Here is a 1972 photo of industrial music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge wearing "Copyright Breeches," made for him by Cosey Fanni Tutti. Both P-Orridge and Tutti are members of the highly-influential art damage music group Throbbing Gristle, who have just begun their first United States tour since 1981.

For those who needed to cleanse their palates of fir tree needles and penis tips.

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that federal and state regulators have struck a deal with Microsoft under which any version of Windows released after May 2011 will not be subject to the scrutiny mandated by a 2002 antitrust settlement. As previously promised, however, Windows 7 will be put under the microscope. Yesterday, the DOJ filed documents (PDF) with US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly asking that she extend her oversight by at least 18 months, until May 12, 2011. Although Microsoft has consented to the extension — and acknowledged that the regulators can later ask for another 18 months — Kollar-Kotelly must approve the request."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While we thought it was great that a group of former reporters from the suddenly-closed Rocky Mountain News were trying to form a new online venture called the InDenver Times, we thought it was quite unlikely that the group would actually be able to get 50,000 people to agree to pay them $5/month by April 23rd. That was the self-appointed deadline set by the group. And, in fact, as we approach the 23rd, Romenesko alerts us that the group is is struggling to even find 10,000 people willing to subscribe. That isn't too surprising. There remain other (free) sources of news, and they're trying to get people to agree to pay for a product that doesn't even exist. The fact that they've got almost 10,000 is impressive enough. That said... while the group still clings to the idea of a subscription model, they're also saying that they'll move forward even without the necessary subscribers. Hopefully that gets them exploring more reasonable business models, because $50,000 a month from subscribers isn't going to go very far.

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Watch The Addams Family's Lurch on Shivaree perform "The Lurch." I've never heard of the song until today, and for good reason, I suppose -- the song stinks! But dig that crazy Shivaree logo!

More about his work and his life here.

Shawn's hearty career as a photojournalist and artist took him around the world several times over, unselfishly spreading his endless supply of good vibes as he went. Particularly renowned for his portraits of musicians, artists, and entertainers, Shawn photographed a stunning array of pop culture demigods in his 20+ year career including Keith Haring, Tupac, Henry Rollins, James Brown, The Notorious BIG, Bjork, Jun Takahashi, Leo Fitzpatrick, Christopher Wool, Mark Gonzales, Ed Ruscha, Vivienne Westwood, The Bad Brains, Dash Snow, Grandmaster Flash, Neil Young, MIA, John Lee Hooker, Nigo, Sofia Coppola, Agnes B., Sonic Youth, The Beastie Boys, Keith Richards, Chloe Sevigny, The Foo Fighters, Everlast, Kraftwerk, Wu Tang Clan, and The Sex Pistols, to name but a few.

(Thanks, Richard Metzger)

stoolpigeon writes "General Atomics' new unmanned combat aerial vehicle, the Predator C Avenger, has been making test flights. This new Predator has a stealthy design, 20-hour endurance, is jet powered and has an internal weapons bay. A number of photos have just become available. 'The aircraft was designed so the wings can be folded for storage in hangars or aircraft carrier operations if a naval customer is found. Cassidy, a retired admiral, has talked about a possible Navy role for Predator C since 2002. The Navy was interested in the Predator B's capabilities, but didn't want to introduce any new propeller-driven aircraft onto carrier decks. The UAV also comes with a tailhook, suggesting that carrier-related trials are planned. The inner section of the cranked wing is deep, providing structural strength for carrier landings and generous fuel volume while maintaining a dry, folding outer wing. Right now, the US Air Force and Royal Air Force are considered the most likely users.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Machine Project, my favorite gallery/workshop in Los Angeles, is holding a pancake breakfast in the beautiful forest it created in its front room.

Pancake breakfast!

Sunday, April 19th, 2009
11am - 2pm

Please join us in the Forest for $3 short stacks from the Kwong Dynasty Pancake Cart, maple syrup, and nature films about bears.

RSVP not required, this event is open to the public.

Pancake breakfast in Machine Project's indoor forest

A Google engineer has developed a solar-powered data display for Google calendar information to use as signage in Google's offices outside of their conference rooms (to display meeting schedules). It uses an ultra lower-power Cholesteric LCD display which can operate on energy generated from indoor light. Aaron Spangler, the engineer, claims on the video that Google uses six reams of paper, in 200 conference rooms, every single day. So, given that, and the people-power required to change and update the signs, this is a significant time and money saver. Besides the Cholesteric display, the unit uses a PIC-based MCU and a Xbee wireless module.

Radish - Indoor Solar-powered Calendar Display

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There's been plenty of attention paid to Sweden's new IPRED law, which requires ISPs to hand over identifying information on those accused of file sharing -- but we've already noted that all the law is really doing is driving people to alternatives, such as encryption. And, now, it appears that even ISPs are recognizing that it just makes good business sense to better protect their users. Broadband Reports points out that a Swedish ISP, Bahnhof, has started destroying its own log files, rather than hand them over to authorities. The company's CEO notes that nothing in the law requires ISPs to keep log files -- but only to turn over what info has been retained. It seems likely that Bahnhof may have just convinced a bunch of folks to see if they can sign up for new broadband from the company. Any bets on how long it takes Sweden to pass a new law requiring ISPs to retain data for a certain period of time? Even the CEO admits that's likely -- but notes that it will show this is nothing more than a witch hunt by the entertainment industry:

"And then the legislators will have to step up and say they want to have data storage, not to catch terrorists but to help record companies and the movie industry in the hunt for file sharers."

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An anonymous reader writes "Due to outrage over the verdict in The Pirate Bay trial, the Swedish Pirate Party has gained 3000 members in less than 7 hours. It is now bigger than 3 of the 7 parties represented in the Swedish parliament. 'Ruling means that our political work must now be stepped up. We want to ensure that the Pirate Bay activities — to link people and information — is clearly lawful. And we want to do it for all people in Sweden, Europe and the world, continues Rick Falk Vinge. We want it to be open for ordinary people to disseminate and receive information without fear of imprisonment or astronomical damages.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This used Raptor from Battlestar Galactica could be yours for the right price. And that's more than the $28,000 highest bid on eBay, which still didn't meet the reserve price. Now, NBC/Universal is going to sell it in a "live" auction along with a slew of other props from the show. And yes, a Viper is also available. Mode details over at h +. "Buy a Raptor Fighter Ship used in Battlestar Galactica!"

Image from Kotomatrix.ru via Rolcats

Is most powerful laptop in all of Tbilisi, can it be?

With all this yammering about socialism, maybe it's time we examine the craft of lolcats mashed up with soviet era slogans and scenarios.

So my Russian is a bit rusty, but occasionally somebody in the comments chimes in with a translation:

turtle says: February 23, 2009 at 3:07 pm

Actual translation: "My [long hours of] service are sleep-inducingly boring! I haven't seen a smile in months! THIS is what they told me to guard! But all IT knows how to do is sleep!"

(Personally, the pic reminds me of the book Bunnicula.)

@ Mike: The Russian word for dog is "sobaka". The closest translation of Laika I can think of is like naming a dog "Barky."

Certainly there are other flavors of lolcats. Have you got a favorite? What are the guidelines for making your own? Have you crafted or made your own physical world mashup?

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/odd_stuff/OMG_ROLCATS';

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fudreporter is one of many who writes to tell us that Time Warner is not planning to continue their tiered consumption tests at this time. The company is not completely admitting defeat, stating that they "may return to the idea in the future," but for now the test has been ceased. "The plan would have established several tiers based on how much consumers use the Internet. Time Warner Cable had said at the time that it believed that consumers who download the most content need to pay more to cover infrastructure upgrades. The plan was first announced two weeks ago, then modified with higher download caps last week. In a news release yesterday, Glenn Britt, the chief executive of Time Warner Cable, said, 'We will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Bare Bones Arduino Board Kit from the Maker Shed is a really inexpensive way to get started with programming in Arduino environment. The Bare Bones kit is easy to solder and program. Just remember, to program the board you will need a USB-TTL Serial Cable. Get 'em while you can, because once they're gone, they're gone! Check out the link for more information.

Despite the Bare-Bones name, the BBB is a full-featured Arduino clone that includes the vast majority of the functionality of the Arduino Diecimila, at just 2/3 the size. Unassembled. These boards are the Rev. C or D versions

Get the Bare Bones Arduino Board Kit on sale now!

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Meet the friends of the LA Phil on MySpace -- 702 people named Phil, Phyl, and Phill.

(Great music stream, too! Every time I hear Night on Bald Mountain I think of my Shown'N Tell and the When Giants Walked the Earth Picturesound Program. I would play it over and over again when I was six years old.)

Eric Goldman points us to the latest silly lawsuit against Yahoo. This time, it's a guy who posted a bunch of comments on various stock forums, and when Yahoo appears to have canceled his account, he sued the company for violating his First Amendment rights. You can read the full lawsuit below: Of course, the First Amendment has nothing to do with this whatsoever. It is entirely focused on what Congress can do, not what some company can do. Congress can't make a law preventing this guy from sharing his thoughts -- but Yahoo has every right to remove his comments. The guy's other complaints are that in removing his posts, Yahoo is "aiding and abetting" stock pumpers, but he provides little evidence to back that up (and, again, simply removing his posts hardly seems like aiding and abetting.) Oh, right, and then there's the claim that this somehow violates the guy's civil rights. At some point people might realize that companies have no obligation to let you say whatever you want...

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Ford is gambling on the power of social media for the new marketing campaign surrounding the Ford Fiesta subcompact. The auto giant handed over 100 new Fiestas to "agents" selected from 4,000 applicants and created YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter accounts for them to relay their experiences. "Ford is taking a hands-off approach and telling participants not to hold back their opinions, bolstering the campaign's credibility. 'We've told them to be completely honest -- that's the only way it's going to work,' Monty told us. 'We won't tell them what to say, nor will we censor or edit any of their content.' So far, it's working in Ford's favor. The tweets on the FordFiesta Twitter page are generally favorable, if a bit dry, as are the posts over at The Fiesta Movement Facebook page. None of the 80 pictures on the Fiesta Movement Flickr page show broken down cars. There are a few hundred videos on the FiestaMovement YouTube account if anyone's got a few hours to kill."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Via SkyNews:

This is the £50,000 winner of a contest to find the world's greenest invention - a solar-powered oven made from cardboard.

The cooker took the FT Climate Change Challenge crown after beating 300 other creations, including a food additive which stops cows passing wind.

The Kyoto Box oven - which costs just £3.50 to make - can cook casseroles, boil water and bake bread.

It is made from two boxes, one inside the other with an acrylic cover, which lets the sun's power in and traps it.

Black paint on the inner box and silver foil on the outer help concentrate the heat while a layer of straw or newspaper between the two provides insulation.

Cardboard Oven Wins £50,000 Green Contest

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An anonymous reader writes "Republican consultant Patrick Ruffini, who counts Google as one of his clients, sketches out a way that the GOP could 'win back' Silicon Valley — but he gets smacked down by tech businessman Francis Cianfrocca. 'Patrick's basic thesis is that the VC firms that fund the Valley will rebel at being regulated by [Treasury Secretary] Tim Geithner, who is talking about increasing reporting requirements for both private equity and venture capital. Assuming I understand them both correctly, something tells me that neither Geithner nor Ruffini understand deeply what venture capital is all about.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tellart's NADA Mobile was launched a few months ago. Since then, the Tellart folks have released the source code under an open source license, so you can use it to build your own iPhone applications using Apple's Dashcode as your development environment:

NADA Mobile is a suite of applications, originated at Tellart in 2008, for running xhtml css javascript "sketches" of new applications. The sketches run on the iPhone/iPod Touch hardware but are even useful for prototyping things that aren't going to be iPhone apps. "Sketches" are generally built in Apple Dashcode, or just a text editor, and then uploaded to the RunSketch iPhone app using a desktop app called SketchServer.

NADA Mobile is an enhanced version of Mobile Safari that gives you access to the accelerometer, GPS, microphone--and can even be used to read the value of an external analog sensor attached to the device's mic input (without using a computer or a microcontroller).

I love the way they've integrated sensors into NADA Mobile. Like the external keyboard solution shown off by Perceptive Development in iPhone Hacks, Tellart uses the microphone in port. But instead of working with serial connections, Tellart's 1/8-inch Jack uses a simple design to read the value of variable resistors. Check out the instructions for talking to a sensor from NADA Mobile: Tutorial: Creating an Application Sketch w/ Sensor

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Here's a super-simple set-up for transferring analog film to digital:

A lens (or a macro lens, or a lens with extension rings) is inserted into the circular hole in the front. A negative holder made of two sheets of vinyl with spacers is at the opposite end. After the film is inserted, the box is closed, and camera is aligned.

Since any remote source of light will be hopelessly out of focus in such setup, no special diffuser is really necessary. I normally use an LCD display.

Shoebox Slide Duplicator

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The one good part of the DMCA are the safe harbors that help people recognize that you should be suing the party that actually did something wrong, rather than the company that made the tools they used. Unfortunately, even with these protections some people still sue the tools/service provider in the middle. Outside the US, it's even more complicated -- without the safe harbor provision, common sense seems to go out the window and you get people suing the service provider for no good reason, except perhaps jealousy. The latest such case involves German composer Frank Peterson, who is suing Google because others uploaded some of his music to YouTube. And, rather than come up with a way to capitalize on it, like so many others, he feels the need to sue. He's claiming millions in "damages" though he wants to force Google to open its books so he can determine the full extent of these imaginary damages. The article also quotes another publisher who makes this odd statement:

Some producers requested to make cover versions of our songs, but refrained to do so after realizing how many videos of the songs already existed for free on YouTube.

Really? It's difficult to believe this is true. The fact that there were videos of a particular song on YouTube would make others not want to cover that song? By what logic?

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Noksu writes "Despite of the recent plunge in Nokia's profits, the company is doing well in the surveillance business. The infamous 'Lex Nokia' got ratified in Finland and the company has launched a massive Nokoscope research project for data gathering. In the meantime Nokia's new smartphones forward e-mail account credentials to a remote server. Surprisingly enough, this is done in HTTP request headers. The company has been informed, but there has not been an official statement yet. Time for class action suit in the US?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our friend Nemo Gould has several new sculptures on display, including this menacing Boogeyman.

Over at BB Gadgets, Joel has the details on these delightful 12 Gauge Shot Glasses.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

Hi, my name is Maggie, and I am a gigantic dork about subways.

I didn't realize this until I was 21, when I lived in NYC for three months on a summer internship and quickly found myself doing things like reading the collected works of subway historian Stan Fischler and spending my whole commute with my nose pressed up against the door windows at the front of the train. (Which is awesome fun, by the way. If you've never done this, you are missing out on a free adventure AND a great opportunity to look ridiculous in public.)

For some reason, above-ground trains don't seem to do it for me. I tried joining Minneapolis' historic streetcar club (Demographics: Over 60, mostly men. The couple meetings I went to featured some great discussions on urological health), but couldn't get as excited about it.

But streetcar preservation's loss is your gain. Today, I present to you the three things you must know about the New York City subway system.

1. The Place to Visit
The New York City Transit Museum is far more fascinating than its name suggests. Descend into this abandoned subway platform in Brooklyn Heights for some first-class history lessons: Like the fabulous tale of the workers who were caught in a cave-in during construction of a tunnel under the East River; sucked up through the river bed by the resulting vacuum; thrown high into the air on a geyser of water---and lived to tell about it!

2. The Man to Know
Alfred Ely Beach is my imaginary boyfriend and a legendary badass. In the late 1860s, Beach put together the first proposal for a subway system in New York City, based on pneumatic train cars. He pitched his idea to the City as was promptly denied, either because famously corrupt mayor "Boss" Tweed reportedly had a financial stake in the trolley, streetcar and elevated railway industry, or because some politically connected landowners didn't want anyone digging under their property.

Either way, Beach decided to fight city hall--in secret. He rented out a basement, hired some discrete labor and dug out a block-long tunnel under Broadway, using the cover of darkness to keep things on the down-low. Word did get out eventually that something was going on, but the details didn't come out until shortly before Beach unveiled his swank underground digs to the public.

Opened in February 1870, Beach's Broadway Underground Railway featured gurgling fountains, a velvet-seated train car, and (by some accounts) a fish tank. Rides were .25 cents a head (about $3.60 or so today). It was spectacular, but the success didn't last. Beach never convinced the state legislature to let him build a full-scale system. By the time he died in 1896, the BUR had been sealed up and forgotten. That is, until the early years of the 20th century, when subway construction workers basically tunneled right into it. According to legend, they found the opulent platform largely intact, but the wooden car was rotting. Most likely, Beach's BUR tunnel ended up becoming part of the old City Hall subway station....which leads me to....

3. The Secret to Enjoy

I picked this tip up from Stan Fischler's books. So the original City Hall station has been closed since the 1940s. There are some good pictures online that will give you an idea of what an amazing piece of architecture this station was. We're talking chandeliers, beautiful arched ceilings, intricate tile work...the whole nine yards.

Most of the time, this is closed to the public. But there is supposedly a way you can sneak a peek. Following Fischler's instructions, you take the Lexington Ave. #6 local southbound to the end of the line and (if the conductor will let you) stay on the train as it does a loop past the old City Hall station to turn itself around. During the loop, you can see the City Hall station out the train windows.

I should note that I never managed to successfully pull this off. I was in New York in the summer of 2002, and (unsurprisingly) convincing subway workers to let you have a little leeway wasn't so easy at the time. But there seem to be people who've done it recently, so you should try it. And, if it works, let me know. I would love to be jealous of you.

BTW, there's more on Alfred Ely Beach in Be Amazing.

Photo is courtesy Brett Day

I've been loving atebits' Twitter iPhone client, Tweetie, for a few weeks now (late adopter). On Monday they're releasing a desktop version, and from the preview video it certainly looks excellent (and unique). #

Here is a TV news story about Artyom Sidorkin, the Russian gentleman who recently had a two-inch live Fir tree removed from his lung where it had taken root. For more on his story, see "The diagnosis? Fir on the lung" in The Guardian. (via Morbid Anatomy)

When CAFC ruled last summer about the legality of open source licenses and their connection to copyright in the Jacobsen case, we were a little worried that the ruling appeared to conflict with some other copyright rulings, in a way that could eventually cause problems. However, on the whole, it was a good ruling, putting weight behind the core concept behind open source/Creative Commons-style license, which mostly rely on copyright to backstop what those licenses require. However, a law firm has been running around trying to push the idea that the ruling means using any open source software increases your copyright infringement liability. Of course, that's only true if you don't abide by the terms of the license. In other words, the risks are no different than if you're using proprietary code: if you obey the terms of the license, there's no problem. If you don't, there is. All the ruling really stated was that there could be greater damages to those who don't abide by the license. So, really, the law firm's advice seems to be directed entirely to firms who plan to not live up to the requirements of an open source license. That's hardly an increased liability for those who comply.

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Techdirt has an interesting look back at some of the more interesting predictions on copyright. The article looks at two different pre-DMCA papers and compare them to what has happened in the world of copyright. "The second paper is by Pamela Samuelson, and it discusses (again, quite accurately) the coming power grab by "copyright maximalists" via the DMCA, entitled The Copyright Grab. It clearly saw the intention of the DMCA to remove user rights, and grant highly questionable additional rights and powers to copyright holders in an online world. Samuelson lays out many concerns about where this is headed -- including how these proposals appear to trample certain fair use rights -- and in retrospect, her fears seem to have been backed up by history. Samuelson, by the way, has just written a new paper that is also worth reading pointing out how ridiculous current copyright statutory rates are -- an issue of key importance in the ongoing Tenebaum lawsuit, which (thankfully) the judge in the case is going to consider."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Tin-Can" Curt Degerman, a well-know aluminum can scavenger in the Swedish town of Skellefteå, was apparently a multi-millionaire when he died last year. He was apparently very thrift and also a shrewd investor. From Sweden's The Local:

“He went to the library every day because he didn’t buy newspapers. There he read [Swedish business daily] Dagens Industri,” a cousin (of Degerman told the Expressen newspaper).

“He knew stocks inside and out.”

And Tin-Can Curt used that investing know-how to turn the modest deposits he collected from returning empty cans into mutual funds worth more than 8 million kronor.

In addition, he had purchased 124 gold bars currently valued at 2.6 million kronor and had nearly 47,000 kronor in the bank.

Tin-Can Curt also owned his own home, which was found to have 3,000 kronor in loose change, bringing the total value of his estate to 12,005,877 kronor.

"Eccentric Swede turned empty cans into gold" (via Fortean Times!)

Damiene Iriarte, 26, was picked up naked behind a building in Brooklyn with a bleeding penis. Apparently he had bit off the tip of his own member. Iriarte is a convicted pedophile. "How he did it? Limber, I guess. Not the work of a sane mind," a police source told the New York Daily News. "Sex offender found nude, self-mutilated; bit tip of own penis off: cops"

Sales are booming for lo-jack style devices designed to remotely kill cars when their owners fall behind on payments. These cars are sold to people whose credit has been downchecked to "B," on lots where cars cost more, loan terms are worse, and they contain GPS units that make the car's location continuously available to the dealer, credit-company (and others) so that they can more easily repossess the cars.

Companies such as OnStar are beginning to make use of their remote controls for purposes other than theft prevention: for example, the company promises to throttle the engine of any car that they're told is involved in a police chase.

Presumably these remote-kill devices are no better or worse secured than, say, the tax-records of every British parent (repeatedly lost by the tax authority), or the computer systems of giant credit-reporting bureaus, or the networks of the 100+ embassies and foreign service offices penetrated by the GhostNet espionage ring.

Designing devices that are intended to be remotely disabled, against the owner's wishes, is like designing one of those science-fiction-movie spaceships with the inconveniently placed "self-destruct" button. I always wondered about those: wouldn't starship engineers turn out a better product if they designed it from the ground up never to explode?

And wouldn't these cars be more secure if they were designed never to be remotely controlled against the owner's wishes?

The devices, which are required by a growing number of subprime loan contracts, are the product of a revolution in telematics -- the blending of telecommunications and wireless technology.

The devices are usually controlled remotely by the dealer or lender and are linked to the vehicle's powertrain. They usually cut out the power several days after the payment is due. Before the deadline, the driver is treated to a concert of tones and flashing indicators signaling that the deadline is approaching. There are also warnings after the deadline has passed.

Their proponents call the devices a win-win for consumers and finance companies. They make it possible for dealers to sell cars to people who would have a hard time getting a loan otherwise. The buyers end up paying a somewhat lower interest rate because the risk to the lender is less.

The products also include global positioning, or GPS, to speed up the repossession of the vehicle, if necessary.

CNN article

There's been a lot of talk of "teabagging" lately. Conservative anti-tax advocates in the United States have been organizing "tea party" protests, fashioned after the colonial-era protests of British rule. In doing so, they and the right-wing TV punditards who cheer these spectacles on for ratings have ranted about "teabagging," and the desire to "teabag Barack Obama" and such, without apparent knowledge of the word's more common street use.

More recently, news anchors and bloggers have giggled knowingly over that sexual reference, but nobody has acknowledged how the word first entered popular American slang.

I'll tell you how. John Waters.

Here is the email exchange:

XENI: Dear Mister John Waters: We at Boing Boing are devoted fans of your work, and we consider you one of the greatest heroes of the "happy mutant" culture we celebrate. Where does the term "teabagging" come from? Is it true that the term was first popularized, or originated, in one of your films? Also, what is the deal with right wing nutbags (if you'll pardon that term, too) appropriating a perfectly good term for a sex act in such an offensive manner? Your humble devotée, -- Xeni.

JOHN WATERS: "Teabagging" is by my definition the act of dragging your testicles across your partner's forehead. In the UK it is dipping your testicles in your partner's mouth. I didn't invent the term or the act but DID introduce it to film in my movie "Pecker." "Teabagging" was a popular dance step that male go-go boys did to their customers for tips at The Atlantis, a now defunct bar in Baltimore. Hope this helps. -- John Waters

* Yes, this is an actual transcription of an email exchange between Boing Boing and John Waters.

Below, the clip from his movie "Pecker" that started it all. (YouTube Link).

Mr. Waters' work in sculpture and photography is currently the subject of an exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles: REAR PROJECTION. Snip from show description.

"Rear projection" is a movie term for the process whereby a foreground action is combined with a background scene filmed earlier to give the impression the actors are on location when they are, in fact, working inside a studio. In Waters' latest work, this artificial and outdated visual effect is embraced, attacked and taken to extremes.

Glorifying the struggle, humiliation, and wild excitement of a life in show business, Waters uses an insider's bag of film tricks and trade lingo to celebrate the excess of the movie industry. Rewriting and redirecting existing film imagery snapped off the TV screen, he assaults, elevates, subtitles, and startlingly alters these one time classic, respected, even honored movies to attain a new kind of equality: a cult film that only needs one viewer - John Waters himself.

And finally: below, a rare John Waters short praising the merits of smoking in movie theaters.

(Special thanks to Mr. Johnny Knoxville and the incredible Richard Metzger, who you really ought to be following on Twitter instead of Ashton Kutcher or CNNBRK.)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A Swedish internet service provider, Bahnhof, has begun deleting customer identification information in order to prevent it from being used as evidence against its customers under Sweden's new legislation against copyright infringement via peer-to-peer file sharing. According to this report on 'The Local,' it is entirely legal for it to do so. The company's CEO, Jon Karlung, is identified as 'a vociferous opponent of the measures that came into force on April 1st,' and is quoted saying that he is determined to protect the company's clients, and that 'It's about the freedom to choose, and the law makes it possible to retain details. We're not acting in breach of IPRED; we're following the law and choosing to destroy the details.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Robyn Miller uncovered this intriguing photo and asked his readers to imagine what it might be: "the secret lair of Jame Bond's nemesis? Better yet... evidence of a crashed spaceship!"

But actually, it's a $239 million dome that covers the radiocative waste from nuclear explosion tests in the Bikini and Rongelap atolls. "The dome covers the 30-foot deep, 350-foot wide crater created by the May 5, 1958, Cactus test." Cactus Dome

Forgetomori posted this video of the George Foreman and Muhammad Ali fight from 1974. He notes that during one second of the video (between 5:45 and 5:46) something that looks like the head of Michael Jackson, circa 2000, appears.

It could be a hoax, a bizarre face added digitally and recently to the scene, as what we assume would be the black hair around the face is actually transparent.

On the other hand, there are some things that interact with the image – passing both in front and behind the “face” – which suggest that it was not such a bad editing job. And also suggest that perhaps it’s not a hoax, but pareidolia. Even if I have no idea of what could have looked like a face with glowing eyes. Certainly the height of that face is not right, it’s at the height of everyone else’s waists. Perhaps a bag? I don’t know.

If you don't want to wait for the video to load, visit Forgetomori's blog, where he has an animated GIF of the relevant section. Michael Jackson face appears in Muhammed Ali video: hoax or pareidolia?

evariste.galois writes "Wikipedia has a special section called, 'Language Philosophy,' in every article for a programming language. This section looks at the motivation and the basic principles of the language design. What if we investigate further than that? What deeper connections between philosophies and programming languages exist? By considering the most influential thinkers of all time (e.g. Plato, Descartes, Kant) we can figure out which programming language fits best with aspects of their philosophy (Did you know that Kant was the first Python programmer)? The list is not exhaustive, but this is a funny and educative start."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kevin Kelly linked to a paper "co-authored by mathematician John Conway, inventor of a cellular automata demonstration known as the Game of Life, [who] argues that you can't explain the spin or decay of particles by randomness, nor are they determined, so free will is the only option left."

From the paper (The Strong Free Will Theorem):

Some readers may object to our use of the term “free will” to describe the indeterminism of particle responses. Our provocative ascription of free will to elementary particles is deliberate, since our theorem asserts that if experimenters have a certain freedom, then particles have exactly the same kind of freedom. Indeed, it is natural to suppose that this latter freedom is the ultimate explanation of our own.

Particles Have Free Will

We've seen a number of stories recently claiming that the death of newspapers would somehow harm (or even do away with) democracy. The whole idea seemed silly, but some new research actually backs up some of that claim. And while I have some problems with it, it's worth presenting the evidence to the contrary as well. The research paper, Do Newspapers Matter? Evidence from the Closure of The Cincinnati Post (pdf file), looks at how the closing of the Cincinnati Post at the end of 2007 impacted local politics in Northern Kentucky in 2008. The research tried to control for other variables and found a noticeable impact: namely, more incumbents won re-election, fewer people ran for office and voter turnout decreased. Some of the impact was small, but the research does a pretty good job trying to control for many other factors.

That said... even the researchers admit that this is just one example, and only covers a short period of time. It's not surprising that immediately following the closure of a newspaper, there may not be other sources to fill the gaps (and even if there are, residents may not be as aware of them). What will be quite interesting to watch is what happens next. However, if you happen to live in the Northern Kentucky region, it certainly sounds like there's a wide-open opportunity to create a locally-focused news site.

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Okay, here's the deal. We've a huge amount of new inventory arriving at the backdoor to our warehouse in anticipation of Maker Faire. The problem is, we share a warehouse with the rest of O'Reilly and we need to clear out space to make room for the new stuff.

So...we've sharpened our pencils and for the next two weeks, we are rolling back the prices on over a hundred of our existing products. Most around 50% off, but some of them discounted as much as 75% off! Once they're gone they're gone. This is a limited time spring-cleaning sale from now through midnight April 30th (midnight on our San Francisco clocks).

Use code BLOWOUT at checkout for the FREE shipping on orders over $100. (Contiguous US)

Check out all the products that are on sale now!

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Wearable tweets, from the fine folks at Airbag Industries. Photo of my beta-tested shirt coming soon. #

Jake at Zoomdoggle (above) invites you to make a silly face and submit the photo for his Gurn-a-Thon.

Welcome to the first annual Zoomdoggle Gurn-a-Thon.

What’s a gurn? I hear you cry. A gurn, or gurning is the ancient English art of pulling very silly faces. Usually through a giant horse shoe. I’m not making this up. From Wikipedia: “Gurning contests are a rural English tradition. They are thought to have originated in 1297 at the Egremont Crab Fair”

I don’t have a horseshoe but I do have a face and a digital camera - and so, dear reader, do you.

QUICK: Make a Face (the Zoomdoggle Gurn-a-Thon)

mikeljnola writes with an excerpt from NOLA.com that says state senator Danny Martiny (R-Kenner) will introduce a bill to the Louisiana legislature on April 27 to "'make it illegal to "create or attempt to create a human-animal hybrid, ... transfer or attempt to transfer a human embryo into a non-human womb ... (or) transfer or attempt to transfer a non-human embryo into a human womb."' With budget cuts all around, our struggling state is concerned with the eminent danger of human-animal hybrids. The upside is that the odds of the Louisiana becoming the Bayous of Dr. Boudreaux are now even slimmer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Download MP4 here. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

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Today we present another animated short from the PSST! 3 Film series -- OMAR / HOT PURSUIT / SEARCH. Like the previous shorts we've featured from PSST! project, this one's the result of a collaboration between three teams of animators. Those teams worked together to express a single story with a uniquely animated and separately produced beginning, middle, and end.

OMAR: A Victorian-sepia-dream in which a child fishes for kite-creatures in the sky, and is lifted on an incredible aerial adventure.

HOT PURSUIT: A Google Maps bad guy car chase drama interlude, with cops and robbers.

SEARCH: A child creates the magical superflat universe of which he dreams.

The first segment in today's episode was directed by Doug Purver, the second part by Honest, the third by Cole Gorst, Brian Smith, and Vincent Aricco.

About the PSST! 3 project, curator Bran Dougherty-Johnson tells Boing Boing,

The main creative challenge is really self-initiated. It's to create original and inspired work on no budget and in collaboration with other teams. That in itself is a challenge, but the reward is unfettered creativity and self-expression with no restraints. You can see in the films that the artists involved took this idea to heart.

Art is a form of reality creation. With PSST! we are opening a space for Motion Graphic Design and Animation to do something other than commercials and endtags, to build community and to create our own work.

Previously:

• Gödel ????? Film School," excerpt from the PSST! 3 Animation Project
• "Legends of Exos," Excerpt from PSST! Animation Project
• BB Video: David O'Reilly, "Please Say Something" preview (animation)
• BBtv: David O'Reilly Vectorpunk Animation (featuring Xeni)

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(Special thanks to Boing Boing Video's hosting and publishing provider Episodic.)

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

Like many great tomes of history, Be Amazing is largely meant to be read as allegory. You (hopefully) can't inject the gooey center of yourself into your neighbor and take over his brain, but you can take the story of the sacculina as a parable showing you how mooching should be done.There are, however, a few entries that offer more immediate, real-world-useful information. This is one of them.

How to Crawl out of Quicksand

Bad Idea: Trust the Movies
Do this, and you're liable to end up thinking that quicksand is something that only happens in the jungle or the desert, and that the average patch has no discernible bottom. But quicksand, as it turns out, isn't some Lovecraftian entity come to devour human souls. It's really just your average run-of-the-mill sand and clay that's been saturated with water, usually from an underground spring. Technically, you don't even need sand--any old find-grained soil will do. According to the United States Geological Survey, quicksand can pop up just about anywhere. It could be waiting for you, right now, out in the backyard. On the plus side, though, that stuff about it being bottomless is also bunk. Most patches of quicksand would barely reach reach up to your waist, let alone be deep enough to cover your head. So before you start screaming for help, it might be a good idea to just try standing up. Unless, you know, you like being made fun of by emergency response crews.

Good Idea: Know Your Physics
Getting unstuck from quicksand is really a Vulcan-esque endeavor, requiring rationality, intelligence and emotional distance. Unfortunately, the most common response to sinking thigh-deep into what previously appeared to be solid ground is to freak out like Captain Kirk at an intergalactic bikini contest. You must stay cool. This information should help. In 2005, researchers from the University of Amsterdam announced the results of their research on quicksand. According to their report in Nature, the human body is actually much less dense than quicksand. Meaning that, under normal circumstances, a person in quicksand should really just bob around like buoy on the ocean. No heroic effort required. Problems only set in when you struggle, which stirs up the sand and water mixture, making it more liquid and you more likely to sink. But, while surviving the pit is easy, getting out is another story. Because quicksand is so viscous, it's difficult for air to penetrate it. Thus, when you move your arm or leg, air can't fill the spot where you once were and a partial vacuum forms. This makes it extremely difficult to pull yourself out of quicksand, even if you are moving slowly and deliberately. In fact, one of the true dangers of quicksand is exhaustion. Even removing one leg from the muck might make a lone hiker too tired to get back to camp and could open them up to attacks from wild animals or the perils of bad weather. Quicksand: It's a good reason to do things with friends.

I would rescue Michael Rogalski, provider of images, from quicksand anytime.

Maker Shed is having a huge clearance sale right now on kits. For instance, the Blubberbot, an inflatable autonomous robot kit (shown here), is selling for $49.95 (regular price is $99.99). The cool telekinetic pen magic trick, regularly $14.99, is $5. And the Bare Bones Arduino Board Kit (a full-featured Arduino clone), regularly $19.99, is selling for $12.50.

(Disclosure: I am editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine.)

Maker Shed April Blowout Clearance Sale

The hardest thing to find for building this piano lid coffee table is the piano lid, but once you find one (check your parents' and grandparents' attics), this project comes together pretty easily!

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Ian Tomlinson, the man shortly after an unprovoked attack by a police officer during London's G20 demonstration, did not die of a heart-attack, as was previously thought. A new postmortem shows that Tomlinson died of abdominal bleeding after the attack by the police-officer. Tomlinson was not a demonstrator -- he was a passer-by on the way home.

The Coroner's statement said the second post-mortem's conclusions were provisional.

In its statement, the Coroner's Court said that the inquest had looked at the first post-mortem carried out after Mr Tomlinson collapsed and died on the evening of 1 April.

That examination, carried out by Dr Freddy Patel, concluded that Mr Tomlinson had diseased heart and liver and a substantial amount of blood in the abdominal cavity.

"His provisional interpretation of his findings was that the cause of death was coronary artery disease," said the statement.

"A subsequent post-mortem examination was conducted by another consultant forensic pathologist, Dr Nat Cary, instructed by the IPCC and by solicitors acting for the family of the late Mr Tomlinson.

G20 death was not heart attack

mike.rimov writes "I saw that part of the brand new Windows Live package is the Family Safety Filter, so I decided to give it a spin. Turned it on, set it to 'basic filtering' (their lowest level), and went to Google ... oops, it blocks Google! So I logged into the settings and added Google as an exception. Google still wouldn't come up. Just in case, I turned off the family filter: voila, Google. As we all know, 'Don't be evil' is not part of Microsoft's motto! Oh yeah — and with the filter on, Microsoft's own search engine, live.com comes up." Anomaly?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Via Michael Scott, we are alerted to a blog post by Thomas O'Toole, where he looks at two separate papers from the pre-DMCA era, both presenting incredibly accurate predictions of what was about to happen in the world of copyright and content. The first, by John Perry Barlow hopefully many of you have read already. Written in 1992, The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine Without Bottles on the Global Net recognizes exactly where things are heading, and the difficulty of selling content in a digital world. It also is quite accurate in recognizing the value of attention, and how that's a key scarce good.

The second paper is by Pamela Samuelson, and it discusses (again, quite accurately) the coming power grab by "copyright maximalists" via the DMCA, entitled The Copyright Grab. It clearly saw the intention of the DMCA to remove user rights, and grant highly questionable additional rights and powers to copyright holders in an online world. Samuelson lays out many concerns about where this is headed -- including how these proposals appear to trample certain fair use rights -- and in retrospect, her fears seem to have been backed up by history. Samuelson, by the way, has just written a new paper that is also worth reading pointing out how ridiculous current copyright statutory rates are -- an issue of key importance in the ongoing Tenebaum lawsuit, which (thankfully) the judge in the case is going to consider.

O'Toole's post about both of these papers is quite interesting, and he then points out a third paper, on which Samuelson based her paper. It outlines the copyright maximalists' plans for blocking the use of new technologies to share content -- including a segment on the importance of "education." O'Toole suggests that this education component never really happened, and that's why copyright infringement via file sharing is so common today. He argues that it's this lack of education that makes people think that file sharing does little to no harm.

While this might sound good on first pass, I'm not convinced that's really the case. The industry has been running an education campaign for years that has done nothing to slow down or stop file sharing. It's not that people aren't "educated." In fact, suggesting that is somewhat insulting. It's that people are educated enough to recognize that accessing/listening/watching/sharing content is a perfectly natural activity that, by itself, isn't doing any harm. Sure, when combined with a bad business model, it can do plenty of harm -- but more and more people intuitively recognize that the file sharing, by itself, is not the problem. The business model is the problem. So, no, it's not about "education." No education in the world is going to convince people that something they see as a square is really a circle.

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Feast eyes on Takeuchi Taijin's "A wolf loves pork" whimsical photo stop motion odyssey. Almost hard to believe these are all individual photos! [via The Pink Tentacle]

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KaliMama sez, "Digital artist Atom X designed this awesome music pirate flag at half-mast for my blog, and then he CC licensed it for all to use. I figured other Boing Boing readers might like it!"

Calling all beggars and blighters and ne'er-do-well cads

Muji has opened a US mail-order store. Muji is a Japanese chain that makes extremely high-quality stationery, clothes, furnishings, and other stuff, all with a very clean line and none of it with any sort of label. I use tons of Muji stationery, our DVDs are organized in Muji DVD boxes, and three of my favorite shirts are Muji shirts. The baby's room has a Muji CD player in it. Our house is filled with useful Muji tools. It's all long-wearing, reasonably priced, and extremely polished.

That said, my experience with their UK web-store has been pretty awful. Slow delivery, awkward packaging, and a decidedly second-rate website all make me more apt to walk down to Covent Garden and shop in person at my nearest Muji than to go online. But if the web-store were all that there were, I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at it. Unfortunately, the US range seems pretty limited -- again, it's better than nothing!

Muji USA

fantomas writes "The BBC reports that 'US President Barack Obama has announced his "vision for high-speed rail" in the country, which would create jobs, ease congestion and save energy." Can rail work in the land where the car is king? Would you travel on the new high speed lines?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

VonGuard writes "On April 9, ECMA International produced the final draft for the first major update to JavaScript since 1999. It's called ECMAScript 3.1, but will soon be known as ECMAScript, Fifth Edition. You'll know it as JavaScript, the Next Generation. Mozilla will begin implementing these features after Firefox 3.5, and Microsoft is already showing prototypes behind closed doors. The question, however, is what this will change for JavaScript coders. To get those answers, I tracked down Brendan Eich, Mozilla's CTO and the creator of JavaScript. I transcribed the interview without any editorial since he explains, perfectly, what's changing for programmers. Long story short: Json will be safer, getters and setters will be standard, and strict mode will make things easier to debug."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rog8811's managed to pack a green laser diode, mirrors, motor and battery into the slender form factor of a Zippo lighter - resulting in an extremely portable pattern projector. Very cool, and as you might imagine it involve a appropriately delicate construction -

For a spirograph pattern to be produced a minimum of 2 rotating mirrors are required. These were cut from an acylic mirror tile, it is important to get the hole dead centre, to do this I drilled a 0.5mm hole into a piece of 7mm diameter brass, stuck the back of the acrylic to this and turned to size in a lathe, (once stuck to a mandrel you can carve the mirror to size with a craft knife). Then use a pin chuck to drill into the acrylic from the back.

Surefire way to boost your popularity at all-night electro dance-athons! Check out the build pictorial for more on his process.


More:

Compact laser light show from computer salvage

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At a time when our economy has gone through one of the biggest upheavals most of us have lived through, you would think that people would be realizing that perhaps it would be helpful to have more people have at least a basic economics education. Not in California, apparently. Economist Greg Mankiw notes that the state of California is considering half of the current economics class requirement to cover personal finance issues, rather than actual economics. Personal finance -- while related to economics -- is not economics. Already, the economics requirement is a single semester, rather than two semesters like many other required classes. As Mankiw notes:

The legislation is akin to requiring high school biology teachers to spend half their class time on issues of personal health and nutrition. Personal finance is a useful life skill, but students need a more thorough grounding in other basic economic principles than what can be learned in the other half of a single semester course. They need a framework to think about such as topics as market outcomes, price controls, taxes, international trade, environmental regulation, monetary and fiscal policy, and so on. The goal of high school economics should be to produce not just smarter decision makers at a personal level but better informed voters on election day.

Many of the bad decisions we talk about on a regular basis would be a lot less serious if people had a grounding in basic economics -- so it's quite sad to see educational goals heading the wrong way.

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An anonymous reader writes "A sophisticated FBI-produced spyware program has played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in federal investigations into extortion plots, terrorist threats and hacker attacks in cases stretching back at least seven years, according to newly declassified documents obtained by Wired.com. The so-called 'computer and internet protocol address verifier,' or CIPAV, is delivered through links to websites controlled by the FBI, and it silently reports back to a government server in Virginia. Among other cases, the FBI used it to track a Swedish hacker responsible for cracking thousands of computers at national labs and NASA's JPL in 2005."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nick sent word of his digitally squarewave take on the legendary theremin instrument - hmmm, a Squaremin perhaps?

This battery powered electronic musical instrument is a descendant of the theremin and can be played without contact from the musician. This small instrument contains two infared (IR) sensors, one controlling the note, with the other controlling the octave that is played through the speaker in the front.
There are seven possible notes (c-b) and 7 possible octaves of each note. The tone is reflected by one of seven colors that illuminates the center area and highlights a small indicator located on the top panel. The brain of this piece is a boot-loaded atmega chip.

The highly portable fold-up case design is hot! Check the source code + related media on Nick's blog.


In the Maker Shed:


Premium Theremin

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With my Mousey the Junkbot project in MAKE and Solarbotics' Herbie the Mousebot hogging the limelight, folks might forget or be unaware of the fact that the original LM386-based Herbie circuit was a line-follower, not a photovore (light-seeker). Peterman921 MouserV2 is a two-time line-following champ. It uses the LM487 audio amp chip and two downward-looking CdS eyes with blinders. And, of course, there's no 5v relay or bump sensors 'cause Mouser doesn't need to back up or avoid obstacles.

Peter has other cool bots in his Flickr sets and on his site, such as this M&M bot, built with a simple LM339 BEAM circuit, camcorder motors, and an M&M tin.

Robots

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myvirtualid writes "The Globe and Mail reports that the Pirate Bay defendants were each sentenced Friday to one year in jail. According to the article, 'Judge Tomas Norstrom told reporters that the court took into account that the site was "commercially driven" when it made the ruling. The defendants have denied any commercial motives behind the site.' The defendants said before the verdict that they would appeal if they were found guilty. 'Stay calm — Nothing will happen to TPB, us personally or file sharing whatsoever. This is just a theater for the media,' Mr. Sunde said Friday in a posting on social networking site Twitter."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The four defendants in the Swedish trial of The Pirate Bay have been found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison and $3.6m fine. I don't know much about Swedish copyright law -- and the defense rested on the technical boundaries what constitutes an infringement -- so I have no idea if this is the kind of judgment that is likely to survive the inevitable appeal.

A more interesting question is whether The Pirate Bay will disappear now. After the illegal seizure of its servers in 2006, The Pirate Bay supposedly adopted a distributed architecture with failover servers in other jurisdictions that were unlikely to cooperate with EU orders. If The Pirate Bay shuts down, it's certain that something else will spring up in its wake, of course -- just as The Pirate Bay appeared in the wake of the closure of other, more "moderate" services.

With each successive takedown, the entertainment industry forces these services into architectures that are harder to police and harder to shut down. And with each takedown, the industry creates martyrs who inspire their users into an ideological opposition to the entertainment industry, turning them into people who actively dislike these companies and wish them ill (as opposed to opportunists who supplemented their legal acquisition of copyrighted materials with infringing downloads).

It's a race to turn a relatively benign symbiote (the original Napster, which offered to pay for its downloads if it could get a license) into vicious, antibiotic resistant bacteria that's dedicated to their destruction.

Throughout the trial, the Pirate Bay defendants have played up their image as rebellious outsiders, arriving at court in a slogan-daubed party bus and insisting that their position was to defend a popular technology rather than illegal filesharing.

Prosecutors made a major slip-up on the second day of the trial after failing to convince the judge that illegally copied files had been distributed by the site.

They were forced to drop the charge of "assisting copyright infringement" and focus on the lesser charge of "assisting making available copyrighted content". They had been seeking SKr115m (£101m) in compensation for loss of earnings due to the millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the site.

The Pirate Bay trial: guilty verdict

Well, the verdict has come down in the trial against The Pirate Bay in Sweden, and it appears The Pirate Bay has been found guilty and each of the defendants has been sentenced to a year in jail and told to pay $3.6 million in damages (less than a third of what the entertainment industry asked for). There will be appeals, of course, so this particular ruling isn't entirely meaningful, even if it's quite disappointing. The trial did certainly include plenty of theatrics, but the core question was an important one: should a site that is, effectively, a search engine, be liable for the content that is linked from that search engine, given that it hosted no infringing works itself. It is in many ways, the same question that was raised in the US in the Grokster case, where the Supreme Court sided with the entertainment industry. It looks like this initial ruling is similar, and that's troubling for the same reasons. The idea that a toolmaker can be liable for the actions of its users should trouble everyone -- especially when that tools has plenty of legitimate uses as well.

But, of course, what happened post Grokster should give you an indication of what will happen here: basically, the entertainment industry will gleefully declare victory, and make statements about how this is a major victory against "piracy." But, in actuality, the exact opposite of that will occur. Unauthorized file sharing continues (or even increases) and it becomes that much more difficult for the legacy industries to win back customers and embrace these new, useful and efficient tools of distribution and promotion. It's a classic case of winning the battle and losing the war. The ultimate problem, of course, is that the entertainment industry still (amazingly) thinks this is a legal issue, not a business model one. It can win as many legal battles as it wants, but in thinking it's a legal issue, it will never recognize how its business models need to change.

The folks behind The Pirate Bay insist that the site will live on and the verdict means nothing, but it may create an inconvenience for users of the site -- especially if other nations use this as yet another excuse to ban the site. The folks this will hurt the most are those content creators who actually do value The Pirate Bay -- such as best selling author Paulo Coehlo, who found that "pirating" his own book helped him tremendously, and who recently spoke out about what a useful tool The Pirate Bay has been. It's a shame that because some big lumbering companies are unable to change their business models that they get to use the legal system to disrupt and annoy those who have figured it out.

In the meantime, one amusing bit that came out as this story was breaking... one of the defendants, Peter "brokep" Sunde, was informed about the verdict early, and joked that: "It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release." So... does that mean whoever leaked the verdict is guilty of piracy?

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Mark posted this classic Devil's Dictionary of a DIYer's definition of tools on Dinosaurs and Robots:

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings objects across the room, denting the freshly-painted vertical stabilizer which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to it.

WIRE WHEEL:
Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench at the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, 'Oh sh*t'

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL:
Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

SKILL SAW:
A portable cutting tool used to make studs too short.

Tools Explained by a Do-It-Yourselfer

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Panasonic has announced the addition of three new compact cameras to its Lumix FS series. The 12MP FS12 with 4x (31-124mm equiv.) optical zoom and a 2.7" LCD incorporates Intelligent Auto mode, Optical Image Stabilization and Face Detection. The FS42 and image-stabilized FS62 are both packed with 10 megapixel sensors, 2.5" LCDs, 4x (33-132mm equiv.) zoom lenses and include features such as Intelligent ISO Control, Intelligent Scene Selector and Face Detection. We expect the FS62 to be widely available, the other two models through select retailers.

Add touch-screen control to your Arduino project! The TouchShield Stealth from the Maker Shed is an Arduino-ready 128×128 pixel OLED screen on a PCB shield that brings advanced I/O capabilities to the Arduino platform. This is the new Stealth Edition, which has an all-blacked out board that looks pretty slick on top of the dark blue Arduino. It's also higher quality, machine soldered and assembled, with a few internal trace re-routes to make it lighter, faster, and power-redundant. Compiling and uploading applications to the TouchShield is done through a one-click button in the Arduino Environment, making it easy to write awesome applications.

Get the TouchShield Stealth ON SALE NOW in the Maker Shed

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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This doesn't come as much of a surprise, given earlier precedents saying that broadcasting a trial wasn't allowed, but an appeals court has officially told the district court in the Tenenbaum trial that it cannot webcast live from the courtroom. This is somewhat unfortunate, though, a bit of a sideshow issue. And, given the oddities involved in the lawsuit up until now (from all parties involved in the lawsuit), it's not clear how useful webcasting the courtroom proceedings would have been. Still, it does seem rather silly to limit the ability to webcast from a courtroom, and the RIAA's assertion that it would be a bad thing because the content would be "readily subject to editing and manipulation" simply makes no sense at all. That's true of any content. But do we see regular "manipulation and editing" of public appearances made by RIAA spokespeople? No, of course not.

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As we've pointed out recently, the industries that rely on copyright have a habit of claiming that copyright is solely about protecting the interests and rights of copyright holders, leaving out the equally as important rights of the public as well. That's partly why we've seen copyright getting pushed increasingly towards the interests of industry. A consumers rights group has looked over copyright law in various countries and has found that the UK's is the absolute worst in terms of actually protecting the rights of consumers, and notes that rather than fixing things, it appears that the UK has given in to industry's desires to make the laws even worse. Hopefully, at some point, politicians will finally start to realize that copyright is a bargain between the public and content creators, and that continually handing over more and more rights to the content creators harms the public interest.

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Adam sez, "Time Warner will no longer be implementing download caps in all markets. I can't thank you enough. As you know, BB is read by a lot of mass-media outlets and other national organizations. I have it on good authority that Senator Chuck Schumer's office was notified of the impending protest through the Boing Boing post, and it spurred them to take the issue seriously."

Time Warner's climbdown on this one is hilarious -- they say that they have to abandon caps until they can "educate" their customers (presumably it takes a lot of education to convince people to let your ISP clobber your participation in digital life to turn a buck).

We Won! (For Now) Time Warner Killing Usage Caps "In All Markets" - But TW Press Statements Suggest They Are Still Out Of Touch (Thanks, Adam!)

The excellent SF in SF free science fiction reading series will host Peter S Beagle and Richard Lupoff at their next event, tomorrow (Saturday):

Our April reading takes place on Saturday, April 18. Doors and cash bar open at 6:00 PM. Readings begin at 7:00 PM.

The guests will be Richard Lupoff and Peter S. Beagle. Each author will read a selection from their works, followed by Q & A with the audience moderated by author Terry Bisson. Books will be available for sale courtesy of Borderlands Books.

The Variety Preview Theatre, The Hobart Bldg., 582 Market St. @ 2nd/Montgomery, San Francisco. Take MUNI/BART! The Montgomery St. stop is steps from our front door.

April Reading - Richard Lupoff & Peter S. Beagle (Thanks, Rina!)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has overturned a lower court order permitting webcast of an oral argument in an RIAA case, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, in Boston. As one commentator put it, the decision gives the RIAA permission to 'cower behind the same legal system they're using to pillory innocent people.' Ironically, the appeals court's own hearing had been webcast, via an mp3 file. The court admitted that this was not an appropriate case for a 'prerogative writ' of 'mandamus,' but claimed to have authority to issue a writ of 'advisory mandamus.' The opinion came as a bit of a surprise to me because the judges appeared, during the oral argument, to have a handle on the issues. The decision gave me no such impression. From where I sit, the decision was wrong in a number of respects, among them: (a) it contradicted the plain wording of the district court rule, (b) it ignored the First Amendment implications, and (c) there is no such thing as 'advisory' mandamus or 'advisory' anything — our federal courts are specifically precluded from giving advisory opinions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

H1kar1 sez, "We're throwing the first US hacker camp in a decommissioned Titan-1 Missile Silo. A bunch of awesome pictures of the site have just been posted from our visits over the past couple weeks. CFP and campsite organizer sign up form still open and looking for people to participate!"

Toorcamp (Thanks, Hikari!)

Submissions are still open for Viable Paradise, the intensive science-fiction writers' boot-camp held on Martha's Vineyard every autumn. I've taught VP several times and always been impressed with the format, the setting, and the caliber of the students and the instructors. Viable Paradise lasts for a single week, and involves a dawn-to-dinner relentless set of tutorials, personal meetings, critiques, and exercises that aim to impart a career's worth of wisdom in a single week. You can become a successful science fiction writer without attending a workshop like this, and attending is no guarantee of success, but for the right writer, this can be the event that gets you from promising to published.

Viable Paradise (via Making Light)

An update from Shepard Fairey, following this recently-Boinged update on the acclaimed artist's legal battle with the AP:

My lawyers filed my response to The AP’s claims against me on Tuesday (CLICK HERE FOR SHEPARD’S RESPONSE). It includes a dozen examples of AP photographs that consist almost entirely of copyrighted artwork from me and other artists. Today, The AP issued a statement accusing me of “making attacks” on them. I don’t feel the need to respond to that in detail, because my lawyer already has (CLICK HERE FOR LAWYER’S RESPONSE).

As I have stated before I am fighting the AP to protect the rights of all artists but I do want to emphasize one other important point. I’m not accusing the AP of infringing anybody’s rights. I’m saying everyone should have the same broad rights of fair use and free expression, and that includes The AP. I’m not questioning The AP’s legal right to do what it does. But I am saying they have to be consistent. They can’t have it both ways. If AP photographs that do nothing but depict other artists’ work are protected by fair use, then my work has to be, too, because it’s at least as transformative, creative and expressive as The AP photos we identify in my response, if not much more so. If the AP has the right to do what it’s done, then so do I.

UPDATE: Shepard Fairey vs The AP (obeygiant)

Previously: Shepard Fairey Counterfiles in Associated Press Obama Poster Conflict

Bart sends us this Instructable for a Legway: "A self balancing, human powered, steampunk styled, Segway. All you need is a brave self balancing human. This is the ultimate green vehicle for all you eco conscious steampunkers."

Steampunk Segway ( Legway ) (Thanks, Bart!)

My unicorn (Okay, Ape Lad's) can beat up your hairless chimpanzee, any time. Bring it on.

Amy Zimmer from Sebastopol, CA writes in:

I would love to go to the maker faire in San Mateo--but crowds flip me out! Do you have any suggestions or must sees for navigating for a crafty mostly gift giver type crafter (and maybe her two girls, ages 10 and 14)?

I think each of us experiences a bit of enochlophobia or agorophobia at some point during Maker Faire; there are just so many people! Well, Amy, you should definitely check it out, it's a great event for the whole family, and here are some tips that might make the experience more enjoyable for you and everybody else who's not at piece in a crowd of tens of thousands:

Buy your tickets in advance

Avoid the ticket line by buying your tickets online in advance.

Check the Maker Faire site regularly

In the weeks before Maker Faire, there will be more and more information published to the Maker Faire site including schedules of demos, makers who'll be attending, and information about transportation to/from the Faire. This will help you know what to expect to see, which should make the visit a little less overwhelming

Make a loose plan for the day

Using the schedule provided online and onsite at the Maker Faire, decide which demos and events are a must for you and your girls (diet Coke and Mentos at 12:30? Soft circuit demo at 11am?), and then plan your day around those. Know which maker and crafter booths you want to get to, and allot time to get to them between time-specific events. By all means, also allow time for unexpected things to catch your eye, but having a plan of attack can help you feel in-control.

Shop early

If you plan to shop in the Maker Shed and Bazaar Bizarre, do it early in the day. Sure, you'll have to carry around your purchases with you, but this is when the crowds are smaller in these parts of the Faire.

Find some quiet time

This one is the hardest tip to actually implement, but it can certainly help. Find a shady grassy spot to eat lunch or otherwise relax and reflect. Drink plenty of water throughout the day to stay hydrated (oh, what a difference it can make in your energy level and mood)!

I hope those tips are helpful to you, and that you'll come out and see us at Maker Faire! Have you been to Maker Faire before and have tips for Amy? Share them in the comments below!

If you have a question you'd like answered here on Ask MAKE, drop me an email or tweet at us!

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Most excitingly today on Offworld, area/code's iPhone puzzler Drop7 -- still one of the platform's absolute best, and one of the very few that (four months later) I'm still playing on a daily basis -- got a social update with worldwide leaderboard and Facebook Connect support that finally legitimizes its 'sequence' mode, and saw the release of a short EP of its fantastic Steve Reich-ian soundtrack. If you haven't played the game yet, do so as soon as possible. Elsewhere we found a fantastic "brief history" of chiptunes (that actually is considerably more exhaustive than they give themselves credit for) in an academic journal, saw vinyl toy/comic star Whaleboy get a trademark for games, and watched the best machinima of the week with Seakitten Collective's LittleBigRevenge. We also played Cosmic Nitro, the latest iPhone game from Galcon creator that's best summed up as "survival mode Missile Command x insanity", downloaded a number of songs from the soundtrack of our highly anticipated Stalin Vs. Martians, scratched our heads over the curiously un-tetramino shapes of Diego Silvério's Tetris furniture, and saw the former real-life Mario Kart prankster do Pac Man in real life.

Patently-O has received some data on recent patent filings showing that they continue to trend downward. The post blames the economic crisis, though it admits that other factors (such as the courts restricting the most egregious problems with the patent system, as well as the Patent Office itself increasing quality standards) may have had an impact as well. What I find odd, though, is the claim in the post that this downward trend in patents is a "crisis." The complaint is that since the USPTO is funded by application fees, seeing a drop makes it more difficult to fund the USPTO. But, that leaves out the simple fact that if you're receiving fewer applications, then the Patent Office shouldn't need as many resources either. Considering the large number of bad patents that got through over the years, and the resulting flood of applications from others hoping to strike it rich by gaining monopolies on obvious ideas, it should be seen as a good thing that applications are finally dropping. If anything, we should be wondering why they're not dropping more. Patents were supposed to be given out in the rarest of circumstances, when other incentives weren't enough. Somewhere along the way, those who controlled the patent system seemed to forget this and lose their way. Bringing back a sense of sanity to the system can only be a good thing for those who want to encourage innovation (those who make money off of the patent system, obviously, tend to have a different opinion -- but I'd rather focus on encouraging innovation, rather than encouraging patent attorneys making exorbitant salaries).

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Raymond Scott music is always good, but it's taken to another level entirely when performed by five six dapper gents with harmonicas. (Via Filled With Chocolate Pudding)

In this episode of Make: Talk, we'll be joined by Jeri Ellsworth, a pinball fanatic and hardware hacker. You might remember her as the chip designer who Easter egged a Commodore 64 emulator in a video game joystick. We'll also present some news from the world of making, and our favorite tricks, tips, and tools of the week. Be sure to call in for prizes that we'll award during the program! The number is (646) 915-8698.

Below is the show player, where you can listen to the live program on Friday, and to past episodes.

Make: Talk on BlogTalkRadio

We've been reading all these "obituaries" for newspapers, with people whining and complaining about what a huge loss it is and how democracy will suffer. To many of us, we've been hearing these complaints for quite some time... but perhaps we didn't realize that they go way back to at least 91 years ago. Romenesko points us to a story in Slate discussing an article from 1918 lamenting how many newspapers were dying off, and how it would be that much more difficult to keep politicians in check with fewer newspapers watching their every move. And... that was back in the days of yellow journalism and corrupt politicians who had an even chummier relationship with certain publishers than they do today. All in all, the point should be clear: just because some newspapers go out of business, it doesn't mean the end of journalism. It never has.

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Tesladownunder writes "This huge LED is on steroids and then some. It is intended for use as a streetlight. It has a 7000 lumen output at 100W and will burn a hole in a CD case without focusing. And that's without the infrared that a halogen or discharge lamp has. Very efficient and low maintenance. Stronger than HID car headlights or a 500W halogen. Hit the site for lots of data and pics of it in action including burning and irresponsible bicycle luminosity. You'll want one to attach to your keyring, too."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the Bay Area Maker Faire only 6 weeks away, I started getting really excited about seeing old friends from past Maker Faires. Someone I always miss in the interim is Russell. I met Russell (aka Rave Raffe) at the first Maker Faire back in 2006. He's a sweet guy, towering at 17 feet tall and weighing in at a healthy 1700 pounds, and he's always accompanied by his good friend (read: maker) Lindsay Lawlor. Russell knows how to bring the party as he walks around the fairgrounds, fully suited in tons of LEDs and boomin with his onboard sound system. Here's a great nighttime video (by MakeJapan) that shows Russell in action, working the outer lot at the 2008 Maker Faire (you also get a glimpse of some other great pieces that were there):

Russell loves to be loved and will tell you so when you rub the sensors on his head.

I could go on and on about what makes Russell such a cool robot, er, I mean, giraffe, but word on the street is that Russell has been through some pretty dramatic changes! Maybe he was having a mid-life crisis. Here's what Lindsay said:

"A huge robot giraffe is an ever-changing project, growing, changing, adapting to new technologies and sponsorships. The giraffe is 'Grazing on the Frontiers of Technology' and hopes to offer something new to see, hear, and feel each year that it appears. This year the giraffe has been totally gutted to the ground and rebuilt from scratch. Only the basic frame has been kept. We have been furiously working on him and hope to have a lovely new machine ready for the faire. We're doing all we can to make the new giraffe into something that will dazzle the crowds more than ever with his flashy new paint and electronics. Everything on him is new from the ground up. Most people who know him from the past will swear we threw the old giraffe away and built an entirely new one!"

Whoa! There are some disturbing in-progress shots on Russell's blog, like this one of giraffe guts:

and this one of his head chilling in the living room with posters of past appearances around him:

The suspense is killing me. Can't wait to see you again, buddy!

Come check out Russell's transformation and meet thousands of your new best friends at this years Bay Area Maker Faire in San Mateo, California, on May 30th and 31st. Get your tickets in advance and save some dough. See you there!

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After a few weeks of getting hit back and forth by pretty much everyone concerning its plans to expand metered broadband with incredibly low caps and ridiculously high profits (even as its own costs were dropping, and the growth rate of broadband was slowing), Time Warner Cable has now agreed to back off from implementing the plan... for now. From the wording, it's quite clear that the company isn't backing off because it realized that it was a bad idea, but it's retreating because it wants to rethink how it pitches the caps:

It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met.

Translation: because you crazy consumers were being so loud, we need to make it look like we're listening to feedback, and hopefully we'll get to roll this out at a later date when you're more focused on other stuff, maybe by calling it something that sounds more innocuous.

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So as not to use the dreaded "S" word two times in a day, we'll call this by its alternate name: the Legway, a step-powered vehicle. It's actually a variation of the Universe Cycle, with handlebars. I'd love to see a video to see how wonky it is to drive. The builder says it's not that hard and he's gotten pretty good at it.

Steampunk Segway

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