardin, Allison Kingsley, Matty Kirsch, Alice Taylor, Wesly Varghese. Special thanks to Wayneco Heavy Industries (accommodation and studio facilities), Virgin America Airlines (air travel), Celsius (thermogenic energy beverage), Ustream.tv (streaming video host). Moral support, production assistance, additional talent, and good vibes provided by: Domini Anne, Scott Beale, T.Bias, Jeremy Bornstein, Brandon Boyer, Chris The Van Guy, Peter S. Conrad, Marque Cornblatt, Wayne, Bre, and the entire de Geere family, Marcy DeLuce, Cory Doctorow, Joel Johnson, Kourosh Karimkhany, Jim Louderback and the Revision 3 team, Karen Marcelo, Rocky Mullin, Alicia Pollak, Jackie Mogol, Taylor Peck, David Pescovitz, Micah Schaffer, and Teal. ]

eldavojohn writes "Ars has been covering the story of Charlie Nesson (alias 'Billion Dollar Charlie') of Harvard Law who's tangoing with the RIAA in court. His approach has been revealed in e-mails on his blog and has confused everyone from Lawrence Lessig to the EFF. His argument is simple: file-sharing is legal as it is protected by fair use. I dare say that even the most avid file-sharers among us would be a bit skeptical of this line of reasoning."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This UK TV commercial for the Wilkinson Sword Quattro for Women Bikini razor would probably stir up some serious controversy in the US. I think it's catchy and memorable. Wilkinson Sword: Mow the Lawn (Creativity Online, thanks Zoë Korstvedt!)

CWmike writes "Clearwire is teaming up with Google, Cisco and Intel to build a WiMax network in Silicon Valley for software developers to try out new applications on the 4G mobile broadband technology. The network will cover the three companies' campuses and the region in between them and will span roughly 20 square miles, Clearwire's Ben Wolff said in a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless show. No public access was mentioned, but Clearwire has forecast expanding its commercial WiMax service to the SF Bay Area next year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "EFF's Fred Von Lohmann asks whether President Obama broke any laws when he gave an iPod loaded with music and video to the Queen."

First, let's imagine that the President (or his staff) bought the 40 show tunes from the iTunes music store. Do you "own" the music that you buy from iTunes? The nearly 9,000 words of legalese to which you agree before buying don't answer that question (an oversight? I doubt it). Copyright owners have consistently argued in court that many digital products (even physical "promo" CDs!) are "licensed," not "owned," and therefore you're not entitled to resell them or give them away. (And the Amazon MP3 Store terms of service are even worse for consumers than iTunes -- those terms specifically purport to strip you of "ownership" and forbid any "redistribution.")

iPods, First Sale, President Obama, and the Queen of England (Thanks, Hugh!)

Way back in the late 90s, there was a spate of news stories worried about this awful web thing and how companies were making it available at work -- and how that was obviously going to be a massive drain on productivity. Of course, this was falsely based on the idea that productivity means always working, rather than getting work done. All the way back in 2000, a study came out, noting that employees who did some personal surfing at work tended to be happier and more productive. There were a variety of reasons for this, including that being able to do some personal surfing allowed for useful "mental breaks" that made actual working time more productive. It also let people spend more time on the job (and, in fact, another study found that most employees who do personal surfing at work more than make it up) rather than having to leave work to deal with personal things.

Since all those studies came out in the earlier part of the decade, we had hoped that these issues had been put to rest. But... no, of course not. With new online services like Facebook and YouTube, suddenly companies started freaking out again -- with hyped up claims from internet filtering companies (it always comes from internet filtering companies) about just how much productivity is lost via Facebook and YouTube. And, of course, they have a simple solution: buy our filter and block access to these sites.

And the fear mongering certainly works. Every time we mention any such story, we're inundated with comments from people insisting that there is simply no reason why anyone should ever access Facebook from work. Well, yet another study suggests that's incorrect again. As with the earlier studies, this one found that people who do a little personal surfing of sites like Facebook and YouTube at work, tend to be more productive.

The study found exactly what previous studies had found:

People who do surf the internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20 per cent of their total time in the office - are more productive by about nine per cent than those who don't.... People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. Think back to when you were in class listening to a lecture - after about 20 minutes your concentration probably went right down, yet after a break your concentration was restored.

It's the same in the workplace.

Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a day's work, and as a result, increased productivity.

Now, of course, there are some people who will abuse the privilege -- and there's nothing wrong with finding out who's doing that and dealing with them properly. But a flat-out blanket ban on such things may actually be reducing productivity for most workers, rather than increasing it. Rather than assuming such personal surfing decreases productivity, why not focus on just those who abuse the privilege.

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A three-part exchange with Jay Rosen and Lance Knobel, via email, that would make a good blog post.

I began with an observation...

I was listening to the podcast of This Week, and listening to George Stephanopoulos mangle the interview with Geithner, who was doing the usual thing that politicos do when interviewed by politicos, he mouthed platitudes and ignored the questions, which GS just repeated. They were stupid Russert-like questions, basically amounting to: Did you change your mind?

Then Krugman comes on, as part of the panel, more nonsense, Krugman is actually trying to say real things, but the conversation keeps coming back to impressions and gotchas and lies.

Then it hit me -- Krugman should have interviewed Geithner.

Lance responds...

Absolutely, but I suspect Geithner would never agree to it. Major political figures learn pretty quickly that they can bamboozle the supposed professional interviewers. So there's very little downside to going on the Sunday shows, 60 Minutes or whatever. Experts and, even more, complete amateurs, are far more dangerous.

You see this occasionally during campaigns. I remember in one of Tony Blair's campaigns he was asked some absolutely direct, specific question by a woman on the street which completely stumped him. He was absolutely at sea. That never happened with the professional journalists, even though Britain has far tougher inquisitors than the US. (See Jeremy Paxman famously torture then Home Secretary Michael Howard.)

The ease with which politicians evade questions is what led to the idiocy of Russert. Instead it should have/could have led to questioners who bothered to learn a subject in depth and would probe through follow-ups and persistence. What I love about the Paxman interview is that he never allowed himself to be brushed off. Stephanopoulos and the others may repeat a question a second time, but then they'll move on.

Jay responds...

Great idea. Only reason it doesn't happen is the limited imagination of the show's producers. They are masters of a form. They do not want to change that form for all the obvious reasons.

Also, Krugman screws with their "sphere of consensus" mindset. They don't know what he's going to do, or say. That is seriously scarifying to them.

See: Audience Atomization.

Lance adds...

Incidentally, one reason why Rachel Maddow is so good is because she's both very bright and incredibly well-informed on the details of so many issues. Having a doctorate in political science can be an advantage. She hasn't yet sunk into the standard form that Jay identifies.

One more thought from Jay...

You'll notice, as well, that an arched eyebrow and a "flip flop, Mr. Secretary?" question can be asked without running up any bills in knowledge acquisition costs for the particular issues the Secretary knows about. Whereas Krugman is up to speed and does not need to rely on one-size-fits-all questions.

In case you missed last night's Nightline segment on the DIY movement and MAKE, featuring Mister Jalopy and Mark Frauenfelder and scenes from Make: television and Maker Faire, ABC News now has it on their website. It's the "Do It Yourself" segment.

More:
Welcome Nightline viewers!

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IFC.com is running a "Radiohead Fanatic Fortnight" contest, starting today, in which Radiohead fans have a shot at winning special collectors' packages of the band's first three albums -- Pablo Honey, The Bends, and OK Computer -- and 12 high-quality vinyl Radiohead EPs. Contest ends April 10th, 2009. Five runners up each receive a copy each of all three 2CD Collectors Edition packages of Pablo Honey, The Bends and OK Computer. Above, video of Thom Yorke's performance on IFC's The Henry Rollins Show. Over the next two weeks, IFC.com will be featuring daily Radiohead videos and other content. Cool stuff.

I was just stumbling around in the ambient section of iTunes' radio listings, and found a radio station that plays nothing but recorded birdsongs. I think its' pretty wonderful. birdsongradio.com, embedded above.

Hugh Pickens writes "Dr Brent Coker, professor of Department of Management and Marketing at Melbourne University, says employees who surf the internet for leisure during working hours are more productive than those who don't. A study of 300 office workers found 70 percent of people who use the internet at work engage in Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB). 'People who do surf the internet for fun at work — within a reasonable limit of less than 20 per cent of their total time in the office — are more productive by about nine per cent than those who don't,' said Coker. 'People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. Think back to when you were in class listening to a lecture — after about 20 minutes your concentration probably went right down, yet after a break your concentration was restored. It's the same in the workplace.' However, Coker warns that excessive time spent surfing the internet could have the reverse effect."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While we still think SanDisk's new music format is unlikely to get much traction, there was one bit of interesting news in a report on the new slotRadio device designed to play its music-on-microSD: you'll be able to buy slotRadio cards with 1,000 songs on them for $40. We've been wondering for years why the industry is so focused on the $1/song price, when new technology allows for tens of thousands of songs to fit in your pocket. In fact, if you get past the whole price-per-song thing, you start to wonder why you can't buy an iPod stuffed with thousands of songs based on exactly what you like. To date, it's always been a price issue -- with the industry requiring its huge fee per song.

But apparently that's changing. slotRadio has almost no chance (DRM included!), but the very fact that it got the industry to agree to a package that involves 1,000 songs for $40 shows that, somewhere, somehow, people in the industry are realizing that, when you can carry 40,000 songs in your pocket, the $1/song pricing model just doesn't make sense.

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Jimmy Zimms writes "Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC is an extension built on the core of ASP.NET that brings some of the popular practices and ease of development that were popularized by Ruby on Rails and Django to the .NET developers. Scott Guthrie, the inventor of ASP.NET, just announced that Microsoft is open sourcing the ASP.NET MVC stack under the MS-PL license. 'I'm excited today to announce that we are also releasing the ASP.NET MVC source code under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL). MS-PL is an OSI-approved open source license. The MS-PL contains no platform restrictions and provides broad rights to modify and redistribute the source code.' Here's the text of the MS-PL.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What do you get if you cross a full-featured PC with a microcontroller? Trossen Robotics is hoping you get a Roboard RB-100, a new breed of robot brains that is like a tricked-out microcontroller or an extremely svelte PC, take your... ah... PIC.

The Roboard RB-100 is a new breed of robotics controller: a fusion of a traditional microcontroller and a full function computer. Think of it as an OS capable microcontroller on steroids, boasting a 32bit x86 CPU running at 1000MHz and 256MB DRAM. The ability to load an operating system of your choice and have direct access to I/O, Comm ports, USB, and networking opens this controller up to a wide range of robotics based applications. Our Roboard Starter Kit comes with just about everything you need to implement this feature rich controller in your next robotics project! All you need to supply is a 1-2gb Micro-SD card to load an OS onto, 6-24v, and a robot!

• * Powerful Computer dedicated to robotics applications.
• * Starter Kit includes Interface Cables and Mini PCI VGA Card.
• * Based on the Vortex86DX, a 32bit x86 CPU running at 1000MHz with 256MB DRAM
• * Compatible with Windows, Linux and DOS
• * Open Source C++ Library for Roboard's unique I/O functions (sensors, actuators, etc.)
• * A perfect solution for Microsoft Robotics Studio development.
• * Only 2 watts of power consumption!
• * Tiny size measuring in at only 96 x 56 mm

The Roboard Starter Set, which includes the RB-100 and nine different power and data cables, sells for $299.

Roboard

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Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger Vivian Jackson, AKA "Yabby You" is one of the most fascinating artists of the "roots reggae" period of the early 1970s. Poverty stricken his entire life, Jackson was in ill-health as a result of living at and working in a garbage incinerator in Waterhouse, Jamaica since he was a young child. After a spell in the hospital, his legs by then crippled with arthritis, 17-year old Jackson was told that he could no longer return to his former job and moved to Kingston where he eked by precariously. Although a Rastafarian, Jackson did not believe in the divinity of Emperor Haile Selassie and his Christian beliefs were at odds with other Rastas he knew. He was given the nickname "Jesus Dread" as a result of his argumentative nature. One night an ethereal song came to Jackson as he BS'd about religion with friends: "Like a strange ting, inside a-my thoughts --like an angel a-sing." Although his poverty slowed the recording process down, many top musicians (and master producer, King Tubby) were impressed with Jackson's unwavering passion that this song must be brought into the world, and volunteered their services. The results, "Conquering Lion" is a dark, brooding masterpiece of true religious fervor and a seminal reggae classic. In many ways, I see this song as a reggae equivalent to "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys. Listen to the way the voices are layered. No other Jamaican artist was doing anything even remotely similar at the time. Nor have any since. Yabby You is still with us and he performs on occasion, standing with the help of crutches. "Conquering Lion" album was pressed in a run as small as 500 copies when it was first released in 1975. It took another 22 years before the LP was widely heard outside of Jamaica, with the deluxe 2 CD edition of "Jesus Dread (1972-1977)" featuring various "versions" of the song released by top UK reggae label, Blood and Fire. Now it's considered a classic. "Conquering Lion" by Yabby You Yabby You live Lightning Flash (Weak Heart Drop) by Big Youth (a "version" of "Conquering Lion") James Brown synch'd to "Conquering Lion" Dub mix Yabby You's "Jesus Dread (1972-1977)" on an audio blog

The Eatmecrunchy bowl (unfortunate name) features a shelf that covers 70% of the base, separating cereal from milk. I might buy one if they threw in a free ShamWow. #

A bunch of folks have been sending in the story of how an early version of the movie Wolverine has leaked online, well before the movie goes to theaters. The NY Times even describes this as unprecedented and eats up the movie industry's claim that this is some huge problem. Not surprisingly, the NY Times article was written by the same reporter who recently wrote an article basically repeating unproven movie studio claims that piracy was damaging its business -- a point disproved weeks later in the same NY Times (by a different reporter) noting that the movie business is seeing a huge surge in attendance.

As has been pointed out over and over again, there's very little evidence that movie "piracy" cannibalizes film attendance. That's why the most "pirated" films are also the biggest box office hits. It's not too hard to figure out why: people go out to the movies for the social experience, not just for the content. And putting in place smarter business models can help drive more people to the actual theaters, even if they saw the content online first.

But, of course, that's not how the industry sees it, and 20th Century Fox has wasted no time in going after anyone sharing the film and trying to hunt down who leaked it. That is, of course, the company's right. But, it does seem that its resources might be better spent focusing on giving people a real reason to go see the film in the theaters.

If anything, it seems the real fear is that the version that's been released isn't very good -- and that's what will keep people away from seeing the film in the theater. That "early word of mouth" that studios have been blaming for bad box office turnout. And, certainly, you can understand why it would be upsetting to the studio to have an unfinished version out there (especially if it's missing many of the sound effects and special effects). But, even so, instead of going all legal and threatening, the studio could have responded in a way that built anticipation to get people to actually go see the movie.

Why not be straightforward about it, saying, something along the lines of:

Hey Wolverine fans! We know that you're all looking forward to the release of the movie next month. We're excited too! By now you may have heard that an early totally unfinished version has been leaked online. It's missing a whole bunch of stuff -- including some amazing special effects -- and honestly, this version isn't a finished product at all. We think you'll get a much better overall experience by waiting for the full finished product, but we certainly understand that some of you just can't wait (trust us, we feel the same way!). If that's the case, please, feel free to check it out, but please remember that this isn't even close to the final version. If anything, think of this as a "behind-the-scenes" peek of just what a movie looks like before all the real "movie magic" gets put in there. If you do check it out, we hope you'll join us May 1st to check out the finalized version as well on the big screen the way we intended for you to see this awesome movie. It's just a month away!

Sure, I just made that up on the spot -- but if Fox had released a statement like that, just think of the reaction among the folks who this unauthorized version would likely reach. Rather than being treated like criminals, they'd be treated like fans -- and with a bit of honesty. Personally, it would make me a lot more likely to want to go (pay and) see the movie when it came out. Would it really have been that difficult to do that? It certainly would be a lot cheaper and more effective than "spending the day demanding that copies of the film be removed from the largely anonymous swath of Web sites that swap movie files" as the NY Times reported folks at Fox Studios did.

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Anonymusing writes "Not long ago, professional video gamer Emmanuel Rodriguez earned a base $30K salary plus prize winnings in the Championship Gaming Series. However, with the economy suffering, sponsors like DirecTV and News Corporation are backing out, leaving Rodriguez with a more typical job for a 23-year-old: store clerk. After the demise of the CPL and the Championship Gaming Series last year, the only major pro gamer league left is Major League Gaming, though it expects to turn a profit this year — some of its players earn more than six figures from the $1 million in prizes given throughout the season, while others are putting off college to work on their gaming careers." A recent story in the LA Times discusses how the games industry slow-down is hitting game developers hard as well. Conversely, the used game market is seeing significant growth — it'll be interesting to see what publishers learn from this.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Memsic 2125 accelerometer from the Maker Shed is a low cost, dual-axis thermal accelerometer capable of measuring tilt, acceleration, rotation, and vibration with a range of ±3 g. It's a great addition to many robotic projects, and is compatible with most micro-controllers, including the Arduino.

More about the Memsic 2125 accelerometer

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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thomsomc writes "Joe Stewart from the Conficker Working Group has created an eye chart that allows for online identification of Conficker B and C infections. Using basic knowledge of the blacklisting that Conficker employs to avoid attempting to infect IPs that belong to popular Anti-Virus and security firms (including Microsoft), the group whipped up this very simple test to see if you can load content from the various pages. If you can see all of the images, you're more than likely Conficker-free. According to Honeynet, 'This detection method should be more reliable than network scanning based tests. Happy scanning!'" Related: Tech Fragments notes in passing that nothing much seems to have come of conficker's dreaded April 1 deadline.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just as we're seeing the various naysayers of any popular new communications technology come out swinging against Twitter, Rick Klau does a nice job reminding people that this is nothing new. With every new form of communication, people freak out about how there's no "rules" and that some people are using it for bad things or (worse!) mundane things. Rick points out the following quote to prove his point:

"Twitter is a one-man show. One has complete freedom of expression, including, if one chooses, the freedom to be scurrilous, abusive, and seditious; or, on the other hand, to be more detailed, serious and "high-brow" than is ever possible in a newspaper or in most kinds of periodicals. At the same time, since Twitter is always short, it can be produced much more quickly than a book, and in principle, at any rate, can reach a bigger public. Above all, Twitter does not have to follow any prescribed pattern... All that is required of it is that it shall be topical, polemical, and short."

The quote comes from Pulitzer Prize winning historian Bernard Bailyn... except that's not the actual quote. Rick simply replaced pamphlets with Twitter -- as the original is talking about the use of pamphlets in the lead up to the Revolutionary War, and how they helped spread ideas. Yet, today, as then, people will complain that the content is "currilous, abusive, and seditious." Every time I see someone complain about how Twitter (or blogging) is somehow not valuable because of all the crappy, boring or mundane content found via those platforms, I simply wonder why the complainer follows crappy, boring or mundane Twitter users and blogs.

On top of that, the question of content being banal or mundane is really in the eye of the beholder. For example, many people point to Twitter messages about "what someone's eating for lunch" to show how useless Twitter can be. Yet, for me, just such a message has resulted in me getting to meet someone who I might not have met otherwise. And the more that I've used Twitter, the more and more useful I've found many of those same "mundane" messages. It certainly may not be for everyone, but I find it amusing that some can brush off the entire idea as being useless when so many people (including myself) have found it to be tremendously valuable and useful, if used properly. Are those who are brushing it off assuming that the millions of people who find it useful are lying?

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Check out the wild futuristic dancing in this classic German 1960s space opera Raumpatrouille.

Funny futuredance (Raumpatrouille Orion) (via IO9)

See also:

Video: Crazy '60s German TV robots und dance moves

Video, MP3: More Raumpatrouille kitschtastic '66 German sfTV

New research suggests that playing first-person shooter vidgames can improve your vision. According to University of Rochester cognitive scientist Daphne Bavelier, the games exercise the "contrast sensitivity function," crucial for reading and nightvision. In the study, some gamers played Unreal Tournament 2004 and Call of Duty 2. Others played The Sims 2, but didn't experience the vision benefits. From National Geographic:

It may be that locating enemies and aiming accurately is a strenuous, strength-building workout for the eyes, (Bavelier) said.

Another possible reason is that the unpredictable, fast-changing environment of the typical action game requires players to constantly monitor entire landscapes and analyze optical data quickly.

Finally, Bavelier said, the games' rich payoff may also play a role.

"It's pleasing to be successful in your mission," she said. "When you combine rewards with these other [factors], then you get much more learning."

"Video Games Improve Vision, Study Says"

Video Link. Nothing too outrageously rare or new, but one of the funnier "misheard lyrics" videos I've LOLed through lately. "Oh baby, hoggify." If you have others you're particularly fond of, do dump them in the comments. Richard Metzger pointed me to one last week, a Clash Song which was actually about "Pac Man's Brother," I've lost the link but will update the post if I can find it again. (thanks, Earl Ruby, via Wayne's Friends List)

In celebration of this week's anniversary of the founding of Apple Computer, 20x200 issued this fabulous limited edition print depicting the original Apple 1 computer. The photo, by Mark Richards, comes from the fantastic book Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers featuring Richards's images and John Alderman's text. As with all 20x200 prints, there are 200 available for $20 with limited numbers of larger sizes costing more. Also available is Richards's portrait of IBM 360 Model 30 Tape Drives. Apple I print

Akido37 writes "Time Warner Cable is expanding its transfer capping program to new markets in Rochester, NY, Austin, TX, San Antonio, TX, and Greensboro, NC. It seems they have been testing plans with 5, 10, 20, or 40GB of data transfer per month, with prices ranging from $30 to $55 a month. BusinessWeek quotes Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt saying, 'We need a viable model to be able to support the infrastructure of the broadband business ... We made a mistake early on by not defining our business based on the consumption dimension.' Ars Technica adds, 'The BusinessWeek article notes that only 14 percent of users in TWC's trial city of Beaumont, Texas even exceeded their caps at all. My own recent conversations with other major ISPs suggest that the average broadband user only pulls down 2-6GB of data per month as it is. One the one hand, this suggests that caps don't really bother most people; on the other, it indicates that low cap levels aren't needed to keep traffic 'reasonable' since it's actually quite low to begin with.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have sent in the story in Cracked, entitled 5 Great Men Who Built Their Careers on Plagiarism, showing how Stephen Ambrose, T.S. Eliot, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Owen and H.G. Wells all appear to have plagiarized certain major works. As we've discussed in the past, while straight-up plagiarism can hurt someone's reputation in pretty serious ways, we have a bit more trouble condemning "plagiarism" where someone took something and turned it into something different. Jonathan Bailey, a staunch fighter against any type of plagiarism and copyright infringement, has written about the Cracked article, where he notes that the five men listed in the article would have a lot more trouble getting away with the same sort of plagiarism today, suggesting that's a good thing. I'm not sure that's necessarily true. In at least some of the cases of plagiarism listed in the original article, these guys took something someone else had done, but made it more impressive and did a better job getting the world to experience something wonderful. Would the world be better off without some of the works by these five men, even if they didn't necessarily originate from them? I'm not so sure... That's not to say that appropriating the works of others and pretending it's your own is okay. The reputation hit you're likely to take for doing that is pretty severe and not worth it. But I have a hard time believing that the actual final effect on the rest of the world is that bad.

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Hugh Pickens writes "Most companies buy servers from the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM or Sun Microsystems, but Google, which has hundreds of thousands of servers and considers running them part of its core expertise, designs and builds its own. For the first time, Google revealed the hardware at the core of its Internet might at a conference this week about data center efficiency. Google's big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there's a problem with the main source of electricity. 'This is much cheaper than huge centralized UPS,' says Google server designer Ben Jai. 'Therefore no wasted capacity.' Efficiency is a major financial factor. Large UPSs can reach 92 to 95 percent efficiency, meaning that a large amount of power is squandered. The server-mounted batteries do better, Jai said: 'We were able to measure our actual usage to greater than 99.9 percent efficiency.' Google has patents on the built-in battery design, 'but I think we'd be willing to license them to vendors,' says Urs Hoelzle, Google's vice president of operations. Google has an obsessive focus on energy efficiency. 'Early on, there was an emphasis on the dollar per (search) query,' says Hoelzle. 'We were forced to focus. Revenue per query is very low.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jake and Dinos Chapman's "FUCKING HELL" is a 2:47 macrofocus video tour through one of the ghastliest phantasmagoric landscapes you've ever encountered, all of it made from melted plastic toys. According to William Gibson, the Chapmans started doing this when they were 8 or 9 years old, working with stuff from hobby shops. They've certainly perfected their art. This is amazing.

Fucking Hell (via William Gibson)

According to the authors of Battlestar Galactica, Bob Dylan was tuning into a cosmic song that drives the universe when he wrote All Along The Watchtower. There are so many great scenes in the BSG series that revolve around the song. In the last episode Starbuck has seconds to jump Galactica away from the exploding Cylon death star, she's fumbling at the controls and says "There must be some kind of way out of here" and then proceeds to transport us to a magic place (no spoilers). In the background The Song is playing.

I'm getting that feeling about Twitter.

BookOfJames: "Maybe it's good for Twitter to burn bright and fast. Once the fad is over, things may settle down for the better. Who knows?"

Maybe so.

Maybe Twitter is just a crude child's drawing of the promised land on online communication.

Another step on the Yellow-brick Road? If so, I think we have, for sure, taken a detour into the land of the poppy flowers or the Wicked Witch of the West. For me, the real eye-opener was this tweet from TheEllenShow, promising a treat to all her munchkins if they drove her follower number over 500K. Think about it -- that's asking for people to spam on her behalf. I follow a lot of people (more than Ellen, for example) and that meant I got a lot of people retweeting her pitch. And while it's true I can choose not to follow Ellen, there's no way to not-follow all the spam. And with a half-million followers, that's a lot of spam.

All this predicts what we have to expect when Oprah joins the mess. And when the Congressional elections are fought in Twitterspace. All of a sudden the lovely patch of green, the bright optimistic future we had for it has turned into the key phrase in The Watchtower.

"There must be some way out of here..."

Said the joker to the thief.

Increasingly, I don't think it's Laconica. I think they have the wrong idea about who their potential users are and what they want, and what to expect from them. Their plan came out a few days ago, and if I want to operate a twitter-like service, I'm stuck with limited customization options and I have to pay to bring customers to them. I don't think this works.

No one has figured out how in this space to enable an honest non-spammer type such as myself to build a nice little business off this technology. Even worse, no one has figured out how to sell a service to a mainstream publication that wants to establish a news network without all the crap that's showing up on twitter.com.

I mentioned this briefly in a post a few of days ago. Let me elaborate.

I'm pretty sure the FriendFeed guys have missed the mark, and also pretty sure they know it.



Here's how I'd look at it if I were on their team.

1. Our key strength: We know how to scale systems. (Based on experience at Google with Maps and Mail.)

2. Our big opportunity: People want to start their own twitters. (This is my assumption. Unproven. Risky. Who? A-list bloggers, struggling news organizations, visionary networks of bloggers wanting to form new kinds of groups. AOL. Yahoo. MSN.)

3. Another strength: We know how to design APIs. (They do, the FF API is very nice. Could be better, and from what I've seen they know how to make it better.)

So, in case it isn't obvious by now, I'd counsel them to get into the platform business. Enable guys who have mastered AppEngine and EC2 to build front-ends for their back-end, provide a toolkit for building your own twitter and then let a thousand flowers bloom. I'd also raise more money so I could acquire the winners, suck their features into the platform, and then do it again. I think this is the winning strategy. If Twitter had FF's strengths (don't think they do) I'd counsel them to do the same. And for gods' sakes, stay in the background, don't compete with your users. More on this in the next paragraph.

One of the reasons Twitter is so demoralizing (at least for this Twitter user, ymmv) is something Jean-Louis Gassee once taught me by asking a question.

"David, are you a pimp or are you a whore?"

It was a good question. And one the Twitter owners would do well to answer.

The better business for them is to be pimps not whores. Fade into the background. Let Twitter become infrastructure, a platform for impressarios. Biz and Ev just can't compete with the dazzling personalities they've attracted. Yet geez Luigi, Biz is going on Colbert tonight! That's a bad idea. It's going to make Ellen and Oprah jealous, Leno and Letterman, Barbara, George Will, etc. Wait until there's competiton, and networks own twitters. The stars (whores) are going to get paid big bucks, like Howard Stern, to draw in users. And they're not going to want to compete with you on a personal level. And Ev and Biz just aren't that interesting as celebrities. But as pimps, maybe...

BTW, to answer JLG's question, 25 years later -- I'm a whore and I know it.

Not a big-time one. Just an average one. Nothing special.

Of course that's going to get quoted.

Pull out your dusty nifty knitter, some surgical tubing, a small liquid pump, and you've got yourself this mesmerizing little "fluid sculpture". I just keep watching it over and over, and thinking of new possibilities for shapes and patterns! Apparently the creators will be at Maker Faire in May; I'm looking forward to seeing it in person! Via Pixelsumo.

More:

Blood scarf by Laura Splan on CRAFT

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cjstaples noted a CNN story proclaiming that Jupiter's signature red spot is shrinking. Over a 10 year study, the giant storm lost just over half a kilometer per day for a total loss of about 15%. Scientists know about shrinkage, right?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study is out saying that the number of people arrested for soliciting sex with juveniles (or at least law enforcement posing as juveniles) online leapt fivefold from 2000 to 2006 -- but instead of using the stat to start a moral panic, people behind the study say the sharp increase doesn't signal a growing danger to kids, but rather better enforcement by police. During the same time span, arrests for solicitations of actual children increased 21 percent, from about 500 to about 600. The report's authors say that had the increase in arrests for online solicitation been due to an increase in the number of offenders, the two growth rates would have been more similar. This report goes along with an earlier one from the Berkman Center at Harvard, which found that as internet use has grown, the number of sex offenses against kids has dropped, once again highlighting that much of the moral panic over kids' safety online is overhyped and misplaced.

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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Make: television received a warm welcome from the folks at Seattlest.com last week. Thanks for the feedback about the episodes, we're always interest in hearing people's reaction. Here's a snippet:

Make debuts on Seattle TV this weekend. We've seen the first two episodes of the show (you can see some clips and episodes here), and the first one airing at 11 a.m. Saturday on KCTS was a little deflating. It just wasn't what we were hoping for, and seemed to opt for Burning Man-style spectacle over substance every time. We've also seen the second episode, though, and all is well with the world: it's awesome. That one doesn't air until April 4, so set your TiVo now. It won't kill you to watch the first episode as well, but know that things get better quickly. (LINK)

Watch Episode 1, Episode 2 or watch them all at our Episode Guide page.

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hansamurai writes "The FBI are investigating the leak of an almost finished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine a month before the film's cinema release. The movie was reported to have been downloaded several hundred thousand times and has since been 'removed.' Viewers have called the movie incomplete, missing some special effects and music. Fox and the MPAA are still upset, though, but say the copy is forensically marked and can be traced to the leak. The film is due out May 1st in the United States, and the leaked copy is marked March 2nd."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Prax Sanchez of Colorado coughed up a nail that was stuck in his nose for three decades. It came out after he underwent a medical MRI. Of course, MRIs are essentially giant magnets which is why you have to remove any metal objects before entering the machine. From KKTV:

"When I went to lay down on the MRI machine, I had a real pain on my right side under my eye," said Sanchez...



It was over an inch long. Doctors say it could have been up his nose for 30 years.

"Once it's in the nasal cavity like that, a little membrane forms around it and it becomes a foreign object."

"Man Coughs Up Nail Stuck In His Nose For 30 Years"

While conducting historical research for the recent MAKE presents: The Transistor video, I came across references to an earlier iteration of the device apparently created way back in 1933 - a full 14 years before Bell Labs researchers had a working model. What makes the discovery even more compelling and inspiring is the fact that its inventor, Robert Adams, was only 13 years old when he made it. Though no patents or publications were created describing its functionality, Adams is said to have built multiple crystal radios utilizing the device. Though Dr. Robert George Adams passed away in 2006, his website documents some of his work -

Two different methods of interconnection between the two crystals were employed -

1. By copper wire from a crystal mounted in a crystal cup, the other end of which is connected to the crystal set proper.
2. By direct physical contact (under small pressure) in an assembly of two crystal cup holders with vertical mounting brackets secured to a small insulated base board.

Connections to this small module of two crystals was achieved with the use of the then available vertical cantilever type cats whisker holders, providing stable connections to the central junction and input and output points. The words 'emitter', 'base', 'collector' hadn't yet been born for this new device, which, of course, was destined to become known today as a "transistor".

Inspired by Adams' story and my experience building a homebrew LED, I've begun experimenting with carborundum to create my own point-contact transistor. As I'm some readers out there have more experience in the field of crystal detectors and similar, I'd love to hear of any experiences/opinions regarding DIY transistors in general - be sure to share any you may have in the comments below.

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An anonymous reader writes "Keir Thomas berates the fact that the world of Linux almost entirely lacks critics. In fact, he says, Linux people tend to see genuine critical evaluation as a bad thing. FTA: 'The problem with this anti-criticism approach is that it's damning Linux to an eternity of navel gazing. Nothing can ever get any better. The best hope we have are the instances where a few bright sparks, with their heads screwed on the right way, get together and make something cool (as happened with, say, Firefox back in the day). But that's rare and can't be relied upon.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Olympus has released a firmware update for the E-30 digital SLR. Version 1.1 rectifies minor issues with image playback and quietens operation of the Image Stabilizer when used with Imager AF and Hybrid AF modes of the camera. The latest firmware can be installed via Olympus Master or Studio software.

Olympus has released a firmware update for the E-30 digital SLR. Version 1.1 rectifies minor issues with image playback and quietens operation of the Image Stabilizer when used with Imager AF and Hybrid AF modes of the camera. The latest firmware can be installed via Olympus Master or Studio software.

Just as in the UK, where Google decided to block all music videos from the major record labels, after those labels demanded payments that Google felt was way out of line with what could be made from advertising, it looks like Google has now pulled music videos in Germany as well. Once again, the record labels will likely complain and demand investigations -- even as other artists have learned that they don't need to profit directly from their videos on YouTube, but that they can profit indirectly and that pulling their videos down actually does a lot more harm than good.

Of course, the record labels recognize this implicitly -- otherwise they would be happy that their music videos were pulled down. If they didn't recognize the benefit from YouTube, why would they complain at all? The problem, it seems, is more psychological. The record labels know they benefit from the music being on YouTube -- but they also know that Google benefits. Rather than realizing there can be relationships where both sides benefit and everyone is better off, the labels seem to feel that only they should really benefit, and thus, Google should have to pay out all (or most) of its benefit.

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Just as in the UK, where Google decided to block all music videos from the major record labels, after those labels demanded payments that Google felt was way out of line with what could be made from advertising, it looks like Google has now pulled music videos in Germany as well. Once again, the record labels will likely complain and demand investigations -- even as other artists have learned that they don't need to profit directly from their videos on YouTube, but that they can profit indirectly and that pulling their videos down actually does a lot more harm than good.

Of course, the record labels recognize this implicitly -- otherwise they would be happy that their music videos were pulled down. If they didn't recognize the benefit from YouTube, why would they complain at all? The problem, it seems, is more psychological. The record labels know they benefit from the music being on YouTube -- but they also know that Google benefits. Rather than realizing there can be relationships where both sides benefit and everyone is better off, the labels seem to feel that only they should really benefit, and thus, Google should have to pay out all (or most) of its benefit.

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N!NJA writes "Hulu has started encoding the html that they send to people's browsers, and then decoding it using javascript before rendering it. [...] They then run the character stream through a series of javascript functions to convert it back into plain text before pushing it into your browser using DHTML. That's quite a lot of effort just for fun, so I assume that is to stop screen scrapers from parsing content." I really can't understand all this effort. Boxee displayed the Hulu advertising perfectly. I suspect Alec Baldwin is to blame.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Macetech shares details on removing PCB resist with a laser cutter -

It's easy to remove most of the residue using water and a paper towel. I used to use alcohol because it removed the residue almost instantly, but I found that it also eroded the paint mask too much. Water alone doesn't get enough of the residue off, so you need a very mild abrasive polish. The best I've found for the purpose is ordinary toothpaste, although I forgot to bring it to Techshop and used some plastic polish instead. This also works fine, but it has a wax which needs to be removed with a grease-cutting soap before you attempt to etch the copper.

His test board was a revised version of the Stealth USB Capslocker project. Read on for his specific settings for the Epilog and more process pics at his blog.

More:

HOW TO - Use a laser to etch PCBs (printed circuit boards)

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UnanimousCoward was one of many people to submit a story that might be an April Fools day joke, except that I don't think it is. Rackable Systems has announced that it is buying SGI for the bargain basement price of $25M. Time was that there was little cooler than an SGI workstation. And note to Rackable's PR: Either this was a genius joke, or a terrible day to announce huge news. Someone either deserves a promotion or a firing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From an item called DIY Dangerous Toy - The Universel Cycle

Buddhist temple made from beer bottles

Bicycle table

I'm not ashamed to admit it: I'm a dude who crafts. I like altering books, journaling, papercraft, rubber stamping, mail art, making stickers, and... God help me for saying this ... "scrapbooking" (tho not the sucky kind, I tell myself).

So, I can totally dig this website, dedicated to men who like being crafty. From Paul's mission statement:

DudeCraft is an experiment in permission. The permission to learn and participate in crafts of all kinds. Building things from wood and steel is cool, to be sure, but so is knowing how to sew your own clothes, knit a scarf, and make something beautiful from an A4 sheet of paper. DudeCraft seeks to make it acceptable for men to participate in all crafts, not just the "manly" ones.

DudeCraft

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr member Aud1073cH created this rather hot hybrid of guitar and Weird Sound Generator -

This is a synth guitar I built from a second hand First Act mini electric guitar that I stripped down, and rebuilt using Ray Wilson's WSG synth schematics. With only one Wacky/Weird/Zany voice, and without the oddness filter (it can plug into guitar pedals for effects and filters.)
Two ribbon controllers on the neck control the wacky and weird oscillator frequencies. Controls where the pickup used to be effect the Zany oscillator, and switches near the neck control the wacky send and range.
Its black with a metal flake flame paint job was my first flame project with the airbrush.

Excellently lengthy dual ribbon control! It's worth noting that "Oddness" (though not included here) is a great low pass filter and easily recreated on it's own from the project schematic. Click on for additional pics documenting the birth of said Synthitar.

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Ponca City, We love you writes "What did the Obamas give Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday when they arrived at Buckingham Palace? An Obama aide reported the queen was given an iPod loaded with video and photos of her 2007 trip to the United States, as well as songs and accessories. She also received a rare songbook signed by the composer Richard Rodgers. The gift issue had come up after Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited the White House last month. Mr. Brown gave Mr. Obama a pen holder carved from the timber of an anti-slave ship, receiving in return a DVD box set of American movies, igniting a torrent of criticism in the British press. According to news reports, the queen gave the Obamas a silver-framed signed photograph — a gift she gives to all visiting dignitaries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ponca City, We love you writes "What did the Obamas give Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday when they arrived at Buckingham Palace? An Obama aide reported the queen was given an iPod loaded with video and photos of her 2007 trip to the United States, as well as songs and accessories. She also received a rare songbook signed by the composer Richard Rodgers. The gift issue had come up after Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited the White House last month. Mr. Brown gave Mr. Obama a pen holder carved from the timber of an anti-slave ship, receiving in return a DVD box set of American movies, igniting a torrent of criticism in the British press. According to news reports, the queen gave the Obamas a silver-framed signed photograph — a gift she gives to all visiting dignitaries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While we often talk about music and movies as creative endeavors that require new business models, it's true that we don't pay as much attention to photographers -- though, I should say that when photographers do show up in the comments, they're often the most vociferous defenders of traditional copyright (much more than even recording industry guys). That's why it's interesting to see some are testing out new business models as well. John alerts us to the news that a photographer who goes by the name Ctein is running an experiment where he's asking "true fans" to subscribe to his work -- paying $9.50/month for a year. At the end of the year, he'll send them a couple of prints (chosen from a selection offered). It's based on the idea of Kevin Kelly's 1000 True Fans concept, but also seems quite similar to the business model we suggested for musicians back in 2003. I have no clue if this sort of thing will work -- especially as I'm unfamiliar with Ctein's work as a photographer or the photography market. However, it's great to see others experimenting with similar models in other areas. I look forward to seeing how well it goes.

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While we often talk about music and movies as creative endeavors that require new business models, it's true that we don't pay as much attention to photographers -- though, I should say that when photographers do show up in the comments, they're often the most vociferous defenders of traditional copyright (much more than even recording industry guys). That's why it's interesting to see some are testing out new business models as well. John alerts us to the news that a photographer who goes by the name Ctein is running an experiment where he's asking "true fans" to subscribe to his work -- paying $9.50/month for a year. At the end of the year, he'll send them a couple of prints (chosen from a selection offered). It's based on the idea of Kevin Kelly's 1000 True Fans concept, but also seems quite similar to the business model we suggested for musicians back in 2003. I have no clue if this sort of thing will work -- especially as I'm unfamiliar with Ctein's work as a photographer or the photography market. However, it's great to see others experimenting with similar models in other areas. I look forward to seeing how well it goes.

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On this week's Make: Talk, we'll be talking to Tom Igoe, one of the developers of Arduino (the extremely popular open source microcontroller), and the Area head of physical computing at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), New York University. Tom is also the author of the amazing Making Things Talk (Make: Books). Mark is still on the road, so Dale and I will be joined "in the studio" by Goli Mohammadhi, Assoc Managing Editor of MAKE and CRAFT. In addition to talking to Tom, we'll present some news from the world of making, as well as some of our favorite tricks, tips, and tools of the week. Be sure to call in for prizes that we'll award during the program!

More:
Make: Talk episode #003 show notes and next episode
Make: Talk episode 2 show notes and next episode
Make: Talk episode 1 show notes and next episode

In the Maker Shed:

Making Things Talk
Our Price: $29.99

Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices. Read reviews here and here.

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Lucas has licensed a killer line of inflatable Star Wars beach toys for the summer, including the long-awaited Death Star beachball, giant Millennium Falcon and Starfighter toys, and so on. There's also a trio of gigantic Star Wars kites -- TIE fighters, X-Wings, and the Falcon, natch.

Blow Up the Death Star! (via OhGizmo)

Tony sez,

StarShipSofa has, in one day, done what no other SF podcast has done before. In another unprecedented move, StarShipSofa has put out all seven Nebula Short Story 2008 nominees, all available as free audio podcasts for your listening pleasure.

The Nebulas are a very special event in the SF world and I wanted the StarShipSofa to mark this occasion by doing something unique for this year's awards.

I wanted to put out all the stories nominated in one day so people can, straight away, have them downloaded back to back... sitting on their iPod and, for the next few hours, submerge themselves in SF stories of the very best calibre. All for free.

Things are changing rapidly in this medium and this is just one example of StarShipSofa pushing the boundaries of normal podcasting in both terms of quality and accessibility.

It's what the StarShipSofa was built for.

StarShipSofa podcasts all Nebula Short Story nominees for 2008 (Thanks, Tony!)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Pieter Michels' Flash bridge for Facebook Connect that allows you to access Facebook Connect services from within a Flash application. This week, Adobe and Facebook decided to release an official version of an AS3 Facebook API, so now there's an officially supported, feature complete way to access Facebook from a Flash-based Connect web site, a Facebook platform application, or a standalone AIR application.

There's decent library documentation provided by Adobe, but I recommend just digging in and examining the sample code that's been provided. It'll give you a better overview of the primary classes you'll be using and the initial steps you need to go through to authenticate and pass user data to and from Facebook.

Actionscript 3.0 Client for the Facebook Platform API
Flash for Facebook Overview and Code Samples
Facebook ActionScript API Documentation

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To be honest, we're still quite confused as to why Hulu's content partners think it makes sense to stop Boxee from showing Hulu videos. If you don't know, Boxee is basically a web browser for your television. If you have a computer hooked up to your TV, you can watch Hulu (and other) videos. You could do it via any browser you want -- including Firefox or IE -- but Boxee is designed to function better for TVs. Yet, for some reason, even though it's just a browser, Hulu's content partners freaked out and demanded Boxee stop. Since then, there's been a bit of a technology back and forth, with Boxee offering workarounds, and Hulu trying to block Boxee's workaround (which Boxee got around quickly again). The latest, as pointed out by a few readers, is that Hulu is now trying to encrypt its content to keep it from working in non-browser apps. Of course, Boxee on the Mac is just like a browser, so the encryption doesn't even do anything -- and Boxee is planning to upgrade its software on other platforms to do the same thing. Honestly, though, the whole thing seems like a waste. Hulu is dedicating technical resources towards making its content less useful, and trying to stop people from using the content in perfectly reasonable ways. That's a recipe for failure. Even if the company is only doing this to appease angry content partners, you have to wonder how Hulu can possibly survive while sitting between content providers who want to lock everything down, and users who want to do the opposite.

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For years, we've talked about how the significantly lower barrier to showing libel in the UK (and the higher damages) have resulted in people suing for libel in the UK for online content, even if there's no connection (at all) to the UK. Yes, there have been cases where people outside the UK have sued in the UK over content that was written, published and hosted outside of the UK (and targeted at a non-UK audience) just because of the nature of UK libel laws. Slashdot points out that this is raising concerns of an increasing number of "defamation tourism" cases in the UK, noting that such lawsuits have become "one of the UK's growing export industries." This shouldn't be seen as a good thing.

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gballard writes "After the constant furore raised by rights groups, ISPs and concerned citizens over the Australian Government's planned 'internet filter', it seems that Australia Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is finally backing down. In a recent interview, the Minister conceded that many of the sites blocked by the filter were legitimate businesses (including, in one case, a Queensland dentist's homepage) and changed his story on whether the planned filter would restrict 'Refused Classification' websites or use the broader (and more vague) criterion of 'prohibited'. It's a positive step, but as the article above suggests, at the moment it's only one crack in the defenses of a censorship plan with broad ramifications for Australian internet users."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger. Watching the news with the G20 protesters in London carrying banners reading "Capitalism Failed Us" and "Marx was Right!" I felt quite good about the day's events. In 1983 and 1984, I was living in London and going to protests like this myself and it brought back long-forgotten memories. When I was younger, I considered myself a staunch socialist, but as I got older that way of identifying myself fell away. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Soviet Union, it seemed like Marxism was something that the world had moved on from and so did I. During the dotcom era, I was as greedy a capitalist as the next guy. Five years ago, slimming my library down for a cross country move, I unemotionally tossed all of my "Karl Marx and related" books. Boy do I regret doing this now! One recent evening, I was writing something and I thought I'd coined a nifty new phrase to describe a major factor in the economic meltdown: "fictitious capital." I decided to Google the term and it's a good thing that I didn't pat myself on the back too hard because it's something that Karl Marx came up with about 150 years before me. That Google search led me down a Karl Marx rabbit hole that lasted for weeks (My wife, Tara, called it "worse than your reggae phase!"). I bought a new copy of "Capital" and read deep into the night. I emerged a few days later, bleary-eyed, unshaven and proudly declaring myself a socialist again. The work of Karl Marx is ultra relevant to understanding the world's current financial mess, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Marx has become intellectually indispensable to me again, as if there ever should have been any doubt. It's fascinating to consider that during the time period when Marx was writing "Capital," there were few factories in England --it was largely an agrarian society still-- yet somehow Marx was able to see clearly the mess that we would be in today. He's the most accurate prophet in all of history, there should be no doubt about this. Marx viewed history with a very, very long telescope. How he was able to see so far into the future is a mystery of his particular genius, but Marx accurately extrapolated how capitalism's endgame would play itself out at the very birth of the system. Marx saw how utterly destructive this system would ultimately become. Look around you: Marx was right. If you disagree, well, I have a challenge for you: Start reading Marx's "Capital" and see what you think afterward. Keep an open mind and try to get past the drier chapters up front. It's a richly rewarding intellectual journey to take. There is an online course taught by Professor David Harvey that I found quite helpful, you might want to take in some (or all) of his lectures for chapters that are more difficult to understand. Maybe some of you might want to form an online reading group on Facebook. The important point is to READ Marx again and to rediscover how prescient his ideas really were and how well they explain what's going on today. The Revenge of Karl Marx by Christopher Hitchens Marxism (Wikipedia) An excellent overview Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey (13 part video lecture series)

A new antipiracy law went into effect in Sweden on Wednesday, allowing copyright holders to demand the IP addresses from ISPs if a court finds that there's evidence of illegal activity -- and, as News.com notes, internet traffic took a major dip in Sweden, though it's not entirely clear if the two things are connected (though, it notes a similar dip occurred, back when The Pirate Bay was taken offline a few years ago). Not surprisingly, some audio book publishers wasted no time in trying to use the law, filing lawsuits to get information on certain file sharers. Sweden, as many of you know, has had very consumer-friendly copyright laws for quite some time. The departure from this (and the introduction of other new laws that are being pushed) has come from massive international pressure, usually starting with the American entertainment industry. It will be worth watching how the country reacts to increased and more draconian copyright rules.

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Over at Offworld, Brandon has the lowdown on loudxmouse's thriftstore paintings embellished with Katamari Damacy.

If you're coming to our website after seeing the ABC News Nightline episode, welcome! We know Nightline viewers are a smart and curious bunch, so we thought we'd use this opportunity to introduce you (and others who might be new to MAKE) to what we do and why. We've got a lot of different things going on and are tremendously excited about the work we do and the global community of do-it-yourself (DIY) enthusiasts we collaborate with on our many projects.

Maker Media is the name of our company, we're a division of O'Reilly Media, the highly-regarded technology publishing company. Under the Maker Media umbrella, we produce the quarterly MAKE magazine, run two busy websites, Make: Online and CRAFT, produce annual DIY festivals, called Maker Faires, run a store, called Maker Shed, and we work with Twin Cities Public Television who produce the popular Make: television program on PBS.

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MAKE magazine is how we got started in all of this. It's a quarterly technology projects magazine and a sort of house organ for the maker/DIY movement. Projects in the magazine range from old-school balsa wood and tissue-paper airplanes to what to do with old high-tech gadgets to building autonomous robots from techno-junk. Our current issue, Volume 17, is on "Lost Knowledge," and looks at the technology of the past and features projects that celebrate its marvels. The upcoming issue, ReMake: America, will explore sustainability and prospering through challenging times using DIY technology and good ol' human ingenuity. We produce both a print and a digital edition of our magazine. You can subscribe here and find back issues here.

Make: Online is our award-winning website that you're reading right now. It is one of the most popular watering holes in cyberspace where makers, crafters, inventors, tinkers, and amateur technologists and scientists of all stripes come for breaking DIY stories, for original content on building, repairing, and making things, and for how-to project articles. We also have several popular video series that run every week, Weekend Projects, MAKE Presents, and How-To Tuesday, that present cool projects, kit builds, and explain (in plain English) how various technologies work. Here's a recent Weekend Project:

 

CRAFT is Make: Online's sister site, covering the new crafting revolution. This is NOT your mother's home economics, this is baking, weaving, sewing, knitting, refinishing, and decorating for a tech-savvy 21st century.

 

Maker Faire is our annual DIY festival, makers meet-up, show and tell, and celebration of creativity, invention, self-directed learning, and the joys of making. We've held Faires in the SF/Bay Area for the last four years and in Austin, TX for the last two. A Maker Faire UK also took place in Newcastle, UK last month, the first one over seas. Last year's Bay Area Faire attracted some 65,000 people. Apparently, there are more people interested in art cars, a life-size mousetrap game, human-powered carnival rides, rocketry and robots, Tesla coils and swap-o-ramas than you might think. This year's Bay Area Faire, May 30 & 31, is inspired by President Obama's shout-out to "the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things" in his Inaugural address, and his call to begin the "remaking of America."

 

The Maker Shed is easy to describe. Think of the coolest technology bookstore, museum gift shop, craft and electronics stores you can dream up -- and now roll them all into one. That's the idea behind the Maker Shed. It's a year-round online store and we also set up full-size retail operations at each of the Maker Faires. It's an irresistible collection of books, kits, robots, microcontrollers, science sets, electronics, craft tools and supplies, all curated by us, the people behind MAKE. It's all of the wondrous stuff we'd want to find in such a store.

To introduce you to MAKE and to the Maker Shed, we've put together a special "Welcome to MAKE" bundle. It includes a one-year subscription to MAKE (four issues), a copy of The Best of MAKE, a 380-page collection of our favorite projects from the first ten issues, and a copy of The Maker's Notebook, a unique project notebook, with plenty of high-quality graph paper for recording your projects and a reference section with weights, measures, facts, figures, and other indispensable info geared towards makers. The bundle saves you $41 off buying the items individually.

 

Make: television is the DIY series for a new generation! It celebrates all manner of "maker" - the inventors, artists, geeks, basement scientists and just plain folks who mix new and old technology to create newfangled marvels. The series encourages everyone to invent, re-invent, recycle, upcycle, and act up. Each half-hour episode inspires millions to think, create, and make cool, unusual, and useful objects in their lives. Some of the projects on the show have included a burrito blaster(!), a VCR-driven cat feeder, a cigar box guitar, a simple digital TV Antenna, a wind turbine, and how to on building solar-powered robots from junk and basic electronics. Make: television began showing nationwide on Public Television stations and online at makezine.tv in January 2009. All of the episodes are now available online. Here's a sample from the Maker Workshop, episode 108, on building miniature robots from very basic parts:

Maker Workshop - Miniature Robots on Make: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

 

We hope you enjoy our offerings and will join us in our quest to put the joy of making back into our hectic modern lives. The full title of our magazine is "Make: technology on your time." We're all about taking control of our technology rather than having it overwhelm us. We do everything we can to learn about the technology in our lives, to improve upon it, make it our own, and to share what we've learned with the growing community of fellow makers. We hope you'll join us on this journey. And if you want to get a truly thrilling and eye-opening experience of the length and breadth of the maker community, come to next month's Maker Faire. We can assure you it's like nothing you've ever experienced and that you will come away truly inspired.

If you have questions about Maker Media or any of our projects, please feel free to ask in the comments feature below.

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Hugh Pickens writes "Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia J. Snowe are pushing to dramatically escalate US defenses against cyberattacks, crafting proposals, in Senate legislation that could be introduced as early as today, that would empower the government to set and enforce security standards for private industry for the first time. The legislation would broaden the focus of the government's cybersecurity efforts to include not only military networks but also private systems that control essentials such as electricity and water distribution. "People say this is a military or intelligence concern, but it's a lot more than that," says Rockefeller, a former intelligence committee chairman. "It suddenly gets into the realm of traffic lights and rail networks and water and electricity." The bill, containing many of the recommendations of the landmark study "Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency" (pdf) by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, would create the Office of the National Cybersecurity Adviser, whose leader would report directly to the president and would coordinate defense efforts across government agencies. The legislation calls for the appointment of a White House cybersecurity "czar" with unprecedented authority to shut down computer networks, including private ones, if a cyberattack is underway. It would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish "measurable and auditable cybersecurity standards" that would apply to private companies as well as the government. The legislation also would require licensing and certification of cybersecurity professionals."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Big tech companies never completely fade away. At some point, they get acquired for pennies. But, even so, SGI is one of the "big names" that really came about as close to simply fading away as any I can remember. Just this past weekend, I got into a discussion with someone who asked if SGI was even around any more... and just like that, comes the news that SGI filed for bankruptcy protection (yet again) just as it announced that it's being acquired by Rackable for just $25 million. For a company that was once considered a massive darling of Silicon Valley, it's quite a quiet ending. At least the company didn't go into full-on patent litigation as it had threatened to do a couple years ago...

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It really is amusing to see the ongoing tug-o-war among politicians who seem to be pushing for both more access to your private information while at the same time threatening internet companies for not keeping your private info private. For example, we just wrote about the UK government wanting more info on who your friends are on social networks... but at the same time, the EU is complaining that social networking sites don't do a good job keeping info private. Perhaps if governments stopped demanding so much access to the info it would be easier to keep it private.

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narramissic writes "Maybe Android and the Android Market aren't so open after all. A developer who contributed to the WiFi Tether for Root Users app reports that Google has banned the application from the Android Market. The developer writes in his blog that Google cited a section of the developer agreement that says that Google may remove applications if they violate the device maker's or the operator's terms of service. T-Mobile, the only operator to offer an Android phone, expressly forbids tethering phones to a computer. This incident raises some interesting questions, the developer notes in his blog. 'Does this mean that apps in the Market have to adhere to the ToS for only T-Mobile, even when other carriers sign on? Will all apps have to adhere to the ToS for every carrier that supports Android phones?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I stopped by Eyebeam in NYC on Tuesday to chat with Tom Igoe about the new Arduino MEGA and few other projects that he is working on. I took a quick video and some pictures of the new board to share with our readers.

If you don't already know, Tom is the Area head for physical computing classes at ITP. He also wrote two of my favorite books, Making Things Talk and Physical Computing (with Dan O'Sullivan). Did I mention he is also part of the Arduino team? Now that's cool.

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Eyebeam is a really cool space. I haven't been there before, but I have heard a lot about it. Hopefully I can check it out more in the future. It looks like a great place to be creative.

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With spring in full swing and the sun shining longer every day, we've got solar on the mind. A great summertime project is a flashback from MAKE Volume 12: the Solar Xylophone! How does it work? A regular xylophone fits inside a solar-powered player box that holds a mallet over each of its 8 chime tubes. Each mallet is powered by a system that includes a solar cell, a simple Solarengine circuit, and a small motor. The systems work in parallel: the brighter the sunshine on each panel, the more frequently its corresponding tube will be struck.

Now you can listen to sol music by day and be lulled to sleep by the gentle sound of your hard drive wind chime (also in Volume 12) at night:

Here's the Solar Xylophone in our Digital Edition for you to scope and build. And for plenty more where that came from, pick up a hard copy of Volume 12 in the Maker Shed.

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A former Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter, now writing for Paid Content, seems to take some glee in reporting that traffic to the Seattle P-I's website is off 20% since the decision to lay off most of the staff and go web only. But, actually, it seems like a pretty good result. Editorial staff was cut by 80% down to just 20 people. Support staff is basically gone entirely. And then all the printing and delivery expenses are gone as well. To basically cut all that expense and still retain 80% of the traffic? That seems phenomenal. If anything, it validates the decision.

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Aliens will land on our planet one day...

You've heard of balloon animals. How about trashbag whales? Spotted on our MAKE Flickr pool.

Bertrand, air whale.

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snydeq writes "Microsoft requested on Tuesday some $20 billion in bailout funds from the federal government, claiming that as the company controls an overwhelming share of the OS market, it is too big to fail. Low adoption rates for Vista, the ensuing ad campaign trying to convince people that they really do like Vista, and the increased need for development resources to rush Windows 7 to market to make people forget about Vista have necessitated the bailout, the company said. "We want to make it absolutely clear that this is not a crisis of mismanagement," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a prepared statement. "This is simply a crisis of dollars — a crisis of not having enough dollars coming our way.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just in time for every prankster's favorite holiday, check out these chained up gems attached to this payphone, much like a giant Asian schoolgirl's cell phone charm:

I designed the faceted gems in Solidworks, printed out templates for each face using images I made in MATLAB, cut out each face from 18g. mild steel sheet on a hydraulic shear, brazed all the pieces together with brass brazing rod and an oxyacetylene torch, cleaned up the edges with a 4" grinder, and then brazed them together with chain. I could only find zinc-plated chain so I burned off all the plating with the torch, which is probably not too advisable considering zinc fumes are bad and can give one something called "zinc flu". Finally I rusted the whole getup with a ferric nitrate solution I prepared by dissolving steel wool in nitric acid. I secured the charm to the pay phone with a padlock for safekeeping.

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Talk about your village ingenuity. (And yes, clearly, it's only for indoor lighting during the day).

Use a 2-Liter Bottle as a 50 Watt Light Bulb lightbulb hack

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