1sockchuck writes "FBI agents have raided a Dallas data center, seizing servers at a company called Core IP Networks. The company's CEO has posted a message saying the FBI confiscated all its customer servers, including gear belonging to companies that are almost certainly not under suspicion. The FBI isn't saying what it's after, but there are reports that it's related to video piracy, sparking unconfirmed speculation that the probe is tied to the leaking of Wolverine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We were surprised and disappointed when Amazon gave in to the Authors Guild's baseless claim that the TTS somehow violated its copyrights. It looks like a lot of others are disappointed as well. A group is now organizing a protest against the Authors Guild for trying to determine whether or not Amazon was allowed to innovate. As the EFF notes, "The publishing industry shouldn't have veto power over new technology." If you're in New York City, you should look into the details of the protest on Tuesday.

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thefickler writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are now using viruses to build cathodes for Lithium Ion batteries. Three years ago these same researchers found they could build an anode using viruses. Creating both the anode and cathode using viruses will make batteries easy to build. This nanoscale battery technology will allow batteries to be lightweight and to 'take the shape of their container' rather than creating containers for the batteries, which could open up new possibilities for car and electronics manufacturers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the comments:

Our friend Rachel just took these pictures last week near Oaxaca (Mexico), and she shared them with us while staying at the Eco Village on her way to Portland. this "bici-maquina" (bike-machine), as they are called in Mexico, is used to power a water pump. i love the technological contrast, claypunkish.

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Dose Nation spotted this gripping National Geographic Adventure article about a writer's trip to Peru to take Ayahuasca. And it was a trip. From National Geographic Adventure:

All at once, I willed myself to rise. I sailed up through the tunnel of fire, higher and higher until I broke through to a white light. All darkness immediately vanished. My body felt light, at peace. I floated among a beautiful spread of colors and patterns. Slowly my ayahuasca vision faded. I returned to my body, to where I lay in the hut, insects calling from the jungle.

"Welcome back," the shaman said.

The next morning, I discovered the impossible: The severe depression that had ruled my life since childhood had miraculously vanished.

Giant blue butterflies flutter clumsily past our canoe. Parrots flee higher into treetops. The deeper we go into the Amazon jungle, the more I realize I can't turn back. It has been a year since my last visit, and I'm here again in Peru traveling down the Río Aucayacu for more shamanistic healing. The truth is, I'm petrified to do it a second time around. But with shamanism—and with the drinking of ayahuasca in particular—I've learned that, for me, the worse the experience, the better the payoff.

Peru: Hell and Back

Right now, these days, URL shorteners are a necessary evil. It's part of the price we're all paying for Twitter's building on SMS, I guess. I hardly use SMS, so this is a price I'm not happy about paying.

Joshua Schachter writes today about their dangers.

We need to prepare for the day when N of the URL shorteners go out of business. When that happens a large part of the web will die. It will not be a good day.

Plan on it, like we should have planned on housing prices turning down, and the economy falling into depression as a result. Plan on it like we should plan on the polar ice caps melting and the oceans rising 100 feet. Let's get used to planning for the obvious failures in our future. We're going to get good at it, or suffer.

One easy way to lower the cost of URL-shortening is to use our own domain names in place of tinyurl.xom, bit.ly, tr.im, et al. Any one of those services could take the lead here by allowing for that. Let me map my own domain onto theirs, easily back up all my data, and give me the ability to switch services when I want, or when I need to.

We here at Techdirt certainly take something of an extreme position when it comes to reusing our words: we won't even stop you if you don't give us credit. But, mostly, that's because we recognize that taking credit for someone else's work is likely to backfire on you, damaging your reputation, and we believe that in the end, you'll regret it. Still, that doesn't make it enjoyable when we see someone trying to pass off our work as their own, so I can certainly understand the reaction of people who get quite upset when it happens. Still, even if you get upset, that doesn't mean you should immediately fly off the handle and threaten legal action. There are much more measured ways to approach it.

For example, Brian points us to a blog post by the folks at Common Craft, who have noticed that many mainstream media sources are using their video about how Twitter works without any credit whatsoever. The content itself is under a Creative Commons non-commercial, no-derivatives license, which it seems clear most of the media properties in question are breaking. Only one (ABC/Disney) actually seems to have followed through on the licensing terms. But still, what's impressive is that Common Craft still takes a very low key approach to it, first noting that perhaps the media's use is "fair use," and then saying:

I'm not writing to make a big hairy deal about the use of the video. The truth is, we're not sure what's appropriate or what to expect

And then asks the community what they think and how they should respond... while also naming the offending parties (NPR, CNN, CBS and KOMO News in Seattle). No matter what you think of the situation, or what Common Craft should do, I think it's fantastic to see yet another case of someone taking a much more measured and reasonable approach to such things, rather than immediately going into "threat" or "cease-and-desist" mode. Personally, I think that the approach they've taken makes the most sense: simply make your community and your fans aware of the situation, and then watch as they help police it for you -- alerting news organizations (most of whom probably didn't even realize they should have credited the video) of their mistake.

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Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger Clio-award winning Luden's cough drops commercial from 1967 with a Frank Zappa soundtrack.

Macworld is reporting that an internet advocacy group has asked the FCC to investigate whether the WiFi-only restriction on the Skype for iPhone app is in violation of federal law. "Since its release on Tuesday, Skype for iPhone has been downloaded more than a million times — that's a rate of six downloads a second, according to the company. All this despite the fact the software only works via the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection, and not AT&T's 3G network. [...] The letter cites the FCC's Internet Policy Statement (PDF link) which states that 'consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice' in order to 'preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We recently wrote about how bands are (successfully) experimenting with different models to sell more merchandise at shows, and Ian Rogers of Topspin (who I also -- finally -- got to meet at the Leadership Music Digital Summit) writes about two bands he recently saw who clearly understand the value of selling (and, as he notes, neither band is using Topspin, so he's not promoting his own partners here) by actually realizing that selling merchandise is part of their job. He describes how one band, Halestorm, was opening for another band, but rather than being just a typical opening band that fades into the background, they made sure that people knew about them, first by putting on a great show and then by making it clear that (a) they have affordable merchandise for sale and (b) the band itself will be hanging out with the crowd and wants to meet everyone. From Ian's post:

• Lzzy starts solo with a guitar around her neck and a mic, just singing acapella. Long notes, killer voice. She has people cheering for her before the rest of the band even walks out on stage. Before her voice gets hidden behind the rock, she lets 'em know she can sing and you can see people are impressed straight away.
• The rest of the band appears and they tear through a few songs. It's straight-ahead rock, on the heavy side but ready for pop radio. Everyone in the band is high-energy and engaging, even Lzzy's brother Arejay on drums is standing up for parts of the songs and just generally being a showman.
• Mid-way through the set Lzzy announces they have a new record coming out in a few weeks but you can buy a pre-release of it now for $5 at the merch stand.
• There's a drum solo-y part that doesn't go on long and ends with the entire band at the front of the stage playing drums and the crowd cheering as they go crazy with it.
• During the last song Lzzy reminds them that they have their own merch stand upstairs and CDs for only $5. She also says the whole band is going to be up there after their set and that she wants to meet everyone.
• I head over to the merch stand after the show and watch their tour manager relieve the woman who runs the merch table so she can disappear into the crowd below with a box of CDs with "Halestorm CDs $5" written on it.
• The merch stand is mobbed. It's surrounded by people and they are selling merch literally as fast as their tour manager can manage.
• The band appears (after breaking down their own stage setup) and meets and talks to as many people as possible, while helping to sell their merch.
• Free stickers list their MySpace page, etc.

As Ian notes: "I'm not worried about these guys at all. Even if the record doesn't work at radio (it may) they're going to do just fine building their audience one show at a time." The band is doing everything right. They're using every opportunity to connect with fans, while also giving them a real reason to buy. They're not waiting for their record label to get them on the radio or MTV. They're doing everything they can to actually build up a rabid supporting fanbase from the bottom up.

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Hugh Pickens writes "A Pew study last year found that only 38 percent of rural American homes have access to broadband Internet, compared to 57 percent in cities and 60 percent in the suburbs. All that could be about to change with the announcement that Verizon plans to start introducing a new wireless network in the 700 MHz spectrum in 2010. 'The licenses we bought in the 700MHz auction cover the whole US,' says Tony Melone, a Verizon Wireless VP. 'And we plan to roll out LTE [high-speed mobile service] throughout the entire country, including places where we don't offer our [current] cell phone service today.' Because the [700 MHz] spectrum is in a lower frequency, it can transmit signals over longer distances and penetrate through obstacles, and because the signals travel longer distances, Verizon can deploy fewer cell towers than if it used spectrum from a higher frequency band, which means it can provide coverage at a lower cost. President Obama's administration is well aware of the high-speed Internet divide that exists today, and as part of the overall economic stimulus package passed by Congress, the government is allocating $7.2 billion for projects that bring broadband Internet access to rural towns and communities."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well, today's Make: Talk was fun... while it lasted. I forgot to set the time interval for the show and it's defaulted to cut the stream at 15 minutes. Turns out, it continues to record, so we could have gone the full 45 for the archived version, but being new to this software/service, we didn't know that. The first 15 are worth listening to, though. We talk about happenings at MAKE, Make: Online, MakerFaire, and making in general. And you get to hear the beginnings of our Tom Igoe interview.

So sorry for the inconvenience. We're getting better as we go along and will work the bugs out. We'll have Tom on again next Friday, same time (12 noon PDT, 3pm EDT), so DO come back,

Funny enough, one of the main topics Dale, Goli, and I were discussing was failure, learning from failure, trying not to be embarrassed by your mistakes -- falling forward. So, I'll try and meditate on that for the rest of the day rather than feel like a complete bonehead.

Here are the Show Notes for what we discussed:

MAKE Classifieds (Closing today! Register for the Shed Gift Certificate drawing)
Fix the World! (The repair area for Maker Faire 2009 -- they need volunteers)
Maker Faire, May 30-31 (Plan to come. Bring the whole family and be prepared to be inspired)
Ask MAKE (New column from Becky Stern. Send Becky your questions.)
Show us your shop (We want to see your workspace photos!)

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

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The evidence that violent video games cause violent behavior remains lacking, but that doesn't stop the games from being blamed for all sorts of violent acts. Usually, this blame is suspect, but perhaps in some cases, you can make a link between video games and violent behavior. Like in England, where a man has just been convicted of killing his partner, apparently because she stayed up late playing Grand Theft Auto on a TV in their bedroom. Of course, one would be hard pressed to argue that the game really made him do it; the fact that he attacked the woman with two knives and stabbed her in the chest 20 times would indicate the guy had some other issues. But we've seen plenty of cases where video games get blamed for abhorrent behavior, while other causes get ignored, so why not here, too?

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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Al writes "A miniature telescope that fits inside the eye of someone with macular degeneration and helps them regain normal vision has been developed by a start-up company called VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies. Macular degeneration affects the center of the retina, making it difficult to read, watch television and recognize faces. The new device, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, works like a fixed telephoto lens within the eye, projecting a magnified image of whatever the wearer is looking at onto a large part of the peripheral retina. Magnifying the image on the eye allows the retinal cells outside the macula to participate, and enables a patient to recognize details using their peripheral vision. Clinical trials suggest that the device could improve vision by about three and a half lines on an eye chart. Last week, an advisory panel for the Food and Drug Administration unanimously recommended that the agency approve the implant."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The house Robert A Heinlein had built for himself and his wife in Colorado Springs is up for sale for a mere $650,000. Features "private wooded lot w/three cascading ponds."

1776 Mesa AV (via Scalzi)

Ars Technica has a first look at the latest beta release from the Fedora universe and it has several new shiny-bits including kernel modesetting, ext4, and faster boot times. "Fedora 11, which is codenamed Leonidas, is scheduled for final release at the end of May. It will include several new features and noteworthy improvements, such as RPM 4.7, which will reduce the memory consumption of complex package activity, tighter integration of PackageKit, faster boot time with a target goal of 20 seconds, and reduced power consumption thanks to a major tuning effort. This version of Fedora will ship with the latest version of many popular open source software programs, including GNOME 2.26, KDE 4.2, and Xfce 4.6. This will also be the first Fedora release--and possibly the first mainstream distro release--to use the new Ext4 filesystem by default.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ars Technica has a first look at the latest beta release from the Fedora universe and it has several new shiny-bits including kernel modesetting, ext4, and faster boot times. "Fedora 11, which is codenamed Leonidas, is scheduled for final release at the end of May. It will include several new features and noteworthy improvements, such as RPM 4.7, which will reduce the memory consumption of complex package activity, tighter integration of PackageKit, faster boot time with a target goal of 20 seconds, and reduced power consumption thanks to a major tuning effort. This version of Fedora will ship with the latest version of many popular open source software programs, including GNOME 2.26, KDE 4.2, and Xfce 4.6. This will also be the first Fedora release--and possibly the first mainstream distro release--to use the new Ext4 filesystem by default.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bluerain is a zillion blue LED installation based on a desktop computer running a QT app, a Make Controller (of course) and 98 x 16 LED cluster water-proof wall units running awesome TI LED PWM chips (TLC5941). Total number of LED: 23520. Total power: 50W. Levels of brightness: 4096. LED Colors: 1. BLUE.

In its current incarnation, little snippets of text from a variety of sources, including a library's check in, check out and catalog search system, flow down from the top of the 56' display toward the ground. Its final resting place is an outside wall of the London School of Economics library, from which the feeds originate.

It's up now in the carpark of the Mission Bank, 16th St between Mission and Valencia St's and will remain there for the next little while.

At the next Dorkbot SF (8 April 2009), MakingThings (the designers of the Make: Controller) will present some of the design details, show some of the electronics and share some of fun they had making it.

Above: a collage by Angela Kilduff, done for her North Gate Radio report and interview with the artist, Michael Brown.

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The folks over at GamePolitics are highlighting the most ridiculous part of a VentureBeat interview of Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America:

VB: Used games are coming up as a big issue again. Why?

RFA: More and more retailers are experimenting with the used game model. We don't believe used games are in the best interest of the consumer. We have products that consumers want to hold onto. They want to play all of the levels of a Zelda game and unlock all of the levels. A game like Personal Trainer Cooking has a long life. We believe used games aren't in the consumer's best interest.

VB: Because?

RFA: Describe another form of entertainment that has a vibrant used goods market. Used books have never taken off. You don't see businesses selling used music CDs or used DVDs. Why? The consumer likes having a brand-new experience and reliving it over and over again. If you create the right type of experience, that also happens in video games.

First off, it's rather stunning to claim that a vibrant used market isn't in the best interest of consumers. As studies have shown repeatedly, healthy second-hand markets actually help both consumers and original producers because it adds more value to the product. That's rather obvious once you think about it. If someone knows they can resell the product at a decent price later, then it both lowers the risk and increases the value of the original product. On top of that, the used market also helps better differentiate on pricing, again benefiting both customers and producers.

Second, it's quite odd to claim that there's no used book, used CD or used DVD market. A few years back we noted that the used book market had become a multibillion dollar industry, and you just need to look on, say, Amazon or eBay to see thriving sales of used books, CDs and DVDs. To claim that there's no such market either shows ignorance of the market or is an outright lie -- neither of which is a good thing.

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Above, Perry "Peretz" Farrell on the Chabad Telethon, singing the classic "Oseh Shalom," via Beware of the Blog.

bird song
vintage song
smutty song
ice cream truck song
song origins
song mistakes
songs you used to love

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

First a story.. I went to grad school in Madison, which is a great place except in the winter, when it's realllly cold. But it's still great then, if you know what to eat.

You want to fill your stomach with something dense and warm. There was this place down the street from where I lived that served something called a Myles Teddy Wedger. I have no idea how it got its name, but it's a pastry, filled with meat, potatoes and onions, served really hot. You could buy one of these and carry it to class with you, walking even a mile, and when you got there it would still be hot! That's how dense it was.

So as you're walking you can think of the MTW in your knapsack and psychically the thought would keep you warm.

Okay that had nothing to do with why people want to know how Twitter is going to make money.

Another good cold weather food is pizza. But Madison is in the midwest where they don't know how to make pizza. The best pizza you can get comes from a chain, Domino's, and it's actually not that bad. I got in the habit, until someone told me that they used the profits to fight Planned Parenthood, which if you're a heterosexual male grad student, is a really bad thing, not just because you support a woman's right to choose (I did then and still do) but well, you don't want your girlfriend to find a Domino's box in your kitchen, if you understand what I mean.

See, their business model conflicted with our values.

So it's possible for a business to use its profits for evil. And we couldn't buy Domino's pizza and keep a clear conscience. And it could turn out, when Twitter reveals its business model, that it's something we don't like. We won't know where we, the users, fit in -- until they tell us how they're going to make money. And when they tell us, we may not like it.

PS: There's a myth in NY that Ray's makes the best pizza. Which one? Ahh. Practically every pizza place in NY is named Ray's. Then there's Original Ray's. Quite a few of those too.

A reader writes, "TheFourthVine's nine year old nephew, Z, wrote a survey that she encouraged her friends to take. However, when his mother went to the school's open house to take a photo of the end result, she couldn't as out of all the science projects Z hadn't been shown."

Except she couldn't. Because my nephew's project, alone among all of them, was not displayed. After much back and forth with various people, my sister learned that apparently some people were uncomfortable with his conclusions. Specifically the part where he said that what he really learned from this project was that some people don't want to be called boys or girls, and that those people need an "other" option. (And also that they tend to prefer blue to green.)

Follow up on Z's Science Project

SpuriousLogic writes to mention that a new Interior Department report suggests that wind turbines off U.S. coastlines could supply enough electricity to meet, or exceed, the nation's current demand. While a good portion of this is easily accessible through shallow water sites, the majority of strong wind resources appear to be in deep water which represents a significant technological hurdle. "Salazar told attendees at the 25x'25 Summit in Virginia, a gathering of agriculture and energy representatives exploring ways to cut carbon dioxide emissions, that "we are only beginning to tap the potential" of offshore renewable energy. The report is a step in the Obama administration's mission to chart a course for offshore energy development, an issue that gained urgency last year amid high oil prices and chants of "Drill, baby, drill" at the Republican National Convention."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've seen a number of attempts by politicians to use the latest "moral panic" around social networks to pass regulations against them. A popular one at the federal level which still (thankfully) has gone nowhere is DOPA, which would require schools and libraries to block social networks. However, state politicians want to get in on the grandstanding as well. Politicians in New Jersey are pushing a law that would require social networks to include a "report abuse" button on web pages and then would make those social networks responsible to investigate each reported "abuse" or face liability.

The unintended consequences of such a law would be awful. Basically, to protect liability, many "social networks" (and the term may be broadly applied to an awful lot of websites out there today) would most likely just shut down the accounts of those accused of "abuse." From a simple liability standpoint that makes sense. Leaving the account up just opens you up to a lawsuit. Furthermore, the button would likely be abused itself. Don't like someone? Click the "report abuse" button! And, no matter what, it makes no sense to put the burden of investigating things on the sites themselves. Hopefully this law goes nowhere, but don't be surprised to see similar proposals pop up elsewhere as well.

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BakerTweet from BakerTweet on Vimeo.

Via adafruit comes this awesome use of embedded tweeting, a bakery device that can alert hungry stomachs to what (please don't make me say it) tweets are coming out of the oven. Sweet.

The BakerTweet prototype is made up of an Arduino Duemilanove, Arduino Ethernet Shield, Ladyada Proto Shield, a Linksys wifi adapter, and a whole bunch of little parts that make up the rest of what you see. We went through a couple of weeks of prototyping until the we settled on all the final components and wiring.

BakerTweet [via adafruit industries]

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Britain's crazy anti-terror laws lend themselves to being brought into action by any kook, something that's been borne out again recently after a jazz musician in Wales was subject to an armed terror-squad raid after a tipster told them they thought he was a terrorist (he has brown skin, a soundproofed recording studio, and drinks "ethnic" West Indian beverages).

Victor Frederick, 63, was arrested and strip-searched just yards from his home, just moments after his partner Andrea Heath and their daughter had infra-red sights trained at them and were told they would be shot if they moved.

No charges were ever brought against Mr Frederick...

But Mr Frederick, who has lived in Cardiff for 35 years and is originally from St Kitts in the West Indies, told how:

police confiscated apparently suspicious items, which included a video of boxer Muhammad Ali and a ceramic urn containing a traditional West Indian drink;

police interpreted soundproofing equipment and wiring from his musical studio as a potential sign of illicit activity;

he was followed by a police helicopter flying just above him more than two weeks after last month’s raid on his house in Holmesdale Road, Grangetown.

Terrified musician targeted in armed anti-terror raid (Thanks, Carl!)

Just in case you thought working in the games industry was OK now that Electronic Arts has (supposedly) cleaned up its act, Greg Costikyan has a scorching post about top game execs who celebrate "corporate culture" in which people are expected to work 60 hours a week:

Mike Capps, head of Epic, and a former member of the board of directors of the International Game Developers Association, during the IGDA Leadership Forum in late 08, spoke at a panel entitled Studio Heads on the Hot Seat, in which, among other things, he claimed that working 60+ hours was expected at Epic, that they purposefully hired people they anticipated would work those kinds of hours, that this had nothing to do with exploitation of talent by management but was instead a part of "corporate culture," and implied that the idea that people would work a mere 40 hours was kind of absurd.

Now, of course, the idea that a studio head, which Capps is, would have such notions is highly plausible; but he was, at the time, a board member of the IGDA, an organization the ostensible purpose of which is to support game developers. Not, you know, to support management dickheads.

Morever, the IGDA has for some years had a Quality of Life Committee, which strives to demonstrate that long hours are an unproductive use of employees, and that superior alternative to the exploitative conditions at many development studios exist. The simple fact (as demonstrated in its research, available at the link above) is that most game developers burn out within 5 years of entering the industry, because of the absurd hours (for, incidentally, lower pay than programmers, artists, producers, and Q/A people can command in other software and media ventures). (And for the youth reading this post, this is why you are an IDIOT to attend Digipen or Full Sail -- get a generalized CS or art degree, so you can get a job somewhere else when you get burned out on the industry. Do NOT get a degree that ties you to the medium for all time to come.)

Mothers, Don't Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Game Developers (Thanks, Greg!)

Evgeny sez, "I've just put up a post about a new Russian game Stalin vs Martians. Check the trailer with the dancing Stalin screaming "I command you to dance!"

Mars attacks, Stalin reacts! (Thanks, Evgeny!)

An anonymous reader writes "As part of the International Year of Astronomy, the live video webcast Around the World in 80 Telescopes is taking place now, with fascinating live linkups with the world's leading observatories. The schedule for the webcast is available as a PDF and the recorded videos are available via the 100 hours of astronomy page"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Although I mentioned her in a previous post about "Jam," actress/writer Julia Davis deserves her own BB post, as I, in my office as "current Boing Boing guest blogger," do hereby decree... Best known as the creator of "Nighty Night," Julia Davis's sense of humor is bleak, black and thoroughly uncomfortable. Although the New York Times described her series as "an English 'Curb Your Enthusiasm," Davis is willing to take far greater risks than Larry David ever would. David, at the end of the day still wants you to LIKE him, but Julia Davis, in her career-defining role as monstrously selfish beautician Jill Tyrell most definitely doesn't give a shit what you think about her! Inspired by Mike Leigh's classic teleplay "Abigail's Party," the plot of "Nighty Night" involves Jill's husband, Terry, being diagnosed with cancer. Although his prognosis isn't terminal, Jill behaves as if it is, and even tries to hasten his not-so-impending death with laxatives and prune juice, so she can get on with HER new life! With Terry held prisoner in the attic, Jill turns her amorous attentions to Don, a doctor who has just moved next door with his wheelchair-bound wife, Cathy. Here is their first meeting. Jill dances to the song "Lavender" by Marillion(!): Although "Nighty Night" did air on the Oxygen network, few Americans are aware of this groundbreaking, darkly comedic creation. You can get it on Amazon and Netflix has it for rental. Check it out, it's brilliant stuff from a unique comic mind (PS Speaking of unique comic minds, Julia Davis is the new mother of twins and the father is Julian Barrett from The Mighty Boosh!) Nighty Night (BBC site) Will "Nighty Night" change the sitcom forever? Turning Glenn down (YouTube) Julia Davis interview: 'I am drawn to extremes' "Let's talk to the Tarot..." (YouTube) "Injure for Friends" (HD YouTube clip from "Jam") A lonely woman goes to great lengths to make friends. 'Comedy is a safe place to let go' "Human Remains" Wikipedia entry on the six-part BBC mockumentary series on marriage by Julia Davis and Rob Bryden AD/BC: A Rock Opera (YouTube) Julia Davis & Matt Berry sing

They've been talking about it for a while, now they've gone and done it: French legislators have passed a three-strikes file-sharing law. The plan is essentially the same as the one discussed before: a new government agency will be set up to to investigate file-sharing complaints made by copyright holders. If it believes there's been infringement, it will send out a first letter to the ISP account holder, warning them and recommending they make sure their WiFi is secure; a second offense within six months will generate a second letter, and if they're busted within a year of that notice, the agency can cut them off from the internet for anywhere from a month to a year. The agency has a lot of discretion on who to cut off and for how long, as apparently legislators didn't want to see businesses get cut off from the internet because of the actions of a few employees. That level of discretion is raising some eyebrows, while some speculate that cutting people off at all runs counter to the French constitution (just as the EU Parliament has said the laws violate civil and privacy laws).

One interesting aspect of the law, though, is the so-called "Hallyday Clause", named after aging French rocker Johnny Hallyday. Hallyday is a very popular and successful French musician, and he moved to Switzerland in 2006 to escape high French taxes. The part of the three-strikes bill with his name on it says that downloading copyrighted material of people who live in tax havens, or otherwise don't "properly" pay their taxes to the French government, will attract a lesser punishment than downloading the material of artists who pay up. It's a slightly amusing "gotcha" idea, but when the actual monetary losses from illegal downloads are pretty minimal at best, it doesn't seem too likely to lure tax-dodging rock stars out of their havens and back into France.

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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Nicolas Dawson points out coverage in Mother Jones of the early stages of a new cybersecurity bill that conveys sweeping powers on the President. Quoting: "The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to 'declare a cybersecurity emergency' and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any 'critical' information network 'in the interest of national security.' The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president. The bill... also grants the Secretary of Commerce 'access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.' This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This sign for a real estate and insurance company in San Francisco's Chinatown seems to be a fitting description of what real estate and insurance companies are trying to do right now. Truth squad: I'm guessing that "Hang On" is the proprietor's Chinese name. Image link. (photo by Domini Anne)

Engadget is reporting that Envizions, maker of the EVO Linux game console, has finally announced final specs and opened the doors to pre-orders. All bets are off till users actually see the hardware, but it would be nice to see a new player in the market. Of course this assumes they put some time into a little polish that is usually expected from the gaming community (that website, yikes) and some effort into a killer game library. "Envizions say that the console will run a modified, quick-boot distro of Fedora called Mirrors (which can be upgraded to a beefier build named Mirrors Evolution X), and will feature a "cloud" service stacked with Amiga (!) games and an Akimbo-based video service. Beyond that, proper titles will be sold online and on SD cards for around $20." I'm sure they wont forget to send Slashdot a beta review copy with a couple of games.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

These days, it's nearly impossible not to infringe on copyright in one way or another during your regular day -- but it's always amusing when big-time copyright supporters are caught infringing (and it seems to happen quite frequently). The latest is musicFIRST, the lobbying group funded (potentially illegally) by the recording industry, which has been pushing a campaign claiming that radio is piracy and demanding that radio stations pay even more royalties than they already do.

But, of course, when it comes to licensing or paying royalties itself... well, you know... that's a different story.

Billboard has noticed that MusicFIRST appears to have quoted the entire lyrics to the Beatles song "We Can Work It Out" in a mocking press release it put out earlier in the week -- but failed to get the necessary license. Now, of course, many of us believe that quoting lyrics like that is perfectly reasonable fair use. But... the recording industry (you know, the folks behind MusicFIRST) doesn't believe that, which is why they've shut down plenty of people for posting lyrics on the web and even thrown people in jail for posting lyrics on the web.

But, when they do it? It's fine? Funny how that works...

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Martin Lihs converted his Wii Remote into a "spraycan" for virtual graffiti. Brandon has the details and a video over at Boing Boing Offworld. WiiSpray virtual graffitti, stencils in motion

And I thought the nest of wires under my desk was bad. Over at BB Gadgets, Joel points us to "A gallery of 'electrical cabling gone wild.'"

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Guantanamo Bay is one of the world's controversial prisons. This may be its final chapter. With unprecedented access, National Geographic has the story you haven't heard. Both sides, told from the inside, before its doors close forever. Click to learn more and go Inside Guantanamo >> natgeotv.com/guantanamo

Matt Asay points out a recent update to VLC as they narrow in on a 1.0 release. Already a favorite of many, the open source project has made great strides in recent history towards really solidifying the position as best-in-class. This update, 0.9.9, fixes several display bugs and sees some definite performance improvements. "If you've yet to try VLC, do so. Whether you just want to play media files or also want to convert them, VLC can handle just about anything you throw at it. When all other media players fail, whether on Windows, Linux, or the Mac, VLC will almost always deliver. You can download VLC media player 0.9.9 here. It's open source, but that's not why you'll want to keep using it. You'll use it because it's better than its proprietary peers--by a long stretch.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Chicks can add and subtract small numbers shortly after hatching, says Rosa Rugani at the University of Trento. Rugani reared chicks with five plastic containers of the kind found inside Kinder chocolate eggs. This meant the chicks bonded with the capsules, much as they do with their mother, making them want to be near the containers as they grew up. In one test, the researchers moved the containers back and forth behind two screens while the chicks watched. When the chicks were released into the enclosure, they headed for the screen obscuring the most containers, suggesting they had been able to keep track of the number of capsules behind each by adding and subtracting them as they moved. It is already known that many non-human primates and monkeys can count, and even domestic dogs have been found to be capable of simple additions but this is the first time the ability has been seen in such young animals, and with no prior training in problem solving of any kind."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month, Carlo wrote about how a number of doctors were pushing their patients to sign waivers, promising that they wouldn't review the doctors online -- and that one company would go around trying to enforce these waivers and get critical comments pulled down from ratings sites like RateMyMD.com. The whole thing seemed quite odd -- but in another article about the service (found via Michael Scott), the details make it clear that this is even more questionable than we previously thought. That's because the way the "waivers" from the company "Medical Justice" work is by having the patient "assign all intellectual property rights for anything the patient may write (and publish) about the physician to the physician." Then, the physician can claim copyright infringement on any review, and force it offline. So unlike what was implied in the original article, it wouldn't be a specific contractual issue, but a copyright issue.

This is not what copyright law was intended to do.

Of course, it does bring up a few interesting points of discussion. First, is that the main purpose of using copyright here is so that the doctors can make use of the DMCA's notice-and-takedown safe harbor provisions, rather than be stymied by the similar (but not quite the same) CDA section 230 safe harbors for things like defamation. One of the key differences between the two is that Section 230 doesn't have a notice-and-takedown provision (though some have been trying to add one). So, really, all this is designed to do is figure out a way to shift the critical rules in question from the CDA to the DMCA. Sneaky!

Second, is that I wonder if this would be seen as actual copyright infringement anyway, or if reviewers could make a credible fair use defense. In some cases, the review itself might not even be covered by copyright (i.e., if there's no creative expression in it -- such as simple "he's awful!" reviews). In other cases where copyright might exist, the four factor fair use test might allow its use. While it could hurt the doctor's ability to make money as a doctor, it wouldn't be harming the market for the copyrighted content. Also, the use would be for purposes of "criticism." So, it's difficult to see how such content posted on a review site would actually violate anyone's copyright, even if the rights really were signed over.

But... (and this is where that sneaky first part comes into play), this might not matter. Even though you can get in trouble for filing a false DMCA notification (and even for failing to take fair use into account), most online services will quickly pull down content when receiving a DMCA takedown to preserve their safe harbor protections. So in almost all cases, the content will get pulled down, even if the content isn't really infringing. And, then it seems quite unlikely that any reviewer/patient will find it worth the trouble of filing a counternotice.

So, really, this is a fascinating misuse of the DMCA that will live on (unless someone like the EFF decides to make an example of it). What it really highlights is one of the many problems with the DMCA's notice-and-takedown provision, which heavily incentivizes service providers to pull down content as quickly as possible. As a result of that, companies like Medical Justice have tremendous incentives to come up with a plan like this to shift what they do to a copyright issue, solely to make use of the notice-and-takedown provision, even in cases where there's no actual infringement of the copyright.

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Check out this neat tutorial for creating glitchy VGA signals from Arduino, via Adafruit.

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Glyn Moody writes "France's 'Loi Hadopi' — better known as 'three strikes and you're out' — was passed by the National Assembly late last night when only 16 deputies were present (the vote was 12 in favor, 4 against). Most politicians had left because it was expected that the vote would take place next week. In this way, President Sarkozy has sneaked his controversial legislation through the French parliament — and shown his contempt for the democratic process. So now what?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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, a yo-yo demonstration by world champion yo-yoer, game developer, and nerdcore rapper Doctor Popular. This episode is an excerpt from our marathon live streaming coverage of the Game Developer Conference, during which "Doc Pop" graciously hung out with our crew and offered insight. We hope to bring you more of those conversations soon, particularly his thoughts on game development. He also creates comics based on internet memes and social network etiquette dilemmas, my favorite of which involves the social awkwardness of "unfollowing" someone on Twitter. The guy's a genius, and his yo-yo-ing is nothing but hypnotic.

Scott Beale at Laughing Squid has a bunch of posts on the eclectic range of Doc Pop's work.

Previously:
* Hideo Kojima on Metal Gear Solid Touch (games)
* 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

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[ 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. ]

David Byrne, Boing Boing hero, music legend, international art treasure, and patron saint of all that is wonderful in the universe, sends us these snapshots from the road. He says:

I've been enjoying the postings of terrorist alert, security and CCTV posters on Boing Boing. All Eyes On You was a lovely one!

here's one I saw on the road near Newcastle, where I performed the other night. love the "be taken down" in smaller type...I want one of these for my house!

DB
en route to Liverpool

I've uploaded them to flickr: one, two.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

While working out some software kinks for the upcoming Cupcake CNC kit, Zach produced the above 3-dimensional niceties. MakerBot Industries Cupcake CNC is an extrusion-based 3D printer
capable of spawning parts for RepRap builds - fun!

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Smivs notes another technology aiming to become the ubiquitous flat, flexible loudspeaker in public and private spaces. This one comes out of the University of Warwick, in the UK, and may reach the market before year's end. We've discussed other attempts on this problem over the years, including a touch-sensitive display that is also a speaker, and an approach based on nanotubes. "The arrangement also allows for highly directional and accurate sound, say the researchers. The speakers would be ideal in public places such as passenger terminals since the sound quality does not deteriorate as much as conventional speakers... The flat speakers are relatively inexpensive to manufacture, say the researchers, and can be printed with design or concealed inside ceilings."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The British government appears to be on a track to undermine its citizens' privacy by collecting more and more information about their online behavior, but some villagers there recently took a stand against a far more evil menace: Google Street View. As one of the Street View vehicles turned down a street in the village of Broughton, a guy took exception, riled up his neighbors and they mobbed the vehicle (via CNet), forcing it into a hasty retreat. While the government goes on forcing ISPs to retain customer data like email, Street View seems to be attracting much more public ire. The main rabblerouser in this most recent case says he's concerned that Street View is invading his privacy and "facilitating crime" by putting pictures of his and his neighbors' houses online, echoing earlier calls that Google Maps facilitates terrorist attacks. The fact remains that Street View doesn't show a would-be thief anything they couldn't find out by walking or driving down the same road; in fact it seems a little unreasonable to think that any decent criminal would rely solely on reconnaissance from Street View when casing a target. The privacy uproar over Street View in the UK seems a little misplaced when the British government is taking much more invasive, and potentially much more harmful, steps to infringe the privacy of its citizens.

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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We make money not art covers a series of biological art projects from the recent Interactivos? Garage Science workshop at MediaLab Prado.

Andy Gracie's Garage Laboratory uses homebrew magnetic field and radio wave generators and investigates their effects on the behavior of microbes found in urban environments -

The project was using magnetic field data sourced from the Pioneer and Voyager probes to generate corresponding magnetic fields inside the cultures of organisms. There just wasn't the time or resources during 'interactivos?' to study the results in any depth so we only made visual observations. When the tardigrades were first hit with strong magnetic fields they pretty much stopped moving and seemed to enter a sort of catatonic state. Normally after about an hour they would begin to move around quite freely again. I began to get the impression that the recovery time and the depth of shock was less each time, so maybe they were building up a tolerance.

Read more of the interview with Gracie here.

Alejandro Tamayo's Fruit Computer Laboratory investigates the popular notion asserting that we will one day use techno-organic computing technology -

But, could chemical reactions in fruits be also used to create on-off switches, the basic building blocks of computer logic and memory? Would it be possible to create a computer with fruits? This project proposes to create a temporary laboratory, open to the general public, that will raise questions and reflections about the construction of a future computer based on fruits.

More details on Tamayo's project on WMMNA.

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plasticsquirrel was one of several readers to send in the sharpening rumors that IBM is on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, as we discussed last week. The pricetag is reportedly $7 billion. According to the NYTimes's sources, "People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. IBM's board has already approved the deal, they said." After the demise of SGI, one has to wonder about the future of traditional Unix. If the deal goes through, only IBM, HP, and Fujitsu will be left as major competitors in the market for commercial Unix. And reader UnanimousCoward adds, "Sun only came into the consciousness of the unwashed masses with the company not being able to get E10K's out the door fast enough in the first bubble. We here will remember some pizza-box looking thing, establishing 32 MB of RAM as a standard, and when those masses were scratching their heads at slogans like 'The Network is the Computer.' Add your favorite Sun anecdote here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Take an old outdated PS/2 ball mouse and turn it into a handy multimedia controller.
Thanks go to Daniel Walker for the original article in MAKE, Volume 17.
To download The Powerfake MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

Check out the complete Powerfake article in MAKE, Volume 17 "The Powerfake"
and you can see that in our Digital Edition.

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Recently on Offworld, Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol sat down with Introversion co-founder Chris Delay, to learn more about the foundation and growth of one of gaming's first most successful indies, how they managed to game the pirates by releasing fake torrents, and how their upcoming Subversion will procedurally model entire cities. We also started voting on last month's contest to write a new legend for one of the cards in EA/Phenomic's real time strategy PC game BattleForge, so head over to have your say on that. And, we rounded up the best of gaming's April Fools posts: World of Warcraft's Pimp Your Mount, Maxis's all-ASCII Spore rogue-like, Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear surprise, Wolfire's Small Tank, Microsoft's rhythm-yodeler Alpine Legend, and the Zeno Clash team's new Apple II point and click adventure. Elsewhere, we saw thrift store paintings enhanced with giant katamari, a new art-project rhythm game that's all light and konga drumming, a papercraft version of Toshio Iwai and his Tenori-On (!!!), a chiptune remix played through a hacked VGA adapter, and the first sing-along video of PopCap's Plants Vs. Zombies. Finally, we saw Hudson's slice of gaming history, the Shooting Watch, come to the iPhone, and their amazing video showing how tower defense games are like conveyor belt sushi, a Japanese meme based on a Goldeneye glitch, a new T-shirt where DaVinci does Mario, last year's promised WiiSpray virtual graffiti finally in motion, and, most wonderfully, LittleBigPlanet's (very) anatomically correct Sackboy.

Take an outdated PS/2 ball style mouse and make a handy multimedia controller.
Thanks go to Daniel Walker for the original article in MAKE, Volume 17.
View the PDF of this project. and then subsribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.

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I wanted to share this email from Eleanor M. Rust who wrote to say that community colleges in California are a great resource for makers who want to learn new skills.

I just bought my first copy of MAKE after being a CRAFT reader for a while, and I'm really enjoying it! But a remark made by a columnist prompted me to email you now:

My partner has been involved in two outstanding woodworking programs at community colleges in Southern California, first as a student and now as a teacher. For anyone in California wanting to pick up shop skills without spending a lot of money, community colleges are a great resource! MAKE seems to be especially friendly to auto-didacts and communal tip-sharing, but these classes are ideal for perfecting techniques without re-inventing the wheel, accessing large or expensive equipment and space, and connecting with other makers. The teachers tend to be true makers themselves with backgrounds in many different fields, and so lots of kinds of projects are possible.

As a new reader, I don't know if these resources have been discussed before or if they fit with your interests. But just in case you'd like to get the word out, here are a few details about the two programs I'm familiar with. They are many others, I'm sure, and in other fields as well as woodworking.

Cerritos College

Norwalk CA (LA County)

Many of the teachers are professional woodworkers, and there is a strong interest in turn-of-the-century techniques and Arts and Crafts style furniture. They teach classes from basic woodworking skills to sophisticated furniture designing and building, as well as professional training on modern CNC production cabinet machinery, but also in using hand-tools, lathe-turning, and making Windsor chairs. One teacher, Tony Fortner, teaches a summer class in architectural and furniture history that involves touring important 19th and early 20th c. buildings around LA, many of which are not usually open to the public. The student body is a good mix of college-age students aspiring to the woodworking trades, and amateurs from college age to the long-retired, many just beginning to work with wood, and some serious hobbyists. Link: www.cerritos.edu/wood

Palomar College

San Marcos, CA (San Diego County)

This school has a similar range of classes as Cerritos, but it also includes guitar-making. There is a saw-mill on site that processes trees from San Diego's urban forestry program, which means that students can cheaply buy local wood that has been culled responsibly. Every year, students visit woodworkers in Japan, and in return the school has been the site of one of very few Kezuru-kai competitions outside Japan, which draws champion woodworkers striving to make the longest, thinnest shavings (I swear!) Link: www.palomar.edu/woodworking.

Finally, the cost of taking classes in California's community college system remains very reasonable, and considering the quality of equipment, instruction and general expertise available at both of these woodworking programs, they are an incredible bargain in these times.

Thanks, Eleanor. This year, for Maker Faire, we are working with Community Colleges in California (all 10 districts) through the Center for Applied Competitive Technologies. CACT's tagline is Making It in California, which is the name of their website as well, MakingItInCalifornia.com. The Center is bringing over 100 high school teachers to Maker Faire.

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KentuckyFC writes "Warp drives were generally considered impossible by mainstream scientists until 1994 when the physicist Michael Alcubierre worked out how to build a faster-than-light drive using the principles of general relativity. His thinking was that while relativity prevents faster-than-light travel relative to the fabric of spacetime, it places no restriction on the speed at which regions of spacetime may move relative to each other. So a small bubble of spacetime containing a spacecraft could travel faster than the speed of light, at least in principle. But one unanswered question was what happens to the bubble when quantum mechanics is taken into account. Now a team of physicists have worked it out and its bad news: the bubble becomes unstable at superluminal speeds making warp drives impossible (probably)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the Obama administration appointing a whole bunch of copyright maximalists to various positions (despite an early indication that perhaps he recognized issues with copyright law), a bunch of public interest and consumer interest groups have gotten together to write a letter to Obama, asking him to recognize that he seems to be filling every open slot with a very heavily biased viewpoint which could do significant harm towards innovation. Some of the letter may be inspired by the rumored candidates for the IP Czar position -- all of whom also fall into the copyright maximalist camp. Though, the fact that it's taken Obama so long to appoint this position (upsetting the Senators who wrote the law requiring the position in the first place) suggests (at the very least) he isn't considering this to be a priority.

Still, the EFF also took the opportunity to point out that it seems likely that Obama violated copyright himself, in giving a gift of an iPod filled with music to the Queen of England. It's almost impossible to know whether or not copyright was violated, but that's exactly the problem. Of course, this is likely to be of little concern to the President -- which is itself another problem. Too many people, who have little familiarity with copyright law, simply assume that "copyright is good" and that "more copyright is better," leading to the false belief that those who have a history twisting copyright to their own advantage are the best positioned to speak on copyright policy. That's regulatory capture at its finest -- something the Obama administration had claimed it was trying to avoid. Obviously, there are more important things for Obama to be focused on, but relying so heavily on copyright maximalists who have benefited from distorting the purpose of copyright is quite troubling.

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The first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech brought out some amazing work by sound makers. Jaime Oliver's Silent Drum(seen above) took home the $5,000 first prize, but after viewing some of the competition, it's plain to see the judges had their work cut out for them.

Eric Singer's GuitarBot, uses automated moving frets and plectrums to form a very capable and programmable electric string machine -

Jan Perschy's SGSX-H 750 uses the gears of an engine much like Hammond organ's tone wheels, generating sound via a pickup for each gear -

Hye Ki Min's Sorisu turns the game of Sudoku into a quest for melodic competition offset by the player's incorrect numerical choices which generate harsh contrasting noise -

As a recent commenter pointed out, every entry to the competition is worthy of interest and discussion. Check out Wired's gallery to read and hear more examples.

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I LOVE this cargo container home, spotted on New World Geek. I could so live in that thing, provided I owned all the land beyond that window and my property was protected by a high fence, 'cause otherwise, it's curtains (which would blown the whole effect). Exhibitionist Estates -- coming soon to a development near you.

Recycled cargo container buildings

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An anonymous reader writes "After coverage here on Slashdot and elsewhere, Cheryl Preston has responded. She says that 'some netizens have missed the mark by turning the rather hum-drum constituency formation issue into a rash of (admittedly sometimes quite humorous) charges, allegations, and ad hominem attacks. I can only wish that I had control of some global Mormon conspiracy network, that this were a money-making proposition, and that my powers of persuasion could possibly move ICANN to adopt a content regulatory system...in reality, the CyberSafety constituency is interested in many current GNSO issues, such as Fast Flux Hosting (FFH); the development of a Registrants' Rights Charter; the gathering of identity information on WHOIS; and public order issues with the granting of new Top Level Domain names, to name a few.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At this year's Maker Faire, our friends at iFixit are on a mission to "Fix the World!" (starting with the easier-to-tackle mechanical/electronic world). They're hosting a new repair section at the fair. They want to show people how to fix all sorts of things -- and they need your help ('cause fixin' the world ain't a two-person job)!

We're looking for volunteers to share their repair knowledge. We want to show the world that with the right information, materials, and a little time, you can repair just about anything. Are you an expert in automobile repair? Do you know how to fix a wide variety of washer and dryer problems? Is your gift building bicycles from scratch? Then iFixit wants YOU!

The repair section will feature areas for appliances, computers, automobiles, motorcycles, consumer electronics, bicycles, and other cool stuff we're working on. If you have experience fixing things and would like free admission to Maker Faire, admission to the invite-only "Maker to Maker" event on Friday, and some other cool perks, please sign up as an iFixit volunteer!

We're going to schedule volunteers in shifts so you won't have to help out all weekend. You will definitely have time to see the rest of the Faire! You will be helping people with their problems, showing off cool ways of diagnosing and repairing failed devices, and generally having a good time. The more people we are able to help, the richer the experience will be for everyone.

To volunteer, send an email to MakerFaire@iFixit.com and include the following information:

• Your name
• Contact info (phone number, address)
• Area of expertise (cars, computers, etc.)
• Any specific interests or cool things you've fixed
• Availability for either May 30th, May 31st, or both

Deadlines:

• Volunteer registration opens on April 2, 2009. Space is limited, so please send us an email as soon as possible.
• Volunteer registration closes on April 30, 2009.

All volunteers should receive an email confirming their volunteer status within a week. Volunteers will be assigned one or more shifts depending on their preferences and availability.

We will be updating our Maker Faire 2009 section with the latest news -- check periodically for additional information. Please email us with any questions, and let us know as soon as possible if you can contribute to this wonderful event!

For more info

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If you've ever needed to download video that's distributed in a Flash application, you may have encountered a scenario where the video is being streamed via RTMP instead of progressively downloaded over HTTP. Luckily, there's application called rtmpdump which, as its name suggests, is able to dump an RTMP stream as if you had downloaded a standard FLV.

After downloading and building the source, you can save the contents of an RTMP stream with the following command, replacing the RTMP url and the desired output file name:

rtmpdump -r rtmp://hotname[:port]/path -o output.flv

The program is distributed with a Perl script called get_iplayer, which apparently used to be capable of quickly finding Hulu streams and passing them to rtmpdump, but it looks like this feature isn't currently working due to a recent Hulu obfuscation switcheroo. My fingers are crossed that this will be available again soon, but until then, the tool is still useful for pulling content from RTMP urls that you know about.

rtmpdump

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Last year, we found it amusing that some in the press were claiming that MySpace Music was going to be "the most significant rollout of a digital-music service since Apple's iTunes." As we noted at the time, the whole concept behind MySpace Music seemed destined to fail, because no one seemed willing to admit that they had to compete with piracy. So rather than design a better product, they made yet another totally lame "official" online music service. And, like pretty much every other such service, users have almost entirely ignored it. Even the folks running MySpace Music are now admitting that the product sucks:

"It was plumbing and a playlist. But it wasn't overly social, it wasn't deep enough, and we didn't really empower the users to do what they wanted to do."

That's from Courtney Holt -- the guy who's now in charge, but who wasn't hired until after the launch. But, of course, the company has already blown the ability to get a lot of attention with a big launch. It totally overplayed that hand (though, many mainstream reporters bought into the hype totally). While Holt has plans for a total redo of the service, it's going to become increasingly difficult to dig themselves out of the ditch from being "the most significant rollout of digital-music service" that almost no one cared about.

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TrekkieTechie writes "Though in fact the big day was April 1st, Google celebrated the five-year anniversary of the popular online email service Gmail with a post on the service's blog, saying 'we want to give a big thank you to all of you who use Gmail every day, to those who've been around since the beginning, to those who were using an AJAX app before the term AJAX was popular, to those who started chatting right in your email ... we couldn't have gotten here without you.' The milestone has also prompted speculation about when, if ever, Gmail will lose its beta status, and Ars Technica recently sat down with Todd Jackson, Gmail's Project Manager, to discuss the reasoning behind that nagging beta label."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I've noticed something recently: I rarely listen to voicemails anymore. If I know who called, I can simply call them back, or get in touch with them through other means. The whole process of calling in to my phone and actually listening to the voicemail is quite a pain -- and I've actually found myself annoyed when I felt the need to actually listen to voicemail. Apparently, I'm not alone. The NY Times is noting that many people are tiring of voicemail, noting that other options are a lot more efficient and effective for leaving messages for people. And it's not just anecdotal. The NY Times report above quotes a study that found over 30% of voicemails "linger unheard for three days or longer." Of course, some of that annoyance may be the user interface for traditional voicemail -- dialing in, listening to each message, remembering which button to press to delete... Newer visual voicemail solutions, like those found on the iPhone, may alleviate some of the pain. In fact, in a separate study that basically states the obvious, most people preferred visual voicemail over traditional voicemail.

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Phase One has announced an updated version of its Capture One 4, PRO and DB RAW workflow software. Version 4.7 introduces a new Enhanced Image Package (.EIP) file format that combines Capture One changes with lens calibration data and the original RAW data in a single file. Furthermore, JPEG and TIFF files can now be edited directly in Capture One. It also supports tethered shooting with Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Nikon D3x DSLRs.

Phase One has announced an updated version of its Capture One 4, PRO and DB RAW workflow software. Version 4.7 introduces a new Enhanced Image Package (.EIP) file format that combines Capture One changes with lens calibration data and the original RAW data in a single file. Furthermore, JPEG and TIFF files can now be edited directly in Capture One. It also supports tethered shooting with Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Nikon D3x DSLRs.

Many educators are having trouble figuring out how to handle electronic devices in the classroom. Some have been educating students on the negative effects, encouraging them to regulate their own use. Others have even highlighted possible applications for mobile devices in the classroom. Though, many just try to ban everything. A principal in British Columbia took his school's ban to a new level by setting up a cellphone jammer. There was just one problem -- the device is illegal in Canada. The principal had ordered the Chinese device online, but some angry students were quick to find out and inform him that he was breaking the law. So much for that idea. Now, he's left looking pretty bad while cellphone use in school now seems like some kind of civil rights issue to some students.

It seems like this is less about the cellphone ban and more about maintaining authority in the school. On that front... this completely backfired. Plenty of schools have effective cellphone bans without resorting to technological blocks (I attended such a high school). Maybe the principal should explain to students and teachers why cellphones are a problem, set some reasonable guidelines for use and some reasonable consequences for violations of the policy. That would probably go a lot further to establish the principal's authority and gain his students' respect than installing an illegal device and being forced to backtrack ever could.

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

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iamnot writes "The new IPRED law came into effect in a big way in Sweden on April 1st. A news report has come out showing that internet traffic dropped by 30% from March 31st to April 1st. A lawyer from the Swedish anti-piracy agency was quoted as saying that the drop in traffic 'sends a very strong signal that the legislation works.' Is the new law, which allows for copyright holders to request the identification of people sharing files, truly curing people of their evil ways? Or perhaps it is just taking some time for Swedish downloaders to figure out the new IPREDator VPN system from The Pirate Bay."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Skype has gotten some press this week after it announced the availability of a an iPhone client for its service (except in Canada, though, thanks to patent issues). The application only works over WiFi, though, and not the cellular data network. Operators typically say these restrictions are in order to prevent the use of massive amounts of bandwidth and harm network performance for other users; what seems more likely is they're worried that Skype will "steal voice minutes" away from their network. That's a silly belief though, because when users are already paying for a big bundle of minutes, and have unlimited off-peak minutes, and so on, it's not very likely they'll go to the trouble of using Skype for most calls. Perhaps the only ones they'd use such an application for are for calls they weren't going to make through the operator's network anyway -- such as international calls, for which they'd use a cheaper landline, a calling card, or wait until they're in front of a PC. Blocking Skype from working over the mobile network only hurts the operators by putting up a barrier in front of customers, it really doesn't protect any revenues. But no matter, the blocking -- or worse -- goes on. In Germany, where Skype is the top download from the App Store, T-Mobile (the operator which sells the iPhone there) is threatening to terminate the contracts of customers who use Skype on their iPhones, because the contracts prohibit the use of VoIP services. That's a nice touch: play by our rules, or you'll no longer have the privilege of giving us your money. You know, that doesn't sound so bad, because then users are free to take their business elsewhere. Although, as Skype's general counsel points out, every other mobile operator in Germany also bans VoIP.

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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Alex asks:

I've brewed beer at home three times, but one thing has always proved to be a problem: How do I get a siphon going well for moving my cooled wort into my primary fermenting bucket, and then for bottling? When I put my mouth on the tube to start the flow, it de-sanitizes the equipment I went to great length to clean, and the flow often stops, making me have to repeat this process. It's very frustrating! I'm sure there's a better way.

I've also brewed beer a few times at home, and this part was tricky at first. You really shouldn't put your mouth on the tube, as it introduces bacteria to the cooled wort, which could spoil the whole batch. I found a video (above, from homebrewingvideo.com) which illustrates an effective way of starting a siphon that works remarkably well. Basically you start the siphon with water from the sink, with the racking cane in a vessel of sanitizing solution. Hold the tubing up to the running faucet water until water starts flowing into the sanitizing solution vessel, then stop the flow with your thumb over the end of the tubing. Then start the siphon by holding the end of the tube low in the sink (lower than the sanitizing solution vessel) and letting go with your thumb. Liquid will flow from the vessel into the sink, and once it starts going well, cap the tubing with your thumb once again. At this point it's safe to lift the racking cane and tubing assembly out of the vessel (keep your thumb over the end of the tubing, and the suction will prevent liquid from exiting the bottom of the racking cane), moving it over to your wort container. With the end of the racking cane in the wort and the end of the tubing lower than the wort vessel, release your thumb, siphoning the water into a waste container (or in the grass if you're in your backyard) until the wort starts coming through, at which point you can move the siphon tubing to drain into your fermenter or bottle. This is a long convoluted explanation of the easily demonstrated method shown in the video, so be sure to watch that too. Happy brewing!

If you've got a question for MAKE, send it my way! Anything goes: photos, video, schematics, you name it. Send questions to becky@makezine.com or hit us up on Twitter.

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This video of Inuit throat-singing by Kathy Keknek and Janet Aglukkaq was created as an application for the 2008 Arctic Winter Games. I'm entranced by the way their throats move as they sing. Woah.

Inuit Throat Singing: Kathy Keknek and Janet Aglukkaq (long) (via William Gibson)

John Joseph Adams sez, "My new anthology, Federations, is due out in a few weeks, and I've just launched the website for it. The website has three free stories on it, from current Hugo & Nebula finalist James Alan Gardner, Jeremiah Tolbert, and Genevieve Valentine. There are also several interviews with those authors and other authors in the book."

From Star Trek to Star Wars, and from Dune to Foundation, science fiction has a rich history of exploring the idea of vast interstellar societies, and the challenges facing those living in or trying to manage such societies.

The stories in Federations continue that tradition, and herein you would find a mix of all-new, original fiction, alongside selected reprints from authors whose work exemplifies what interstellar SF is capable of, including Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, Anne McCaffrey, George R. R. Martin, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Alastair Reynolds, Robert J. Sawyer, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, and many more.

About the Anthology

Pre-order Federations

(Thanks, John!)

Rebecca from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Does your company have to contend with the maze of laws dealing with user privacy and publishing user content? Want to do the right thing by the online community that gives your business value, and still fulfill your legal obligations? Check out EFF's Bootcamp on May 11 in San Francisco. It costs only $300 for a full-day of training."

Given that $300 won't buy you an hour of law-firm advice, this is a damned good deal.

EFF Bootcamp

Here's some disgraceful footage of London's cops beating the shit out of a group of peaceful G20 protestors who are holding their arms in the air, chanting, "This is not a riot." Look familiar? It's what the British cops did at the last Climate Camp, too. How much you want to bet that no one involved in the authoritarian response to these peaceful protestors pays any price, because they all offer the lame excuse that an entirely different group of protestors broke some windows at a bank in a different part of town?

Film Of Police Attack On G20 Climate Camp (Thanks, Whitey!)

Apparently, two police officers at MIT have been suspended after they decided that students at the university shouldn't see a front page story about another MIT police officer caught dealing drugs -- so they dumped hundreds of copies of the paper in the trash (well, actually a recycling bin -- they may want to censor, but not clog landfills, apparently). Of course, it really makes you wonder what they hoped to accomplish. The MIT paper, The Tech, is available online, including the article in question. Throwing out the papers probably did little (if anything) to stop people from reading about the incident -- and simply ended up calling more attention to questionable activities by MIT police. All of this, of course, highlights yet another nice benefit to online newspapers: people can't throw them out to try to hide what's in them.

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Hugh Pickens writes "A science-savvy robot called Adam has successfully developed and tested its first scientific hypothesis, discovering that certain genes in baker's yeast code for specific enzymes which encourage biochemical reactions in yeast, then ran an experiment with its lab hardware to test its predictions, and analyzed the results, all without human intervention. Adam was equipped with a database on genes that are known to be present in bacteria, mice and people, so it knew roughly where it should search in the genetic material for the lysine gene in baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Ross King, a computer scientist and biologist at Aberystwyth University, first created a computer that could generate hypotheses and perform experiments five years ago. 'This is one of the first systems to get [artificial intelligence] to try and control laboratory automation,' King says. '[Current robots] tend to do one thing or a sequence of things. The complexity of Adam is that it has cycles.' Adam has cost roughly $1 million to develop and the software that drives Adam's thought process sits on three computers, allowing Adam to investigate a thousand experiments a day and still keep track of all the results better than humans can. King's group has also created another robot scientist called Eve dedicated to screening chemical compounds for new pharmaceutical drugs that could combat diseases such as malaria.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This magnificent Ram's Head Coffee Table is from the 1970s. The heads are patinated brass. Alas, it is $5200.

Tim Lee recently highlighted an interesting, but worth exploring, aside made by Will Wilkinson, talking about the concept of "journalistic capture." You are (hopefully) aware of the concept of regulatory capture -- whereby regulators effectively become tools of the industries they regulate. There are a variety of reasons behind this, in part due to the fact that industries will always have more advanced lobbying activities rather than consumers or other parties, but also due to the fact that there's often a revolving door between regulators and the industries they regulate. That's why industry lobbyists all too often write the bills that regulators introduce and pass. Regulators are all too happy to allow this to happen -- as their main source of information about those industries comes straight from the industry reps themselves. Thus, the "need" for any particular piece of legislation is quite often presented from the industry's viewpoint directly. Basically, since the industry controls the flow of information, the laws come out in their favor. Regulatory capture at work.

Wilkinson's point is that something quite similar often happens with journalists and the industries or individuals they cover. Basically, the journalists are almost entirely reliant on their sources within the industry to provide the information necessary for reporting on that industry. Thus, the insiders are able to shape the story and often have it come out to their advantage -- just like laws and regulatory capture. It's certainly not a new concept to think that journalists often become too chummy with the industry insiders they cover -- but thinking of it in terms of "journalistic capture" is quite an intriguing concept which deserves more widespread recognition and discussion -- especially in an era where so many people distrust journalists and are looking for sources they feel aren't as biased.

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Edwin Wise is no stranger to the pages of MAKE magazine, and special effects are his specialty. It's only natural that he contributed a couple of DIYs to our Halloween Special Issue back in 2007, including the Hot Glue Spider Web Gun and the classic animatronic prop, the Flying Crank Ghost:

In Volume 13, he offered up the super-loud Boom Stick, a two-stage, chamber-sealing, quick-exhaust, piston-valve air cannon that you can build out of common plumbing components. The Boom Stick straight up assaults the startle reflex of any nearby victim. A nice companion piece is the Vortex Cannon project Edwin wrote for Volume 15. Here's a video of the Vortex Cannons so you can check them out in action:

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eX4-lI0B3SE&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&fmt=18
"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eX4-lI0B3SE&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&fmt=18
" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="600" height="486">

Last, but not least, in Volume 16, Edwin provided us with the Chladni Plate project, where you use a broken speaker, bits of wire, and tape to prepare a coneless voice coil driver, then use it to generate standing waves on a sheet of metal, making sound visible!

We checked in with Edwin this week to see what effects he's been brewing up, and here's what he said:

"What am I up to, huh? I continue to write stuff for Make magazine. I have another article coming out in issue 19, for example, though at only four issues a year there's only so much I can do there.

My 800-lb gorilla project each year is that I do FX, acting, and stuff for Scare for a Cure. This haunt is a direct descendant of Richard Garriot's Britannia Manor (which was a BIG DEAL in Austin, but ended in 1994, and was then continued in spirit by Wild Basin's Haunted Trails, which I joined in 2000, but ended in 2005). [Check out images and details of the transformation of the 2008 haunt, World of Horrorcraft on Edwin's site.]

I'm also working, in the background, on a variety of projects -- some electronics for the haunt, some physical projects, and one computer program that is a wiki that makes it easy to write how-to articles and link/embed research and supporting information from around the web. Unfortunately, software takes a lot of time and that's one resource I'm usually short on, so I don't think it will be up and running until the end of this year.

This wiki/database program that I'm targeting for my own blog and project documentation (and as a forum for other similar makers) was actually conceived as a way to track changes and connections, and comment on, government information such as the federal budget, a project from the League of Technical Voters, "Connect the Dots."

Anyway, I'm busy. Always. This doesn't even count my background activities of ballroom dancing, tai chi, and social stuff!"

Thanks, Edwin! Keep up with Edwin on his site, simreal.com. And for back issues of MAKE, including the classic Halloween issue, head on over to the Maker Shed.

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Master hacker and lockpicker Barry Wels (who shot the photo above) has posted an account of a "penetration party," at which safes are made available for guys skilled in the fine art of lock-cracking to demonstrate and hone their skillz. I love all the photos he illustrated this account with -- these guys are as scary-smart as they are cool. Snip:

[S]afe opening is all about experience. The best safecrackers are the ones that have the most experience, or with the best connections to people who can tell you what the internals of the target safe most likely will look like. In previous events the strategy to open safes was to drill a hole on a strategical place in the safe. This sounds easier as it is, and I always admire the craftsmanship that is needed to pull it off. Just think about it: you need to picture what is inside the safe and then try to drill away the element that keeps the safe locked, or in case of a combination lock drill until you are inside the heart of the lock and set the code by looking into it with a scope. Being off by a millimeter can cause you big trouble, not to mention the glass plates that can set off ‘relockers’ if hit (shattered) by a drill. If this happens, the safe will lock up, and even the original key and combination will not open it anymore (a mechanism to win time, safes that have the relockers fired can take a looong time to open).

[A]t this event we tried to shift from drilling to picking and decoding safes. Just as with opening standard locks, there is nothing like opening a high security safe without a scratch. To do so requires the right tools, and Jord Knaap is becoming really good at making safe opening tools. His hand made Hobb’s picks are just as good, and sometimes better, as the stuff that is available commercially on the market. And Paul Crouwel was the first one to pick open a safe at the weekend. In about fifteen minutes the door of this monster safe swung open without a scratch. Later Paul tried his luck (skill) on another safe, but when it did not open in fifteen minutes decided to go for a smoke. When he came back, master lockpicker Julian Hardt was kind enough to have picked it open for him. Later that day Julian would repeat the job and pick open the lock on a heavy rosengrens safe.

About the safe opening weekend (next one in 1 month!) (Blackbag.nl, via Wayne's Friends list)

Headline writers for the press are always trying to generate some attention, but it's amusing when they present a headline that seems to go entirely against what's said in the actual article. Professor Nancy Baym, who has been studying the power of online communities, discovered this when her latest research was released. Marketwatch ran a press release about her research declaring: Social networking, not for real friends, which certainly seems attention grabbing, if it were not for the fact that her research doesn't say that at all. What the research actually notes is that you may have weak relationships focused on a narrow topic, with folks you connect with on various social networks -- but it also notes how that's a good thing. She doesn't say that social networks aren't for real friends, even if that's what the headline reads.

Amusingly, another article covering the exact same bit of research runs with a different headline: Facebook friend collectors 'are normal' -- (suggesting the opposite of the Marketwatch headline) and quoting Baym:

"You can ask somebody, 'Of your 300 Facebook friends how many are actually friends?' and people will say, 'Oh, 30 or 40 or 50.' But what having a lot of weak-tie relationships is giving you access to are a lot of resources that you wouldn't otherwise have.... They can really open up access to resources that we wouldn't have otherwise."

That doesn't sound like "social networking isn't for real friends" at all. But, apparently, accuracy doesn't make for as good a headline sometimes. Then we've got USA Today, which seems to totally contradict the Marketwatch headline, by noting: For teens, a friend online is usually a friend offline, too. Apparently, the people at Marketwatch and at USA Today seemed to think they were reading different studies.

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suolumark writes "The CSIRO has won what could be a landmark settlement from Hewlett Packard over the use of patented wireless technology. The settlement ended HP's involvement in a four-year lawsuit brought by the CSIRO on a group of technology companies, in which the organisation was seeking royalties for wi-fi technology that is used extensively on laptops and computers worldwide. CSIRO spokesman Luw Morgan earlier said legal action was continuing against 13 companies: Intel, Dell, Toshiba, Asus, Netgear, D-Link, Belkin, SMC, Accton, 3-Com, Buffalo, Microsoft and Nintendo."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.