Afforess writes "'Proxy servers are an everyday part of Internet surfing. But using one in a crime could soon lead to more time in the clink,' reports the Associated Press. The new federal rules would make the use of proxy servers count as 'sophistication' in a crime, leading to 25% longer jail sentences. Privacy advocates complain this will disincentivize privacy and anonymity online. '[The government is telling people] ... if you take normal steps to protect your privacy, we're going to view you as a more sophisticated criminal,' writes the Center for Democracy and Technology. Others fear this may lead to 'cruel and unusual punishments' as Internet and cell phone providers often use proxies without users' knowledge to reroute Internet traffic. This may also ultimately harm corporations when employees abuse VPN's, as they too are counted as a 'proxy' in the new legislation. TOR, a common Internet anonymizer, is also targeted in the new legislation. Some analysts believe this legislation is an effort to stop leaked US Government information from reaching outside sources, such as Wikileaks. The legislation (PDF, the proposed amendment is on pages 5-15) will be voted on by the United States Sentencing Commission on April 15, and is set to take effect on November 1st. The EFF has already urged the Commission to reject the amendment."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joel at Boing Boing Gadgets has an awesome post up with props from Blade Runner and other great sci-fi movies. Deckard's gun is amazing, but my favorite is the manual for the Voight-Kampff machine, used to evaluate replicant/human status in test subjects. Props (BB Gadgets, via MeFi)

Really not sure what to make of this one, but people keep submitting it, so might as well put it out there to see what people think: apparently, a girl in NY complained on Twitter that she couldn't find the movie Adventureland online to download as a torrent, and Miramax (which put out the film), Twittered back telling her that she shouldn't download it (and, in a slightly creepy way, included the hashtag #fbi). The girl supposedly wrote back: "Okay I won’t, JUST FOR YOU," at which point, Miramax promised her two free tickets to the movie (though, in the end, she supposedly only got one).

What's odd is that the reactions among submitters has gone to both extremes -- with one group finding it freaky and suggesting that it would piss off fans of the movie -- while others actually found it oddly humanizing and endearing by Miramax (though... pretty much everyone felt that the whole FBI reference could have been left aside). I'm leaning a bit towards the latter option. As I noted when the Wolverine leak happened, studios are never going to be able to stop unauthorized file sharing, but they might as well figure out ways to act cool about it, and leverage it to their best advantage. It's not clear which side of that line Miramax is on right now... but hopefully it closer to acting cool, rather than acting as a creepy stalker.

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Over at BBGadgets, our Lisa Katayama has an incredible post up about a widow in Japan who is publishing an anthology of text messages she sent to her loved one, after his death.

Her husband, Motoo, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2006, probably from the steel pipe factory he worked at. He got worker's comp, but the disease ultimately destroyed his lungs and left him with hallucinations for the remainder of his life. Shocked, the widowed Fukuda started sending text messages to her dead husband every time she thought of something she wanted to say to him. Things like: "I couldn't live if I didn't think you were still beside me. I can't live [without you]. I'm crying every day" and "I want to call you 'Otosan' to my heart's content. Why do you have to be inside such a small urn?" Every time she sent a message, the phone by his home shrine vibrated (she made sure it was always charged).

Woman publishes book full of text messages sent to her dead husband's cell phone (BBG)

gabrlknght writes "Superstring theory claims the power to explain the universe, but critics say it can't be tested by experiment. Lately, though, string math has helped explain a couple of surprising experiments creating 'perfect liquids' at cosmic extremes of hot and cold. 'Both systems can be described as something like a shadow world sitting in a higher dimension. Strongly coupled particles are linked by ripples traveling through the extra dimension, says Steinberg, of Brookhaven. String math describing such ripples stems from an idea called the holographic principle, used by string theorists to describe certain kinds of black holes. A black hole's entropy depends on its surface area — as though all the information in its three-dimensional interior is stored on its two-dimensional surface. (The 'holographic' label is an allusion to ordinary holograms, where 3-D images are coated on a 2-D surface, like an emblem on a credit card.) The holographic principle has value because in some cases the math for a complex 3-D system (neglecting time) can be too hard to solve, but the equivalent 4-D math provides simpler equations to describe the same phenomena.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Here's a recap of recent Boing Boing Video episodes over the past week -- check 'em out!

* "Super Ed," by Subatomic Nixons (dir. Bill Barminski and Walter Robot / music video). A new work from our favorite director and animator Bill Barminski, and Walter Robot. The song is a reimagining of Ed Sullivan with robots and superheroes. The band, Subatomic Nixons, is Barminski's music side project. Download an MP4 here.

* Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and Matt Ganucheau of Expression College joined us for Boing Boing Video's marathon live coverage of the 2009 Game Developers Conference. Above, part one, below, part two of an interview we did about the future of music in games -- how will the tech tools change? Are developers thinking about sound and scores as a more fundamental building block of the gaming experience? What about iterative/automatically generated music tools?

Blog posts:
Music in Video Games, pt. 2, with Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau (MP4 download)
Music in Video Games, pt. 1, with Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau (MP4 download here)

* And below, finally -- GDC Out-take - Radiohead Fan-Dance-Off with Giant Katamari Damacy Heads. Peter, Matt, and Xeni don Katamari Damacy head, crank up a favorite song ("Bodysnatchers" by Radiohead), and rock out in front of a webcam. Download MP4.

By now, you've probably seen those ads on television, those undeniably cool, impressive ads, for GE's Smart Grid technology, using augmented reality. The purpose of these ad is to get your attention with some wow-factor so you'll pay attention to the message, and visit their website -- sure it's about General Electric and their smart grid products, but the ads are also trying to raise public awareness about smart grid technology in general and specific technological components of it, such as smart metering. Retooling the power grid, here in the US, and abroad, is going to take a huge, concerted effort, on the part of governments, industry, and the public. So companies like GE are looking to get consumers conversant with the issues and technologies involved. What are we talking about? A little background:

Smart Grid
This introduction, from Northwestern University's Science in Society page, does a great job of succinctly describing what the smart grid is:

Traditionally, to meet growing electricity demands, we have simply built more power plants and added lines to distribute the power to customers. But these improvements are expensive, costing up to $2,000 per kilowatt of capacity. To put that in perspective, the average home consumes around 2 kilowatts of power per hour, so building to serve just 1,000 homes could cost $4 million.

Building more power plants is also not an environmentally-friendly approach to the increasing demand for electricity. Instead of producing more energy, could the solution be to revise the current power distribution network and markets to use the energy we have more efficiently, and harness renewable energy resources such as wind and solar power?

Proponents of "smart grid" technologies think so. "Smart grid" refers to applying communication and information technologies to the nation's power grid system--a complex network that routes electricity from the energy utilities to the consumers

[...]

The grid as it exists today was originally designed more than fifty years ago, long before the proliferation of computer and telecommunication systems we rely on today. The stresses that our increased power needs exert on the grid are shown through unreliable service and blackouts, which pose significant economic and safety threats to our society.

Smart grids offer a number of improvements, including some that automatically monitor and evaluate grid conditions, and report these conditions back to the utility's control room. Devices on the network can communicate with each other to automate re-routing and switching to avoid power lines with faults, and detect and even repair faults in wires before they lead to outages.

Smart Metering
One of the key technology components to the smart grid is what's called "smart metering." The Northwestern University's Science in Society page explains this basic concept too:

The smart grid also introduces a new level of communication between the consumer and the power suppliers. The current interface between the suppliers and the customer is the meter, which has remained basically the same, technologically-speaking, for the past century, and cannot communicate information to or from the consumer. Smart grids, however, allow power companies and consumers to gather precise information about the quantity and timing of household consumption, and enable consumers to receive information, such as real-time pricing and emergency grid requests to lower energy consumption.

For the next six weeks, GE is going to be sponsoring a special Make: Green microsite here on Make: Online. It's an opportunity for us to talk about these issues and technologies in general (GE has no input in the editorial content) and to talk to GE engineers and scientists (if YOU the reader want to) about smart grid in general, and some of the specific things that GE is developing in this area. We'll also be posting about augmented reality, so if you have questions related to GE's AR ad campaign, ask about that, too. Feel free to post any questions you might have on this emerging energy technologies in the Comments, and we'll try to find the engineers and scientists who can answer them.

If you want to gather some background information, here are some resources to get you going:

• Wikipedia entry on smart grid
• Wikipedia entry on smart metering
• Wikipedia entry on augmented reality
• GE's Ecomagination - Smart Grid site
• Smart Savings (Northwestern University's Science in Society intro to smart grid)
• Earth2Tech's Smart Grid FAQ
• Smart Meters (UK-based industry e-zine)

And don't forget, we want to cover these activities from a uniquely MAKE perspective, so if you're building any sort of "smart meter" on your own, a la Adafruit's Tweet-a-Watt, or similar, or are using digital technology and embedded systems to monitor/control your energy usage, we'd love to hear about that.

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Editor's Note: This post is part of a series of posts sponsored by GE. GE had nothing to do with the content of the article and no control over Make: Online editorial. -Gareth

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We'd already mentioned that among Josh Freese's hilarious purchase options, someone had bought the $20,000 option -- though no one was entirely sure who it was. Now it turns out that it was a 19-year-old high schooler in Florida, who claims that spending $20,000 on a week with Josh Freese was "totally worth it." Freese seemed to go out of his way to make it into a great adventure for the kid, having him hang out with a bunch of rockstar friends, beyond just the "required" parts of the $20k option. They did, in fact, play mini-golf, though Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo couldn't make it -- so they made that up by having a pizza party at his house. We're still waiting to see if anyone's going to pony up for the $75,000 option...

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CWmike writes "Mozilla is pondering dropping support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP without Service Pack 3 when it ships the follow-up to Firefox 3.5 in 2010, show discussions on the mozilla.dev.planning forum by developers and Mozilla executives, including the company's chief engineer and its director of Firefox. 'Raise the minimum requirements on Gecko 1.9.2 (and any versions of Firefox built on 1.9.2) for Windows builds to require Windows XP Service Pack 3 or higher,' said Michael Conner, one of the company's software engineers, to start the discussion. Mozilla is currently working on Gecko 1.9.1, the engine that powers Firefox 3.5, the still-in-development browser the company hopes to release at some point in the second quarter. Gecko 1.9.2, and the successor to Firefox 3.5 built on it — dubbed 'Firefox.next' and code named 'Namoroka' — are slated to wrap up in 'early-to-mid 2010,' according to Mozilla."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

pkluss noted Kevin Turner, COO of Microsoft making the proclamation that "Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is the safest, most reliable OS we've ever built. It's also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It's the safest and most secure OS on the planet today."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

During the last Olympics, we sat stunned as NBC Universal made mistake after mistake after mistake in making it incredibly difficult for fans who wanted to watch the Olympics online to do so. And then, NBC Universal executives bragged about how difficult they made it to watch, when really they just shot themselves in the foot, since even the audience who could actually watch it online watched it more on TV. In other words, everything about NBC Universal's strategy backfired... and then they talked about how great it worked. It's hard to understand how the folks involved still have jobs.

But... rather than learn from that, it looks like NBC Universal has decided to make things even worse for the next Olympics. NewTeeVee points us to the news that NBC Universal is working on a deal that will require online viewers to first prove they have a pay TV package before granting them the ability to watch buggy, limited, delayed online video of the event. Oh, and of course, this will only apply to the cable or satellite providers who first pay NBC Universal for the privilege. How a viewer will "prove" he or she is a customer is still being decided, but will likely involve an IP address if you're at home, or some other convoluted system if you're elsewhere.

This really is just an extension of the ongoing discussions between the networks and cable/satellite TV providers to lock up their content behind a paywall before online video wipes away the need for pay TV. It's like watching a trainwreck way in advance. Any attempt to limit what can be done for the sake of keeping an old business model in place has always failed miserably. It's always disappointing to see people who should know better make the same mistake over and over and over again.

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Worried about not making a good impression on the date you've just brought over to your place for a nightcap? Spice up the bathroom with these matching bloody bathmats and shower curtains!

Blood Bath Mat

Blood Bath Shower Curtain

(via Street Anatomy)

This may be the creepiest spam I've ever received. In this multi-level marketing scam, you terrorize local parents into coming to your business to have their children fingerprinted (Why fingerprinted? Presumably to ease identification of their mutilated remains -- don't you feel safer already?) by the local cops. This, in turn, gets you a bunch of potential customers to buy whatever junk your business sells.

Introducing Operation Kidsafe

Operation Kidsafe is a completely turnkey program designed by child safety expert - Mark J. Bott- that will deliver a huge number of parents and potential new customers. Parents will bring their children to your location to have their children fingerprinted and photographed using the same technology and equipment that is used by the U.S. Secret Service and FBI. In the event their child ever goes missing, they will have this information to provide to their local police department to assist in the safe return of their child.

Completely Turnkey- Operation Kidsafe coordinates the entire event. Local Police and Fire Departments attend. 10,000 flyers are distributed throughout the community to Churches, Schools, Day cares and other civic organizations. A full court press is put on media to help get the word out.

Market Exclusivity- Once you enroll, no one else within a 50-mile radius of your location can host another Operation Kidsafe Event. You have first right of refusal for the following year.

Free Sales Training- The Operation Kidsafe staff will teach your salespeople a system that allows a comfortable transition to reviewing your products and services while the children are being fingerprinted. They will help you focus your team by holding a training and prep meeting with you prior to your event.

No limit to # of Children Fingerprinted- Spread the word! You have the ability to make this event as big as you would like. You can advertise it, send out letters to your own customer database, host a live radio remote etc. The possibilities are endless!

If you would like more information and a full sponsor package with references, please fill out the request and fax to us at

RadiusK writes "Starting today, developers can get an early look at the SDK for the next version of the Android platform. Version 1.5 introduces APIs for features such as soft keyboards, home screen widgets, live folders, and speech recognition. At the developer site, you can download the early-look Android 1.5 SDK, read important information about upgrading your Eclipse plugin and existing projects, and learn about what's new and improved in Android 1.5."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "Do bad patents bring bad karma? Less than 24 hours after a hacker identified as 'Weev' claimed he exploited a feature for reporting inappropriate content to wreak havoc on Amazon's product ratings (Amazon blamed a "glitch"), the USPTO issued Amazon.com a patent for the Automatic Identification of Unreliable User Ratings, an 'invention' which - you guessed it - purportedly prevents Amazon's product ratings from being gamed by providing a feature for reporting inappropriate content ('Section 244 also contains a link 254 to a display (not shown) where customer CCC can report that item review 222 contains scandalous or inappropriate material')."

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Adam sez, "There's going to be a large protest in Rochester, NY on Saturday to fight the upcoming "tired pricing" aka absurdly-low bandwidth caps. This is not only anti-competitive, but it will cost local residents significantly more, in an economy that is already hurting. Not to mention deaf folks who rely on video chat for ASL, etc... It'd be great if people would come and show their support to convince Time Warner (RoadRunner) to abandon the plan. If we successfully fight this here, perhaps other communities across the country won't have to."

Date: Saturday, April 18, 2009
Time: 11:00am - 5:00pm
Location: Time Warner Cable Store
Street: 71 Mt. Hope Avenue
City/Town: Rochester, NY

Join the Time Warner broadband capping protest!

Protest RoadRunner's new pricing scheme

Stop the Cap!

In response to Dale's post yesterday, asking for input on colleges for makers, Pete Marchetto wrote a brief piece on his college experience in making things with some links he thought may be helpful.

Making in College

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FutureDomain writes "The Boston College Campus Police have seized the electronics of a computer science student for allegedly sending an email outing another student. The probable cause? The search warrant application states that he is 'a computer science major' and he uses 'two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.' The EFF is currently representing him."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's Xinhuanet, so take it with a grain of salt. But even if this is phony PRC naval propaganda, the headline and the story are too good not to re-blurb, and here's the "official" Xinhuanet photo, which I can't repost here because they're jerks about re-use.

Thousands of dolphins blocked the suspected Somali pirate ships when they were trying to attack Chinese merchant ships passing the Gulf of Aden, the China Radio International reported on Monday. The Chinese merchant ships escorted by a China's fleet sailed on the Gulf of Aden when they met some suspected pirate ships. Thousands of dolphins suddenly leaped out of water between pirates and merchants when the pirate ships headed for the China's.

Thousands of dolphins block Somali pirates (via @hi_im_monkey)

Photo: "Dolphin Song," from the Flickr photo stream of the wonderful world-adventurer Steve Jurvetson, who could probably vanquish Somali pirates with his bare hands.

Noah Zerkin sent us a vid to his current project. It's a wireless inertial data glove rig, built with an Arduino- and Processing-based motion capture system for use in creative interaction, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), etc. It's built entirely with parts from Sparkfun and RadioShack. He writes:

The thing that makes this special is how insanely inexpensive it was to build. The ultimate aim is to create a low-cost modular full-body interaction capture system for use in gaming, AR, and creative applications. The first commercial app I'm targeting for integration is Maya. After that, we'll look at integration with a game engine. I'm not sure what a glove/arm kit will cost, but it should be under $250 (Perhaps well under... we'll see... there are costs besides parts). Mass-production units would cost considerably less.

Augmentation

More:
Updated Power Glove with Bluetooth and Arduino

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coondoggie writes "While Ethernet technology has gone places no one would have envisioned 36 years ago, NASA today signed an agreement with a German Ethernet vendor to build highly fault-tolerant networks for space-based applications. TTTech builds a set of time-triggered services called TTEthernet that is implemented on top of standard IEEE802.3 Ethernet. Its technology is designed to enable design of synchronous, highly dependable embedded computing and networking, capable of tolerating multiple faults, the company said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What is it with these bizarre exaggerated claims about the "harms" associated with modern social networking tools? There was just a totally exaggerated report claiming that social networking was harmful to your health, but when you looked at the details, it didn't actually say that at all. The latest, is the claim that new research says that Twitter can make you "immoral." Really? Well, if you actually read the details that doesn't seem to be what the report says at all. Instead, it seems to note that if you only interact with people through short bursts of information, it may take you longer to recognize the emotional impact of what's being said because it's harder to spend the time to reflect. It's difficult to see how that finding is really all that new or surprising. But it says nothing about Twitter somehow turning moral people into immoral people, as the original story suggests.

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The adult film legend died at age 56 on Sunday. She was found in her mobile home by a family member.

Chambers' death was a "total shock," [fellow adult star Ron] Jeremy said, because they had been scheduled to sign a contract Monday to perform together in an off-Broadway "tongue-in-cheek" re-enactment of the porn classic "Deep Throat." "What's strange is that she was at a stage where she was totally happy and totally content with her life," Jeremy said. "Her life was falling together, and she was doing really well."

Above, an interview with Ms. Chambers from 1977 on a NYC public access cable TV show. The porn title for which she is best known: The Mitchell Brothers production "Behind the Green Door."

theodp writes "Gov. Christine Gregoire applauded Microsoft's job training partnership with WA state and county government agencies, which calls for the distribution of 30,625 training vouchers statewide during the next 90 days. 'This program [Elevate America] is all about equipping people with the new skills they'll need to get a job in the changing economy,' said Microsoft Counsel Brad Smith, who also made it very clear that getting 'workforce ready' won't involve acquiring any Linux skills. At least this offer appears to be no-cost, unlike the $35 Microsoft requested in an e-mail come-on for 'The Stimulus Package for Your Career' (so much for Smith's and Gregoire's war on spam)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The short version: This is an awesome book.

I've been a fan of Theodore Gray's work in odd science for some time now -- his amazing Periodic Table of Elements posters and puzzles are the subject of previous Boing Boing blog posts, and he contributes a monthly column about "chemistry, elements, and blowing things up" for Popular Science . I just received a copy of his beautiful new book, Mad Science, and the richness and eccentricity of its contents are just what I'd expect from him.

This thing is like an anarchist cookbook for happy mutants -- page after page of recipes, hazard warnings, beautiful photographs, and quirky personal observations. Want to know how to turn ore into homemade titanium in a flowerpot? Copper-plate your iPod? Craft a "hillbilly hot tub"? Brew ethanol in your bathtub? All here.

The attention to detail will delight "makers" and nerd readers of all ages. I love the little skull and crossbones death-icons on pages where experiments could lead to loss of life.

Gray has a degree in chemistry, but I believe he is an "amateur scientist" in the true and honored meaning of the term. His work fosters the culture of tinkering and experimentation, which, as he says in the introduction, is the true source of all great scientific achievements.

Science is not something practiced only in labs and universities. It's a way of looking at the world and seeing truth and beauty everywhere. It's something you can do whether you are employed as a professional scientist or not. While I have a degree in chemistry from a fine university, I've never worked as a professional chemist. I do these demonstrations in my shop on a rural farmstead a half a mile from the nearest neighbor.

Theo Gray's Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home - But Probably Shouldn't (Amazon).

More about the projects here.

Terry McBride, of Nettwerk, an interesting label based in Canada, has been running a whole series of interesting experiments that show how a modern record label can still be useful. When I saw McBride speak at Midem earlier this year, he mentioned an experiment he was running, which I never really wrote about. However, Nancy Baym points out that it's starting to get some press. The idea is a free concert to attend... where you're asked to pay what you think it was worth on the way out. Nettwerk artist k-os is doing this, setting up a "Karma table" where you can also get a free copy of k-os' "fan-mixed" album. This was the other experiment Nettwerk is running: rather than letting fans remix the album, they released all the stems so that fans could mix the album itself -- and then they're releasing both the best fan-mixed versions and the professionally mixed versions.

It's an interesting experiment, and it will be worth watching (especially if McBride is willing share any of the actual results). It does seem like a risky move, because you're taking on the whole upfront cost of putting on the event -- giving away a scarcity, rather than an infinite good. However, depending on how the rest of it is structured they could end up making some decent money out of it. I'm just not sure it's really the best model, since giving away the scarcity for free gets much costlier much faster.

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risingfish writes "Looks like Obama did what many organizations have asked him not to do. In a disappointing move, he has tapped a fifth RIAA lawyer to a top spot in the Justice Department."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "The average visitor to YouTube is costing Google between one and two dollars, according to new research that shows Google losing up to $1.65 million per day on the video site. More than two years after Google acquired YouTube, income from premium offers and other revenue generators don't offset YouTube's expenses of content acquisition, bandwidth, and storage. YouTube is expected to serve 75 billion video streams to 375 million unique visitors in 2009, costing Google up to $2,064,054 a day, or $753 million annualized. Revenue projections for YouTube fall between $90 million and $240 million." Maybe this is in part because, as Al writes, "Researchers from HP Palo Alto studied videos uploaded to YouTube and found that popularity has little to do with quality or persistence."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Doyle creates mind-bogglingly beautiful dioramas with exquisite detail. These pieces just ooze mood and wonder. Doyle is profiled in the next issue of Hi-Fructose, previewed here. From his artist statement:

My work mines the debris of memory through the creation of intricate worlds sculpted in 1:43 scale and smaller. Often sealed under glass, the works depict the remnants of things past—whether major, transformational experiences, or the quieter moments that resonate loudly throughout a life. In much the way the mind recalls events through the fog of time, the works distort reality through a warped and dreamlike lens.

The pieces’ radically reduced scales evoke feelings of omnipotence—as well as the visceral sensation of unbidden memory recall. Hovering above the glass, the viewer approaches these worlds as an all-seeing eye, looking down upon landscapes that dwarf and threaten the figures within.

Conversely, the private intensity of moments rendered in such a small scale draws the viewer in, allowing for the intimacy one might feel peering into a museum display case or dollhouse. Though surrounded by chaos, hazard, and longing, the figures’ faces betray little emotion, inviting viewers to lose themselves in these crucibles—and in the jumble of feelings and memories they elicit.

The glass itself contains and compresses the world within it, seeming to suspend time itself—with all its accompanying anguish, fear, and bliss. By sealing the works in this fashion, I hope to distill the debris of human experience down to single, fragile moments. Like blackboxes bobbing in the flotsam, these works wait for discovery, each an indelible record of human memory.

Thomas Doyle's Dioramas (Thanks, Miss Heather Sparks!)

In the past, we've used the website Scribd to upload documents that we want to show readers here -- usually things like court filings. It's a decent solution, and often better than providing a link to a pdf which annoys some people (myself included). Recently, the company has come under some misguided fire by copyright holders, falsely accusing the company of somehow making it easy to infringe on copyrights. The company has pointed out that beyond its existing DMCA safe harbors, the company goes above and beyond in helping copyright holders stop unauthorized use. In fact, we've defended the company against unfair attacks. However, it looks like the company has ramped up its attempts to appease copyright holders, and in some cases may be going too far. We already pointed out how it took down a public domain book (though it was quick to fix that mistake).

The latest, though, is that I just went to upload another document (a public domain court ruling), and as I did, I saw that Scribd now requires me to check off a box saying: "I certify that I own the copyright to these documents." That was troubling to me, because I do not own the copyright on this particular document... no one does. As I moved to upload the document at a competing site (DocStoc), I Twittered the dilemma, noting that I wasn't sure what to do. To Scribd's credit, it took a company representative all of three minutes to respond that public domain documents were okay, and that they would update the language of the uploader to make this clear. A quick response, which actually makes me feel good about Scribd, but... at the same time highlights the problem.

After getting so much pressure from copyright holders, Scribd feels the need to be extra proactive in "protecting" copyright, even to the point where its default decisions go too far. While it will now clarify that public domain documents are okay... what about cases where the document would be fair use? Someone should still be able to upload the document without declaring that they own the document or that it's in the public domain if it's a fair use case. This certainly isn't putting any of the blame on Scribd, who seems to be bending over backwards to satisfy everyone. But that's a part of the problem. The copyright holders are clearly pushing well beyond what copyright allows them to do, and it's putting pressure on Scribd to respond -- with the early response going so far as to wipe out certain user rights. The copyright supporters love this, because they don't care much about trampling user rights, but it shows just how screwed up things are that a company like Scribd even needs to be put in this position.

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A simple fart in a Waco, Texas hotel room led a man to throw a knife at his flatulent friend, who then responded by stabbing the guy in the chest. The stabber was arrested. From the Associated Press:

Police said they were called to a motel on Wednesday (local time) where several men from the Houston area were sharing a room. Police said a 35-year-old man allegedly passed gas in the room on Tuesday night.

Police said one of the other men became upset, picked up a knife and threw it at the 35-year-old man, who was cut in the leg. The suspect was accused of then stabbing the man in the chest.

"Fart fight gets nasty"

Daniel Kish is a blind psychologist who uses echolocation to "see." In New Scientist, Kish writes about his experience of "echo vision" and how he teaches others to do it:

Although our programme has many facets, we are best known for teaching FlashSonar. Its ability to give blind people a way to perceive their environment far beyond the reach of an arm or a cane is fast being recognised by people who work with blind people and in other disciplines. We are the first to develop a systematic, comprehensive way of teaching it.

We start by sensitising students to echoes, usually by having them detect and locate easy targets, such as large plastic panels or bowls. Once they can do this, we move on to learning to recognise more complex echoes by comparing them to familiar ones.

For example, when facing a hedge, a student might say, "It sounds solid?" I might reply, "As solid as the wall to your house?" "No, not that solid," she might say. "As sparse as the fence of your yard?" "No, more solid than that," she might answer. Now we have a range of relativity to work with. "Does it remind you of anything else near your house, maybe in the side yard?" "Bushes?" she might query. "But what seems different from those bushes?" "These are sort of flat like a fence." Ultimately, students verify what they hear by touching.

"Echo vision: The man who sees with sound"

The artist lineup for the 2009 Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco has been announced. Boing Boing bloggers and Boing Boing Video were there last year, and we produced a number of video episodes with artist interviews and "bus sessions" (where bands joined us on a friend's rockstar tourbus to play acoustic jam sessions for the show). We'll be returning this year, with more fun and hijinks planned.

This year's roster includes Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Beastie Boys, Incubus, Black Eyed Peas, Jason Mraz, Thievery Corporation, Ween, The Mars Volta, TV on the Radio, Tom Jones, Built To Spill, Calexico, The National, Q-Tip, Deerhunter, Heartless Bastards, Blind Pilot, Mastodon, Trombone Shorty and Dengue Fever.

The lineup looks amazing, and above, a promotional puppet video with more.

The event takes place in Golden Gate Park, August 28-30. Tickets go on sale this Sunday, April 19, at 10am PST, at sfoutsidelands.com. (Thanks, Rick Farman!)

KindMind writes "CNet has pictures of a planned 10,000 year clock to be built in eastern Nevada by the Long Now Foundation. From the article: 'Running under its own power, the clock is an experiment in art, science, and engineering. The six dials on the face of this machine will represent the year, century, horizons, sun position, lunar phase, and the stars of the night sky over a 10,000-year period. Likely to span multiple generations and evolutions in culture, the thinking and design put into the monument makes it a moving sculpture as beautiful as it is complex.' This was reviewed on Slashdot in 2005. Really cool pictures, including one of a mechanical 'binary computer' that converts the pendulum into positions on the dial."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We already wrote about how ridiculous it is to compare Somali high seas pirates with music, movie and software fans downloading an unauthorized copy of something off the internet -- and even the press is starting to question the wisdom of calling unauthorized file sharing "piracy." Yet, that hasn't stopped the BSA, masters of misleading through questionable stats from ramping up a marketing campaign that purposely tries to compare software file sharers with Somali pirates. As Gordon Haff at News.com notes:

"This has got to be one of the most tone-deaf and cynically opportunistic PR pitches I've seen for quite some time. It's one thing to figuratively equate piracy with making digital copies of software, music, movies, or books. We can debate endlessly whether such actions are truly stealing or not. But that's not the point. It's that to literally and deliberately equate the two in the wake of pirates taking a ship's crew hostage and the US Navy subsequently killing three of the attackers...Well, words fail me."

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MJackson writes "The European Commission has opened an infringement proceeding against the UK after a series of complaints by Internet users, and extensive communication with UK authorities, about the use of Phorm's behavioural advertising system, which uses Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology, by internet service providers. Phorm works with UK ISPs to monitor what websites you visit for use in targeted advertising campaigns, though its methods have raised more than a few fears about invasions of privacy. Similar services in the USA have caused an equal level of controversy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instructables user Bctcteacher writes:

My students love to build things and throw stuff so let's put both together! Now, for the green part. Let's see if we can make something that is recyclable and fun! Looking around the classroom, I see lots of cardboard (used shipping boxes) and a good supply of Elmer's glue. So, with a little help from Autodesk's CAD program Inventor, I whipped up a nice little Catapult (Hence "CAD-A-Pult").

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gilgongo writes "It's more than 10 years since people started making a living writing web page markup, yet the job title (and role) has yet to settle down. Not only that, but there are different types of people who write markup: those that approach the craft as essentially an integration task, and those that see it as part of UI design overall. The situation is further complicated by the existence of other roles in the workplace such as graphic designer and information architect. This is making recruitment for this role a real headache. So, how do you describe people who 'do HTML' (and CSS and maybe a bit of JavaScript and graphics manipulation)? Some job titles I've seen include: Design Technologist, Web Developer, Front-end Developer, HTML/CSS Developer, Client-side Developer and UI Engineer. Do you have any favourite job titles for this role?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review has a roundup of some of the weirder ideas on show at last week's Computer-Human Interaction conference in Boston. They include a trackball that heats up as you roll over different parts of an image, a pair of goggles that track eye movements using electrooculography, and a miniature robot with a cellphone for its head."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the last two boutique hotels I stayed at, when I checked in, they asked if I wanted a physical newspaper delivered each morning. This is a good thing, as, for me, mornings in hotels consist of me checking up on the news via my laptop, and then getting annoyed when I finally open the door to head out and realize there's as newspaper there I need to throw out. However, the big hotels have continued to force it on you whether you want it or not. Perhaps that's finally changing. Marriott is the first major hotel chain to say that it will now stop automatically delivering a paper to hotel rooms, instead giving guests the option as to whether or not they want it. While I'm sure some newspapers (especially USA Today) may be freaking out about this decision, it only makes sense. The hotels will certainly save a lot of money, guests are happier and everyone wastes a lot less paper.

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davidmwilliams writes "Earlier this year the Linux Foundation launched a competition for budding writers, film makers and just general Linux enthusiasts to make their own grassroots advertisement to compete with Apple's highly-successful 'I'm a Mac' series of adverts. The winner has now been announced."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Marcus had a vision of wearable space invaders and set forth to make it a reality -

The whole project was inspired by Alex, especially his LED matrix projector and his tiny 64 pixel project. After some beers with Alex I claimed: "I can do it much smaller in SMT". Silly me! Not that it was hard enough to build it in SMT, but I also wanted to do it in bi-color (I just got some small bi-color LED matrix laying around, waiting for a project) and I made some real design mistakes (but that is a story for another article). Additionally I wanted an design which still allows me to use the LEDs of the display as light sensor. That was nearly too much - but only nearly!

That's some pro-quality SMD soldering - very well done! Here's hoping that safety pin doesn't bridge any connections. (As the maker points out, the pin is soldered safely in place.) Read more of the project on Interactive Matter.

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Hugh Pickens writes "According to a survey of college students Facebook users have lower overall grades than non-users. The study by Aryn Karpinski, an education researcher at Ohio State University, found that Facebook user GPAs are in the 3.0 to 3.5 range on average, compared to 3.5 to 4.0 for non-users and that Facebook users also studied anywhere from one to five hours per week, compared to non-users who studied 11 to 15 or more hours per week. Karpinski emphasized that correlation does not equal causation and that the grades association could be caused by something else. 'I'm just saying that there's some kind of relationship there, and there's many third variables that need to be studied.' One hypothesis is that students who spend more time enjoying themselves rather than studying might tend to latch onto the nearest distraction, such as Facebook or that students who use the social networking site might also spend more time on other non-studying activities such as sports or music. 'It may be that if it wasn't for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online.' As for herself, Karpinski said she doesn't have a Facebook account, although the co-author of the study does. 'For me, I think Facebook is a huge distraction.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Heads up San Fransisco makers -

The next Make:SF meeting is Tuesday, April 13th at 6:30 PM
There is a $5 fee to cover pizza and overhead. Special secret giveaway at tonight's meeting!

Location:
Instructables HQ
489 Clementina St. - 3rd Floor
San Francisco CA

To present contact Andrew at meetings [at] makesf [dot] org

Related sites:
http://www.makesf.org
http://www.meetup.com/makesf/
http://makesf.pbwiki.com/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/686701@N22/

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An anonymous reader writes "Big container ships are taking it very slow these days, cruising at 10 knots instead of their usual 26 knots, to save fuel. This is actually slower than sailing freighters traveled a hundred years ago. The 1902 German Preussen, the largest sailing ship ever built, traveled between Hamburg (Germany) and Iquique (Chile): the best average speed over a one way trip was 13.7 knots. Sailing boats need a large and costly crew, but they can also be controlled by computers. Automated sail handling was introduced already one century ago. In 2006 it was taken to the extreme by the Maltese Falcon, which can be operated by one man at the touch of a button. We have computer-controlled windmills, why not computer-controlled sailing cargo vessels?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I read Farhad Manjoo's piece in Slate about Twitter. It's the best of a class of commentary that says that Twitter is something you can skip if you aren't interested in periodic 140-character reports on mundane people's lives. As I read the piece it made sense, so I was left wondering why I was and still am attracted to Twitter and use it, daily.

When I took a picture of the shark tank at the NY Aquarium, or the Cyclone at Coney Island or the traffic on the Belt Parkway, I had a background script on my server that automatically published a pointer to each picture to Twitter. I feel the pictures are more interesting because people see them while I'm still there. It's a very small window into my mundane life. I post them not because I think anyone cares about my life, rather because I want to see what ideas it gives me for next steps.

In a way, as a user of Twitter, I have the same business model as the investors in Twitter. I don't know what it is, but I have a feeling there's something here. I look at it this way, if you tried to tell me what we're doing on Twitter has nothing to do with what we'll be doing with networks in the future, I'd be 100 percent sure you were wrong. There's something here. The challenge is to figure out what it is.

However increasingly I'm sure that Twitter itself is not it.

If it were, by now we'd see one killer app built on Twitter that was as game-changing as Twitter itself, if not more so. I think this is because they have put limits on what developers can do, trying to save the good stuff for themselves. The danger in doing that is that you leave nothing juicy for developers. And you leave the door open for a competitor who will take advantage.

Things I'd like to see -- unlimited, open architecture metadata hanging off the 140-character messages, payloads for Twitter. And open access to the firehose by anyone who wants to develop on it. Both these things would guarantee Twitter, Inc. a role in the future. Without giving up control of both, they leave opportunities for others and make it more likely they will be a stepping-stone.

BTW, I was able to finish this post on my 1000HE on the Jetblue flight while it was waiting at the gate. The free wifi from the terminal is strong enough to be accessible on the plane. It's amazing how quickly you can write when you're under deadline!

Slatterz writes "The Chinese government is denying any involvement in the reported infiltration of US electric grid systems. Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu as saying that any sort of involvement from China in the incident "doesn't exist at all." The denial follows a report in the Wall Street Journal which claimed that agents from China and Russia along with several other countries had infiltrated the computer systems charged with managing electricity in the US and left behind software payloads which could be used to control or disable electric grids in the US." Bruce Schneier is skeptical about the whole story.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

15 years ago Marc Canter was a cashed out ex-founder of a Kleiner Perkins startup, rushing through his money in the lifestyle of a rich and famous rock star Hollywood movie mogul. It was a huge bonfire, built around a spectacular vision of commercialism, entertainment, network technology and physical venues like bars, football stadiums, bowling alleys and restaurants.

Marc turned his house on Potrero Hill into a demo for his vision.

I'm writing this from the JetBlue terminal at JFK which is a total realization of the vision. And I totally hate it!

In front of me is a HD video screen I'm trying hard to ignore, but it won't let me. All around me are similar screens with people sitting around them trying to ignore them. Hanging off the ceiling everywhere are more HD screens showing sports, news, commercials, schedules announcements. Off in the distance is a ruckus of a central hallway, total confusion, people unable to figure out even the most basic things like how to get a coffee and blueberry muffin. I don't dare go into the men's room!

On the monitor in front of me is one of Marc's favorite ideas. I can swipe my credit card and go to a menu where I can choose from all kinds of food that they will bring right to where I'm sitting. I didn't try it.

In a few months I'll probably love this place, but right now -- I'm Mr. Luddite. Give me a plain Jane terminal anyday!

Update: On the other hand, one thing everyone who reads this blog will appreciate -- free wifi, and it's good.

Heather Tomkins drew this lovely anatomical illustration on the casted arm of her friend, the illustrator Taylor White: "I was thusly wrangled into making this old school plaster cast (they do things funky in Norway apparently) into an awesome work of art."

CAST, AWAY!!!! (via Street Anatomy)

"Sexting," or kids taking nude or provocative photos of themselves and sending them around, is one of the moral panics du jour. While some people are working themselves into a lather over it, one can't help but wonder if Casio is trying to pitch its latest mobile handset to the teen sexter market with a couple of YouTube videos called "Sexy girl in the shower" and "Money shot." The videos have since been yanked, but the former touted the handset's waterproofing and 5-megapixel camera by showing -- no prizes for guessing -- a girl using it in the shower to talk and take a photo of herself. We won't get in to the content of the second ad, but suffice to say it's not something very many companies would be too comfortable with. Sure, showing somebody using a phone in the shower sounds like a great way to promote a waterproof handset, but given the sexting uproar, perhaps Casio's timing (and/or judgment) was a little off.

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 artful dodgers of Steampunk Magazine have done it again -- another gorgeous issue, of great conversation, ideas, fiction, reviews, and how-tos. Content includes a manifesto of sorts by steampunk sci-fi godfather Bruce Sterling, how-tos on metal casting and no-budget welding, an awesome piece on "tramp printers" of the 1800s, and an an interview by Libby Bulloff with the Chronabelle crew, a group of California high school/college students who live their lives as an airship crew. I was thrilled to read this from Chronabelle's Lady Almira:

Maker Faire has been, and probably will remain, the highest point in my experiences as a steampunk. It really inspired me and made the entire crew feel like we were part of something real. As great as the internet steampunk community is, getting to interact with real flesh and blood folks was a nice change of pace.

[BTW: Many of the steampunk musicians, artisans, craftspeople who were part of last year's Contraptors' Lounge will be back at this year's Faire and it all promises to deliver even more thrills and frills. Stay tuned for more info on Make: Online.]

Steampunk Magazine

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Newly released documents Documents released in 2001 revealed that Ronald Reagan served as a secret FBI snitch during the Red Scare (we already knew he named names during the hearings, but now we also know that he snuck around behind his friends' and members' backs and destroyed their lives):

It was revealed last week that the future President played another role as well: as a secret FBI informant, code name T-10. According to an article published in the San Jose Mercury News, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act indicate that Reagan and his first wife, Actress Jane Wyman, provided federal agents with the names of actors they believed were Communist sympathizers.

American Notes Hollywood (via Digg)

(Image: File:Ronald Reagan in Dark Victory trailer.jpg, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

N!NJA writes "California's biggest energy utility announced a deal Monday to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from a startup company that plans to beam the power down to Earth from outer space, beginning in 2016. Solaren would generate the power using solar panels in Earth orbit and convert it to radio-frequency transmissions that would be beamed down to a receiving station in Fresno, PG&E said. From there, the energy would be converted into electricity and fed into PG&E's power grid."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Salim sez, "Princeton's UChannel's Podcast amalgamates public lectures from some of the world's best public lectures. They just put out an excellent item which serves as a great primer to anybody who is just becoming interested in issues related to copyright law."

Professor James Boyle describes how our culture, science and economic welfare all depend on the delicate balance between those ideas that are controlled and those that are free, between intellectual property and the public domain â€"the realm of material that everyone is free to use and share without permission or fee

Intellectual property laws have a significant impact on many important areas of human endeavour, including scientific innovation, digital creativity, cultural access and free speech. And so Boyle argues that, just as every informed citizen needs to know at least something about the environment or civil rights, every citizen in the information age should also have an understanding of intellectual property law.

The Public Domain: enclosing the commons of the mind

MP3 Link

(Thanks, Salim!)

Adafruit Industries posted a rather sweet tutorial on using XBee modules as a wireless MIDI bridge. In the video above, Limor demonstrates the 'bees buzzing serial data at a distance of about 50 feet. The default latency between sender and receiver comes in at around 6.0 milliseconds and can even be improved a bit with adjustments. This is great news for those looking free their live gear from lengthy cabling (wireless keytar?) Check the site for more details.

In the Maker Shed:

XBee & XBee Adapter Kit

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The Guardian's just published my latest column, "Developers still finding that it pays to get in the game," about the increasingly prevalent online game practice of selling items to players, and the parallels this has to the download wars:

Official, game-sponsored exchanges for real-money trades (RMTs) are more than places where players can swap goods for money. Fundamentally, these exchanges act as an honest broker between two extremely different types of player: cash-rich/time-poor players (people with jobs, for the most part) and time-rich/cash-poor players (retirees and young people). Seen through this lens, a "game" is just a bunch of applied psychology that makes kids work long hours to earn virtual gewgaws that adults are trained to desire. In this "Free to play, pay for stuff" world, kids are alienated from the product of their leisure by a marketplace where the game-company skims a piece off of every transaction.

The psychology of this is fascinating, since it all only works to the extent that the game remains "fun". One key element is that skilled players (eg kids) must not feel like the rich players are able to buy their way into positions of power. Game devs are advised to sell defensive items - shields, armour, dodging spells, but not offensive ones. A skilled player will still be able to clobber a heavily armoured rich player, given enough time (and skilled players have nothing but time, by definition), but may quit in disgust at the thought that some rich wanker is able to equip himself with a mega-powerful sword or blaster that gives him ultimate killing power. No one wants to play in a game where one player has an "I win" button.

For me, the most fascinating thing about this is how it can be seen as the application of the business model that downloaders have been advocating since Napster: "Don't sue the kids who download your music or movies, rather, see them as the marketing that sells the same media to cash-rich adults who lack the time to use P2P software."

Developers still finding that it pays to get in the game

OMG, I think I just blew the lid off my chrome dome in peals of rhapsodic techno-bliss over this photo set of Soviet-era nuclear control gear. Paging Dr. Strangelove!

Kurchatov Nuke Equipment

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Mark Pitcher's posted a set of Soviet nuclear controls that look exactly as I pictured high-tech equipment looking when I was a kid (shown here is a nuclear detonator panel (!) that bristles with high-tech menace): "Equipment built during the 1940's to 1970's for use in the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site (the 'Polygon'). All are hand-made and most are one-offs. Photos from a museum in Kurchatov Kazakhstan."

Kurchatov Nuke Equipment (via Make)

A reader writes, "You couldn't make this up: Cameras are being turned on the people paid to watch CCTV streams, to note which bits of surveillance footage they didn't see. The system developed in Turkey uses webcams to track a person's eye movements and can then produce an edited reel of footage that they didn't see at the end of their shift."

Privacy campaigners may enjoy the irony if the gaze-tracking system comes to be regarded as intrusive by CCTV operators - who could fear that employers will use it to dispense with their services if they consistently miss too much on-screen skulduggery.

Eyeball spy turns the tables on Big Brother

We'd been covering the Coupons.com DMCA legal saga for a few years now, and we thought it had ended back in November, when Coupons.com dropped its case against John Stottlemire. If you don't recall, Stottlemire was sued because he'd realized that if you deleted a few files on your hard drive, you could reprint coupons issued via Coupons.com's software. The company claimed this was a DMCA anti-circumvention violation -- though it seemed odd to claim that simply telling people to delete some files eliminated any sort of copy protection. Also there were significant questions as to whether or not what Coupons.com was doing was actually copy protection. Stottlemire was doing a pretty good job (as an individual) fighting back, and the company finally dropped the case.

But... apparently after Stottlemire bragged that he "kicked [Coupons.com's] ass," the company tried to reopen the case, claiming that Stottlemire had breached the non-disclosure agreement on the settlement and claiming that they need to reopen the case to "set the record straight." It's difficult to see how claiming you "kicked their ass" breaches any disclosure agreements, since it's hardly giving away much of anything. And, it appears, a judge has agreed, denying the request to reopen the case. The judge did say that Stottlemire's statement was a breach, but hardly an egregious one, and certainly not a big enough deal to reopen the case.

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Last year, IDW published a collection of six comics adapted from my short stories called Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now, all of these stories also licensed under Creative Commons. Now, Robot Comics, a firm that provides comics for Android mobile phones, has begun to make the comics available free under the same CC license for mobile phones, beginning with my story Anda's Game (which was also included in my short story collection Overclocked, and podcasted as a reading by Alice Taylor of Wonderland.The adaptation is by the excellent Dara Naraghi, illustrated by Esteve Polls.

The story is a riff on the way that property-rights are coming to games, and on the bizarre spectacle of sweat-shops in which children are paid to play the game all day in order to generate eBay-able game-wealth. When I was a kid, there were arcade kings who would play up Gauntlet characters to maximum health and weapons and then sell their games to nearby players for a dollar or two -- netting them about $0.02 an hour -- but this is a very different proposition indeed.

Cory Doctorow's Anda's Game

Hugh Pickens writes "While it's probably not true that P. T. Barnum was the originator of the saying 'there's a sucker born every minute,' the proliferation of nearly 23,000 Ponzi schemes on YouTube, with an astounding 59,192,963 views, proves that the sentiment is still alive and well. The videos usually don't ask for money directly, but send viewers to web sites where they are urged to sign up for the 'gifting program,' usually for fees ranging from $150 to $5,000. One of the videos recently added on YouTube featured Bible quotes, pictures of stacks of money and a testimonial from a man who said he not only got rich from cash gifting, but also found true happiness and lost 35 pounds. 'They make it seem like it's legal and an easy way to make money, but it's nothing more than a pyramid scheme,' says Better Business Bureau spokeswoman Alison Southwick. Some of the videos claim that because it's 'gifting,' it's somehow legal. 'They talk about "cash leveraging," whatever that means, and other vague marketing talk,' says Southwick, but the basic scheme is that participants are told to recruit more people who will put in more money. 'It's just money changing hands,' says Southwick, 'and it always goes to people at the top of the pyramid.' A spokesman for YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc., said the company doesn't comment on individual videos."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pentax has released a firmware update for its K20D digital SLR. Version 1.03 improves operation of the Shake Reduction (SR) function of the camera. K20D users can download and install the latest firmware from the Pentax website.

Pentax has released a firmware update for its K20D digital SLR. Version 1.03 improves operation of the Shake Reduction (SR) function of the camera. K20D users can download and install the latest firmware from the Pentax website.

We've posted samples images from the Nikon D5000 DSLR. We borrowed a production specification version of Nikon's latest digital camera and made the best of the London weather. Most of the shots have been taken using the Nikkor 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 VR and at default settings. However, we've tried to use a range of the camera's ISO settings, two of its scene modes (including the new Silhouette mode) and even tried turning Active D-Lighting off for some of the low-light samples. We've added these samples to the end of our hands-on preview.

We've posted samples images from the Nikon D5000 DSLR. We borrowed a production specification version of Nikon's latest digital camera and made the best of the London weather. Most of the shots have been taken using the Nikkor 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 VR and at default settings. However, we've tried to use a range of the camera's ISO settings, two of its scene modes (including the new Silhouette mode) and even tried turning Active D-Lighting off for some of the low-light samples. We've added these samples to the end of our hands-on preview.

Surface Mount Soldering

Techniques for making modern circuits.

By Scott Driscoll

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Haywired by Mike Rigsby was written for budding electronics hobbyists. It's filled with helpful hints on soldering, wire wrapping, and multi-meter use. Learn how to build and record a talking alarm, or craft your own talking greeting card. Construct a no-battery electric car toy that uses a super capacitor, or a flashlight that can be charged in minutes, then shine for 24 hours. Each project is described in step-by-step detail with photographs and circuit diagrams.

More about Haywired by Mike Rigsby

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Canadian lawyer David Canton (who I recently had the pleasure of meeting) has written up an excellent analysis why the recent ruling about Google's potential liability for suggesting trademarked keywords doesn't make much sense. His key point is a good one:

Perhaps Google did suggest a competitor's mark -- but trade-mark infringement only occurs when there is "use" in conjunction with similar products or services. How is Google supposed to know whether my use will infringe, or be perfectly lawful? A ruling that Google can never suggest keywords that happen to be trade-marked does not make sense to me.

For example, the word "Canton" has been trade-marked for various things by various companies in the U.S. and Canada, including speakers, liqueur, and soup. So if I wanted "David Canton" as a keyword, why would it be a problem for Google to suggest "Canton" as a possible keyword? Surely it's my responsibility to use that keyword for my own purposes to promote my legal services -- and not use it to sell my own line of speakers, liqueur or soup.

Google should have a role to play if I do that -- but the role should be to forward complaints or put the complainant in touch with me -- not to be liable itself for my infringement.

Indeed. Yet another reason for why the Second Circuit's ruling is so troubling.

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More information on how Amazon came to misclassify over 50,000 books (including books about feminism, about gay and lesbian themes, etc) as "adult" and make them largely invisible to searchers. Turns out Patrick's theory was largely correct -- an employee in France filled in a field incorrectly and clobbered the listings for 50,000 items.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Amazon begins to re-rank affected 'adult' books; theories swirl [UPDATED] (via Lisa Gold)

Greeted with the news that some Americans of Chinese descent were turned away from the polls because the names on their ID didn't match with the incompetently assembled voter lists, Texas State Rep. Betty Brown (R) has proposed that they should change their names so that "Americans" can manage them better. (Um, if these people aren't also "Americans" then why do they get to vote?)

"Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese -- I understand it's a rather difficult language -- do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?" Brown said.

Texas lawmaker: Asians should change their names to make them 'easier for Americans to deal with.' (via Sociological Images)

Dan sez, "Danish photographer Peter Funch stakes New York City street corners out for two weeks at a time, taking pictures of passersby from the very same spot. He then uses Photoshop to composite the results into single images. I love the mass of yawners."

Peter Funch (Thanks, Dan!)

Ren sez, "This is a smashing video that remixes scenes from Disney movies that appear to be traced from one another. The effect is super-bizarre, but it explains why I was never able to tell those princesses apart!"

Disney Templates (Thanks, Ren!)

Hurrah! After a year's absence, Steampunk Magazine is back with issue #5 -- either buy the handsome object in print, or get a free Creative Commons licensed download.

The new ish has short fiction from John Reppion and Jimmy T Hand, instructions for making an "emergency welding machine," information about being a "tramp printer," Steampunk madlibs ("On the construction of the Tesla Coil"), an interview with Voltaire, Bruce Sterling's "User's Guide to Steampunk," and much, much more.

SteamPunk Magazine (Thanks, Magpie Killjoy)

eldavojohn writes "A South Korean blogger named Park Dae-sung has been arrested and charged with destabilizing foreign markets by blogging about declining companies. This is the same blogger who predicted the economic downturn that has been experienced the world over. The Korean Times offers more information on the community college graduate and the accusations levied against him." Several readers have also sent in news that Omidreza Mirsayafi, an Iranian blogger arrested and imprisoned for his writings earlier this year, has now died in custody.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Every couple years or so, the press goes nuts, after some renowned chiphead says something along the lines that "Moore's Law" is dying. But then you look at the details and it's all rather meaningless. So... with reports coming out, yet again, that someone is claiming that Moore's Law is reaching its end, there's still little to worry about. First of all, Moore's Law was always more a rule of thumb (and has been defined multiple different ways by Moore himself). The definition that many people attribute to Moore has never really been accurate, anyway. But even the guy quoted in this article notes that we'll just move on to somewhat different technologies to continue the inevitable march forward to more and more powerful computer chips. So, once again, it seems that the death of Moore's Law isn't nearly as big a deal as it's been made out to be.

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photo by Barbara Fried

photo by M2

We have learned sad news through our friends at Laughing Squid. Tom Kennedy, an art car and Burning Man artist (whose work we've featured in MAKE and online), drowned in Ocean Beach, CA this weekend. His friend John Law writes:

We lost one of our very best. Tom Kennedy (1960-2009) drowned at Ocean Beach on Sunday, April 12th at 2PM. Tom was an artist, activist, teacher, prankster - a strong friend, bright spirit and true inspiration to each and every one of the thousands of people he touched through his powerful and loving art and his huge and giving heart. I first met Tom at Burning Man 94 when he came out from Texas with his amazing art car "Ripper the Friendly Shark", forever raising the bar at that event for creativity and originality in personal expression. I was dumbfounded by the whimsical nature, bold concept and execution of the piece. But more importantly, I was floored by Tom's unmitigated joy at just being there, alive and creating the world around him.

Very sad news. Somewhere in the aether, an angel is now tooling around in a snazzy new shark car.

Goodbye To Tom Kennedy: Art Car Artist, Activist, Teacher & Prankster

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That is a fancy way of saying "crazy mushed up text with LOTS OF ALL CAPS! BOLD! I-T-A-L-I-C ! Nnnnnooooo negative space!" on product labels. I made up that bogus design category name, "Hyperbolic Bronnerian," to describe things like the plant stimulant product above. I found this at Home Depot on Sunday. Dr. Bronner's Soap is, of course, the greatest and most insane example of this aesthetic. I think Bragg Amino Acids are another good one. What are your favorite? "Unbalanced neighbor's signs" might be included, as might the rambly emails of mentally disturbed persons who fear black helicopters and alien butt probes. However, I am really looking for commercial products here. Viva Bronner!

Here are some amazing scans of the plant growth stimulant product labels. one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One is shown below.

Randy Sarafan made a chair that tweets his toots. Uses all the staples: Arduino, XBee, Python, Twitter. And it's open source, check the Instructable!

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I had an email today from a reader, Kent Weakley, asking about maker-friendly colleges for his son.

My thirteen year old is crazy about Make magazine and all the great podcasts. He loves inventing and creating. Quick question - what are some good colleges that can help nurture the creative, innovative spirit of an inventor??? And what are some of the schools staff members, etc. of Make have attended? Thank you for your help!

What recommendations would you give this dad for his child? If you're in a college program today, let us know what you think. If you're a recent graduate, would you recommend the program to another young maker?

I wonder how much of a role college (or school in general) has played in the development of makers. Without prejudicing the answer, my own sense is that the formative development of makers has happened outside of school. But I'd like to hear whether college programs helped you improve your skills and stimulated your own development as a maker.

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An anonymous reader writes "Contrary to what we discussed four days ago, Germany's registration authority, DeNIC, did not suspend access to wikileaks.de. After some investigation, Heise found out that the ISP ended the contract (in German, Babelfish translation) with Theodor Reppe back in December 2008, with the mandatory three-month notice giving him enough time to move wikileaks.de elsewhere — which he did not do. At the end of March, the domain wikileaks.de was released back to DeNIC."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Los Angeles jury today convicted music producer Phil Spector of second-degree murder in the death of actress Lana Clarkson more than six years ago. At left, Spector, as seen in a previous Boing Boing post by Mark.

Here is a New York Times piece about the trial, and the killing for which Spector was today found responsible.

Mobile operators around the world have been pushing the sales of data modems and laptop dongles in a bid to grow their subscriber figures and revenues, and they've largely been successful. But Comscore says that growth in data-modem subscriptions in the US slowed significantly in the fourth quarter, and it puts the blame on cutbacks in discretionary spending. That's one likely explanation, but another is that the market for people who want to spend $60 per month on mobile broadband is pretty much tapped out. The Comscore report says that mobile data users didn't add to their overall internet usage, but rather just shifted some of their time from fixed to mobile connections, making the mobile service one of convenience. When that convenience costs more than most home broadband connections, and can generally deliver lower speeds, it doesn't seem particularly surprising that user growth doesn't continue to skyrocket.

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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Nikon has announced the AF-S DX Nikkor 10-24mm F3.5-4.5G ED, an ultra-wideangle zoom for DX format DSLRs. This mid-range optic offers a minimum focus distance of 0.24m through the entire zoom range, and includes a built-in AF-S motor that enables autofocus on entry-level Nikon bodies (including the D5000 also announced today). The optical formula consists of 14 elements in 9 groups, including 3 aspherical elements and 2 ED glass elements to combat aberrations. It will be available from May at a cost of €849.

Nikon has unveiled the D5000 upper-entry-level DSLR and we've prepared a full preview of the camera and its features. Sitting between the D60 and D90, the D5000 appears to go head-to-head with Canon's EOS 500D, aiming at upgrading DSLR owners and experienced compact users. It combines many of the features of the D90 in a slightly smaller, simpler body and includes a 12.3 MP CMOS sensor, live view, 720p movies and a 2.7 inch, 180 degree Tilt/Swivel LCD.

Nikon has announced the AF-S DX Nikkor 10-24mm F3.5-4.5G ED, an ultra-wideangle zoom for DX format DSLRs. This mid-range optic offers a minimum focus distance of 0.24m through the entire zoom range, and includes a built-in AF-S motor that enables autofocus on entry-level Nikon bodies (including the D5000 also announced today). The optical formula consists of 14 elements in 9 groups, including 3 aspherical elements and 2 ED glass elements to combat aberrations. It will be available from May at a cost of €849.

Nikon has unveiled the D5000 upper-entry-level DSLR and we've prepared a full preview of the camera and its features. Sitting between the D60 and D90, the D5000 appears to go head-to-head with Canon's EOS 500D, aiming at upgrading DSLR owners and experienced compact users. It combines many of the features of the D90 in a slightly smaller, simpler body and includes a 12.3 MP CMOS sensor, live view, 720p movies and a 2.7 inch, 180 degree Tilt/Swivel LCD.

Clara Cannucciari, 93, lived through the Great Depression. Now, she hosts a Web video series on how to cook meals of the era, like pasta with peas, peppers and eggs, and the "poorman's feast" with meat and lentils. Great Depression Cooking with Clara (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)

Boing Boing pal Todd "Telstar Logistics" Lappin has a guest post up on Laughing Squid about a new scam he encountered on Craigslist.

Last week I posted an ad to Craigslist offering our yellow loveseat for sale for $200. A gentleman wrote to say that he was interested, but that he couldn’t come see it because he’s busy with work. Instead, he proposed mailing his payment, and then having movers come later to pick up the loveseat. Odd, but not unheard-of, I supposed. Yet as the transaction has unfolded, it now seems pretty clear that that this “buyer” is really trying to pull a Craigslist version of the Nigerian dictator/advance-fee fraud.

The tone of his messages seemed strange from the get-go, but the note I received last night brought things into focus.

Read the email here. It is to LOL. A Nigerian Dictator Scam on Craigslist? (Laughing Squid) Incidentally, Todd's loveseat is still for sale.

Last year, when Al Gore's Current Media filed to go public, we couldn't figure out how it could possibly have a successful IPO, unless it came from the strength of Al Gore's name alone. The company wasn't profitable, wasn't receiving very much buzz, didn't seem to do anything all that unique, and its big plans to be a cable channel "for the internet age" hadn't been very successful (the internet stuff was a failure, almost all revenue came from the pure cable side). So, now that the IPO has been canceled, the company is conveniently blaming the economy, but you have to think that the company's actual prospects had even more to do with it than anything else. If the company had actually been doing well, I'd imagine it would actually be a good time to go out, as those with money actually are looking for decent buys.

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Miracle Jones writes "As Amazon struggles to re-list and re-rank gay, lesbian, and adult books on their website after massive public outcry against the secretive partitioning process, they are claiming that the entire situation was not the result of an intentional policy at all, are not apologizing, and are instead insisting that the situation was the result of 'a glitch' that they are now trying to fix. While some hackers are claiming credit for 'amazonfail,' and it is indeed possible that an outside party is responsible, most claims have already been debunked. How likely is it that Amazon was hacked versus the likelihood of an internal Easter weekend glitch? Or is the most obvious and likely scenario true, and Amazon simply got caught implementing a wildly-unpopular new policy without telling anyone?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The flying car is one of those things that falls into the category of "the technology of the future... and it always will be." Over the years we've covered plenty of stories of companies still trying to get into the flying car business. The NY Times has an article checking in on the space, where it notes that, indeed, there are still a bunch of companies that are trying to perfect the flying car, while noting one of the major problems: cars are designed aerodynamically to try to stay on the ground -- airplanes are designed the opposite way. Plenty of people are also quick to point out the other issue: even if you could build a practical flying car... would you want to? The idea of today's drivers having to think in even more dimensions when they seem to have enough trouble on the road isn't encouraging.

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Vigile writes "In mid-February, news broke about a potential issue with Intel's X25-M mainstream solid state drives involving fragmentation and performance slow-downs. At that time, after having the news picked up by everyone from CNet to the Wall Street Journal, Intel stated that it had not seen any of these issues but was working with the source to replicate the problem and find a fix if at all possible. Today Intel has essentially admitted to the problem by releasing a new firmware for the X25-M line that not only fixes the flaws found in the drive initially, but also increases write performance across the board."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently on Offworld we've already played what'll probably be this week's best indie development, Terry Cavanagh & Stephen Lavelle's Judith, a short game of shifting narratives and timelines that peels itself back one layer at a time and gives you subtle clues to your next move with each consecutive shift. If you've only got one hour for an indie game this week, give it to Judith (it even, graciously, comes in Mac and Linux flavors). We also took a look back at the most practical of this GDC's Pecha-Kucha-esque microtalks, with Boom Blox producer Robin Hunicke imagining six easy steps to help fix PlayStation Home, or rather, provide it with more engaging possibilities for play (we concur with all six). Elsewhere we saw excellent custom toy work with a bits and bobs Bioshock Big Daddy doll and hand-sculpted Grim Fandango figurines from Tim Schafer's LucasArts swan song adventure, and fantastic new fineries with the Gaming Revolution T-shirt (above) and the WiiExploded shirt (from the same people behind the exploded Atari 2600 and iPhone). Finally, we saw lush greenery coming to the barren landscape of Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5's versus mode in real life, curious character choices made for the officially licensed Super Mario Bros chessboard, a new album made entirely on handheld synth Korg DS-10, saw Q-games' beautiful Pixeljunk Eden Encore in motion, and, most wonderfully, watched demoscene compo winners RGBA & TBC create gorgeous landscapes in just 4K of code.

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.

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When we were working on the Maker's Notebook, and I put out a call to staff, contributors, and other makers about what such a notebook should contain, the response was instantaneous and precise. You could tell that folks had done a lot of thinking on the subject and had formed strong opinions on their ideal notebook. When I put out a similar call last week for favorite shop bookshelf titles, I got a similar swift and enthusiastic response. Since folks reading Make: Online work in a lot of different media, your mileage might vary as to which books enjoy pride of place on your bench. Not surprisingly, the lion's share of recommendations we got were for electronics books, so I decided to divide the column into two parts. This week I cover electronics and microcontrollers, next week we'll cover tools, mechanics, and misc.

We'd love to hear what your favorite shop shelf books are. What are your go-to reference sources? We want to grow this list and keep it someplace here online for handy reference.

Electronics Reference

Getting Started in Electronics
Forrest M Mims III
More people probably learned electronics from this hand-drawn little masterpiece than any other source. I hardly ever mention this book to a wirehead who came of age (er... electronically speaking) in the 80s or 90s and not have him/her give an "I'm not worthy" wave in Forrest Mims' general direction. I'm such a visually-oriented person that, when someone says, for instance, "double-pole, double-throw switch," I visualize the switch page in this book. I'd tried learning electronics from various Tab Books in the early 80s, but it was this one that finally keyed the lock for me.

Engineer's Mini Notebook Vol. I: Timer, Op Amp, and Optoelectronic Circuits & Projects
Engineer's Mini Notebook Vol. II: Science and Communication Circuits & Projects
Engineer's Mini Notebook Vol. III: Electronic Sensor Circuits & Projects
Engineer's Mini Notebook Vol. IV: Electronic Formulas, Symbols & Circuits
Forrest M Mims III
I have two of these volumes on my bench, III and IV, and I love them. Volume III has all sorts of low-tech tilt-switches, pressure gauges, heat and light sensors, etc. Really clever, useful design ideas and circuits. IV has electronics formula, mathematical constants, common codes and symbols, etc. All sorts of useful reference info.

The Art of Electronics
Paul Horowitz
This showed up on a bunch of people's lists. After the Mims books, this one usually comes up in discussions as the go-to book for learning electronics. As the Scientific American review put it: "Full of clever circuits and sharp insights, but with a surprising minimum of mathematics... The depth is genuine, as is the richness of examples, data and apt tricks."

Electronic Troubleshooting
Dan Tomal & Neal Widmer
This isn't necessarily the best book on the subject, but it's the one I have on my bench. I also have and use the Radio Shack Using Your Meter by Alvis J. Evans, which is equally clunky and not for novices. I'd love to hear recommendations for other electronics troubleshooting guides, especially for beginner-to-intermediate users.

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