theodp writes "As we've seen before, sometimes all it takes is a little bad PR to get IBM to ditch a patent. More recently, Big Blue took a break from its stealth U.S. layoffs to withdraw a patent application for offshoring jobs while maximizing government tax breaks, saying it was 'filed in error'. And before bad PR lightning could strike thrice, IBM preemptively abandoned another patent application last Friday, this one for Selecting Shared Service Centers in another country ('e.g., India') and staffing them with less-productive-but-cheaper IT workers. Guess this one was 'filed in error' too!"

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My friend Steve Lodefink (who has written a number of articles for MAKE) can build just about anything. Not only that, his creations always look beautiful, even on his first attempt. Here are his build notes for a Fink "Telekaster" guitar he's making.

Dave Knott writes "Gamasutra reports that SimCity, Sims and Spore game creator Will Wright is leaving EA/Maxis. He will now be acting as head of Stupid Fun Club, an 'entertainment think tank' that he was previously funding out of his own pocket. From the article: 'The club has focused mainly on designing and building robots, as well as creating video productions based on them. Wright and EA will co-own Stupid Fun Club, which will focus on developing new cross-media IP for games, movies, TV and toys. EA has the right to develop game concepts that emerge from the think tank, and both the company and Wright have an equal stake.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Do you want to work for GAMA-GO? The fantastic firm is expanding and has several job openings in San Francisco. I visited their new office/warehouse/storefront a few days back and it's magnificent -- the yetis are growling with glee as they unpack boxes while a vigilant team of ninja kitties prowls the perimeter. Greg Long says:

We're GAMA-GO. We're in San Francisco. We design clothing, accessories, limited edition artwork, gifts, toys, and other things that we really dig. We sell GAMA-GO all over the world at hip clothing, gift, and museum stores, and to a very loyal following at our website gama-go.com. Shortly, we’ll be opening our first retail store in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco.

We are currently looking to fill two jobs.

1) An enthusiastic retail sales super-star to be the face of GAMA-GO at our flagship location.

and

2) An experienced part-time web developer to update and improve our customer-centered web site: GAMA-GO.com

GAMA-GO job opportunities

Evil Mad Scientist Windell writes:

Last year David Friedman published on his blog Ironic Sans an interesting design concept for something that he called The Bulbdial Clock. That's like a sundial, but with better resolution-- not just an hour hand, but a minute and second hand as well, each given as a shadow from moving artificial light sources (bulbs).

We've recently put together a working bulbdial clock, with an implementation somewhat different from that of the original concept.

A Bulbdial Clock

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There's been quite a bit of uproar over some ISPs' boneheaded plans to introduce broadband traffic caps and charge customers based on the amount of data that travels across their broadband connection. Already, the pushback against Time Warner's plans to expand its use of the caps has led another ISP, Frontier Communications, to reconsider its plans to introduce them, illustrating how competition could take care of this issue. Still, some politicians see it as a chance to wade in and drum up some publicity, such as a New York congressman, who (among other things) says the caps raise "broad and sweeping First Amendment issues." Erm, well, these caps aren't so impressive, but to imply they're unconstitutional seems like a bit of a stretch. But the rhetoric is -- unfortunately -- typical of politicians' positions on these issues. The rep says he'll take "a leadership role in stopping this outrageous, job killing initiative", which is nice and sure to grab some headlines in his hometown paper, but it ignores the real issue at play: a lack of true competition in the broadband market. Politicians jump on whatever hot internet issue pops up, whether it's these caps, or something like net neutrality, talking about the need for new laws and rules. If they'd do more to engender actual, meaningful competition in the broadband market, all of these issues would take care of themselves. But that doesn't make for nearly as great a sound bite, apparently.

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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The cartoonists Mats!? went to India, and he's posting videos he shot there, including a funeral train, and a cobra ritual.

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday iFixit tore apart the Nintendo DSi and found several internal upgrades from the outgoing DS Lite. It seems that an experienced hand can completely disassemble the DSi in less than ten minutes using standard tools, especially since the job does not require a tri-wing screwdriver. This should make repairing and tinkering with the DSi substantially easier. The DSi now includes two integrated cameras that, unfortunately, have only 0.3 megapixel resolutions. This is certainly a bit underwhelming considering most mainstream phones have cameras of at least 1.3 megapixels. On the chip side of things, Nintendo is using a Samsung MoviNAND integrated 256 MB Flash memory / MMC controller chip, as well as a custom ARM CPU + GPU is stamped with the revision code 'TWL.' The DSi's chips all had manufacture dates around September 2008, indicating that Nintendo has been stockpiling these devices for quite a while prior to the North American release."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jennifer Manfre' of the Milken Institute says:

So, unemployment numbers are out today and they are, of course, bad. How about a little bit of optimism for our friends and colleagues that have been laid off? Global Conference is a tremendous opportunity for exposure to the latest trends and the ultimate networking opportunity. There are about 3K top level attendees from finance, government, business, entrepreneurs, philanthropy, non-profit and academic - from all 50 states and about 60 countries from around the world.

We're giving away 15 complimentary passes - but you have to be recently (past 18 mos) unemployed. The link to the application is here.

dacut writes "We've seen compact fluorescent lamps start to take over shelf space at the local hardware store. Replacing a 60 watt incandescent with a 13 watt CFL seems like a great savings, though many consumers are disappointed with the slow warm-up times, lower-than-advertised lifetimes, and hassles of disposing the mercury-containing bulbs. Now EDN reports they may use more energy than claimed due to their poor power factor. Mike Grather, of Lumenaire Testing Laboratory, 'checked the power factor for the CFLs and found they ranged from .45 to .50. Their "real" load was about twice that implied by their wattage.' The good news: you're only billed for the 13 watts of real power used. The bad news: the utilities have to generate the equivalent of 28 watts (that is, 28 VA of apparent power for you EEs out there) to light that bulb. Until they fix these issues, I'll hold on to my incandescents and carbon arc lamps, thanks."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gautam John writes in with a couple of posts concerning software audit "raids" done in India (also common in the US). The first explains how unfair the process is, noting how it's basically court-sanctioned extortion. Outside groups get to basically stop your business for a whole day, harming your reputation among both employees and clients (even if you haven't done anything wrong) and then can squeeze you to pay up. The Associated Press did a big expose on how the BSA, in particular, has a history of using underhanded means to squeeze many small businesses to pay up -- even noting that the BSA keeps the money, rather than distributing it to firms. The most egregious part, though, was where the "auditors" refused to allow the company to back up its data, saying that the data might be created with unauthorized software, and thus, backing up the data would be infringing.

The BSA quickly responded, asking the blog owner to post its detailed response, where it defends the raids. Unfortunately, its defense is incredibly weak. It starts off -- as does pretty much every BSA story -- with it claiming that "independent studies" show how much damage to the wider economy unauthorized file sharing does. That's not accurate at all. We've picked apart the numbers before, showing how the BSA numbers are totally bogus (and, while it's a third party that came up with the numbers, it's entirely paid for by the BSA). A big part of the problem is that the industry only looks at the downside to the economy, and doesn't include any factor to recognize that companies that use unauthorized software also help the economy. Perhaps the downsides outweigh the upsides... but totally ignoring all upsides and then double, triple and quadruple counting the downsides via "ripple effects" does not make for a credible study.

However, the BSA then goes on to defend the practice of not allowing companies to back up their data, by basically saying "hey, that's the law." But, of course, that only supports the original poster's complaint that this is effectively "court sponsored extortion." It does nothing to explain what's illegal about backing up your data (which is not covered by the copyright of the software companies).

Of course, in the end, all these sorts of tactics do is push people to explore open source alternatives, not just because they're cheaper (sometimes free, though, not always), but because they don't have to put up with legal bullying and extortion-like tactics.

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At the age of 52, "VW" had a sudden desire to quit work as lawyer and start painting. He previously hadn't been interested in art. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and amyotrophic later sclerosis (ALS). Above left is an artwork he painted just before he was diagnosed. Above right is a piece VW made a few years later, just before he died. From New Scientist:

"...Degeneration in a brain area responsible for controlling impulses might explain his creative urge, says Anli Liu, a neurologist and artist who recently authored a case report on VW. At the same time, symptoms of ALS limited VW's motor control and, eventually, his ability to create art."

Brain decline reflected in patient's brush strokes

linuxwrangler writes "Security researcher Jack Louis, who had discovered several serious security flaws in TCP software was killed in a fire on the ides of March, dealing a blow to efforts to repair the problem. Although he kept good notes and had communicated with a number of vendors, he died before fixes could be created and prior to completing research on a number of additional vulnerabilities. Much of the work has been taken over by Louis' friend and long-time colleague Robert E. Lee. The flaws have been around for a long time and would allow a low-bandwidth 'sockstress' attack to knock large machines off the net."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This enchanting little short was produced at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratory, at UC Berkeley in 2007, and has won a number of awards at film fests since. Snip:

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries . All action takes place around NASA's Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries . Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers' produced by fleeting electrons . Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?.

Magnetic Movie, A Semiconductor film by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt. (thanks, Marianne Shaneen!). Ed. Note: this video was previously blogged on Boing Boing Gadgets.

[The Tektronics 466 shown here]

On the Reddit forums, there's an interesting discussion going on about buying oscilloscopes:

If you need to track the position of edges down into the nanoseconds you might appreciate watching Ebay for the Tektronics 2465. Broken ones sell for a couple hundred bucks, and if you decide to fix one look for one that has any other problem than a blown preamplifier, which are expensive modules that fail because of inadequate cooling, just because technicians can't manage to keep the air inlets on the cabinet free of dust. If you don't anticipate working on anything that fast or aren't so into the project of getting serious horsepower for dirt the 465 is a great old 100Mhz workhorse that can occasionally be had for 50 bucks working but it is only 2 channel. If all you want to do is look at a bunch of slower changing signals you might do better with the plethora of PC interface devices available now, with all their software bells and whistles, but digitizing scopes that are fast are still quite expensive.

Oscilloscope recommendation [via Serge on the HacDC elist]

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(Ed. Note: The following guest essay was written by Jasmina Tešanovi?. Full text of essay continues after the jump, along with links to previous works by her shared on Boing Boing. Image: "Earthquake," by Flickr user mirkosim, via Flickr blog / Heather Champ.)

Here in northern Italy, we overslept the big earthquake in Aquila, which is a beautiful, ancient small town now completely in ruins. My agent, his wife and his cat were in Rome one hundred kilometers from the epicenter. He jumped out of his bed at the early hours of 6th April. He phoned me a few hours later: this is like a bombing, he said.

As I write this, I am watching RAI 2 channel: they talk of natural disasters, and two, new, strong quakes shake their TV crew. Two buildings in Aquila -- among many historic town buildings from the Renaissance and Baroque -- groan and half-collapse. The TV crew shifts to a safer spot.

A big debate is going on: all about the dead, the wounded, the reconstruction, the solidarity, the future. But a very Italian debate parallels it: a so-called scientist claims he predicted this quake. Other seismologists claim it is impossible to predict any such thing, even though there were tremors a week ago, and a major one was expected.

A psychologist is speaking of God under the ruins. He is almost screaming while preaching peace for the dead and aid for the survivors. A politician is asking for renewed unity for a very split and quarrelsome Italian society. Berlsusconi, the right wing president, declared an emergency state in that region, as soon as he returned from G20 in London where he had to mingle with the first-class of world politicians. While Berlusconi was away there was a huge rally of the opposition in Rome against his bland denial of the Italian financial crisis. But then this sudden natural disaster changed the subject: Italy is always a landscape prone to earthquakes and volcanoes. I know a war journalist who build a beautiful mansion under the volcano Etna. He survived many wars and eruptions, yet he died of a too much food and wine under his favorite volcano.

In the seventies in Friuli, northern Italy a massive earthquake killed thousands. I remember being in Milan in those days. We trembled with those refugees. Italian solidarity aided the survivors. All Italians are survivors.

In Aquila, famous historical monuments are down or half-collapsed, art objects are scattered and waiting to be trampled or looted. Rescue troops search methodically, still hoping for survivors. People sleep under tents praying for good weather. Italy has not seen a true spring yet. More rain is forecast, even floods.

As I watch the TV, I know this is not a science fiction disaster movie, this is the new realism. Only last night the same television showed me an old movie with Ana Magnani: the post war late 1940s in Italy. It seemed so different: the good guys had defeated the bad guys. There was hope. Watching these high tech rescue squads, ambulances heavy with gear and with high pitched Italian sirens, politicians in Armani suits with Missoni ties, blonde sexy news announcers with cosmetic lip surgery, all scampering among the ruins, I feel uneasy. Where are the real people? Whatever became of normal life? Trained dogs sniff for normal life beneath the rubble.

Marta, a 24 year old, has been saved after 23 hours of advanced post-disaster research. The disaster technicians sawed through metal, they pried the rubble off her: her broken voice out of the broken body: grazie ragazzi, grazie! Mother and father without voice waiting for their child to reappear from their smashed home: they still hope she is alive, but the Italian earth still trembles.

Scenes of primordial trauma, like Pompeii. That earth opens above or beneath us, and we can do nothing about nature. Can that still be the truth? It doesn't sound very modern.

A survivor in a reality talk show , a journalist, weeps, remembers how his colleague found that two of his children were killed. Old, poor people sitting next to their destroyed building say: we are here, we are waiting. They don't say what they await: maybe nobody knows. People owning cars sleep inside those cars. There are also tents, some tents fancier than others, though none as fancy as the hotels where the luckier refugees are still unhappy. The victims talk under shock, trying to remember the details of life, trying to remember what they lost: they speak in details, like Katrina refugees, like Kosovo or Bosnian ones. Any memento from a destroyed home -- like a stone of your house -- counts more than a jewel. A salvaged photo is more precious than food. People hunt through their rubble for their future values.

Volunteers are coming from all points. The hospital has collapsed. Pundits call for high tech sensors while the journalists ask the predictable questions. The whole world is watching you, Italy: anxious for the fate of the foreign tourists, foreign students... even my own email is full of foreigners asking me: how are you in Italy? I am in Italy in solidarity with Italy.

Berlusconi is telling the refugees: go to the seaside hotels for Easter, enjoy! We are paying! His jokes are beyond bad taste!

---

Jasmina Tešanovi? is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanovi? on BoingBoing:

- 10 years after NATO bombings of Serbia
- Made in Catalunya / Lou and Laurie
- Dragan Dabic Defeats Radovan Karadzic
- Who was Dragan David Dabic?
- My neighbor Radovan Karadzic
- The Day After / Kosovo
- State of Emergency
- Kosovo
- Christmas in Serbia
- Neonazism in Serbia
- Korea - South, not North.
- "I heard they are making a movie on her life."
- Serbia and the Flames
- Return to Srebenica
- Sagmeister in Belgrade
- What About the Russians?
- Milan Martic sentenced in Hague
- Mothers of Mass Graves
- Hope for Serbia
- Stelarc in Ritopek
- Sarajevo Mon Amour
- MBOs
- Killing Journalists
- Where Did Our History Go?
- Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide
- Carnival of Ruritania
- "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
- Faking Bombings
- Dispatch from Amsterdam
- Where are your Americans now?
- Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
- Slaughter in the Monastery
- Mermaid's Trail
- A Burial in Srebenica
- Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
- To Hague, to Hague
- Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties
- Floods and Bombs
- Scorpions Trial, April 13
- The Muslim Women
- Belgrade: New Normality
- Serbia: An Underworld Journey
- Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
- The Long Goodbye
- Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
- Slobodan Milosevic Died
- Milosevic Funeral

Last September, (despite warnings to avoid overly cumbersome DRM), EA discovered just what sort of backlash annoying DRM could have when thousands of reviewers on Amazon slammed the game Spore for its overly limiting DRM from Securom. EA eventually backed down (somewhat), and on newer games seems a lot more sensitive to community concerns about DRM (though, many would argue not sensitive enough). Apparently, some of EA's competitors, however, haven't been paying much attention. Reader Tyler Hipwell sends in the news that Atari recently released the game Chronicles of Riddick with similarly awful DRM (requires online activation, limited to three total activations) and a ton of negative reviews are flowing to the Amazon listing. Either Atari didn't pay attention to EA's experience with Spore... or it somehow thought that the same thing wouldn't happen to its game as well. Neither one of those options says anything good about Atari.

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Sooner Boomer writes "I'm trying to help drag a professor I work with into the 20th century. Although he is involved in cutting-edge research (nanotechnology), his method of literature search is to begin with digging through the hundreds of 3-ring binders that contain articles (usually from PDFs) that he has printed out. Even though the binders are labeled, the articles can only go under one 'heading' and there's no way to do a keyword search on subject, methods, materials, etc. Yeah, google is pretty good for finding stuff, as are other on-line literature services, but they only work for articles that are already on-line. His literature also includes articles copied from books, professional correspondence, and other sources. Is there a FOSS database or archive method (preferably with a web interface) where he could archive the PDFs and scanned documents and be able to search by keywords? It would also be nice to categorize them under multiple subject headings if possible. I know this has been covered ad nauseum with things like photos and the like, but I'm not looking at storage as such: instead I'm trying to find what's stored."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The newspaper headlines around this one are funny: "House passes bill too gross to talk about," cringes the Oregonian. Bottom line seems to be that they've outlawed bukkake. Here's a pretty straightforward wikipedia entry about the act, popularized first in Japanese pornography, then made famous through American titles.

Today's Oregon ruling was sparked by a really awful non-consensual crime that involved a single perp and a single intended victim. Not funny, and I'm all for the maximum possible penalties there. But the language of the bill appears to cover the consensual but equally icky Porn Valley phenom, which typically involves lots of multiple participants, some of whom are paid as performers:

The proposed new law nobody wants to talk about would make it a second degree sex abuse crime to propel "a dangerous substance at another person." That substance being semen or other bodily fluid flung out of sexual desire.

Yep. Apparently such behavior is part of a gang initiation rituals.

The proposed law follows an incident last June when a man threw his semen on a mother in a Portland area Target store. Her little girl saw it first.

(via Susannah Breslin)

Gorgeous raygun construction, spotted on the MAKE Flickr pool, fashioned from old radio and camera parts.

Atomic Disruptor Raygun

More:

• MAKE 17: "Discreet Companion" Ladies' Raygun
• Tinkerbots' rayguns

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TechnoBabble Pro writes "The CAPTCHA idea sounds simple: prevent bots from massively abusing a website (e.g. to get many email or social network accounts, and send spam), by giving users a test which is easy for humans, but impossible for computers. Is there really such a thing as a well-balanced CAPTCHA, easy on human eyes, but tough on bots? TechnoBabble Pro has a piece on 3 CAPTCHA gotchas which show why any puzzle which isn't a nuisance to legitimate users, won't be much hindrance to abusers, either. It looks like we need a different approach to stop the bots."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have been sending in the opinion piece in the Guardian written by U2's manager Paul McGuinness expressing strong support for France's approval of a three strikes law (ignoring, conveniently, that the law was passed using trickery, telling everyone the vote would happen at a later date, waiting to most elected officials had left, and then passing the law with a vote when only a few people were still around). This isn't a huge surprise, because McGuinness has gone around (loudly) blaming everyone else for the problems in the recording industry (while reaping the rewards of the more than $300 million that U2 brings in per year). So, it's no surprise that he's in favor of laws that puts the onus on others to somehow fix the business model problems he's unwilling to fix. But some of his comments deserve a response:

There are a few simple reasons why the new law deserves strong support. First, the crisis in our music community is real. A generation of artists, all over France, and further afield, are seeing their livelihoods destroyed, their career ambitions stolen. Investment that should help them build careers is draining out of the industry. This isn't just a shift in the business model from recorded to live music. It's a catastrophe for all the business models, old and new. It is a myth that artists can build long-term careers on live music alone....

There are clearly people who oppose the new law, but I have not heard of any viable economic alternative to the system now being introduced, committing ISPs to helping protect copyright. The only other proposals offered look like solutions produced for the laboratory, not for the market place.

That's odd. For someone who claims he's "followed this debate closely" for him to claim that this is a catastrophe for all business models. After all, every single other business related to music has been doing amazingly well. And, we've gone through example after example after example after example of it working in "the marketplace" rather than "the laboratory." And we've discussed how it works for bands small, mid-sized and large -- and works in ways that has allowed them to make more money than they could have in the past. So, for him to claim that those business models don't exist or don't work is simply wrong. Furthermore, he pulls a sleight of hand by pretending that the only other business model is "live music." However, as we've seen live music is one business model that works, but not the only one.

But the key thing, is that McGuinness is confusing protection with a business model. He talks about all the problems with business models, and then seems to jump to the conclusion that kicking people off the internet will suddenly make people buy music again -- as if he can suddenly turn back the clock. Kicking people off the internet doesn't make them feel better about your product. It doesn't make people more comfortable giving money to the recording industry -- it makes them pissed off and eager to spend their money elsewhere.

It's the exact opposite of a business model. It's a "piss your customers off" model.

Meanwhile, the business models that work (the same ones McGuinness is apparently ignorant of) are all about the opposite: they're about appealing to your customers, connecting with them, building up a relationship and trust. McGuinness, instead, prefers to treat them all as criminals. He shouldn't be surprised when they respond with anger rather than money.

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Here's a cheap and clever idea -- use one of those disposable anti-static straps you can get for a couple of bucks to create an anti-static home base on your desk that you can touch often to ground any charge you might build up. Submitted to us by MAKE subscriber Rob Severson of CircuitGizmos Labs. See more of Rob's workspace in my latest Toolbox column.

Antistatic Desk Strip

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wiryd writes "A new ICANN proposal would allow applications for almost any TLD. From the article: 'Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in .hiphop. "Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for," says Paul Levins, ICANN's vice president of corporate affairs. "It could translate into one of the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader SunKing sends in this little tidbit that I'd not seen before (perhaps some of you have). It comes from The Real Frank Zappa Book and discusses his response to "the home taping movement" and the attempt to get everyone to rebuy their old albums on CD by proposing a system where you could subscribe to whatever genre of music you wanted and get it delivered in batches. He first talks about how ridiculous it is to focus just on selling discs of music:

MUSIC CONSUMERS LIKE TO CONSUME MUSIC . . . NOT PIECES OF VINYL WRAPPED IN PIECES OF CARDBOARD.

Then he talks about how to "embrace" home taping:

It is our proposal to take advantage of the POSITIVE ASPECTS of a NEGATIVE TREND afflicting the record industry today: HOME TAPING via cassette of material released on vinyl.... First of all, we must realize that the taping of albums is not motivated by 'stinginess' alone .... People today enjoy music more than ever before, and, they like to take it with them wherever they go. THEY CAN HEAR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD AUDIO AND BAD AUDIO . . . THEY CARE ABOUT THAT DIFFERENCE, AND THEY ARE WILLING TO GO TO SOME TROUBLE AND EXPENSE TO HAVE HIGH QUALITY 'PORTABLE AUDIO' TO USE AS 'WALLPAPER FOR THEIR LIFESTYLE'.

So he makes the following suggestion:

We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user's home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1 (SONY consumer level digital tape encoder), Beta Hi-Fi, or ordinary analog cassette (requiring the installation of a rentable D-A converter in the phone itself . . . the main chip is about $12).

All accounting for royalty payments, billing to the customer, etc. would be automatic, built into the initial software for the system.

The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape.

Providing material in such quantity at a reduced cost could actually diminish the desire to duplicate and store it, since it would be available any time day or night.

Monthly listings could be provided by catalog, reducing the on-line storage requirements of the computer. The entire service would be accessed by phone, even if the local reception is via TV cable.

The advantage of the TV cable is: on those channels where nothing ever seems to happen (there's about 70 of them in L.A.), a visualization of the original cover art, including song lyrics, technical data, etc., could be displayed while the transmission is in progress, giving the project an electronic whiff of the original point-of-purchase merchandising built into the album when it was 'an album', since there are many consumers who like to fondle & fetish the packaging while the music is being played. In this situation, Fondlement & Fetishism Potential [F.F.P.] is supplied, without the cost of shipping tons of cardboard around.

We require a LARGE quantity of money and the services of a team of mega-hackers to write the software for this system. Most of the hardware devices are, even as you read this, available as off-the-shelf items, just waiting to be plugged into each other so they can put an end to "THE RECORD BUSINESS" as we now know it.

Just imagine how different the music industry might be today if he'd been able to move forward with that idea. 1983 was probably too early, but jump forward ten years... and we'd be facing a very different sort of music industry.

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An anonymous reader writes "As an IT administrator did you ever think of replacing disks by SSDs? Or using SSDs as an intermediate caching layer? A recent paper by Microsoft researchers provides detailed cost/benefit analysis for several real workloads. The conclusion is that, for a range of typical enterprise workloads, using SSDs makes no sense in the short to medium future. Their price needs to decrease by 3-3000 times for them to make sense. Note that this paper has nothing to do with laptop workloads, for which SSDs probably make more sense (due to SSDs' ruggedness)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The tiny $40 Robo-Q looks like a lot of fun. Check out the video.

The all-around control, you may never experience it! The 6 directions control plus 3 speed levels. Also the Robot can be controlled via Artificial Intelligence (AI) after you press the AUTO button, then the Robot can detect-and-escape from the barriers. What's more, after you press the AUTO button and Direction button, the Robot can detect-and-trace the objects. In the Trace mode, the Robot can be charged and run to the controller automatically! The controller as a Robot Station can be stored a Robot inside.

The Society for Linian Studies is presented what promises to be a wonderful exhibition: "The Cognomi Theory of the Antarctic Interior."

The Velaslavasay Panorama proudly welcomes an extraordinary exhibition and presentation from The Society for Linian Studies - The Cognomi Theory of the Antarctic Interior, which unearths the history of Linian Scholarship.

More than 300 years ago, a man thought lost at sea re-appeared in Italy with accounts of a civilization inhabiting the interior sea of an undiscovered southern continent. Giuseppe Cognomi composed numerous volumes on this advanced and isolated culture - which he called The Linians - and the singular environment they inhabited at the bottom of the world. Though widely disregarded by the scientific community, the tradition of Linian scholarship has been kept alive through the years by a devoted few. The Society for Linian Studies is the first organized attempt to preserve Cognomi's legacy and progress his research.

Saturday, April 11, 2009 marks the opening of The Cognomi Theory of the Antarctic Interior, an exhibit examining the fascinating but largely forgotten origins and history of Linian scholarship. The public is invited to explore the Linian Sea through a series of enlightening dioramas based on Cognomi's original drawings, and to learn about notable Linian scholars of the past along the way. The evening debut of the exhibit features a lecture from Lyman Emery, the world's leading Linian Scholar and Director of The Society for Linian Studies.

Crafted through the tireless efforts of The Society for Linian Studies, The Cognomi Theory of the Antarctic Interior will remain on view through August 16th of 2009 during our regular open hours - Friday, Saturday, Sunday 12-6pm. This is the première exhibit to be held in the recently refurbished ancillary salon of The Velaslavasay Panorama, a room which shall serve hence as host for a wide array of pleasing temporal presentations. In fitting complement to our current 360-degree arctic panorama Effulgence of the North and in this, the International Polar Year, The Cognomi Theory of the Antarctic Interior adds a southern dimension to our elucid investigations into polar regions and distant landscapes.

Zarf writes "Yesterday Google announced that the Google App Engine now supports Java development, and fast on the heels of the Java announcement is an announcement for Groovy support! Groovy is a dynamic programming language for the JVM that is a near super-set of Java. Much Java syntax is valid Groovy syntax, however, Groovy adds powerful meta-programming features, and the new functionality will bring these meta-programming features to App Engine development. Groovy got special attention from the SpringSource Groovy team and the Google App Engine Java team, and it was this collaboration that helped create the changes that were the big secret in the recent Groovy release of 1.6.1."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scott Matthews says:

It's a hand-made ukulele built from an old Deluxe Memory Man box (the Deluxe Memory Man is a classic analog delay, and one of EHX's best-known pedals).

The song seems to be a 100-year-old hobo folk tune, and I can't get it out of my head!

Via Ukulele Hunt, here's an MP3 of Karinne Keithley performing "Sweet Child of Mine" on ukulele. The Ukulele Hunt link has a few other excellent songs by Ms. Keithley.

Nik Software has announced the availability of the Silver Efex Pro, its advanced Black and White conversion plug-in for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Silver Efex Pro is the third of Nik's plug-ins that it has developed for Photoshop Lightroom. The plug-in is compatible with Lightroom v2.3 and higher and is available for immediate download for a suggested retail price of $199.95 or free to existing users.

Nik Software has announced the availability of the Silver Efex Pro, its advanced Black and White conversion plug-in for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Silver Efex Pro is the third of Nik's plug-ins that it has developed for Photoshop Lightroom. The plug-in is compatible with Lightroom v2.3 and higher and is available for immediate download for a suggested retail price of $199.95 or free to existing users.

Coop says:

Another fun little video featuring my pal Aaron's 60's-Big Daddy-style bubbletop custom car, The Atomic Punk. Lots of in-progress shots that show just how much hard work went into building this crazy thing.

Michael Scott point us to a fascinating question that an increasing number of libraries are starting to ask: is it legal to lend out a Kindle with some ebooks? Amazon says no -- and claims that it's a violation of the terms of service, but libraries are claiming that isn't true. The terms only bans lending out the ebooks themselves... not the device that has a purchased ebook on it (an important distinction). So, some libraries have been buying Kindles and purchasing a series of books (usually best sellers that are in high demand) and lending out the device. However, Amazon claims that it won't discuss "enforcement" on this issue, which might mean that it's not doing any -- or might mean get ready for the lawsuits. Of course, this isn't an entirely new issue. Years back, we talked about some libraries lending out audiobooks on iPods, but it seems like the Kindle situation could get a lot more attention... including the legal kind of attention.

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(image: "Fujimori: Los titulares de la condena," by Flickr user javi270270.)

Alberto Fujimori, former president of Peru, was convicted Tuesday of "crimes against humanity" and received a 25 year sentence for his role in murder and kidnappings committed by death squads in the government's campaign against leftist "Shining Path" guerrillas.

Human rights groups call the ruling a precedent-setting verdict that upholds the internationally-recognized principle that violent abuses must not be committed in the name of fighting terrorism. Snip from Washington Post story:

Many people in Peru admire Fujimori for largely defeating the Shining Path insurgency and ending a two-decade war that left about 70,000 people dead. But the tribunal found that Fujimori was guilty of creating and authorizing a military intelligence death squad that killed innocent people.

(...)Fujimori's trial focused on two episodes of killings: a 1991 raid in which 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, were killed at a barbecue in Lima where the military intelligence unit was looking for Shining Path suspects. This raid, which became known as the Barrios Altos massacre, was followed by the 1992 abduction and killing of nine students and a teacher from La Cantuta University, also by the Colina Group.

Fujimori was also accused of ordering the kidnappings of journalist Gustavo Gorriti and businessman Samuel Dyer in 1992.

One of the arguments Fujimori partisans sometimes offered was that the dead had been terrorists and that their deaths were, therefore, justified. But the tribunal wrote in the summary of the 711-page sentencing document that none of the 25 people killed in the two massacres had been members of the Shining Path.

Peru's Fujimori Gets 25 Years (washington post, thanks Ned Sublette)

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow recently tweeted,

Fujimori just got 25 yrs for death squads. It's not online, but if you ever get a chance to see this flick about Peru, do: http://is.gd/rjS2

She's referring to the documentary "State of Fear," which documents the atrocities and how they came to pass. Tagline sound familiar? -- "A nation wages a war on terror and loses its democracy."

First, I've had very good experiences, personally, working with the top people at Associated Press. They sponsored the third BloggerCon at Stanford in 2004. They, along with AFP, have generously given me access to their photo flow as part of an experimental project. I have advised them, at no charge, on RSS and podcasting. So I'm pre-disposed to like them, and to defend them, even though many of my colleagues in the blogging world are less considerate.

That said, it took me a while to come to some conclusions on their mysterious new "strategy" for doing online news. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. It's a Hail Mary pass. Financially, things are looking terrible at AP -- as at other news organizations. There's a general downward trend in the economics of news, and that's amplified by the downturn in the economy. If we could see AP's balance sheet, we might conceive of something desperate ourselves.

2. So their response, near as I can tell, is to renegotiate their deal with the Internet, Google primarily, and change the unit of content they share. Instead of it being a "story" they want to share topics, much like Mahalo. And it's likely to work as well as Mahalo, which is to say, not at all. Here's why. Google is a search engine for people, and people know what they're looking at when they see an SEO-optimized page. They correctly conclude the page wasn't designed for them and hit the Back button. Google, whose indexing algorithm does its best to emulate a human being, isn't fooled by such simple attempts to fool it. Maybe at first, but they soon catch up. You don't see many Mahalo pages in the top search results on Google, and you won't see many AP category pages either, nor should you. Yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the news people to think about their users and what serves them. He was giving them good advice, and it's likely advice he gives his own people, including the people who write their search algorithms.

3. But -- even if somehow they could fool Google's algorithms, Google is already undermined by the real-time web. I think they see it, I hate to say I Told You So, but I've been writing about this since 1996, when I called for Just-In-Time search. People want to hit the Internet to find out what's new. No one, and I mean no one, has the site that everyone goes to to find out What's New Now. It's weird that AP singularly has the best resources to create such a site, and get way out in front of the Internet industry, including Google. Esp if they partnered with some of their competitors like AFP and NYTCO or Bloomberg. Then it all comes down to UI. Have a look at Twitter or FriendFeed and you'll get some ideas right off. River Of News. That, my dear friends at AP (no sarcasm) is where you should be pouring your energy, not trying to take back what you think Google took from you. That happened a long time ago, and the toothpaste ain't going back in the tube.

4. I've said it many times before, no one seemed to hear, so I'll try again. Focus on what you love about news, and then bring more of that to the insatiable users of news. If you're making people happy, they'll find a way to keep you doing it. It's like Napster in 2000, the music industry was complaining while millions were freshly excited about music, for the first time in 25 years. People were talking about music on airplanes, in supermarkets. There had to be a way for them to make huge money from that, instead they tried to stop it. AP -- same thing, now in 2009. We love news. We don't love what the cable networks are providing us. The papers are folding. Get on top of the Internet, don't try to crawl under it. Best advice I can offer.

Hugh Pickens writes "Mass strandings of dolphins and whales could be caused because the animals are rendered temporarily deaf by military sonar, experiments have shown. Tests on a captive dolphin have demonstrated that hearing can be lost for up to 40 minutes on exposure to sonar and may explain several strandings of dolphins and whales in the past decade. Most strandings are still thought to be natural events, but the tests strengthen fears that exercises by naval vessels equipped with sonar are responsible for at least some of them. For example, in the Bahamas in March, 2000, 16 Cuvier's beaked whales and Blainville's beaked whales and a spotted dolphin beached during a US navy exercise in which sonar was used intensively for 16 hours (PDF). 'The big question is what causes them to strand,' says Dr. Aran Mooney, of the University of Hawaii. 'What we are looking at are animals whose primary sense is hearing, like ours is seeing. Their ears are the most sensitive organ they have.' In the experiment, scientists fitted a harmless suction cup to the dolphin's head, with a sensor attached that monitored the animal's brainwaves, and when the pings reached 203 decibels and were repeated, the neurological data showed the mammal had become deaf, for its brain no longer responded to sound. 'We definitely showed that there are physiological and some behavioral effects [from repeated, loud sonar], but to extrapolate that into the wild, we don't really know,' said Mooney."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Danny "Search Engine Land" Sullivan has written a masterful rant about the newspapers' campaign to blame Google for all their trouble and to take steps to stop their material from being made available through a search engine.

Earth to newspapers: if people aren't talking about what you publish, it's not news. We call that stuff a secret.

Please get all your newspaper colleagues to agree to a national "Just say no to Google" week. I beg you, please do it. Then I can see if these things I think will happen do happen:

* Papers go "oh shit," we really get a lot of traffic from Google for free, and we actually do earn something off those page views

* Papers go "oh shit," turns out people can find news from other sources

* Papers go "oh shit," being out of Google didn't magically solve all our other problems overnight, but now we have no one else to blame.

...

The papers can't get coordinated on anything. Anyone remember Pathfinder, that was supposed to be the Time-backed portal for news. Yeah, that did well. What, a decade of the web, and none of the papers could put together their own version of Hulu? The only thing you can all agree on is that you hate Google News for "stealing" so much from you -- despite Yahoo News still being the larger news site. But Google makes a better target, plus I suspect some papers might have favorable placements with Yahoo that makes them not want to yell about the Big Y.

Google's Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It (via Jbat)

A recent post on the boxee blog announces the release of a new, fully documented API that will allow developers to create and share new apps and plugins. "The new boxee API enables developers to build sophisticated applications (such as the Pandora and RadioTime apps) using a set of API calls in Python and writing the GUI using XML. ... Users can install new applications via the boxee App Box, the beginnings of our app store. Unlike other app stores, boxee does not want to be a gate keeper (or bottleneck) in deciding which applications are published so anyone can become a publisher." A complete description is available at their developers page. I'm sure this will help in their ongoing battle with Hulu.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With plenty of attention going towards Eric Schmidt's attempt to convinced newspapers that Google is helping, rather than hurting them, the much more interesting thing to read is Danny Sullivan's absolutely brilliant outpouring of frustration to newspaper industry execs and publishers, thinking back to a presentation he gave to (as he describes it) "a hostile audience" a few years ago -- where they were all missing the point. And, they're still bringing up the exact same wrong points today. Sullivan gets it exactly right. He takes the industry to task for lashing out (incorrectly) at everyone else for their problems, rather than recognizing that they're the ones who need to change in order to keep up with the market. The problems they're facing aren't because of Google or blogs. It's because they haven't kept up and haven't kept serving their market. In fact, he points out how much Google loves newspapers, and the newspapers are doing everything to spit back in Google's face:

I also explained that unlike virtually all other publishers on the internet, newspapers were given extraordinary special status with Google. They were among the very select few to be admitted into Google News and receive the huge amounts of traffic it could send their ways. That many small blogs with excellent content struggle for admittance that these other publishers just got handed to them on a silver platter.

My favorite part, though, may be Danny's response to the silly idea that newspapers should take their content offline for a week. We discussed that back in February, but Danny gets to the heart of the matter:

Please get all your newspaper colleagues to agree to a national "Just say no to Google" week. I beg you, please do it. Then I can see if these things I think will happen do happen:

• Papers go "oh shit," we really get a lot of traffic from Google for free, and we actually do earn something off those page views
• Papers go "oh shit," turns out people can find news from other sources
• Papers go "oh shit," being out of Google didn't magically solve all our other problems overnight, but now we have no one else to blame.

Indeed. But there seems to be some sort of incredible "logic blindness" that blocks newspaper industry execs from getting these simple facts.

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Fisherman in the Philippines snared an extremely rare megamouth shark, one of only 40 or so known to be left in the world. Then they ate it. From the Associated Press:

The 1,100-pound, 13-foot megamouth died while struggling in the fishermen's net on March 30 off Burias island in the central Philippines. It was taken to nearby Donsol in Sorsogon province, where it was butchered and eaten, said Gregg Yan, spokesman for WWF-Philippines.

Yan said a WWF Donsol Project Manager Elson Aca took pictures of the megamouth and tried to dissuade the fishermen from eating it. Shark meat is the main ingredient in a local delicacy.

Rare megamouth shark caught, eaten in Philippines

American national security officials say spies from China, Russia, and other countries have penetrated the US electrical grid with software apps that could be used to remotely disrupt the system, according to this WSJ article.

The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war. "The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," said a senior intelligence official. "So have the Russians."

The espionage appeared pervasive across the U.S. and doesn't target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. "There are intrusions, and they are growing," the former official said, referring to electrical systems. "There were a lot last year."

Many of the intrusions were detected not by the companies in charge of the infrastructure but by U.S. intelligence agencies, officials said. Intelligence officials worry about cyber attackers taking control of electrical facilities, a nuclear power plant or financial networks via the Internet.

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on." Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

Our sewage systems? Oh no, not the dreaded rain of communist poo! Anyway: FUD or legitimate fear? Hash it out in the comments. Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated By Spies (Wall Street Journal via @oxbloodruffin)

Instructables user tamberg writes:

This instructable connects the popular BlueSmirf Bluetooth module to the ID12 RFID reader and shows how to make a dust and water resistant (IP55) RFID reader that sends IDs to your PC or mobile phone over Bluetooth radio without an additional micro controller and without an external power source. Created as a prototype for an online swim lap counter system named Rfish, it can be used for any project in need of a self contained, weather proof RFID reader.

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MrKaos writes "Proving that science fiction can still be great entertainment, J.J. Abrams appears to have impressed Star Trek fans at the official world premiere of Star Trek, who gave the film a five-minute standing ovation at the Sydney Opera House in Australia today. Meanwhile, mere hours beforehand, flummoxed fans at the Alamo Drafthouse theater in Austin, TX, deceived into thinking they were seeing a special, extended version of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, were pleasantly surprised when a disguised Leonard Nimoy greeted them and announced they would be seeing the new film in its entirety. ILM's influence on the film is reported as visually stunning, and lucky Australian fans are scheduled to see the movie first, as it opens a day before the American release."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Next door, on our sister site CRAFT, Wendy Tremayne has an excellent piece on worm-bin composting. I've had a compost pile since I was a teen. It's almost something of a religious experience for me (United Church of Compost?), certainly something that gets me up close and personal with natural life cycles I might otherwise overlook. And I've never gotten over the aerobic decompositional thrills of putting a huge amount of stinky, gooey garbage and yard waste in the top of the bin and shoveling out uniform, rich, black compost out of the bottom. It's a fundamentally satisfying process somehow.

6. Feed your worms. Bury your kitchen scraps under a couple inches of bedding to avoid inviting fruit flies. A pound of worms will decompose up to half a pound a day of your fruit and vegetable scraps, tea, and coffee. Avoid animal products and oily foods that encourage odors and pests.

How-To: Make a Worm Composting Bin

More:

• Pallet-based compost bin
• HOW TO - Make an urban compost bin
• HOW TO - Backyard composter

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An anonymous reader writes "On April 6th, Wizards of the Coast took all of their PDF products offline, including those sold at third-party websites like RPGNow.com. From the RPGNow front page: 'Wizards of the Coast has instructed us to suspend all sales and downloads of Wizards of the Coast titles. Unfortunately, this includes offering download access to previously purchased Wizards of the Coast titles.' Wizards of the Coast also posted a press release to their website that states they are suing eight file sharers for 'copyright infringement,' and WotC_Trevor posted a short explanation about the cessation of PDF sales to the EN World Forums."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On the issue of warrantless wiretapping, we've never been given a clear explanation by anyone why it makes sense to allow the government to totally skip over the warrant process. The warrant process is there for a clear reason: to prevent abusive power by the government. No one is saying that the government can't issue wiretaps. They just want the gov't to get it reviewed and approved by a court. And, there isn't even an issue of urgency, since the government has the right, in extreme cases, to wiretap first, and get the warrant soon after. Many people hoped that with the Obama administration, things would change, and we'd finally move away from the warrantless wiretapping program, which by any basic definition, violates the 4th Amendment.

Apparently not. The EFF has an analysis of the new Justice Department in trying to get one of the warrantless wiretapping cases dismissed, noting that the new administration appears to be taking an even more extreme position than the previous administration (which was already quite extreme). Basically, the motion to dismiss claims that the government "is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying -- that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes." It's difficult to see how anyone could square that with the 4th Amendment, and hopefully the court will suggest the Administration's top lawyers reread the Constitution.

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr member dnny was thoughtful enough to build this rather sweet hideout for his feline buddies. Sweeter still is the fact that his pet's new pod is built from a used wooden cable reel. A little user-testing to determine ideal entry width, some added carpet padding and behold -- the cat cave! (Now who's turn is it to clean the cat cave?)

---

More:

AVR based homemade robotic cat toy ...

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mmmscience writes with this excerpt from the Examiner: "Big news in the medical world: scientists in Australia have found a way to stop the body from attacking organ transplants, greatly decreasing the possibility of organ rejection. ... When a new tissue is introduced, one's immune system kicks into overdrive, sending out cells known as killer T cells to attack and destroy the unknown tissue. ... Professor Jonathan Sprent and Dr. Kylie Webster from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research focused on a different type of T cells — known as regulatory T cells (Treg) — in this study. Tregs are capable of quieting the immune system, stopping the killer T cells from seeking out and attacking foreign objects."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After the success of the Makers & Hackers event in the UK, the folks behind it where invited to do something for the upcoming Milano Green Art Festival in Milan during the Milan Furniture Fair. They want to make a bunch of cool lamps out of junk and existing lamps and are holding a one day design event to build the lamps. It'll be held in the Omnibus Centre in London on April 18th, 2009, 10am to 5pm.

More strange one day events: Slow Lighting

More:
Photos from Makers and Hackers event in London

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Aimino is conducting some very interesting experiments accessing the the real world via conventional computing interfaces. Arduino is employed for physical device control while an additional machine runs PTAM image processing software determines camera position. The above demo alone is entertaining/intriguing the concept seems to have much potential. Unfortunately Edit->Undo in everyday situations still seems unattainable :(

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Barence writes "Google CEO Eric Schmidt has hit back at newspaper bosses, warning them that they risk alienating readers in their war against news aggregators such as Google News. 'I would encourage everybody to think in terms of what your reader wants,' Schmidt said at a conference for the Newspaper Association of America. 'These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more.' Schmidt's rebuke follows a sustained attack on Google by newspaper bosses such as Rupert Murdoch, who have accused the search giant of 'stealing' their content without payment." Schmidt also suggested that newspapers need to expand their distribution methods to make better use of mobile technology, and a NY Times piece argues that the Associated Press' struggle against aggregators is futile since they're largely trying to give news stories to consumers for free anyway.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Online gambling company PartyGaming has agreed to pay the US government $105 million as part of a "non-prosecution agreement" to wrap up the government's investigation of the site. The move comes after the company's founder, Anurag Dikshit, paid $300 million in online gambling taxes a settlement to the US government last year, meaning it's now collected about $750 million or more in "settlements" with foreign gambling companies and their executives. The government has shown little interest in prosecuting anybody, underlining the belief that it's really just taxing these companies in a very roundabout way. If it's going to do that, it remains that legalizing online gambling so it can be regulated and taxed would be a better solution.

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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Slatterz writes "Come next week, Microsoft will be in the unusual position of no longer offering mainstream support for its most widely used product. Windows XP will pass another milestone next week on the road to retirement when mainstream support ends on 14 April 2009, over seven years after the OS originally shipped. While the company said that it will continue to provide free security fixes for XP until 2014, any future bugs found in the platform will not be fixed unless customers pay. Windows XP accounts for about 63 percent of all Internet-connected computers, according to March 2009 statistics from Hitslink, while Windows Vista makes up about 24 percent."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Trust in Dust brings us these elegantly simple piezo contact microphone earrings. It's refreshingly cool to see functional electronics used for jewelry. Those with sensitive lobes would be wise to avoid hooking up bulky plugs while wearing ;)

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New data-retention policies went into effect in the UK this week, forcing ISPs to store details of all user emails and VoIP calls for a year, just in case law enforcement or the security services want to thumb through them. The government's intent is to mine the data to try and recognize patterns in relationships and contacts that will help them find terrorists and criminals. The idea that all of this data is being stored by ISPs makes privacy activists shudder, and their worry is not unfounded. But it's also important to understand that the idea, that by capturing all this data, the government can easily root out terrorists, is bunk. More data doesn't equal better data; it just makes it a hell of a lot more work to dig out useful information. It also raises the possibility of discovering false patterns that waste law enforcement's time and suck in innocent people. Recently, a guy in Wales found himself in the middle of an armed anti-terror raid on his home after somebody told police that they thought he might be a terrorist because he had soundproofing gear and wiring. He wasn't a terrorist, but rather a musician with a home recording studio. If police will go to such lengths based on unverified, anonymous tips, the thoughts of the conclusions they'll draw from having an entire country's email and VoIP records at their fingers should raise a few eyebrows.

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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Thumb Stadium is one of my favorite kits in the Maker Shed. I really enjoyed making this kit. The instructions are very clear, and it's easy to solder together. My favorite game is SlapJack, although ThumbWar is a close second.

Thumb Stadium is a 2-player hand-held game kit which features four (4) totally different games of skill. Easy and fun to build, Thumb Stadium is sure to provide years of entertainment while teaching you electronics! ROHS Compliant.

More about Thumb Stadium

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phantomfive worries about a report in the Wall Street Journal ("Makes me want to move to the country and dig a well") that in recent years a number of cyber attacks against US infrastructure have been launched over the Internet: "Cyberspies have penetrated the US electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials. The spies came from China, Russia, and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the US electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's somewhat unfortunate that it is comment-worthy when a high school does not overreact and does not blame camera phones and YouTube for a school fight getting publicized on YouTube. Usually we see stories where school administrators, law enforcement or politicians assume that, because the video is on YouTube, it will encourage more infractions, and then they take out their anger on YouTube. They never seem willing to admit that by putting these videos on YouTube, it actually makes it easier to catch and punish those responsible. That's why it's so amazing to see this story, sent in by reader William Jackson, about a school that notes it's using the video of a fight to track down and punish those responsible and the principal, Dan Durbin, doesn't blame YouTube for this at all:

"This should remind our students that they're not going to get away with anything. If you try something like this, you're going to be seen on a security camera or on someone's cell phone.... The evidence of this makes our jobs easier because I don't have to go get it from a student. Sometimes things happen that we don't know about until well after the fact."

Even more impressive? He even seems to think that perhaps the school should rethink it's no-mobile-phones policy in light of this:

"We may need to embrace this technology in some capacity. Our students aren't going to keep their cell phones hidden away at all time. So I've asked our staff to think about what is the appropriate time to be using some of this technology. When we have something that happens at our school and a student captures it on their cell phone, we can't blame the technology. We have to look at what's going and what caused that to happen."

The local Police Chief, Matt Clancy, seems to feel the same way as well:

"It's a great tool for us. You've got it on video, and you can identify the person and see what they're doing. There's lots of video of amateur fights and street fights on YouTube. But will seeing that encourage someone to be violent any more than a television show or a movie? I don't know."

Yes, this all looks like common sense... but it's so uncommon these days that it's actually worth pointing out.

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GM and Segway have demonstrated a 2-wheeled vehicle they call PUMA (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility). It's basically a bigger Segway that's smaller than a car, but bigger than a scooter because it seats 2 people side-by-side. Having recently visited Saigon (and seen Top Gear's Vietnam Special), I find the technological achievement of the PUMA to be absolutely ridiculous considering the time-tested utility of a 2-wheeled motorcycle (which can easily transport 2 people and zoom through insane traffic at the same time). In fact, the PUMA Project symbolizes many of the failures of the American auto industry. Instead of taking existing technologies and innovating by adapting them to suit practical needs, the PUMA Project simply takes an existing product and makes it bigger, not necessarily better. Okay, obviously, the PUMA Project is just a prototype and not meant for real world usage. But perhaps the time to show off impractical concept vehicles is not during one of the worst global recessions?

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A London cop charged Ian Tomlinson, a G20 demonstrator an innocent bystander at the G20 demonstrations who was on his way home from work, who was walking peacefully with his hands in his pockets, clubbing him and throwing him to the ground without provocation. Shortly after, he suffered a fatal heart attack. Does anyone believe that Tomlinson was the only person who was attacked without provocation by the police that day?

Dramatic footage obtained by the Guardian shows that the man who died at last week's G20 protests in London was attacked from behind and thrown to the ground by a baton-wielding police officer in riot gear.

Moments after the assault on Ian Tomlinson was captured on video, he suffered a heart attack and died.

Video reveals G20 police assault on man who died (Thanks, Dan and everyone else who suggested this!)

notthatwillsmith writes "We've all seen the nifty demos of Microsoft's Surface PC. Now Maximum PC details how you can put together your own multi-touch tabletop PC. The article shows how you can build the cabinet and combine that with a standard PC, a decent projector, about $350 worth of assorted hardware (cameras, lenses, mirrors, and screens), and a handful of free apps to build your own Surface-like PC — without giving Microsoft $10,000."

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Jon "DVD Jon" Johansen sez,

We just went live with the public Windows beta of doubleTwist. The Mac version went out a little more than a month ago and generated headlines like "doubleTwist may be the coolest universal media manager ever"

We feel that just like you don't have to use a different browser for every web site you visit (Firefox to read the NY Times, IE to stream Hulu, Chrome to browse YouTube, etc) you shouldn't have to use iTunes for Apple products, Nokia software for Nokia phones, Sony software for Sony products, etc. The typical household today has many such devices and we are building a simple and powerful software that connects them.

The new doubleTwist supports most major devices, from the BlackBerry and Android phones to the iPod/iPhone and Sony PSP.

doubleTwist - Play, Sync & Send photos, videos and music for Blackberry, iPod, Android, iPhone, PSP, LG. Free download for Mac, PC. (Thanks, Jon!)

Update: Jon sez, "One small correction: this version of doubleTwist does not have DRM support (it's finally gone from music anyway!) Our main aim is to provide a unified device management experience, including support for proprietary devices such as the iPod and the iPhone."

Here's a fantastic lecture by Jared "Guns, Germs and Steel" Diamond at the USC College Center for Religion and Civic Culture on the "evolution of religion" -- the evolutionary forces that shape religions and cause some to prevail and others to wane.

The Evolution of Religions (via Kottke)

This beautiful old chart, headed "Unbelievable Time Required to Cover Immense Distances of Space", displays the time it would take to get to various "nearby" celestial objects, using an unspecified propulsion system. Does anyone know what that system was, or where the chart comes from?

Unbelievable Time Required to Cover Immense Distances of Space (via A Whole Lotta Nothing)

While conducting research for his Dork Yearbook project, Joel did a Google image search for yearbook covers. I think this cover for Rochester, New York's West High School 1968 annual is a psychedelic masterpiece that absolutely embodies the genre of high school stoner art.

I love this collection of award-winning science-fair projects -- I spent many a happy afternoon measuring surface tension, modelling DNA with plasticene, and so on:

In the category of mathematics, 17-year old Sana Raoof of Jericho High School in Jericho, New York produced this mind-bender to win the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award and $50,000 scholarship in the 2008 fair in Atlanta. She chose Harvard, which no doubt feels privileged to have won the bidding for this brilliant young mathematician.

Just in case you are having trouble recalling exactly what chord diagrams and singular knots are all about - having perhaps missed that particular sub-chapter in your high school math class - Greg Muller offers a passable introduction at his blog The Everything Seminar to refresh your memory. Basically, knot theory is about solving simple problems with advanced techniques. For those of us who don't like doing things the easy way...

10 Winning Science Fair Projects That Will Make You Feel Dumb (via Neatorama)

Describing this delightful Etsy item, Bill sez, "Apparently the Easter Bunny was killed in a tragic accident at a Peep factory and he donated his body to science. Finally, an answer to mystery of the origins of Easter eggs!"

The Easter Bunny donated his body to science (Thanks, Bill!)

Here's a preview of the artwork from old-school underground comix genius Basil Wolverton's The Wolverton Bible, which look appropriately groovy and sinister (compare with The Manga Bible and Robert Crumb's Book of Genesis -- the latter being very intriguing, though the publisher brushed me off when I asked to have my name put down for a look at an early review copy).

Preview of 'The Wolverton Bible' (Thanks, Avi!)

The Nature Conservatory is having a competition for designing "an original and compelling object" from a single 4' x 8" sheet of plywood. From the site:

FSC stands for the Forest Stewardship Council. FSC certification means that the wood was produced using sustainable forestry practices recognized by the FSC. This Challenge is meant to raise awareness of the importance of FSC certification. It is a companion initiative to DESIGN 21’s FSC Awareness Competition Wood, Paper, Checkmark.

Entries must be flat-pack designs, either using no hardware, or with the use of up to 20 pieces of EcoSystems: Alpha hardware. For PDF instructions and 3D files of the Alpha hardware, please visit Design Green Now.

EcoSystems will provide CNC (computer numerically controlled) routing manufacturing of the winning entry. The wood used is 1” Appleply, a 17 ply panel that has a rotary-cut White Maple face. In addition to being FSC wood, the panels are NAUF (No Added Urea Formaldehyde) and come with a no VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) clear finish.

The deadline is June 2nd, so get your design on! Via Core77. Photo by Peter Guthrie.

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A new paper in the journal Flavour and Fragrance points to an evolutionary explanation for women's superior sense of smell relative to men: they use it to sniff out genetic deficiencies in potential mates.

"Women have a larger interest in reproductive events because they have fewer opportunities for passing on their genes than men," said George Preti, a Monell Chemical Senses Center organic chemist...

"Men produce thousands of gametes every day, women just one every month," Preti said. "Their investment in a reproductive event is higher than men's, so they're more biologically attuned to who they're mating with."

Preti and other pheromone researchers suspect that mammalian olfactory systems actually evolved to detect chemical traces of genetic incompatibility in the odors of potential mates.

An Evolutionary Explanation for Sexual Smell Differences

(Image: Someone Sniffs, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed photo from Orin Optiglot's photostream)

The URL of this story - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/05/football-fart - is matched in greatness only by the content of the article. A referee gave a misconduct warning to a professional soccer player for farting as a player on the other team was taking a penalty shot. From The Guardian:

The official deemed the act "ungentlemanly conduct" and booked the player responsible. However Chorlton Villa, who conceded a goal on the second take, went on to win the match 6-4 against local rivals International Manchester FC at Turn Moss in Stretford, Manchester, last Sunday.

"Footballer given yellow card 'for breaking wind' during penalty shot" (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

While most people think that marketing is about "convincing someone to buy stuff," that was not its original purpose. Instead, that's what it's become for many. But the real purpose for marketing was supposed to be to listen to what the market was saying, and help create products that met their needs. The good news is that, with the economy struggling, some are starting to go back to that definition. David Churbuck, who works in marketing at Lenovo, is predicting that marketing is starting to go through a massive change towards what he calls "empathy marketing." It gets beyond the old "four Ps" of marketing that we were all taught in marketing class, and gets to actually taking the time to actually talk with (not to) your customer -- and some of the time that means having the brand shut up and let everyone else do the talking.

This is one of the benefits that we've seen in preaching the message that content is advertising and advertising is content. Traditional advertising (and, increasingly, marketing as well) has been about a one-way street: pushing a message and trying to get it ingrained in people's heads. It's had little to do with getting people to interact, embrace and share. But when you actually take the time to recognize that marketing and advertising should be a two way street, where you're holding a real conversation and everyone is getting value out of it, you start to get beyond "pushing a message" and really get to a place where good things happen. It's what we've been helping plenty of companies do via the Insight Community. Companies like Dell and American Express have tapped into the community to create discussions and generate insights in ways that are useful to everyone.

Users find more of what they're actually looking for, build up better trust in certain companies, and actually are a part of the ongoing process and discussion. Companies get to better interact with customers or potential customers, and get real advice and feedback in return. Whether it's called conversational marketing or empathy marketing, it's a good thing: it's a return to real marketing, where it wasn't about convincing people to buy, but really interacting with the market to figure out how to provide what it needs, rather than telling the market what the marketers want to sell.

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digithed writes "In response to Sweden's recent introduction of new laws (discussed here recently) implementing the European IPRED directive, a new Swedish Web site has been launched allowing users to check if their IP address is currently under investigation. The site also allows users to subscribe for email updates alerting them if their IP address comes under investigation in the future, or to report IP addresses known to be under investigation. This interesting use of people power 'watching the watchers' is possible because the new Swedish laws implementing the IPRED directive require a public request to the courts in order to get ISPs to forcibly disclose potentially sensitive private information. Since all court records are public in Sweden, it will be easy to compile a list of addresses currently being investigated."

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Last week, I blogged about the "Radiohead Fanatic Fortnight" taking place over at IFC.com. That's continuing this week with a look at some of Radiohead's more memorable videos and the directors who shot them. The list includes Fake Plastic Trees, Just, Knives Out, Motion Picture Soundtrack, with work from directors including Jonathan Glazer and Michel Gondry.

Above, the lovely Pyramid Song. One of my favorite videos in the set, from the unfairly brilliant animators and directors of Shynola, whose work I adore just as much as I do Radiohead.

Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Steven Leckart looks at DIY letterpresses and how to build your own. Compared to digital printing, letterpress is just so much more... "authentic."
How To: Build Your Own Letterpress

It's become quite clear that the threat to children from sexual predators on the internet has been massively overhyped by the media looking for a juicy story and for politicians looking to take advantage of it. Studies have shown that the number of sexual offenses against kids has dropped while internet use has grown, and fewer kids are actually being targeted by predators. What's always been interesting throughout this long-running moral panic is that kids have been shown to actually be pretty savvy in dealing with strangers online, and that perhaps politicians give them far less credit than they deserve in these areas. As we've noted, teaching kids how to deal with dangers they might face online -- just as with dangers they might face in real life -- is a much better way to keep them safe than by searching for some legal or technological magic bullet to eradicate sex offenders and protect the children. Now, another study has emerged saying that kids talk to their friends, and not strangers, online. Kids' primary use of social networking sites isn't to try and meet new people, let alone strangers, but rather to keep up with their real-life friends. The stories of kids being lured in by online predators grab lots of attention, and such incidents are undoubtedly despicable, but it's important to also remember that they are relatively rare.

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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Hodejo1 writes "Steve Jobs vowed weeks ago that when iTunes shifted to a tiered price structure in April, older tracks priced at $0.69 would outnumber the contemporary hits that are rising to $1.29. Today, several weeks later, iTunes made the transition. While the $1.29 tracks are immediately visible, locating cheaper tracks is proving to be an exercise in futility. With the exception of 48 songs that Apple has placed on the iTunes main page, $0.69 downloads are a scarce commodity. MP3 Newswire tried to methodically drill down to unearth more of them only to find: 1) A download like Heart's 34-year-old song Barracuda went up to $1.29, not down. 2) Obscure '90s Brit pop and '50s rockabilly artists — those most likely to benefit from a price drop — remained at $0.99. 3) Collected tracks from a cross-section of 1920s, '30s, and '40s artists all remained at $0.99. Finally, MP3 Newswire called up tracks in the public domain from an artist named Ada Jones who first recorded in 1893 on Edison cylinder technology. The price on all of the century-old, public-domain tracks remained at $0.99. (The same tracks are available for free on archive.org.) The scarcity of lower-priced tracks may reflect the fact that the labels themselves decide which price tier they want to pursue for a given artist; and they are mostly ignoring the lower tier. Meanwhile, Amazon's UK site has decided to counter-promote their service by dropping prices on select tracks to 29 pence ($0.42)."

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Michael Scott points us to the news that a planned community "movie night" in Daytona Beach, Florida has been put on hold due to copyright concerns, basically because the city hadn't realized it needed to secure a license to show a movie. The community movie night was an idea to bring the community closer together and also to raise money to fund the city's annual Independence Day celebration.

Now, those who follow the copyright world may immediately scoff and say: "What were they thinking? Of course they need a license to hold a movie night!" But, it shows how most non-copyright-infatuated folks think: what's wrong with bringing together a local community, and showing them a legally purchased or rented movie to help build community spirit or raise money for an event or charity? That seems like a perfectly reasonable (and kind-hearted) thing to do. But, now, the city may have to lose money on the event if it goes forward. It will have to pay at least a $500 license, and won't be allowed to solicit donations. Puts a bit of a damper on the whole thing. Perhaps an up-and-coming movie producer might want to donate their movie to the event to help the city get around having to pay such a fee.

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