While there have been lots of attempts to ban spam email (some less effective than others), text-message spam sent to mobile phones has largely escaped legislative scrutiny. The CAN SPAM Act bans sending spam emails to phones, but it doesn't specifically address SMS. An Arizona court ruled earlier legislation covering autodialed telemarking calls also banned SMS spam, but that decision didn't seem particularly solid. Other countries, like India, have extended their Do Not Call lists to cover SMS spam, and now a couple of US senators have introduced legislation that would do the same here. SMS spam hasn't become a huge problem in the US for a number of reasons, mainly because it costs spammers more than email spam, while it's also generally easier to track down those who sent it than with email. Still, it's nice to see a law seeking to get out ahead of something so annoying, rather than waiting until the cat's out of the bag and it's an uncontrollable situation.

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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christian.einfeldt writes "This week, Major League Baseball will open without Microsoft's Silverlight at the plate, according to Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which handles much of the back-end operations for MLB and several other leagues and sporting events. The change was decided on last year but was set to be rolled out this spring. Among the causes of MLB's disillusionment with Silverlight were technical glitches users experienced, including needing administrator privileges to install the plugin (often impossible in workplaces). Baseball's opening day last year was plagued by Silverlight instability, with many users unable to log on and others unable to watch games. Adobe Flash already exists on 99% of user machines, said Bowman, and Adobe is 'committed to the customer experience in video with the Flash Player.' MLBAM's decision to dump Silverlight is particularly problematic for Microsoft's effort to compete with Adobe, due to the fact that MLBAM handles much of the back-end operations for CBS' Webcasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and this year will do the encoding for the 2009 Masters golf tournament."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

narramissic writes "Change is afoot at the Office of the US Trade Representative. New details have been released about an anti-counterfeiting trade agreement that has been discussed in secret among the US, Japan, the European Union and other countries since 2006. Although the six-page summary (PDF) provides little in the way of specific detail about the current state of negotiations, the release represents a change in policy at the USTR, which had argued in the past that information on the trade pact was 'properly classified in the interest of national security.'" Michael Geist has a timeline that puts together more details about the ACTA negotiations than any government has so far been willing to reveal.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The legal world is catching on to social media in a pretty big way. Status updates and other messages are commonly cited as evidence, while there's growing concern over jurors' use of Twitter and other services on their mobile phones during trials. In one case, lawyers in Arkansas argued that a juror's tweets showed he was predisposed against their client, and wanted a verdict that would "impress his audience." They appealed the decision against their client based on the juror's 140-character missives, and a judge has now rejected the appeal and let the judgment stand. He said the juror's tweets were in bad taste, but didn't constitute improper conduct. While it doesn't seem like the messages in question reflected any predisposition on the part of the juror, this is likely just the tip of the iceberg of these types of cases, particularly with the definitively unanswered question of whether posting messages to social-networking sites during deliberations breaks jury rules regarding non-disclosure.

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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Researchers have genetically engineered biological viruses to form the anode and cathode of a battery. MIT researcher Angela Belcher and her colleagues manipulated the genes of a harmless virus so that the bug coats itself in tiny iron phosphate particles and connects to highly-conductive carbon nanotubes. From Science News:

Ions and electrons can move through smaller particles more quickly. But fabricating nano-sized particles of iron phosphate is a difficult and expensive process, the researchers say.

So Belcher’s team let the virus do the work. By manipulating a gene of the M13 virus to make the viruses coat themselves in iron phosphate, the researchers created very small iron phosphate particles.

“We’re using a biological template that’s already on the nanoscale,” Belcher says.

Tweaking a second gene made one end of the virus bind to carbon nanotubes, which conduct energy well. The resulting network of iron phosphate-coated viruses and carbon nanotubes formed a highly conductive cathode, one that ions and electrons could move through quickly.

"Viruses could power devices"

avishere writes "People are losing their jobs, but for some execs the economic meltdown seems like the perfect time to get their software into the hands of those who can't afford their multi-thousand-dollar price tags. Software giants Autodesk and SolidWorks have each latched onto the worst-economic-disaster-since-the-Great-Depression meme and released free versions of their flagship computer-aided-design brands before their potential users are forced to sell their laptops on Craigslist. 'In these uncertain economic times,' Autodesk coos sympathetically, it will give away temporary licenses of AutoCAD and other software to those unemployed in the fields of architecture, engineering, and design. (They are also developing a Mac version, two decades after abandoning the platform.) SolidWorks was quick to respond with its subtly titled Engineering Stimulus Package. So if anyone out there has their weekdays free, jumpstart your hardware and design projects for cheap. Legally, too."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Man, check this beast out, from a builder in Norway. Looks like it might be built around the Lynxmotion Hexapod Phoenix.

A-Pod is an ant inspired hexapod robot with a 2 DOF abdomen (tail), a 3 DOF head with large mandibles. 6 legs with 3 DOF each. Total 25 servos. This video demonstrates body movement and mandible control. I still have to do some mechanical improvements to the legs (therefore little walking). The robot are remotely controlled with a custom 2,4 GHz RC transmitter.

A-Pod part 1 [Via Serge Wroclawski on the HacDC elist]

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Tiffany Ard creates "artwork and nursery decor for serious science nerds." Seen above is a spread from her book Pat Schrodinger's Kitty. From the description:

Here are Paul Dirac and Enrico Fermi. They can do lots of things. You can do lots of things too! This parody of the children's classic Pat the Bunny is perfect for the babies in your life who are interested in physics.

Pat Schrodinger's Kitty

Sophie Tucker, seen here, fell overboard off the northeast Queensland cost of Australia. Last week, she was reunited with her human family. Apparently, Sophie had been living on an island for four months. From AFP:

She was returned to her family last week when (Jan) Griffith contacted rangers who had captured a dog that had been living off feral goats on the largely uninhabited island, in the faint hope it might be their long-lost pet...

Griffith said that when the dog was first spotted on the island she had been in poor condition.

"And then all of a sudden she started to look good and it was when the rangers had found baby goat carcasses so she'd started eating baby goats," she said.

Dog overboard found four months later

I did a quick 1/2 hour podcast with Chris Brogan this afternoon about "100 Twitters" -- a topic we have both recently posted on.

If there's one group online that it's useful to avoid pissing off, it's "the geeks." And one thing that plenty of geeks love is Dungeons and Dragons. Yet, D&D publisher, Wizards of the Coast, has fans of the game up in arms over the decision to stop a bunch of online retailers from selling PDF versions of its games and books, while also filing eight lawsuits claiming infringement for unauthorized distribution.... and I have to admit, I can't recall a story ever getting this many submissions from readers here (perhaps there's a bit of overlap in our audiences). In some cases, the demand to retailers to remove these PDFs has caused those who legitimately bought them (but hadn't downloaded them yet) to not be able to get the product they had purchased. On top of this, Wizards is apparently also looking at employing some sort of DRM for any future digital releases, which also has plenty of people angry.

What's amazing to watch is the pushback from the games' biggest fans. They're wondering why Wizards is limiting legitimate sales of its products, and looking to make the overall product worse by limiting it with annoying DRM. As people keep pointing out, piracy is going to happen one way or the other -- but rather than trying to lock stuff down (and, one other aspect of this is requiring all resellers to become "authorized internet resellers"), why not focus on ways to use that content to build bigger and better business models that don't require treating all your fans and customers as criminals?

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Deep Packet Inspection, or DPI, is at the heart of the debate over Network Neutrality — this relatively new technology threatens to upset the balance of power among consumers, ISPs, and information suppliers. An anonymous reader notes that the Canadian Privacy Commissioner has published a Web site, for Canadians and others, to educate about DPI technology. Online are a number of essays from different interested parties, ranging from DPI company officers to Internet law specialists to security professionals. The articles are open for comments. Here is the CBC's report on the launch."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last month, we pointed out that some of the music industry folks who actually "get it" were getting worried that when iTunes launched its variable pricing offering, labels would focus much more on jacking up prices to $1.29, rather than finding songs to offer at $0.69. Aaron Martin-Colby points out that this appears to have been quite an accurate fear. Gizmodo went looking for $0.69 songs and had a lot of trouble finding any. $1.29 songs, however, were quite easy to find. Once again, looks like the record labels are more focused on squeezing fans rather than giving them a real reason to buy.

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machaut writes "Twitter, one of the highest profile Ruby on Rails-backed websites on the Internet, has in the past year started replacing some of their Ruby infrastructure with an emerging language called Scala, developed by Martin Odersky at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Although they still prefer Ruby on Rails for user-facing web applications, Twitter's developers have started replacing Ruby daemon servers with Scala alternatives, and plan eventually to serve API requests, which comprise the majority of their traffic, with Scala instead of Ruby. This week several articles have appeared that discuss this shift at Twitter. A technical interview with three Twitter developers was published on Artima. One of those developers, Alex Payne, Twitter's API lead, gave a talk on this subject at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, which was covered by Technology Review and The Register."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eric Steuer (who you may know as creative director of Creative Commons), writes in with news about a personal side project he's been working on that launched this morning.

My friend Tim Molloy and I put together a soundtrack for Tim's new novel, "How to Break Bad News" (Virgin Books), which is about a reporter who goes undercover at a fast food restaurant chain to expose labor abuses - but then finds he prefers working there to being a reporter.

The soundtrack is being distributed for free by RCRD LBL and features 14 tracks by acts like Dirty on Purpose, Sam Champion, Michna, and CoCo B's.

It's all here: "How to Break Bad News" soundtrack.

There's a soundtrack release party at Hugs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Thursday. Tim will be reading from and singing copies of the book, while the guys from RCRD LBL will DJ sets that include songs from the soundtrack.

Embedded soundtrack below, but you'll want to visit the rcrdlbl post for all the project details.

Slartibartfast was one of many readers sending in news of GM's partnership with Segway to develop a two-seater urban electric vehicle. It's called the Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, or "PUMA." This is just a prototype, so don't get your credit card out yet. Its total cost of ownership could be about 1/4 that of a traditional car, GM says. The prototype runs for 35 miles, at a top speed of 35 mph, on lithium-ion batteries. It features the now-familiar Segway balancing technology, though fore-and-aft training wheels are visible on the prototype. Some commentators have likened it to a high-tech rickshaw, others to a golf cart. Engadget describes how the ride feels.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our friends at iFixit.com nabbed a brand-new DSi as soon as it went on sale, and as they are want to do, they immediately field stripped it down to its nuts and ribbon cables. Here are some of the deets they discovered.

Highlights:

* The DSi's new matte black skin feels rougher than the DS Lite.
The roughness allows for better grip of the system and should be
far more scratch-resistant.

* The overall size and shape are quite similar to the DS Lite.
It's 3 mm thinner but 4 mm longer and 1 mm wider.

* Battery capacity is substantially less than the DS Lite. The
DSi uses an 840 mAh battery compared to the DS Lite's 1000 mAh
battery.

* The Game Boy Advance port is no more. In its place is a new SD
slot and the ability to download DSiWare through Nintendo's
online download library.

* The DSi now includes two integrated cameras. Unfortunately,
each one only boasts VGA resolution (0.3 megapixels). This is
certainly a bit underwhelming considering most mainstream phones
have cameras of at least 1.3 megapixels.

* An experienced hand can completely disassemble the DSi in less
than ten minutes using standard tools. This is the first Nintendo
system we've taken apart that does not require a tri-wing
screwdriver. This should make repairing and tinkering with the
DSi substantially easier. The DSi is definitely not as complex as
an iPhone!

* Nintendo is using Samsung MoviNAND integrated 256 MB Flash
memory and MMC controller. The custom ARM CPU + GPU is stamped
with the revision code 'TWL'.

* Our DSi's components all had manufacture dates around September
2008, indicating that Nintendo has been stockpiling these devices
for quite a while prior to the big North American release.

Nintendo DSi First Look

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One of the most common sayings in economics is "there's no such thing as a free lunch." And, it's true: everything you do has some sort of cost in terms of opportunity costs. That was the point of that statement. Unfortunately, however, it appears that some have tried twisting that statement into saying that "free" doesn't work as a part of economics. A few weeks back the Economist (normally good on such subjects) wrote an article that trashed the concept of "free" within a business model, totally misunderstanding how free is a part of a business model, rather than the business model itself. Chris Anderson already did a good job ripping apart the Economist's article, but I wanted to address a different aspect of the whole "free lunch" question.

Too many people, it seems, assume that "there is no free lunch" means that the market is entirely static. That is, they believe it's a zero sum game. If I do x, then y loses out. So, if I am offered free internet service or a free lunch, then whoever provided that is out the same. But that's simply not true. Economics is not a zero sum game, but is built around economic growth -- where the sum of economic activity can be greater than the parts. If I do a transaction with you, and in the end, we're both better off (i.e., we both got more value than we gave up), then the amount of overall value in the world increased. It might not be a "free" lunch (the economic transaction cost me something), but new utility is created above and beyond what was there before.

This is a key point that is often overlooked by those who slam the concept of free and assume that it can't happen or it can't work. They overlook how free is a part of a larger economic transaction that actually does increase overall utility and economic growth. This is the key insight that economist Paul Romer had a few years back in noting that the core way to increase an economic market was to insert what he called "non-rivalrous, non-excludable goods" -- which I've taken to calling "infinite goods." These are "goods" that can be replicated at absolutely no cost, increasing the size of a market and increasing the overall utility in the world. As Romer noted:

Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable. A useful metaphor for production in an economy comes from the kitchen. To create valuable final products, we mix inexpensive ingredients together according to a recipe. The cooking one can do is limited by the supply of ingredients, and most cooking in the economy produces undesirable side effects. If economic growth could be achieved only by doing more and more of the same kind of cooking, we would eventually run out of raw materials and suffer from unacceptable levels of pollution and nuisance. Human history teaches us, however, that economic growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking. New recipes generally produce fewer unpleasant side effects and generate more economic value per unit of raw material.

Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. The difficulty is the same one we have with compounding. Possibilities do not add up. They multiply.

The trick (and where the trouble comes in) is that it's not always easy to figure out how to capture a piece of that larger market -- especially if your old business model was based on a very different type of scarcity. Yet, those who figure out how to put these models into practice will find that their markets grow bigger and bigger, and while there are tradeoffs, they'll have something about as close to a "free lunch" as you can imagine.

Anyway... we'll be exploring these ideas and more at The Free! Summit next month, so hopefully you'll be able to join us. Speaking of which, if you're interested in presenting a case study about how you're leveraging free, the organizers of the event are holding a competition via Vator.tv where you can enter to present.

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Hunyue of HY Research has turned the awesome Beagle Board into a complete mobile internet platform, with a 4.3" touchscreen, battery power capability, some extra side controls, and a CNC case. It won't win any design or beauty contests, but it's still pretty cool.

Beagle MID

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coondoggie writes "Next month, with the help of a variety of high-tech gear, researchers will begin a wide-ranging project to better understand the origin, structure and evolution of tornadoes. The National Science Foundation has given $9.1 million to the project called Vortex2 (of course it has a convoluted backronym), which will take place from May 10-June 13. Researchers say Vortex2 is the largest attempt in history to study tornadoes, and will involve more than 50 scientists, 40 research vehicles, and 10 mobile radars, and will cover 900 square miles in southern South Dakota, western Iowa, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, the Texas panhandle, and western Oklahoma."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While we've wondered why those who made such bad bets on Wall Street are getting bailed out and even relied upon to save the economy, Forbes has found one of the guys who knew better: Andy Beal. A banker in Texas who basically stopped taking on any new loans for years as he thought things were going out of control. In fact, he barely worked at all -- stopping by just a few hours a day, playing board games with his staff, and even laying off about half of his employees. He did this while waiting for the market to collapse, knowing that things were way out of control. In return, he got investigated by regulators, who couldn't understand why he wasn't joining in the fun.

Of course, now that things have collapsed, he's buying up distressed assets for pennies on the dollar, and wants to buy more, planning to become a huge bank. Oh, and all that government money that's supposed to help those private companies who are buying up these assets? He doesn't qualify for most of it (no more than a token amount that's not even worth taking). Instead, it's really designed for the folks who screwed things up in the first place. This guy -- who actually saw what was going on, and prepared for it, now has to compete against those who screwed up and are being handed billions by the government.

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A federal judge has thrown out the conviction of the senator who educated us all about the true nature of the Internet. Ted Stevens had been convicted last fall of lying about free home renovations that he received from an oil contractor, 8 days before he lost his Senate re-election bid. The judge blasted the US Department of Justice prosecutors for mishandling the case in ways that might rise to the level of criminality. "In 25 years on the bench, I have never seen anything approach the mishandling and misconduct in this case," Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said. He called the allegations "shocking and disturbing." According to the article, "Several jurors have told The Washington Post that the evidence against Stevens was overwhelming during a month-long trial that ended in October."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

William Shunn sez,

In 2006 and 2007, over the course of about 30 episodes of my "ShunnCast," I serialized my memoir "The Accidental Terrorist," the story of how I, as a naive young Mormon missionary, came to be arrested for terrorism and permanently banned from Canada. The response was enthusiastic and overwhelming.

Now I'm serializing the book again, but this time in its own dedicated podcast. Starting today and continuing throughout 2009, I'll post a chapter from "The Accidental Terrorist" every Tuesday morning. Fridays I'll post a "Setting the Record Straight" segment to discuss exactly how true the preceding chapter was.

This just may be my favorite true-life amazing-but-true tale -- never has threatening an aircraft been funnier or more thought-provoking.

Memoir-go-round (Thanks, Bill!)

With iPhone Hacks, you can make your iPhone do all you'd expect of a smartphone -- and more. Learn tips and techniques to unleash little-known features, find and create innovative applications for both the iPhone and iPod touch, and unshackle these devices to run everything from network utilities to video game emulators. iPhone Hacks is exactly what you need to make the most of your iPhone.

This book will teach you how to:

• Import your entire movie collection, sync with multiple computers, and save YouTube videos
  
• Remotely access your home network, audio, and video, and even control your desktop
  
• Develop native applications for the iPhone and iPod touch on Linux, Windows, or Mac
  
• Check email, receive MMS messages, use IRC, and record full-motion video
  
• Run any application in the iPhone's background, and mirror its display on a TV
  
• Make your iPhone emulate old-school video game platforms, and play classic console and arcade games
  
• Integrate your iPhone with your car stereo
  
• Build your own electronic bridges to connect keyboards, serial devices, and more to your iPhone without "jailbreaking"
  

Order iPhone Hacks in the Maker Shed

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I guess I should be flattered that some professional reporters are mistaking my writing for the cause of the problems in their industry, when my work is a reaction to what's happening. They could also react to the changes, instead of waiting for the wave to roll over them. Don't brace yourself against the wave, that doesn't work -- it's better to be limber and be ready to surf. I once described the change as like jumping out of a plane with no parachute. The chances of a safe landing are virtually nil. The challenge is to prolong the ride, and to have fun while rushing to your demise.

I once wrote: "Fifteen years ago I was unhappy with the way journalism was practiced in the tech industry, so I took matters into my own hands. And then dozens of people did, and then hundreds followed, and now we get much better information about tech. It will happen everywhere, in politics, education, the military, health, science, you name it. The sources will fill in where we used to need journalists."

This didn't in any way put even one reporter out of a job.

The reporters were going to lose their jobs anyway, as people's attention moved to the net and away from papers, and the news organizations braced instead of surfed.

There was an opening, and some of us rushed in to fill it. It meant our ride was more fun and rewarding, but it didn't change the outcome, for us or anyone else.

Same thing happened in my industry, software development, when I was in the middle of my career. Most of the stuff people use now is either free or very inexpensive. I used to earn my living by selling packaged software that costs between $99 and $249 per copy. It was all less capable than the software I give away these days. I give it away because I am a software writer. I can't not write software and feel fulfilled. But I share the frustration of today's writers. I've lived it.

Even so reporters look for scapegoats -- and increasingly I am one of those people. So be it. I started claiming the title of Most Hated Person on the Internets, and life got a lot easier. If hate makes you happy -- enjoy.

I've also put free ideas out there that might help with the aggregation or curation of news, which are now super-hot topics, but areas I have been active in for about 12 years. Maybe if instead of villifying me, you did more listening, we could fly together instead of falling faster? Just a thought.

Kelson writes "The W3C Widget specification is running into a problem: Apple claims a patent on automatic updates and is unwilling to license it royalty-free in the event that it impacts the spec. The W3C is investigating to determine whether the spec includes anything covered by the patent, and decide what to do."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Because (of course) last year's ProIP bill that (once again) strengthened copyright laws wasn't enough, Hollywood's favorite lawmakers all got together outside of LA and complained about how copyright laws needed to be even more draconian. They once again quoted the same mythical stats about the damage done by infringement, and didn't hear from a single defender of the public or someone who could explain the basic fact that strengthening copyright law doesn't solve anything. Instead, they just complained, blamed pretty much every foreign country (other than France) and insisted "something must be done!"

Apparently changing their business models to adapt to a changing marketplace has yet to be considered. Not when all of these Congressional Reps from California have no problem swallowing made up stats and misleading fear mongering from an industry unwilling to embrace new business models. Instead, they blame everyone else, including apparently a major session blaming Canada. It's still not clear why Hollywood thinks Canada is such a copyright pariah. The country already has pretty strong copyright laws and doesn't seem to be a haven for piracy at all.

The only country they did seem to like? Apparently that would be France, which just sneakily (after most of Parliament had gone home for the night) passed a three strikes bill. The entertainment industry execs seemed to think this might be a perfect solution -- once again looking to kill off any opportunity to create a better business model, and instead piss off fans and drive them further underground. It's like seeing the same dumb horror movie over and over again, where we the consumers/audience keeps yelling out "no, don't go in there!" and yet they still go in there, make the same mistakes over again and end up only damaging themselves. Is it really that difficult for them to recognize that the business model is the issue, and no amount of increased copyright protection is going to change that?

In the meantime, it's pretty sickening that our elected officials would choose only to hear from one extremely biased side on the debate, and will now introduce legislation that bails out that one industry at the expense of the public. Clearly, these hearings were not to "hear" anything new -- but to put on a puppet show prior to already written (by the industry) legislation to be introduced.

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I'm not usually a big fan of violent video games, but Fieldrunners is a fun, incredibly addictive iPhone game. Worth your dime. #

Create IRL pixel art on any metal surface. Want. (via) #

The Obama administration has filed a brief in EFF's lawsuit against the government for its program of illegal, mass wiretapping of Americans, defending the practice, arguing that the lawsuit should be dismissed, endorsing the Bush administration's invented "State Secret" theory, and augmenting it with a new theory, that "the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is "willful disclosure" of the illegally intercepted communications." This brief was not written by Bush cronies left behind by the outgoing administration: this is an invention of the Obama administration.

I don't expect the guy to walk on water, but I'd sure like it if he'd stop wallowing in the mud.

Every defining attribute of Bush's radical secrecy powers -- every one -- is found here, and in exactly the same tone and with the exact same mindset. Thus: how the U.S. government eavesdrops on its citizens is too secret to allow a court to determine its legality. We must just blindly accept the claims from the President's DNI that we will all be endangered if we allow courts to determine the legality of the President's actions. Even confirming or denying already publicly known facts -- such as the involvement of the telecoms and the massive data-mining programs -- would be too damaging to national security. Why? Because the DNI says so. It is not merely specific documents, but entire lawsuits, that must be dismissed in advance as soon as the privilege is asserted because "its very subject matter would inherently risk or require the disclosure of state secrets."

What's being asserted here by the Obama DOJ is the virtually absolute power of presidential secrecy, the right to break the law with no consequences, and immunity from surveillance lawsuits so sweeping that one can hardly believe that it's being claimed with a straight face. It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior. As EFF's Bankston put it: "President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties. But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a "secret" that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again."

New and worse secrecy and immunity claims from the Obama DOJ (via /.)

WayHomer was one of several readers to point out the 40th birthday of an important tool in the formation of the Internet, and a look back at it by the author of the first of many. "Stephen Crocker in the New York Times writes, 'Today is an important date in the history of the Internet: the 40th anniversary of what is known as the Request for Comments (RFC).' 'RFC1 — Host Software' was published 40 years ago today, establishing a framework for documenting how networking technologies and the Internet itself work. Distribution of this memo is unlimited."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The PUMA is a Segway/car combination prototyped by Dean Kamen's company in collaboration with General Motors. More details and video at Boing Boing Gadgets. Puma: GM and Segway take a swing at a small car (Thanks, Jim Leftwich!)

Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscreen" 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.

---

Today Boing Boing video debuts a new work from the multitalented multimedia artist Bill Barminski, whose animation and short films we've featured many times before. This one's a retro-kitschy flight of fancy for his music side project Subatomic Nixons, and features a character who looks a lot like television legend Ed Sullivan -- only, he's wearing a superhero cape and smiting rock bands. The video was produced by Walter Robot (= Bill Barminski and Christopher Louie).

Here are previous Boing Boing video episodes featuring Barminski's work.

Adam sez,

Last month, Boing Boing encouraged folks to "sign the open letter" at FixCNBC.com, which asked the network to hold Wall Street accountable instead of being in the tank for big corporations.

This FixCNBC site was built by Rebecca Malamud and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, and was a project of the new Progressive Change Campaign Committee -- which primarily helps elect strong progressives to Congress. Over 20,000 people signed the letter.

The PCCC teamed up with some NYC comedians (including someone from the Onion) to deliver the letter to CNBC, and today the video of that delivery was released. It's good. Check it out!

(And if you haven't signed the letter to CNBC yet, you still can)

Message delivered to CNBC! (Thanks, Adam!)

Today, I am going to show you how easy it is to connect, and use, a Memsic 2125 Accelerometer from the Maker Shed. This sensor is able to detect tilt, acceleration, rotation, and vibration with a range of ±2 g. It can be used for making balancing robots, game controllers, musical instruments and more. I'll get you started...what you do next is up to you!

Want to learn even more about the Memsic 2125 accelerometer? You can check out all the detailed specifications on the data sheet here.

Subscribe to the MAKE podcast | Download for iTunes

Don't forget to checkout my other Arduino 101 videos:

• How-To Tuesday: Arduino 101 blink an LED
• How-To Tuesday: Arduino 101 the button
• How-To Tuesday: Arduino 101 potentiometers and servos
• How-To Tuesday: Fun with the Arduino Starter Kit

Another great resource is Becky's excellent CRAFT Video: LilyPad Arduino 101

In the Maker Shed:

The Memsic 2125 accelerometer from the Maker Shed is a low cost, dual-axis thermal accelerometer capable of measuring tilt, acceleration, rotation, and vibration with a range of ±2 g. It's a great addition to many robotic projects, and is compatible with most micro-controllers, including the Arduino.

More about the Memsic 2125 accelerometer

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palegray.net writes "CNN is running an article on the notorious effects of caffeine withdrawal, a problem that seems to be affecting an increasing number of people. Citing numerous reasons why people might need to cut back on their caffeine intake (pregnancy, pre-surgery requirements, etc), the story notes a significant number of people who are simply unable to quit. I drink around eight cups of coffee a day, along with a soda or two, and I definitely suffer from nasty withdrawal symptoms without my fix."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While my keynote presentation today at the Mesh Conference does mention Trent Reznor, luckily (for me) it's not the same presentation I did at MidemNet... because, if it was, I'd have to do a last minute update on the presentation to take into account the new iPhone app that Reznor is releasing, which basically takes all of the features from the NIN website, and enables it on the iPhone... and then adds in a neat bit of location-based info so fans can find each other, or know where other fans happen to be. And, oh yeah, despite all the fuss about charging for iPhone apps, he's releasing it for free -- realizing that better enabling fans to connect will only help him further monetize other things later. The overall article is a great read as well, digging deeper into Reznor's experiments, business model and thoughts on the process:

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't think music should be free. But the climate is such that it's impossible for me to change that, because the record labels have established a sense of mistrust. So everything we've tried to do has been from the point of view of, 'What would I want if I were a fan? How would I want to be treated?' Now let's work back from that. Let's find a way for that to make sense and monetize it."

He's making the same point we've been making. It's no longer about whether or not music "should" be free. That doesn't matter any more. For most people it is free. So once you accept that, you start looking for ways to do more with it -- and Reznor is doing much more with it than just about anyone else.

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a whoabot writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Obama administration has stepped in to defend AT&T in the case over their participation in the warrantless wiretapping program started by Bush. The Obama administration argues that that continuation of the case will lead to the disclosure of important 'state secrets.' The Electronic Frontier Foundation has described the action as an 'embrace' of the Bush policy." Update: 04/07 15:18 GMT by T : Glenn Greenwald of Salon has up an analysis of this move, including excerpts from the actual brief filed. Excerpt: "This brief and this case are exclusively the Obama DOJ's, and the ample time that elapsed — almost three full months — makes clear that it was fully considered by Obama officials."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My friend Randy and I both recently had joint surgery (me on my knee, him on his shoulder), and we've been talking often about physical therapy. For shoulder patients, a couple of handles on a rope moving around a pulley over the patient's head is used for stretching the joint, and is recommended for use more often than would be convenient to attend the treatment center, so Randy made his own, and in true Instructables fashion, shows you how.

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Recently on Offworld we took a look at the four indie dev meets studio artist/illustrator games produced for Giant Robot and Attract Mode's Game Over/Continue? show that opened the final day of GDC. The games (above, the collaboration between Hellen Jo and Spelunky creator Derek Yu) made a one-night-only appearance, so if you missed the show, this is one of your best opportunities to take a closer look. We also played Enviro-Bear 2000: Operation: Hibernation, a 5-minute physics enabled journey starring the titular bear driving a sedan into trees and through ponds for some pre-hibernation sustenance (and one of the most charming indie games in recent memory), and took a first look at 8bitar Hero, a multiplayer game that procedurally generates Rock Band patterns from someone playing an emulated NES game, in real-time. Elsewhere we saw a real life Pip-Boy 3000 from Fallout 3 created with the help of an iPod Touch, saw the results of updating a NES Power Glove with modern day technology, and saw the first screens of the indie-created WiiWare game Super Meat Boy. Finally, we watched a 1993 home video from John Romero showing an early prototype of Doom, a disqualified but still fantastic Assembly 2003 demoscene music video from Melon Dezign, a laser cutter that can play the Super Mario theme, and paged through The Croopier, an experiment in creating timely and newsworthy games in Processing every week.

Back in late January, I did a guest blogging stint on Boing Boing. One of the things I wrote about was my new Braithwaite wallet, a beautiful laser-etched, Deco-inspired coat wallet (that I carry in my front pants pocket). In the comments to my post, one person remarked: "I can't wait for someone to rip off these designs and sell them for cheaper." Connor Ferster, the man behind the Braithwaite, didn't take offense, he took it to heart. He decided to make all of their wallet designs (interiors and exteriors) available as free PDF downloads (measurements and all), licensed under Creative Commons. Anyone can download the designs and either make their own wallet, based on the Braithwaite pattern, or remix the designs and make their own (and yes even as a commercial product). I think this is a really smart thing to do. It's going to get them far more publicity and good will than whatever they might lose in sales.

Connor also tells me about a new program they have to replace any wallet you buy from them, should your wallet ever get lost or stolen. But this offer is only good through April 22nd which is when they actually start shipping wallets (they're still in a pre-order phase).

Braithwaite Wallets

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An anonymous reader writes "Reacting to allegedly fraudulent election procedures, students are storming the presidency and parliament of the small eastern European country of Moldova. It is reported that they used Twitter to organize. Currently twitter and blogs are being used to spread word of what is happening since all national news websites have been blocked. If the 1989 Romanian revolution was the first to be televised, is this the first to be led by twitter and social networks?" Jamie points out this interesting presentation (from March 2008) by Ethan Zuckerman about the realities of online activism, including how governments try to constrain it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Reacting to allegedly fraudulent election procedures, students are storming the presidency and parliament of the small eastern European country of Moldova. It is reported that they used Twitter to organize. Currently twitter and blogs are being used to spread word of what is happening since all national news websites have been blocked. If the 1989 Romanian revolution was the first to be televised, is this the first to be lead by twitter and social networks?" Jamie points out this interesting presentation (from March 2008) by Ethan Zuckerman about the realities of online activism, including how governments try to constrain it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's been plenty of complaining about how ticket scalpers for various concerts and sporting events have been scooping up all of the tickets for events and making it more expensive for fans to get those tickets. Of course, in many cases, companies like TicketMaster and the musicians themselves are in on the deal, pretending to offer "scalped" tickets that they're really selling themselves. With so much talk about this issue, you knew it was only a matter of time until some grandstanding politician got involved. In this case, it's New York's Chuck Schumer, who has introduced new legislation to try to limit ticket reselling (thanks to Eric Goldman for sending this over). It will require ticket resellers to "register" with the FTC, and then such official resellers will only be allowed to get tickets two days after the tickets go on sale.

It's difficult to see what good this does, other than create a bigger bureaucratic mess. If you don't think that the ticket resellers will figure out workarounds, you haven't been paying much attention over the past few years. Besides, the very fact that Ticketmaster thinks this is a good law is a pretty damning sign that it's not doing much to solve the problem, but is really designed to help Ticketmaster make more money.

It's still difficult to see why these issues can't be solved effectively without legislation. Bands can offer early tickets through fan clubs or mailing lists, or use other tools to make sure fans get tickets at lower prices. Besides, if the demand really is that high for certain tickets, what's wrong with letting the market determine that?

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A great oppurtunity to do awesome things @ Eyebeam's Art & Technology Center -

Eyebeam Residencies
Summer / Fall 2009

You've got big ideas. You could use a little time and money, not to mention support and inspiration, to create a visionary project. Apply between April 1 and May 15 for Eyebeam's Summer/Fall 2009 Residency cycle. Residents are granted a $5,000 stipend and 24/7 access to Eyebeam's state of the art digital design and fabrication studios at their Chelsea facility.

About the Residency

Eyebeam residencies support the creative research, production and presentation of initiatives querying art, technology and culture. The residency is a period of concentration and immersion in artistic investigation, daring research or production of visionary, experimental applications and projects. Past initiatives have ranged from live animation, sound and physical computing works to technical prototypes, installations and tactical media events. Check out what our current and past residents have been doing here: http://eyebeam.org/people-residents/residents.

The ideal resident will both contribute to and benefit from the collective environment at Eyebeam, and will embrace the spirit of openness shared across the organization: open source, open content and open distribution.

To promote collaboration and the sharing of diverse skill sets, Eyebeam has established and continues to encourage the formation of research groups that bring together creative practitioners working at Eyebeam as well as expert external participants.

New research often leads to public outcomes including seminars, workshops and exhibition. Research groups currently active at Eyebeam include:

• Sustainability
• Urban Research
• Middle Eastern Research
• Open Cultures

For more information and to apply check out the FAQ here

If you're interested, be sure to check out the "How To Apply" forum on 4-16-09.

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eldavojohn writes "The Associated Press is starting to feel the bite of the economic recession and said on Monday that they will 'work with portals and other partners who legally license our content and will seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don't.' They are talking about everything from search engines to aggregators that link to news articles and some sites that reproduce the whole news article. The article notes that in Europe legislative action has blocked Google from using news articles from some outlets similar to what was discussed here last week."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Are you an American who worries about terrorism? Stop. If you want to worry about something, here's John Goekler's Counterpunch article on the statistically likely killers that you need to fear:

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, between 310,000 and 580,000 of us will commit suicide by cigarette this year. Another 260,000 to 470,000 will go in the ground due to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. And some 85,000 of us will drink to our own departure.

After the person in the mirror, the next most dangerous individual we're ever likely to encounter is one in a white coat. Something like 200,000 of us will experience "cessation of life" due to medical errors - botched procedures, mis-prescribed drugs and "nosocomial infections". (The really nasty ones you get from treatment in a hospital or healthcare service unit.)

The next most dangerous encounter the average American is likely to have is with a co-worker with an infection. Or a doorknob, stair railing or restaurant utensil touched by someone with the crud. "Microbial Agents" (read bugs like flu and pneumonia) will send 75,000 of us to meet the Reaper this year.

If we live through those social encounters, the next greatest danger is "Toxic Agents" - asbestos in our ceiling, lead in our pipes, the stuff we spray on our lawns or pour down our clogged drains. Annual body count from these handy consumer products is around 55,000...

Imagine what the world could look like if we made a conscious choice to live out whatever time we have with courage, compassion, service and joy.

Terrorism is an act of the weak. But so is walking through the airport in our socks.

The Most Dangerous Person in the World? (via Schneier)

From the MAKE Flickr pool

The nixie tube isn't the only vintage tube display device - The Dekatron was used in computers and calculators as far back as the 1940s. Eschlaep's put one to a bit of practical use as what is likely the coolest and highest power kitchen timer evers -

Dekatrons are relatively difficult to find, so I decided to use a single Dekatron in my timer. Actually this project is an old one that I revisited. The original project was just going to be a spinner, but I had trouble with the driving circuit (it never worked reliably). For the 2008 Maker Fair I dusted it off and tried to power it up–with 12V instead of 5V. The power supply and microcontroller did not appreciate it and the whole thing stopped working. The second time around I decided to turn it into something useful.

There are twenty minutes remaining on the timer. You can read the time using the scribed lines on the brass ring around the Dekatron. The ionized gas in the tube glows purple because of the high argon content.

A beautiful device, complemented well by a homemade wooden 1/8" plug. See more of the project on his blog and Flickr. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

The LA Times reports that Konami has announced Six Days in Fallujah, a video game due out next year that is based on an actual battle fought in Iraq in 2004. Quoting: "The idea for the game ... came from US Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, NC, that makes combat simulation software for the military. ... 'The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that's what they grew up playing,' said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami... More than a dozen Marines are featured in documentary-style video interviews that are interspersed with the game's action. The Marines reappear in the game itself, doing pretty much what they did during the war. One tells the story of how he furiously wrote a letter to his wife and begged a chaplain to give it to her if he died. Another, Eddie Garcia, talks about how his right leg was shredded in a mortar attack, and how he suffered survivor's guilt after he was taken out of combat."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The LA Times reports that Konami has announced Six Days in Fallujah, a video game due out next year that is based on an actual battle fought in Iraq in 2004. Quoting: "The idea for the game ... came from US Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, NC, that makes combat simulation software for the military. ... 'The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that's what they grew up playing,' said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami... More than a dozen Marines are featured in documentary-style video interviews that are interspersed with the game's action. The Marines reappear in the game itself, doing pretty much what they did during the war. One tells the story of how he furiously wrote a letter to his wife and begged a chaplain to give it to her if he died. Another, Eddie Garcia, talks about how his right leg was shredded in a mortar attack, and how he suffered survivor's guilt after he was taken out of combat."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With 2009 showing very strong ticket sales, the movie industry seems to be doing a good job of giving people, who are perhaps looking for a bit of escapism, a reason to get out of their houses. Furthermore, IMAX and 3D continue to boost ticket sales and draw huge lines for movies like Monsters vs. Aliens. Fast & Furious rumbled onto the big screen this past weekend, generating $72.5 million in ticket sales in three days, already earning more than the previous installment of the series, The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift. At Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, movie-goers have yet another reason to check out the film on the big screen. The theater is equipped with 15 computerized movie seats that move, shake, tilt, and rumble to match the action on-screen. As a result, viewers are immersed more fully in the film, an experience not easily reproduced at home for which the Chinese (and one other theater in Arizona) are charging an extra $5 per ticket. We've said this many times before, but maybe the movie theaters are finally starting to understand the concept that it's the experience, not just the content, that gives people a reason to go out to see movies at the theaters.

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Alex sez, "I'm involved in a free Children's Book Festival in Crystal Palace, London, taking place on Saturday 25th April. There's a whole day of free workshops, including comic masterclasses, monster-drawing and horror writing. The aim was to make it as quirky and interesting for children, and get them involved in making stuff of their own. As well as the workshops, there's also an exhibition of illustration/comics at a local gallery, and in the local bookshop there will be readings and signings by authors throughout the day. Through twisting a few people's arms, I've managed to get some great up-and-coming people involved - all giving their time for nothing."

The Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival (Thanks, Alex!)

As usual, Alex at Tinkerlog does an excellent job of clearly describing some electronics arcana, in this case, exactly why one needs to use current limiting resistors on LEDs (and when you can do without them).

If you apply a specific voltage to a resistor, you can compute the resulting current with:

I = V / R Example: I = 5 Volt / 100 Ohm = 50 mA

Obviously that does not work with LEDs because they don't behave like a linear resistor. If you look at the graph above, you can rise the voltage from 0 Volt to 1.6 Volt without resulting in noticeable current. Apply a bit more voltage and there is current and the LED lights up. We have reached the Forward Voltage which is needed to open the pn-gate. Forward Voltage (VF) for a typical red LED is 1.7 to 2.2 Volt. Now small changes in the voltage produce large effects on the resulting forward current (IF). Datasheets normally state at least the absolute maximum ratings for IF, eg. 25 mA. If you apply a voltage that results in a larger current, the LED may be destroyed.

Driving an LED with or without a resistor

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intersys writes "A new fundamental law of economics has been formulated by Rod Beckstrom, former Director of the National Cyber Security Center. In Words: The value of a network equals the net value added to each user's transactions (PDF) conducted through that network, valued from the perspective of each user, and summed for all. It answers the decades-old question of 'how valuable is a network.' It is granular and transactions-based, and can be used to value any network: social, electronic, support groups, and even the Internet as a whole. This new model or law values the network by looking from the edge of the network at all of the transactions conducted and the value added to each. One way to contemplate the value the network adds to each transaction is to imagine the network being shut off and what the additional transactions' costs or loss would be. Beckstrom's Law replaces Metcalfe's law, Reed's law, and other concepts which proposed that the value of a network was based purely on the size of the network (and in the case of Metcalfe's law, one other variable)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Modding virtuoso Ben Heck presents this highly convincing C64 for retro-on-the-go users. -

This project somehow has the distinction of being both the longest and fastest portable electronics project I have ever done. I originally started making a C64 laptop in the fall of 2006, and kept pecking away at it every so often. Finally, a few weeks ago, I said "screw it" and started over.

I redid everything in a week and a half - the shortest project ever. (The previous record hold was the Wii portable at 2 weeks) The goal this time was to make something that looked exactly like a computer from the early 80's, yet in a new form. Including the color beige and texture.

The build uses a genuine 'C64C' motherboard, along with a gamecube power supply and SD card doing its best floppy disk impersonation. But I'm guessing that vintage keyboard feel is the best part! Could a Vic 128 palmtop be far behind? Check out a ton of build pics and info over on Ben's site.

More:

Teeny Tiny Commodore 64

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In response to my latest Toolbox column, Mark Demers, aka SpikenzieLabs, sent us a link to his solder spool holder kit. The kit is a laser-cut stackable acrylic box that holds spools of solder or wire. You can buy a kit (for $10) or download the files from Thingaverse and cut and assemble your own.

Solder Spool Holder Kit

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Sunday's DIY workshop at CHI 2009 was a great time, with a thoughtful mix of academia and hands-on projects. DIY for CHI was a workshop presented at the CHI2009 conference in Boston. We had a chance to meet and greet important people who are teaching and studying the arts of creating computer interfaces with students and other participants. There were productive discussions about creating data collecting systems, opportunities to grow the academic side of the DIY movement, and the pleasures and pitfalls of living with DIY practitioners. Demonstrations included creating wearable input devices, making RFID sensing units, making fabric out of plastic bags, circuit bending, a site visit to the Boston Fab Lab and more.

As a followup for the workshop, dorkbot boston has created a get together at the MIT Media Lab:

Dorkbot: DIY for CHI What: Dorkbot: DIY for CHI Methods, Communities, and Values of Reuse and Customization When: Tuesday 7 April 2009 7:00 PM Where: Bartos theater, Lower Level, at the MIT Media Lab (building E15 on the MIT campus) map Cost: Free! Open to everyone!

Check it out and bring your ideas for building community around DIY in education, and society.

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While other states are banning traffic cameras after realizing that they're entirely about revenue, and tend to be less efficient as a way of improving safety, it looks like Maryland is going in the other direction. Tim DiPaula points out that Maryland is planning to increase the use of both speed and traffic light cameras, using the overall "better safety!" claim to get it approved. Of course, the fact that some towns in Maryland that already have such cameras brought in more money from them than the entire town budget seems to also be an important factor.

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When Scripting News started twelve years ago, it was a link blog, the only kind of blog that existed at the time, and of course they weren't even called blogs, a term that wouldn't come along for another three years. Over time I started including "posts" -- longer essays, following the form of other bloggers. Just before I started using Twitter, early in 2007, I made a conscious decision to stop linking from Scripting News, and to make every bit of content here a post. It wasn't doing any good to be the only link blog. When I started using Twitter it provided an outlet for links, I pushed the links I'd normally post on Scripting News.

I tried a lot of experiments with links, but they all came up short. Either I didn't have enough people following to create critical mass, or the attention span of Twitter users is too ephemeral to make it worth the effort. You could see it in the read counts of things I point to on Twitter. In the first few minutes there would be hundreds of hits, then the traffic would fall off immediately. For most people Twitter scrolls fast, it seems a waste to put much thought into linking, because it doesn't seem to generate much thought.

Now I think I've hit the sweet spot, for a variety of reasons:

1. No special feed, the links go out to my main Twitter account, so the most people see them. This means I have to be the only editor. The feed has my name on it, so the links come from me.

2. I have a very sweet editorial tool. It's so simple and effortless I actually look forward to pushing a link cause it's so much fun.

3. The links are not ephemeral, they accumulate on a page of the 25 most recent links ranked by the number of clicks, thanks to the facility of the tr.im API. I find myself going back to that page as part of my rotation, along with GMail, Twitter and FF -- I want to see how each topic is viewed by the people following the flow. There are real differences. A link to me singing Green Acres with Amy Bellinger didn't rank so high (shame cause it's funny) but a Lifehacker article about running Ubuntu in a Window on Windows ranked very high with over 1000 clicks over a long period. Clearly this link was passed around. I think more people are going to tune into this list, esp as I branch out and do it for other prominent Twitter linkers, and it gets included in something bigger I'm playing with.

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that Microsoft acknowledged today it has 'broadened the options' for PC makers to continue offering Windows XP as a downgrade from Vista — and potentially even Windows 7. However, the company would not confirm specific reports that HP has been given the green light to sell new PCs with Windows XP Pro pre-installed through the end of April 2010. 'Windows XP went into semi-retirement in June 2008, when Microsoft stopped selling it at retail and withdrew Windows XP Home from use on all but netbooks, though it allowed XP Professional to be installed as a Vista downgrade. Since then, Microsoft has extended the final date it will sell XP Professional install media to large computer makers and smaller systems builders to July 31, 2009, and May 30, 2009, respectively. Today, Microsoft denied that it had extended the life span of Windows XP, and intimated that those rights were built into the newer operating system — in this case, Vista — and did not expire at some arbitrary date.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Via Jay Rosen comes a discussion sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America about how to "reinvent" the print newspaper. Of course, it seems like the premise here is a bit skewed. It's like saying "how to reinvent the horse-drawn carriage" rather than "how do we improve transportation." There's no rule that news has to come in print form, but it seems like some newspaper folks believe that print has special powers. As Rosen highlights, Charlotte Hall, an editor from the Orlando Sentinel, says during the discussion:

It stops the clock once a day and takes an assessment, offering the kind of in-depth and analytical work that the 24/7 breaking news world on the Web cannot provide. Print is good at the things the Web is not good at--watchdog, explanatory, enterprise, narrative storytelling.

That sounds good, but it's not print that's doing that. It's the reporters and editors who are doing that -- and there's absolutely nothing stopping them from doing it online as well. And, therein lies the problem. Some folks in the newspaper world seem to have imbued "print" with special powers that it just doesn't have. Yes, for many people print newspapers are convenient -- and they don't necessarily need to go away. But it seems that so many people get so focused on the physical paper that they forget about actually serving their community.

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For years, many people have been pointing out that the real problem with broadband in the US isn't an issue of net neutrality or broadband caps, but the lack of competition. While having only two providers in a region usually isn't enough to ensure reasonable broadband practices, it may actually be working in upstate NY. While Frontier Communications has been talking about really low usage caps, it seems that now that Time Warner Cable has decided to launch capped broadband in one of Frontier's regions, the company may be thinking about going in the other direction, potentially even running a whole ad campaign about why TWC customers should switch to avoid the caps. Of course, given Frontier's previous statements about caps, it's difficult to believe that customers will be all that well protected from an eventual capped broadband anyway. But, still, this demonstrates that competition can sometimes keep these things in check. But, what you really need is more than just two players.

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candiman writes "The Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, has just announced that none of the private sector submissions to build a National Broadband Network was up to the standard, so instead the government is going to form a private company to build a fiber to the premises network. The network will connect to 90% of premises delivering 100Mb/s. The remaining 10% will be reached with wireless and satellite delivering up to 12Mb/s. The network cost has been estimated at 43 billion AU dollars over 8 years of construction — and is expected to employ 47,000 people at peak. It will be wholesale only and completely open access. As an Australian who voted for the other guys, all I can say is, wow."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Holly Yarbrough's Mister Rogers Swings! is a fine collection of swinging, jazzy, uptempo covers of songs from classic episodes of Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, with a big, brassy band backing sweet, passionate vocals. You can catch a preview of the disc with "Won't You Be My Neighbor" at the end of this week's Tank Riot podcast, around 1:10:14.

1. Won't You Be My Neighbor
2. You've Got to Do It
3. I Like to Be Told
4. Sometimes People Are Good
5. It's You I Like
6. When the Day Turns Into Night
7. Everybody's Fancy
8. Please Don't Think it's Funny
9. Look & Listen
10. This is Just The Day
11. Many Ways to Say I Love You
12. You Are Special
13. I'm Taking Care of You
14. Peace & Quiet
15. Then Your Heart Is Full of Love
16. It's Such a Good Feeling Mister Rogers Swings!

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Steven's found these swell, tuna-as-nerd tees:

Critter Tees is a line of t-shirts for fisherman and fishophiles. They sure do love wordplay: Bob Marlin? Salmon' Be Jammin'? I'm no pro angler, but I'm partial to their "big eye tuna on campus..." tee. A pocket-protector-toting fish? In horn-rimmed glasses? ...that are, of course, taped at the bridge. Sign me up.

Geeks Are Big Eye Tuna!?

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

The Reading Rights Coalition and the National Federation for the Blind are staging a protest in New York today (Tuesday) at the offices of the Authors Guild, to let the Guild know that their successful campaign to remove the text-to-speech feature from the Kindle has hurt blind people and undermined their ability to access a wide variety of works in a more-accessible form.

The Authors Guild argued that the text-to-speech feature in the Kindle violated their copyrights, saying that the private use of a file-conversion feature infringed the "performance right" in copyright, and that it was illegal for Amazon to make devices that could be used to infringe copyright, even if they could also be used in non-infringing ways. Neither of these premises stand up to legal scrutiny, but Amazon withdrew the feature anyway -- now, text-to-speech works only on books that have it switched on.

The Authors Guild has gone on record saying that this has nothing to do with blind people (who have a statutory right to transform books to "assistive formats") because the Kindle's touchscreen wouldn't work for totally blind people.

This is nonsense, and I assume the AG knows it.

First, because "legally blind" is not the same as "totally blind." Indeed, the Kindle's ability to dynamically resize text makes it a natural for readers with limited vision, and it's entirely likely that a disproportionate number of Kindle owners are legally blind.

Second, and most importantly: even if the Kindle had a big, Braille, "I AM BLIND READ EVERYTHING ALOUD TO ME" button (thus rendering all its text accessible to even legally blind people), the Authors Guild's legal theories would still prohibit its production.

Under the theory that any devices that can convert text to audio is illegal if it's possible that some of those texts aren't "licensed for text-to-speech conversion," then no device that can convert arbitrary ebooks to audio will ever be legal.

Sorry, blind people, guess you're out of luck.

The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m. The coalition includes the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promised for the first time easy, mainstream access to over 255,000 books.

Reading Rights Coalition Urges Authors to Allow Everyone Access to E-books

Stephen "Mathematica" Wolfram, author of the tome A New Kind Of Science, has been developing a new browser search engine called Wolfram|Alpha. BB pal Rudy Rucker, a brilliant mathematician in his own right, spent two hours on the phone with Wolfram and wrote up his notes for h+ Magazine. From h+:

Kicking off our conversation, Stephen remarks that, "Wolfram|Alpha isn't really a search engine, because we compute the answers, and we discover new truths. If anything, you might call it a platonic search engine, unearthing eternal truths that may never have been written down before..."

Wolfram|Alpha can pop out an answer to pretty much any kind of factual question that you might pose to a scientist, economist, banker, or other kind of expert. The exciting part is that you're not just looking up pages on the web, you're getting new information that's generated by computations working from the known data. Wolfram says the response can be so speedy because, "We've found that, of all the things science can compute, most take a second or less."

Wolfram sees his new program as being part of a history of mankind's attempts to systematize knowledge. "We have the encyclopedists trying to write everything down. We have people like John Wilkins trying to create an analytical language for thought. We have philosophers and scientists hoping to find a universal theory of the world. But all these attempts founder on the vastness and the subdivisibility of the tasks."

He feels that the turning point came with Newton and Leibniz. "Before Newton, nobody had the notion of trying to compute the truth. They always thought in terms of reasoning things out like a human would do. But the point isn't to emulate a human being. The point is to find an answer. Leibniz came closest to the notion of Wolfram|Alpha, with his plan for a universal library, and with his dream of a logical system for calculating truth."

Wolfram|Alpha: Searching for Truth

One thing about riding a two-wheeled vehicle on a four-wheeled road, you 've got to be visible: that's why our Joel on Boing Boing Gadgets is so excited about these lovely, hi-viz helmets:

These are DOT-approved (or at least were) motorcycle helmets crafted by a Brazilian artist who uses "animal teeth, fangs, bones, and hairs besides fines stones from the Amazon river" to make these $100 helmets.

This is a motorcycle helmet

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted a rara avis from the criminal underground:

A Consumerist reader found a card skimmer on a WaMu ATM. He ripped it off and reported it to the police and the bank. The police said they'd never actually seen one in real life.

I always check for card skimmers at the ATM by smashing the front repeatedly with a sledgehammer, starting with the camera.

Local man finds card skimmer on ATM

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Twenty six seconds' worth of science: a cannonball floating in mercury!

Cannonball in mercury (via Kottke)

From the "Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary" exhibition at the New Museum of Arts and Design, this wonderful accordioning vanity set made out of bits and pieces of old furniture, sawn and reassembled.

'psiche complexo' by courtney smith, 2003 (armoire, vanity table, stool with cushion, two side table/cabinets, hinges, other hardware)

(Image: Vincente de Mello)

Joshua Fouts writes, "Rita J. King and I are premiering *today* a new documentary exploring the potential of immersive virtual journalism as a tool for empowering global journalism as the industry continues its transformation amidst the current upheaval and collapse. The documentary comes out of a project we did with the Larry Pintak at the American University in Cairo in which we brought a group of 8 Egyptian political activist bloggers into Second Life to explore the potential of the space for empowering and augmenting their work. We were fortunate that our first effort brought a high ranking US State Department official, James K. Glassman, who was then US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy. Some interesting issues came up."

The Launch of a Journalistic Experiment: The Virtual Newsroom of the American University in Cairo

Instructables user CorbinsTreehouse shows us how to make a unicycle rack for your motorcycle. Quite a niche device, I know, but perhaps it can be easily adapted to hold other one-wheeled devices.

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It looks like some lawyers may be realizing that suing so-called "gripe sites" (more commonly called "sucks sites") might not make very much sense (thanks to Bill Squier for sending this in). The lawyer basically points out what plenty of folks have been saying for years: these sites are usually perfectly legal. They don't violate trademark law, and almost every time such a case goes to court the company loses -- only adding more attention and legitimacy to the gripe site. Instead, the lawyer suggests ignoring the site is often the best course of action:

The best course to deal with a gripe site often is to do nothing at all. The site itself actually might have a little impact on a company's business and the ferocity of its venom might obscure the reality that it is only one of millions of sites that has little traffic and that is visited only by the disaffected, whose business is ultimately lost anyway. Also, if the target pays no overt attention to the site, its operator may lose interest in this particular cause and direct his or her ire to more recent, emotionally appealing, or reactive targets. Non-action can be the most difficult course to take where there is a demand that something must be done.

He also notes that sending a cease-and-desist is likely to create the opposite reaction, often encouraging the site to continue (though, while he mentions that cease-and-desist letters are likely to get posted to the sites, he doesn't mention that many site owners will use that to get more attention from others using a "they're trying to shut me down" alarm). Oddly, the lawyers' "final" advice seems like the sort of thing that shouldn't be "final" or a "last resort" but should be much closer to the top of the list:

Finally, the target might seek to engage the operator of the gripe site to find out just what his/her problem is and see if it can be rectified. This would be the cleanest, easiest, and cheapest solution. It might not work, but it has little downside risk and might, if not immediately successful, attenuate the ferocity of the attacks and might in the long run hasten the end of the site, by causing its operator's interest to wane.

Wait... speak to someone like a human and see if you can fix their problem? What kind of advice is that?

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Make: Online has won an award in Treehugger's 1st annual Best of Green Awards. We won in the Science and Tech category as Best DIY Tech and Gadget Blog:

MAKE is an easy winner for this category. The magazine's blog is constantly filled with great ideas, hacks, instructionals, and information that keeps gadgeteers and DIYers entertained and on their toes. It encourages creating cool, useful stuff from what you already have around you. And being resourceful, creative, and thrifty with electronics is something we want to reward.--J.H

Congrats to everyone who works so hard here at Maker Media to make this site possible, and everyone else who contributes to it, and that likely means YOU. Thanks!

Also congrats to Make: Online's Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries for their win in the Best Gadget Hack category for Tweet-a-Watt.

First Annual Best of Green Awards

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A 2007 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded that medical professionals helped the CIA torture detainees held at Guantánamo Bay prison and other "black sites" overseas, and said their participation in the abuse amounted to a "gross breach of medical ethics. The report was kept secret until recently. Snip from New York Times story:

Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report said.

Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers' intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said. But it found that the medical professionals' role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners, and that the professionals had "condoned and participated in ill treatment."

At times, according to the detainees' accounts, medical workers "gave instructions to interrogators to continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods."

The Red Cross report was completed in 2007. It was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalist who has written extensively about torture, and posted Monday night with an article by Mr. Danner on the Web site of The New York Review of Books. Much of its contents were revealed in a March article by Mr. Danner and in a 2008 book, "The Dark Side," by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, but the reporting of the Red Cross investigators' conclusions on medical ethics and other issues are new.

Report Outlines Medical Workers' Role in Torture (NYT)

strongmantim writes "I manage an internal help desk (25-30 people) for a medium-large company in the healthcare industry. We're looking for an internal, secure, FOSS (if possible) instant messaging / presence awareness client and server combo. Transmission of Protected Health Information is a sensitive issue, so the server has to be able to log any conversations that occur. It is preferred that the client not support outside protocols such as AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.; if it does, I will have to promulgate and enforce yet one more policy that my techs not connect to them. All of the computers that will connect run Windows XP. The system should be scalable up to ~100 people (in case we decide to include our entire office in the roll-out). Hardware and OS for the server are not an issue. Oh, and one more thing: It has to be free. Suggestions?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We talk a lot about how it makes sense for people to make their content available online for free and adopt business models that take advantage of that, rather than complain about "piracy." While unauthorized file sharing is usually illegal, it's pretty silly to pretend that it doesn't happen or that you can stop people from sharing stuff they like with others. That said, artist Evan Roth has launched an "Available Online For Free" prank-style promo campaign for his new art exhibit (via Urban Prankster) by creating stickers that can be snuck onto products in a store to advertise the fact that... well, they're probably available online for free. ("Available Online For Free" is the name of the art exhibit and the exhibition book is, not surprisingly, available as a free download.) While it's probably not a good idea to go around putting these stickers onto products in a store (disclaimer: I wouldn't recommend it -- the pictures are kind of funny... but you likely won't make friends with the store owner), the campaign is a pretty creative and humorous way of stating the obvious -- anything that can be, will be available online for free, one way or another. Making your content freely available online doesn't mean that you can't still find ways to sell it, but you need to recognize that this is the lens through which a lot of people see products on a shelf. If you don't realize that yet, you may be in for a lesson via sticker sometime soon...

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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Juliana sez, "Think Galactic, a Chicago-based reading group, is proud to announce that this month they're reading three stories from from Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi. When asked nicely, Bacigalupi and Night Shade Books created a free PDF download of the stories available for book group members and random interwebs denizens to enjoy! The three stories incude the Hugo nominee 'Yellow Card Man,' and the Sturgeon Award-winning story 'The Calorie Man.' Think Galactic, which seeks to engage with speculative fiction from a radical left perspective, is hosting the file on their website, and hosting a convention in Chicago this June. They're ecstatic that Bacigalupi and Night Shade Books are giving people a chance to taste cutting-edge works that Kelly Link describes as, 'Ferocious, intelligent, and precisely rendered, these stories include some of my favorite contes cruels and cautionary tales for the twenty-first century. Paolo Bacigalupi is clearly the fifth rider of the apocalypse - you know, the one who writes science fiction in his spare time.'"

PDF Link

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi (Thanks, Juliana!)

You gotta watch the video. (Update: Ugh, Sony BMG has stupidly geo-blocked most of the world from viewing this video on YouTube, maybe try metacafe if YT doesn't work for you).

Josh Kun has a piece in the New York Times about the Mexican cumbia band Los Pikadientes de Caborca, who hail from Mexico's Sonora region. Their crazy ride to stardom and a major label contract was sparked by a cellphone ringtone for the song featured in that video, above.

Last year Los Pikadientes de Caborca recorded "La Cumbia del Río" -- a bare-boned singalong about dancing and partying by the side of a local river -- on a home computer, uploaded it to their cellphones and, with help from Bluetooth and Memory Sticks, shared it with friends. The song quickly went viral, and its grass-roots popularity led to heavy rotation on radio stations across Sonora; before long, cellphone videos of people dancing to the song were flooding YouTube.

Los Pikadientes had no record label, but suddenly they were the digital darlings of regional Mexican music, with a hit on both sides of the border.

Sony offered the band a record deal and rereleased "La Cumbia del Río," which spent six weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Regional Mexican chart. The song's ring tone sold more than 150,000 copies in the United States, and the band released a debut album, "Vámonos Pa'l Río," which was nominated for a 2008 Grammy. The song is still on the Latin charts.

"We have to be honest; we wouldn't exist without cellphones and ring tones," said Francisco Gonzalez (who goes by the single name Pancho) of Los Pikadientes, whose new album is scheduled for June, complete with an elaborate ring-tone marketing plan. "We ended up doing eight months of promotion in the United States because of that one song. We're the ultimate cellphone success story."

Mexican Bands Hear Success Calling (NYT, via Ned Sublette's mailing list). You can buy their stuff here, too.

Update 2: Jose Marquez from holamun2.com says,

Happy to see the Mexican Village People on BoingBoing. :-) here's a TV interview they did with us in February. And here is a text interview with them from last October. And finally, we also worked with the band to make their first video before the label had a chance to. The guy in the video works in I.T. at NBC Universal.

In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, refurbish, etc.

---

Last week, I did a posting called Show us your shop!. The idea was to encourage people to share pictures of their workspaces and tell us about them. To provide some incentive, I offered a Maker's Notebook and the choice of Best of Instructables or Best of MAKE to our favorite post. The piece got a really nice response, with some seriously cool, well thought out (and tricked out) spaces on display. It was actually hard to choose a winner. Jeff Duntemann's shop was probably my fave, and his shop tips were so good, I turned them into a separate post. But Jennifer Elaan's electronics shop is also pretty spectacular. And others were worth crowing about too, so much so, I decided to do this week's column on some of what I've leaned from looking at these fine workspaces.

Oh, and I decided to give a Maker's Notebook and choice of books to both Jeff and Jennifer. I'll be sending you both emails. Congrats.

Check out the previous post I did about Jeff's shop and tips, and check out his original article. Here's another tip from it:

Build a Rotating "Wire Tower"

If you work in electronics, you have to deal with wire. Lots of wire. If you're going to build radios or other equipment that operates at RF, you will need lots of kinds of wire: Bare tinned "bus wire," tinned hookup wire, and many sizes of enameled "magnet wire" which is not often used for magnets but is essential for winding RF coils. At some point you'll end up with a ratty cardboard box full of spools, all of different sizes, and (predictably; this must be Somebody's Law) you'll have to dig all the way to the bottom of the bin to find the spool you want.

So manage your wire. Build a rotating wire tower.

Jennifer Elaan's workspace is like an electronic geek's dreamspace. Check out the desk above (one of several). That looks like an analog and a digital scope, a signal generator, three DMMs, a benchtop power supply, a logic probe, and lots of test leads. Check out the magnetized helping hands made out of machine shop cooling hose to the left. Not shown in this picture is a separate test lead rack, filled with leads. The second picture is her tool drawer. Looks like she doesn't skimp on tools (and neither should you!).

Herbie is a CNC Machine with his own blog. Hey, we didn't say that MAKE readers weren't weird. Herbie's... owner sent us a link to Herbie's blog, which included the above walkthrough of Herbie's... ah... new baby brother, an XY table and cam-lock vise and new drill press. Herbie must be leaking lubricant in numerically-controlled sibling rage!

Here's what Herbie's owner says of his shop:

I am a hobby machinist and physical computing tinkerer working out of a very compact shop in my NYC (Manhattan) apartment! My workshop is only about 85 sq ft but I have a CNC mill, 7x14 lathe, multiple pieces of sheetmetal working equipment (notcher, shear, three finger brakes), grinder, buffing wheel, punch press, air compressor, workshop computer, soldering station/EE bench, bandsaw, drill press, and more! I do not do 'for profit' work but rather do rapid-prototyping and similar stuff for myself, friends, and fellow hackers. Check out my website/blog.

Read full story

More:

• Toolbox: What the hell is that thing?
• Toolbox: Soldering station tools and hacks
• Make: Online Toolbox: Jigs, clamps, and helping hands
• Toolbox: Ten tools you won't want to live without
• Toolbox: Benchtop power supplies
• Toolbox: Portable lighting
• Toolbox: Portable workbench
• Toolbox: From "miserable old box" to workshop showpiece

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With Sweden's new antipiracy law in effect, it seems that one industry is getting a nice boost: apparently there's a lot of new interest in encrypting your internet traffic, and services that provide encrypted VPN services are getting lots of new business. This, once again, points out that near total pointlessness in playing Whac-A-Mole over file sharing. It just become an endless game where each side continues to elevate itself, and it makes it that much more difficult in the end for the entertainment industry to do what it will inevitably be forced to do anyway: start building business models that embrace file sharing. But the further they push users of such services underground, the more and more difficult they'll find it to embrace these services down the road. Each attempt to knock out these services or their users only comes around to backfire on the industry itself.

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(Click images for enlargement)

My kids have a couple of Berenstain Bears books, which I've never bothered to read, because I don't find the art very compelling. I'm much more interested in Richard Scarry's wry humor, or Dr. Seuss' psychedelic meltiness, or Mel Crawford's primary-colored frankness.

But a couple of weeks ago I visited the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY, and came across an exhibit of 1940s through 1960s era magazine illustrations by Stan and Jan Berenstain, and I was knocked over by how stupendously fun and brilliantly composed they were. The large illustrations, which appeared in Colliers, McCall’s, and The Saturday Evening Post, featured crowd scenes of dozens of kids fighting, making mischief, throwing temper tantrums, crying, taunting, hiding, and marveling at the world around them. The art rivals Will Elder's for its masterfully executed complexity and elements of humorous little details.

It turns out there's a book that has many of these illustrations, called Child's Play: The Berenstain Baby Boom, 1946-1964 - Cartoon Art of Stan and Jan Berenstain. I just ordered my copy and am looking forward to poring over the pages with my kids.

An anonymous reader writes "Citing figures from market research firm NPD, Microsoft says Windows' share of the US netbook market has ballooned from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February. 'The growth of Windows on netbook PCs over the last year has been phenomenal,' wrote Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft's in-house Windows blogger, in a post Friday. Information Week author Paul McDougall notes Microsoft's 8% decline in Windows sales is due to netbooks sporting Linux. How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Given some of the Associated Press's recent actions, this won't come as a surprise, but the AP has now announced that it will start suing any news aggregator that doesn't share its profits with the AP:

"We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories."

I'm a bit curious what those "misguided theories" are... because copyright law and rules concerning fair use seem pretty clear, and search engines aggregating info and sending people to your site has been ruled fair use before. So, perhaps the AP chairman is talking about some other "misguided" legal theory? Another AP person claims: "This is not about defining fair use. There's a bigger economic issue at stake here that we're trying to tackle." But she neglects to say what that is, other than our old business model sucks, and we've got no freaking clue how to adapt to the changing market place, so this is the best we've got...

That said, I'm not sure how this is any different than how the AP has acted in the past. While the NY Times claims that this is a shot at Google, that seems unlikely. Google has already agreed to pay the AP -- though, the article notes that the AP may claim that the current license deal doesn't cover AP stories showing up in Google's regular search results. If that's the case, then Google should call the AP's bluff, and block out all AP articles. Then let's see how various newspaper sites feel. In the meantime, the AP has already sued others, including Moreover and All Headline News. And I know that some of the other top aggregators have already folded and started paying the AP, rather than go through a legal battle. So it's not clear what's new here other than unsupported bluster on the part of AP execs to make its member papers think it's doing something other than squandering money.

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Xanthe Matychak of Core77 and Chris Tomkins-Tinch of Rochester Institute of Technology's Makers Club interviewed me about my Clubhouse Strummer drone stick when I was in Rochester a couple of weeks ago.

Mark Frauenfelder's DIY 3-string electric uke