We recently posted a link to a libel guide for bloggers, recognizing that many bloggers don't realize their comments are subject to defamation laws. That said, however, it's still quite rare to find a blogger found guilty of libel in court. Mark writes in to alert us to one such case that raises a number of very troubling questions: a court in South Carolina awarded a $1.8 million libel judgment against a blogger, despite questions about whether the guy in question actually wrote the blog post. The court ruled in summary judgment, which really should only occur if the facts are not in question -- but they are very much in question. The guy who was accused claims he didn't write the content (even if he agrees with it). The blog itself appears to be a semi-anonymous group blog, so there's no clear indication that the guy being fined actually wrote the content. You would think that this fact, alone, would preclude a summary judgment and require a trial. There were also issues with actually making sure that the guy was given proper notice about the lawsuit and the court proceedings, so he was not present at some of the hearings. As the link above notes, this ruling is quite chilling if you write a blog.

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Daniel Reetz posted an Instructable about making your high-speed book scanner from trash and cheap cameras. His version is only around $300. I don't think I'd make one myself, but I'd love for some generous maker to install one at my local public library! From Instructables:

Digital books change the landscape . After suffering through scanning many of my old, rare, and government issue books, I decided to create a book scanner that anybody could make, for around $300. And that's what this instructable is all about. A greener future with more books rather than fewer books. More access to information, rather than less access to information. And maybe, years from now, a reformed publishing/distribution model (but I'm not holding my breath...).

I've built two of these things now, and this instructable covers the best parts of both of them. You can build a book scanner using only hand tools plus a drill. I realized that not everyone is comfortable with using all the different hand tools you might need to make it. So I scanned a book on using hand tools that should answer all your questions. ;)

DIY High-Speed Book Scanner from Trash and Cheap Cameras

Karim Y. writes "The Vatican is going solar in a big way. The tiny state recently announced that it intends to spend 660 million dollars to create what will effectively be Europe's largest solar power plant. This massive 100 megawatt photovoltaic installation will provide enough energy to make the Vatican the first solar powered nation state in the world! 'The 100 megawatts unleashed by the station will supply about 40,000 households. That will far outstrip demand by Pope Benedict XVI and the 900 inhabitants of the 0.2 square-mile country nestled across Rome's Tiber River. The plant will cover nine times the needs of Vatican Radio, whose transmission tower is strong enough to reach 35 countries including Asia.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With all the journalists declaring that Google needs to pay newspapers, it's amazing how often their arguments are based on simply incorrect statements -- the sort of thing that is the real problem newspapers face. When they make an argument based on entirely incorrect information, no one trust them. For example, reader David Muir points us to Joel Brinkley's article in the San Francisco Chronicle, where he compares the newspaper industry to the recording industry and gets nearly everything wrong. Brinkley is a former NY Times' reporter and a journalism professor at Stanford. This is the sort of person who shouldn't fall prey to getting stories backwards, but he does. First, he claims that Google is using newspapers content "without compensation."

This is wrong. Google is indexing and linking to newspaper content. They're providing a service to those newspapers, by sending them more traffic. If those newspapers don't want that service, it's quite easy to opt-out. The fact that very few do so suggests they do, in fact, value that service, and thus they feel they are getting compensated.

Then, amusingly, he compares the newspaper business to the recording industry, suggesting Google is like what Napster was a decade ago -- and questions where would the recording industry be if it hadn't shut down Napster. Rather than talk to an unbiased party, he goes straight to the RIAA, who of course talks up what a wonderful victory Napster was, and says, without having shut down Napster: "We would be in a world with thousands of pirates."

Um. I hate to break it to both Brinkley and the RIAA... but we're in a world with millions of (what they falsely define as) "pirates." In fact, I'd imagine that the recording industry would actually consider it a real victory if there were only "thousands." But does Brinkley point this out? Does he note that the legal effort to shut down Napster not only failed to stop "piracy," but actually helped advertise it, make it more prevalent, and drive it further underground to sites and communities that were much more difficult to work with?

Of course not. Because why would a super journalist like Brinkley bother with reality in making his case?

Also, it's worth pointing out that the situation with Napster was also entirely different in that it didn't involve the musicians/labels putting the content up themselves, and didn't involve Napster offering up an easy tool for them to remove that content. When it comes to newspapers and Google, both things are true.

This is the sort of stuff anyone familiar with what they were talking about would know. But Brinkley is a journalism expert, so why should he bother to understand what he's talking about before writing an entire column on it?

He then goes on to (falsely) claim that "without newspaper journalism, the nation would have little original journalism left" extrapolating out (incorrectly) the idea that because most journalism originates from newspapers today, it must continue to do so in the future. We're already seeing that's false, as new operations spring up to take over where newspapers are faltering (such as in putting forth bogus opinion pieces comparing Google to Napster).

Then (because he's not done being wrong yet), Brinkley tries (and fails) to respond to the "information wants to be free" line (which he falsely states "information should be free" -- the distinction is important, but Brinkley doesn't bother to even notice) by saying:

Wouldn't that be nice. Wouldn't it be nice if metropolitan newspapers didn't have to pay millions of dollars a year for their reporting staffs? Wouldn't it be nice if Keller's paper didn't have to pay $2 million a year to maintain its Baghdad bureau? Newspapers provide an expensive product. They deserve to be paid for it.

We've debunked this argument probably 50 times in the last year alone, but since Brinkley apparently doesn't do any research, let's debunk it one more time. No one is saying that because information is offered to consumers for free that it means that you don't make money or you don't pay your reporting staff. Brinkley is setting up a bogus strawman (the sort of thing reporters shouldn't do). What they are saying is that they need to come up with better business models (which we've pointed out do exist) that leverage (rather than deny) the basic economics of content, and do so in a way that makes a more valuable product.

Brinkley, of course, never bothers to explain how to make the product any more valuable (hint: it's not by writing columns that are entirely based on incorrect statements) or why people would want to pay for such rubbish. He just insists they "deserve to be paid for it." But if Brinkley's writing is an example of the type of quality found in papers today, is it any wonder people don't find it worth paying for?

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This gentleman is very proud of his $4 business card.

Yes, yes, it sure is impressive, but I just want to know the name of the song that starts playing at 1:08. (via Mt. Holly Mayor' Office)

Karen Hertzberg writes "Since the earliest days of MMO gaming, beta testing has played a pivotal role in the success or failure of our persistent worlds. We've come a long way since the initial tests of Ultima Online and The Realm, but what role do our current beta tests play in the potential outcomes of unreleased titles? To answer this question, Ten Ton Hammer turned to current and former beta decision makers at Cryptic Studios, NetDevil, Sony Online Entertainment, Funcom, and Mythic Entertainment. Some of their answers — and the information they reveal — may surprise you."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I found this little kitchen "hack" on Monkeybrad's blog, the bloke who brought us the 55-gallon drum chair. Sort of an obvious use, but it had never occurred to me. I might use this in my garage. I love that method of stowing the lids on the handles, too.

Putting Pots and Pans in their Place

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RSS feed for new episodes 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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Recently on Boing Boing Video: bacon and animated childhood fantasies.

Above, we learned how to fashion a thermic lance from prosciutto, "an engineering-grade form of bacon," capable of cutting steel. Also, a vegan version of this lethal device fashioned from cucumbers and breadsticks. PopSci columnist Theo Gray invented the device, and as the YouTube editors who spotlighted this episode said, "Fire plus bacon equals delicious, delicious thermodynamics." There's more madness like this in Theo's new book, MAD SCIENCE, which I blogged about here. Original video blog post is here. You can download an MP4 here.

Also last week, we debuted 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. In this one: part 1, A Victorian-sepia-dream in which a child fishes for kite-creatures in the sky, and is lifted on an incredible aerial adventure. Part 2, a Google Maps bad guy car chase drama interlude, with cops and robbers. Part 3, A child creates the magical superflat universe of which he dreams. Original video blog post is here. And an MP4 Download is here.

(Special thanks to BBV's video hosting provider, Episodic.)

Last week, Joel thrilled us with a laser cutter performing the Super Mario Bros. theme. Today, Offworld's Brandon presents an array of vintage computer gear, including a TI-99/4a and HP ScanJet 3C, singing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Dig the video over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Video: Retro computers sing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody"

If, after watching this video, you want to see it played backwards, don't bother. You already did! (Via The Agitator)

Smivs writes to tell us that one of the world's most powerful telescope arrays has been switched on with great success. Seven radio telescopes in the UK have been linked with optical fiber, replacing the older microwave tech that connected them previously. One researcher compared the move to a broadband upgrade from dial-up. Research teams will now be able to do in one day what previously took them three years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Kontopoulos made these wooden sculptures that hit themselves with a hammer and almost tip over. He calls it "a system of sculptures that is constantly on the brink of collapse. My intention was to capture and sustain the exact moment of impending catastrophe and endlessly repeat it." (via bangocibumbumpuluj)

My friends Kelly and Erik of the Homegrown Evolution blog and authors of the terrific how-to book Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City just wrote a very funny post about a plant they can't stand: the asparagus fern.

Read the entire entry, but here are a couple of good bits:

"When I saw a vendor at a farmer's market selling potted Asparagus setaceus, I felt like I was witnessing a crack dealer in an elementary school lunchroom."

and...

Even if you could eat the shoots, you would have the world's smallest side dish. Breed a one inch tall pig and you could make tiny pork chops to go along with your buttered Asparagus setaceus.

Least favorite plant: asparagus fern

Reader shaniac points us to a blog post on a custom toy blog, where the blogger explains how some of his photo galleries of custom toys he made were forced offline due to a DMCA takedown notice from 20th Century Fox, claiming that they infringed on intellectual property from the Wolverine movie. Except, if you look at the images, it seems pretty clear that they've got nothing, whatsoever, to do with Wolverine. In other words, 20th Century Fox appears to have broken the law, in claiming it held the copyright over the figures in those images, when it appears it did not. Unfortunately, the site hosting his content doesn't fully understand that under the DMCA it can re-enable his content if he files a counternotice and 20th Century Fox fails to file a lawsuit within a specified period of time. Instead, it's told the blogger that he needs to get the lawyer from 20th Century Fox to agree that the content doesn't infringe -- and the lawyers don't seem to be responding to any emails, meaning that the blogger is stuck in limbo for no good reason.

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Via Ukulele Hunt: Hawaii82 plays "In Your Hawaiian Way" on ukulele. As Al says: "Whenever you start learning an instrument there comes a point where it starts to feel natural and you begin to make music. I love seeing this very moment on YouTube."

John Scalzi, supermensch, has pulled together a "Hugo Voters' Packet" for attendees to this year's World Science Fiction Convention (attendance in which entitles you to a vote on the Hugo Awards). The packet is a download containing nearly every work that's nominated for the Hugos as well as writing samples from people who are up in categories like "Best Fan Writer." It's huge, and you have to be a registered WorldCon attendee to get it, and it is slathered in awesomesauce.

The 2009 Hugo Voters Packet: Now Live

David Byrne is in charge of booking acts for the stage at the The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee this June -- he's packing it with the heavy rotation acts from his personal playlist, like a four-day trip through Byrne's musical influences. Yee-haw!

David Byrne has assembled a number of performers for the first artist-curated stage in the eight-year history of the Bonnaroo Music and Art Festival. On the evening of Friday, June 12 Byrne, who is performing the "Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno," will host his recent collaborators Santigold and the Dirty Projectors, singer/songwriter and founder of Righteous Babe Records Ani DiFranco, former Polyphonic Spree member and Beggar's Banquet recording artist St. Vincent and up-and-coming multi-instrumental all-female Norwegian alt/folk band Katzenjammer.

"We've been interested in inviting artists to play a curatorial role in Bonnaroo for some time now," according to Bonnaroo co-founder and producer Ashley Capps. "David was the logical choice for us and we were thrilled that he agreed. His love for music of all kinds and his passion for sharing that music make him the ultimate musical guide."

Byrne adds "this was an easy one. I basically reeled off a list of what I was listening too recently or who I had seen live recently and Ashley and Co did the rest. It's not like these folks need me to introduce them to a wider audience, at least I don't think they do...I'm just thrilled they'll be added to the festival lineup"

David Byrne First Artist to Curate Stage! (Thanks, Krista!)

Ilya writes "Companies such as BMW are investing in Thermoelectric Generators to make their cars more efficient by replacing the alternator. Thermoelectric Generators convert wasted heat from the engine into electrical power. This green instructable shows how you can use the same technology right now at home to harvest expelled heat from home appliances to charge your cellphone and other gadgets. Also features a lego racer powered by the roaring flames of a tea candle."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

That recent bacon/fire/science/death-themed Boing Boing Video episode sparked a lot of delicious incoming blog suggestions. Two are here.

Above, roguetoronto.com shares this snapshot of bacon graffitti and says, "Took this under the College Street bridge here in Toronto. The photo is untouched, straight off my Xacticam. This is Canadian BACON, spray-bombed to perfection. I think that it is quite old by the state of the chipped paint."

And at left, a stylish bacon bracelet spotted on Etsy, via via cnet. Sadly: sold out right now. (thanks, Mark Kleiman)

Update: That Etsy seller has a new bacon bracelet. AND: The graffitti may say "radon," now that I think of it. BACON IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. No, it really does say "bacon." Thanks commenters!

For those of you in the Bay Area who are looking for an interesting mix of science and art, check out the 2nd Annual Science & Art Appreciation Night at the Chabot Space and Science Center this Friday, April 24 from 7pm - 11pm (link). They'll have some cool exhibits from local artists as well as screening several Make: television segments.

Chabot's describes the event like this:

Great art is often inspired by discoveries in science. Join us for the infusion of Art & Science with an evening filled with displays from local artists and photographers, live music, beer, wine and food available for purchase. Plus final showings of DomeFest 2008, an immersive experience that leaves necks craning, heads spinning, and a special feature of the Make: television Profiles of Bay Area Artists at 7pm and 8pm in our MegaDome theater. More info here.

If you attend, we'd love to see the pictures! Post to our Flickr pool.

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The Professor would be proud of David Butcher of San Jose, California. He built his first pedal generator prototype in 1976. Every morning, he spends 45 minutes on the stationary bicycle generator to charge up a bank of salvaged batteries. Having mastered the machine, Butcher now sells plans so you can build your own. The cost of the parts is around $230, he says, or much less if you recycle an old bike. If you're interested in learning more, Butcher hangs out in a videochat room when he's pedaling away every morning. Apparently, he cranks out 1.8 kilowatt-hours a month. Of course, er, YMMV. Butcher has videos demonstrating the generator directly powering a blender (video above), washing machine, and breadmaker. His bike blender was even featured on a recent episode of MAKE: TV. From Butcher's site:

My pedal generator is in the garage, hooked up through the Trace C12 controller in my Micro Solar Energy System to a recycled battery pack from my Sparrow Electric Car. I work out in the early morning, and it's dark. It would be pointless to use as much energy to light the workout area as I generated with the workout, so I light the area with the 12 volt LED Bar Light I put together several years ago. It uses white LED's to light the workout area. They require almost no power, so virtually everything I generate ends up in the batteries.

The San Francisco Chronicle profiled Butcher last year. Butcher digs alternative power tech in general, having installed solar panels on his roof and X10 modules throughout his house for intelligent control of appliances and other devices. From the SF Chronicle:

Butcher, who lives alone after a divorce, traces his environmental leanings to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, which marred miles of coastline with 200,000 gallons of crude oil. Butcher was 14 at the time and witnessed it firsthand. He built his first pedal generator when he was in his early 20s.

"I was always interested in alternative energy and solar in particular," he says. "I was living in Portland, Ore., where solar is not as much of an option. So I thought, 'What else could I do?'

"I'd been on a swim team for years and I was in pretty good shape, and I thought there must be a way to get some power going."

Butcher's prototype bicycle was chain-driven and featured a welded steel frame. Today's version, with its simplified drivetrain and bolted frame, can be assembled with basic hand tools.

When he took up his pedaling regimen two years ago, Butcher tipped the scales at 180 pounds. Today, at age 53, he weighs a lean 150 and possesses a pair of legs that wouldn't look out of place on the Olympic cycling squad. Butcher's pedaling has become so efficient that he has pretty much abandoned his car (electric, incidentally) in favor of bicycling, reducing his carbon footprint still further.

David Butcher: Pedal Powered Generator (via BB Gadgets)

"Stationary bike designed to create electricity" (San Francisco Chronicle)

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.

Short, but zippy, fact I found out this morning, while researching a piece on mosquitoes and malaria.

I've always sort of wondered what the interaction between mosquito and parasite is like. I've often seen the relationship described in a way that implies mosquitoes are ignorant of the larger human drama playing out in their digestive tract--as though they're basically just a parasite Fed-Ex. Sure, you're getting some bad news, but that's not really the mosquito's problem.

Turns out, though, there's some fairly decent evidence that, while not really being in the mortal danger we humans are, mosquitoes infected with malaria parasites aren't exactly the picture of insecty good health, either. I've spent most of the day talking to researchers at the Imperial College in London, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the University of California Mosquito Research Program. They say that, while still controversial, there seem to be a least a couple of ways malaria bites the proboscis that feeds it.

First, infected female mosquitoes lay fewer eggs than their healthy sisters.

Second, it looks like infected mosquitoes might have trouble sucking blood. Gregory Lanzaro, Ph.D., director of the UC Mosquito Research Program, says there's been some research showing that malaria damages mosquito salivary glands, basically keeping the host from slurping down a full meal. Chronically un-satiated, the mosquito would end up having to bite more victims to get a proper dinner. That's good news for malaria, which needs a human habitat in order to grow up and reproduce. A mosquito that eats from more people is a mosquito that gives malaria a better chance of not ending up like a parasitic Peter Pan. Or, to look at it from our perspective, a mosquito that's carrying malaria is a mosquito that's more bitey and, thus, more likely to spread malaria to more people.

The mosquito POV? Probably a lot like being on a diet. Forever. Is it time to eat again yet?

A reader, who prefers to go by the name Angry Young Man, points us to an interesting set of comments on a torrent of a recent stand up comedy performance by the comedian Louis CK, where it appears the comedian himself showed up on Mininova and asked nicely for the content to be removed, even explaining his reasoning:

HI. I'm Louis CK. Can you please take this down? This show is a work in progress and was not intended to be passed around the internet. I have absolutely no problem, personally, with file sharing, and if you take everythign I have on the market on DVD, CD, and put it up for free downloading, I don't care. But this is an artistic and personal request. Please take this torrent down. thanks.

Following that, the guy who uploaded the torrent complied:

Sorry Mr. CK, I have taken down the direct downloads and asked Mininova and ViPeers to remove the torrent. I thought you would have preferred the reverse, your live concerts in ****ty audio quality would be ok, especially for what you said about NBC taking down your Late Night appearance, and your high quality DVDs and stuff wouldn't be ok since you need ***** for that stuff. I sincerely apologize for the torrent and the misunderstanding.

And people say that those putting up torrent files don't respect artists?

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Narcissus writes to tell us that the European Parliament is planning a vote in the Industry Transport, Energy (ITRE) committee that could reintroduce amendment 138 (currently amendment 46) which deals with safeguards to user rights on the internet and graduated response schemes. There are several online campaigns trying to drive awareness and action already but there is limited time to act. "The Council may propose a compromise version of amendment 138/46 that is completely neutralized, or that may even become the opposite of the original by allowing the "three strikes" scheme instead of preventing it. According to the latest negotiations, am.138/46 wouldn't anymore be an article (that must be transposed by Member States in their law) but a mere recital that has just indicative value. It is urgent to contact the members of the ITRE committee to advise them to reject compromise with the Council that failed to respect the intent of the original amendment. The best would be once again to approve the amendment."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This chair is made from a 55-gallon plastic drum, along with six small bolts, nuts, washers, six drywall screws, and a little ingenuity. It's "surprisingly comfortable" (claims its builder).

Recycled 55 Gallon Barrel Chair [Thanks, Seth Robinson!]

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jammag writes "Cranking out code — your very best code — requires being in the optimal environment, muses developer Eric Spiegel. He explores the pitfalls and joys of the usual locales, cubicle, home, the beach. He claims he's done his best coding on an airplane. In the end, though, he suggests that the best environment is a matter of the environment inside yourself, your internal mood — and to hell with the cubicle or wherever. You have to be focused on quality, regardless of the idiot clients. It's all inside your mind. Where's your coding happy place?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last year, we wrote about a district court decision that noted iParadigm's popular Turnitin plagiarism checker service wasn't violating copyright by adding every student's paper to its database, noting that this was fair use. Wired points out that an appeals court has upheld this ruling and links to Thomas O'Toole's quick summary of why this is fair use:

The court stepped through the fair use analysis, dropping positive notes here (commercial uses can be fair uses), here (a use can be transformative "in function or purpose without altering or actually adding to the original work," citing Perfect 10 Inc. v. Amazon.com Inc.), and here (fact that turnitin.com used the entirety of the plaintiff's work did not preclude finding of fair use). And it turned back a lot of other, small-bore challenges to the district court's fair use finding.

While O'Toole rushes through these points, they're actually pretty important, since they're quite often misunderstood by people (even copyright lawyers) who claim that commercial use isn't fair use, or that using an entire work can't be fair use or can't be transformative. In this case, the court lays out why none of that is true. When the original decision came out, I suggested that all of these points could be helpful to Google in defending its book scanning efforts, since it could make pretty much the identical arguments on all points. It's scanning was a commercial use, but transformative (it was for indexing/searching books, not reading them), it was making use of the entire work, but again, in a transformative way.

Unfortunately, as we all know, Google caved in that lawsuit and settled -- though, now we're watching as many are challenging whether the settlement terms are legal or reasonable. I still think Google should have stuck with the pure fair use defense, showing that its use was transformative and different - similar to just indexing websites for linking purposes. Not only is it unfortunate that Google gave this up, because it's one less strong precedent over fair use, but it's now opened up the ridiculous claims by a bunch of other industries (newspapers, recording) demanding that Google "settle" with them as well, and hand over cash. Google's decision to back down was a big mistake, not just in terms of screwing over others trying to scan books (what most of the current complaints are about), but in denying a strong fair use precedent and making Google look like an easy place for struggling industries to demand cash.

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Maker Faire Africa is a "celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention, that will take place August 13-15 at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Ghana's capital, Accra." It is not an official Maker Faire event, but it has our blessing.

Many of the African makers we've featured here on the site, often via posts from Afrigadget, have been invited to the event. Our pals over at Afrigadget are part of the organizing team for the Faire. We can wait to see how everything plays out. They're looking for sponsorships and donations, so check out the site for more details.

Maker Faire Africa

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Microsoft's supposed open-source guru Sam Ramji has asked open-source vendors to focus on "value" instead of "cost" with respect to competition with Microsoft products. This is especially funny given the Redmond giant's recent "Apple Tax" message. "While I'm sure Ramji meant well, I'm equally certain that Microsoft would like nothing more than to not be reminded of how expensive its products can be compared with open-source solutions. After all, Microsoft was the company that turned the software industry on its head by introducing lower-cost solutions years ago to undermine the Unix businesses of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and the database businesses of Oracle and IBM."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft's supposed open-source guru Sam Ramji has asked open-source vendors to focus on "value" instead of "cost" with respect to competition with Microsoft products. This is especially funny given the Redmond giant's recent "Apple Tax" message. "While I'm sure Ramji meant well, I'm equally certain that Microsoft would like nothing more than to not be reminded of how expensive its products can be compared with open-source solutions. After all, Microsoft was the company that turned the software industry on its head by introducing lower-cost solutions years ago to undermine the Unix businesses of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and the database businesses of Oracle and IBM."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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.

It looks like I'll be spending another couple of weeks here at Boing Boing, which certainly leaves me feeling celebratory. In honor of the boundless excitement currently coursing through my veins, I thought I'd bring you some fun facts about one of the most iconic party pics in history--Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous VJ Day kiss photo.

Who's That Girl? Nobody Knows.
On August 14, 1945, thousands of men and women flocked to New York City's Times Square to celebrate the allied victory over Japan. There was, by all accounts, a lot of semi-anonymous lip-locking going on, but it's these two people--a sailor and a nurse--who smooched at just the right moment and became larger than life.

In his autobiography, photographer Eisenstaedt writes that he followed a sailor through the crowd, watching as the man kissed just about anything that moved and wore a skirt. When the sailor hit on a nurse who was wearing a pleasantly contrasting white outfit, Eisenstaedt took the shot...but failed to get either of their names written down.

To date, more than a dozen men, and at least three women, have claimed to be the kissers. Of the men, my favorite is George Mendonca, a Rhode Island fisherman, and World War II navy recruit, who claims he grabbed the strange nurse and kissed her right in front of his girlfriend. In fact, Mendonca says his girlfriend (now his wife) is visible in the background of the shot.

The Raw Deal
Amazingly, Eisenstaedt isn't the only one to blame for the fact that we have no idea who the kissers are. Photog Victor Jorgensen actually took the same scene from a slightly different angle...and also forgot to get the subjects' names. To be fair, though, it's hard to hate on Jorgensen, as dude seriously got the shaft. Although his version was the one that ran in the next day's New York Times, Jorgensen never got the glory (or the royalty checks) that Eisenstaedt enjoyed. Why? At the time, Jorgensen was working as a military photographer and didn't own the rights to his work. In fact, that's Jorgensen's shot I've posted here. It's in the public domain. Eisenstaedt's version, significantly, is not.

Everything Looks Better With Sharp Angles
Eisenstaedt's VJ kiss photo is one of many famous pictures that artist Mike Stimpson has recreated in Lego pieces. Check out his Web site for square-shouldered, claw-handed versions of everything from the D-Day landings, to John Lennon's bed-in for peace, to the National Geographic Afghan girl.

Still feeling frisky? The May/June issue of mental_floss (due in stores asap) has an article I wrote about 10 of history's most important kisses.

Photo from the National Archives, via pingnews photo service.

Over at Morbid Anatomy, Joanna has word of a pathological wax model exhibition at the Palacio de la Escuela de Medicina in Mexico City. Some of the images are NSFW and also NSFFaint-of-heart.

In just two weeks, I’ll be heading west to Seattle for An Event Apart. The event, as with any AEA show, will undoubtedly rock. It’s also on the brink of being sold out, so act now if you’d like to attend. You can also save an extra $100 off the registration by using the discount code AEACEDE.

And that reminds me. If one were looking for the best coffee in Seattle, where would one go? Let the debate begin, fine folks of the Pacific Northwest.

I love doing the weekly podcast with Jay, because he's so damned smart and he surprises me with his stories. Not many people do that as well as he does.

This week his surprise was the idea that we could tell stories of inspiration to help get over the hurdles the future is throwing in our path. His example of Max Headroom was brilliant and new to me, I didn't watch the show in the 80s, I was too busy running my always-on-the-brink startup.

So he's going to bring us inspiration from media, and I expect I'll do some of that too, but I think my first tale of inspiration should come from tech, and I think it's probably going to be Jon Postel and his great law that came from experience in guiding the Internet through its early days. In all of the layers we've built on top of Postel's work, we've never found a situation that wasn't covered by his law, and never really found another law to stand alongside it. Every time I think I've figured out something I want to pass on to future generations it's always turned out to be a variant of Postel's Law. That's the sign of something profound and deep, and it's simple.

"Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send."

People keep trying to break the law, but when they do, it always ends badly. Maybe someday they'll stop trying.

I suspect when the fullness of the new Land of Journos reveals itself it will also be an instance of Postel's Law.

There was a lot of attention paid last week to a new "cybersecurity" bill that would drastically expand the government's power over the Internet. The two provisions that have probably attracted the most attention are the parts that would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and then seize control of "any compromised Federal government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network." Perhaps even more troubling, the EFF notes a section that states that the government "shall have access to all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access." Read literally, this language would seem to give the government the power to override the privacy protections in such laws as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Thankfully, Congress can't override the Fourth Amendment by statute, but this language poses a real threat to Fourth Amendment rights.

One clause that I haven't seen get the attention it deserves is the provision that would require a federal license, based on criteria determined by the Secretary of Commerce, to provide cybersecurity services to any federal agency or any "information system or network" the president chooses to designate as "critical infrastructure." It's hard to overstate how bad an idea this is. Cybersecurity is a complex and fast-moving field. There's no reason to think the Department of Commerce has any special expertise in certifying security professionals. Indeed, security experts tend to be a contrarian bunch, and it seems likely that some of the best cybersecurity professionals will refuse to participate. Therefore, it's a monumentally bad idea to ban the government from soliciting security advice from people who haven't jumped through the requisite government hoops. Even worse, the proposal leaves the definition of "critical infrastructure" to the president's discretion, potentially allowing him to designate virtually any privately-owned network or server as "critical infrastructure," thereby limiting the freedom of private firms to choose cybersecurity providers.

When thinking about cyber-security, it's important to keep in mind that an open network like the Internet is never going to be perfectly secure. Providers of genuinely critical infrastructure like power grids and financial networks should avoid connecting it to the Internet at all. Moreover, the most significant security threats on the Internet, including botnets and viruses, are already illegal under federal law. If Congress is going to pass cybersecurity legislation this session (and it probably shouldn't) it should focus on providing federal law enforcement officials with the resources to enforce the cyber-security laws we already have (and getting the government's own house in order), not give the government sweeping and totally unnecessary new powers that are likely to be abused.

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

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Recently we covered California utility company PG&E's ambitious deal with upstart Solaren to beam energy to earth from a space-based solar collector. What we didn't know is Solaren's patent also covers the alteration of weather elements with that very same system. "By heating up the upper and middle levels of an infant hurricane, they say they could disrupt the flows of air that power the enormous storms. Air warmed by tropical waters flows up through a hurricane and is vented through the eye into the upper atmosphere. Theoretically, you could heat up the top of the storm and lower the pressure differential between layers, resulting in a weaker storm. "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Recently we covered California utility company PG&E's ambitious deal with upstart Solaren to beam energy to earth from a space-based solar collector. What we didn't know is Solaren's patent also covers the alteration of weather elements with that very same system. "By heating up the upper and middle levels of an infant hurricane, they say they could disrupt the flows of air that power the enormous storms. Air warmed by tropical waters flows up through a hurricane and is vented through the eye into the upper atmosphere. Theoretically, you could heat up the top of the storm and lower the pressure differential between layers, resulting in a weaker storm. "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As far as I know Hueniverse was the first to notice that Twitter's support for OAuth put it in direct competition with Facebook Connect. This is a good thing because two-party systems work, and one-party systems don't.

Now it would be great if:

1. Facebook would make OAuth their default way to hook into their identity system. They have the power to ratify this as a standard. If they do, everyone who follows will have to use OAuth. I'm not crazy about OAuth, but one way of doing something is better than two, no matter how much better the second is. (That's a version of the brilliant always-applicable Postel's Law.)

2. One or both of them should swallow hard and use some of their investor's money to provide developers with an open storage system to go along with their OAuth support. This is the YouTube-like opportunity of 2009, the first to do it will get all the developers building on their platform and will set a standard as powerful as HTTP (if it's as simple as that, which it could easily be). This goes along with my longtime request for Payloads for Twitter, it's what we're all waiting for, in order for Twitter apps to stop being the demos they are, and start entering killer app territory.

The sign of a platform, its gravitas, macho-ness comes from the possibility of developers eclipsing the platform itself with utility and coolness. If you look back at all the really successful platforms of the past they all had this quality.

The Apple II had VisiCalc and Choplifter. The IBM PC had Lotus, dBASE, a host of word processors. CP/M had WordStar. Mac had Pagemaker and Quark. The web had Yahoo and Google, Blogger, YouTube, eBay, Amazon, Skype and on and on (probably the biggest and best platform so far).

Maybe it won't be Twitter or Facebook, but whoever builds the next consensus platform will have open data storage APIs in addition to identity. It's a vital part of identity. We've been waiting too damned long for this.

Visionary artist Paul Laffoley, whose psychotronic work is informed by fringe science, the occult, cyborganic architecture, eccentric engineering, and forgotten histories, has been awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Creative Arts. Congratulations, Paul! This has been a long time coming. Seen above, "Geochronmechane: The Time Machine from the Earth" (1990), Paul Laffoley (Kent Gallery), Paul Laffoley (Guggenheim) (Thanks, Richard Metzger!)

Three cheers for Randall "XKCD" Munroe! Not only has he just announced his first book of collected toons, he got a fabulous write up in the NYT about it as well. Randall's one of the most consistently funny -- and sweet -- geeks on the web, and every day he tops himself in finding new ways to be made of awesome.

The print xkcd book is not being published through a traditional company but rather by breadpig -- which was created by Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of the social-news Web site reddit. The site has sold high-concept merchandise like refrigerator magnets or T-shirts, but never a book. (Its profits go to the charity Room to Read.)

"We never made any projection -- 10,000 seems like a good run," Mr. Ohanian said, adding that this lack of research "is laughable from the perspective of anyone who knows the book industry. It's what makes sense."

The book -- with the working title "xkcd," though Mr. Ohanian says it may carry a subtitle like "a book of romance, sarcasm, math and language" -- will not initially be sold in bookstores, and probably never in the big chains. Instead, it will be sold through the xkcd Web site.

When Pixels Find New Life on Real Paper (Thanks, Dave!)

The 1984 sculpture in this video was located in the San Francisco FAO Schwartz's window for a couple of years. It's now for sale on eBay with a starting bid of $4500. The maker says, "I'll include alot of matchbox and hotwheel vehicles(some of which i've retrofitted with head and tail lights." Matchbox Mountain (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)

Jill Sylvia creates insanely detailed and gorgeous sculptures from hand-cut ledger paper. (Thanks, Greg Long!)

Jordan Terrell sent in this link to a DHCP library he's been writing for Arduino Ethernet. It's part of a larger RFID door lock project he's working on.

I knew that the Arduino Ethernet hardware and supporting library didn't directly support getting an IP address (and other supporting information) via DHCP. I began to look around to see if someone had developed a library that would handle the DHCP handshake, and unfortunately I could find no such library - only comments of people wishing someone would develop such a library. Well, I've started just that - a DHCP library for the Arduino Ethernet shield.

DHCP Library v0.1

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Many different sources are talking about the latest scandal surrounding the warrantless wiretapping program. Incriminating evidence against California rep. Jane Harman was apparently captured some time ago on a legal NSA wiretap. However, Attorney General Gonzales supposedly intervened to drop the case against her because (and this is where the irony meter explodes) Bush officials wanted her to be able to publicly defend the warrantless wiretap program. "Jane Harman, in the wake of the NSA scandal, became probably the most crucial defender of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, using her status as "the ranking Democratic on the House intelligence committee" to repeatedly praise the NSA program as 'essential to U.S. national security' and 'both necessary and legal.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Many different sources are talking about the latest scandal surrounding the warrantless wiretapping program. Incriminating evidence against California rep Jane Harman was apparently captured some time ago on a legal NSA wiretap. However, Attorney General Gonzales supposedly intervened to drop the case against her because (and this is where the irony meter explodes) Bush officials wanted her to be able to publicly defend the warrantless wiretap program. "Jane Harman, in the wake of the NSA scandal, became probably the most crucial defender of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, using her status as "the ranking Democratic on the House intelligence committee" to repeatedly praise the NSA program as 'essential to U.S. national security' and 'both necessary and legal.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fee sez, "The BBC and Guardian report that despite claims that waterboarding leads to people confessing all quickly, some suspects were subjected to the torture hundreds of times. I was already appalled by the idea of civilised countries using torture... this level of torture enacted upon individuals is inhumane and unspeakable. I hope they are prosecuted."

The CIA waterboarded two al-Qaida terror suspects a total of 266 times, according to a report that suggests the use of the torture technique was much more extensive than previously thought.

The documents showed waterboarding was used 183 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who admitted planning the 9/11 attacks, the New York Times reported today.

The US Justice Department memos released last Thursday showed that waterboarding, which the US now admits is torture, was used 83 times on the alleged al-Qaida senior commander Abu Zubaydah, the paper said. A former CIA officer claimed in 2007 that Zubaydah was subjected to the simulated drowning technique for only 35 seconds.

CIA waterboarded al-Qaida suspects 266 times (Thanks, Fee!)

What is it with cable news channels for being thinskinned the second some bloggers start posting criticism? Earlier this year, Fox News used the DMCA to take down videos that were being used in commentary, and then sought to force the site to waive its fair use rights for future video usage. So, that give liberals a chance to laugh at "conservative" Fox news... but don't laugh too hard, because now there's the flipside. The "liberal" CNN has filed a DMCA notice to have video taken down that was being used by a conservative blog for commentary purposes -- again, almost certainly fair use. Also, it sounds like some of the video footage that CNN demanded be taken down wasn't even filmed by CNN, suggesting they don't hold the copyright on it. Either way, it's quite silly for either news station to file such a notice. In both cases it was clear that the sites in question weren't trying to use the video to "compete" unfairly, but to offer criticism and commentary. The fact that both news channels went the DMCA takedown route, makes it clear that they were simply trying to shut up critics. And, of course, in both cases, it backfired, bringing more attention to the stories (and just how thinskinned) cable news networks appear to be... no matter where they might sit on the political spectrum.

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C S Miller writes "Not much more to add. The BBC is reporting that 'Stephen Hawking is "very ill" in hospital.' He has had a few health scares before, and as a post-graduate he was told he didn't have much longer to live; he's now 67."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot regular Bennett Haselton writes "The ACLU has targeted a group of Tennessee school districts for blocking websites categorized by a blocking company as 'LGBT.' I hope the ACLU wins, but it may create the mistaken impression that egregious overblocking of websites is easy to fix. On the contrary, the vast majority of errors are hard-coded into the products and cannot be fixed by unblocking a single category." Hit that tantalizingly entitled 'Read More' link to read his essay.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot regular Bennett Haselton writes "The ACLU has targeted a group of Tennessee school districts for blocking websites categorized by a blocking company as 'LGBT.' I hope the ACLU wins, but it may create the mistaken impression that egregious overblocking of Web sites is easy to fix. On the contrary, the vast majority of errors are hard-coded into the products and cannot be fixed by unblocking a single category." Hit that tantalizingly entitled 'Read More' link to read his essay.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As was easily predicted when The Pirate Bay verdict came out last Friday, the entertainment industry celebrated it as a big win. Amusingly, Arts+Labs, one of many, many entertainment industry lobbying groups (and run by a guy, Mike McCurry, who thinks that Google doesn't pay a dime for its bandwidth), was quick to praise the decision, with McCurry claiming that this is a turning point and that people will now realize that file sharing is "something both dangerous, criminal, and unfair." (I'll let the grammar nazis figure out which two of three things he meant when he said "both").

I love these proclamations of turning points. Especially since there's absolutely nothing to support it. We've seen the entertainment industry shut down Napster, Aimster, Morpheus, Grokster, TorrentSpy, OiNK and others over the years, and none have been "turning points" in the direction the entertainment industry wanted. In every case, things actually went the other way. Every time they shut down one of these services, another one shows up to pick up the slack and turns out to be bigger and more popular than the previous ones. In the meantime, over in Sweden, the ruling had generated large protests and thousands rushing to sign up to be a member of The Pirate Party. If it's a "turning point" for anything, it seems to be the opposite of the what the industry wanted.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't think that most file sharing is legal or right (and I don't participate in any of it). But, millions of people who know that it's illegal have absolutely no problem taking part in it, and no "education" campaign or shutting down of a particular site or service is going to stop that. Continuing to pretend it will doesn't help the industry at all. What helps the industry is to stop denying that this is something that can be stopped legally, and finally moving on to experimenting with business models that work -- such as the business models that we've been describing here for over a decade. It's not that hard, no matter what entertainment industry lawyers (and it's always the lawyers) insist.

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I enjoyed this video interview with the wonderful artist Gary Taxali describing an experience he had in India.

Here's another video about his art, illustrations, and toys. He discusses how he was inspired to become an artist after finding some illustrated Indian textbooks his parents had.

Gary has a new show at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in NYC, called Hindi Love Song.

Noah Bicknell and Daniel Reetz made this book scanner using cheap digital cameras and scavenged building materials. From the Insructable:

I love books. There is some truly fantastic knowledge and information hidden out there in hard to find, rare, and not commercially viable books. I find that I want my books with me everywhere. But that's where the problems begin. Buying, moving, storing, and preserving books means environmental costs... and when I loan a book to a friend, I no longer have access to it. Digital books change the landscape . After suffering through scanning many of my old, rare, and government issue books, I decided to create a book scanner that anybody could make, for around $300. And that's what this instructable is all about. A greener future with more books rather than fewer books. More access to information, rather than less access to information. And maybe, years from now, a reformed publishing/distribution model (but I'm not holding my breath...).

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In this startling time-lapse video, we see life's wonder unfold as a brave couple bare the entire process of making a baby, from fertilization to gestation to birth. Science!

Como Hacer un Bebe | How to make a baby (Thanks, Elmar!)

G_of_the_J writes "A man who had cut 18 cables affecting Verizon and Comcast was blackmailing them. He had demanded bank accounts be set up and information be provided on web sites that he specified. Although he used anonymous access to get to the web sites, the FBI had planted a trojan which was downloaded to his computer. The trojan then sent his IP address and other information to the FBI."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russ built this vintage DIY beauty 25 years ago to demonstrate the abilities of a now classic/rare chip -

Handmade SN94281-based synth I made back in 1983. The device won the Grand Champion prize at the York County Science and Engineering fair --- I was 12 years old at the time. Last year at this time, I decided to restore it to working order for its 25th birthday. It is basically a "breakout box" for the Texas Instruments SN94281 Complex Sound Generator chip. All features of the chip are available as front panel knobs or multi-position switches.

The chip is showing signs of its age -- the power audio amplifier no longer works correctly, but the output signal can still be amplified if driving a high impedance load.

Those are definitely the greatest rotary(?) switches I've laid eyes on - and you seldom see that classic label-gun anymore. You can hear samples of the box at work on Russ' site.

The SN94281 is a simpler version of the SN76477 chip used for sound synthesis in many older arcade machines. Nowadays the chips are often sought out for use in homebrew synth designs such as Thomas Henry's SN-Voice board.

[via MatrixSynth]

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Here's a kit company, called Phenostream, we've never heard of before offering an interesting-looking and very inexpensive AVR-based robot kit. As you can see from the photo, the AVRkitCar is very tiny. It sells for CDN$85, which is around US$70. I'll see if I can't get an evaluation unit from them and do a full-blown review of this kit.

AVRcarKit [via adafruit industries]

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bowman9991 writes "Ridley Scott's next science fiction film, his first since Blade Runner, will be a 3D adaptation of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, an action packed novel about the impact of the time dilation effect on soldiers returning from an interstellar war against the mysterious Tauran species. Scott recently decided to move to 3D after watching footage of James Cameron's yet to be released science fiction epic Avatar.The Forever War, Cameron's Avatar, and Scott's other upcoming science fiction project, Brave New World, will make the next five years a fantastic time to be a science fiction movie enthusiast."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Where do you get that special something for that special project if you aren't quite sure what it is or where to get it? Why the MIT Flea Market, of course!

The MIT Radio Society, in conjunction with the MIT UHF Repeater Association, the MIT Electronics Research Society, and the Harvard Wireless Club, sponsors a Swapfest on the third Sunday of each month, April through October. This is a place to buy, sell, and swap amateur radio, electronic, and computer equipment. Hams and non-hams alike are welcome.

I spent the day on Sunday looking through bin upon bin of connectors, resistors, capacitors, transistors, LEDs, antique electronics, and more. Over the course of the morning, I bumped into a few friends and made a few new acquaintances. My original quest was to get some birthday schwag for a party later in the day, but eventually, I started shopping for my own hardware needs. I could have gotten more, but three trips back to the car seemed to be enough.

It is refreshing to see so many people looking for supplies and tools to do creative projects. These days, people who have extra 'treasures' adorning their caves can jettison their surplus in more ways, but there is fortunately still a way to sell and buy in person. There was definitely a healthy exchange of ideas and the excitement of a great unanticipated find was definitely in the air.

What is your all time best find at the MIT Flea or similar tech-styled exchange? Where are the other places you look for and find great supplies and ideas for projects?

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CBS has certainly taken a much more enlightened view to online content than NBC. While it's true that NBC is seeing a lot of success with Hulu, the company resisted online efforts for years, and has always resisted the idea of allowing people to watch content as they want to. Instead, the company has focused on limiting how, where and when you can watch its content. CBS, on the other hand, was an early believer in focusing less on control and more on just getting your content out there. For an example of this contrast, look at how the two networks are dealing with big sporting events.

As recently discussed, NBC is working hard to make it as difficult as possible for you to watch the Olympics online, even when its own experience showed that online viewers didn't cannibalize TV viewers -- in fact the opposite happened. People who watched online watched more TV. So why are they trying to make it so hard to watch online?

Meanwhile, CBS, which had tremendous success webcasting the NCAA's March Madness basketball tournament is now working to see if it can get the permission to broadcast the Super Bowl online as well (thanks to MattP for sending this in), knowing that it will likely bring in a larger audience, and increase the opportunities for everyone.

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Recently on Offworld, with a few weeks of Nintendo's excellent DS rhythm game Rhythm Heaven under belt, Lisa Katayama told us what the game has to teach us about otaku culture, while MIT professor Henry Jenkins talks with two former students about what The Legend of Zelda can teach us about morality & philosophy. We also took a quick look into the latest game in the Nintendo's WarioWare franchise that will put all its chaotic potential directly into the hands of the players by letting them design and trade their own micro-games online, and learned more about finely tuning a zombie-onslaught in Left 4 Dead's forthcoming Survival Mode DLC. Elsewhere, we saw that the world's finest games festival -- Nottingham, UK's yearly GameCity fest -- will be returning in October and will now be free for all, watched the original Metroid composer play his music live, saw the best Mario writing utensil never made, and read the wryly funniest Craigslist ad we've seen in some time, as one enterprising poster offers "Tetris lessons at affordable rates." Finally, we saw that the fantastic retro art exhibit Famicase -- which imagines 8-bit Nintendo games never made -- would be returning to Japan in May (above, the pick of Famicase 2008), watched one man discover just how disorienting the holodeck-future will be inside EON Reality's immersive 3D room, and, in a sentence no one ever imagined anyone would be typing, saw one man's attempt to bring Matthew Barney's arthouse cinema series Cremaster to the world of LittleBigPlanet.

Johannes decided to try pushing the limits of Arduino as a desktop computing platform -

I have resently been working on a project for the arduino, called Arduputer. With the project i intended to see how much the arduino could do. The current sketch is about 13kB.

On the arduputer I have several programs including a text editor, a simple ocilloscope and a program that shows available ram on the Arduputer.

I have modified the Ps2 keyboard library and the GLCD. In the GLCD library I added a routine for showing a picture. I used Bitmap2LCD for converting it from bmp to bitmap. The routine is a little wired so if you are going to convert a bitmap yourself, the settings are.

Paging Scheme vertical downwards
Most significant bit last
Origin corner top left

FYI - As the author notes in the forum discussion, Tux the penguin only appears here as a demo graphic (sorry Linux lovers).

It seems he's using Arduino compatible hardware configured with an ATMega168. It would be interesting to see any possible benefits from using the ATMega328's extra memory. GPL licensed source code available for download here - and the more on the project on the Arduino forums.

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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Drivintin writes "In a move that should make cable companies nervous, Adobe announces they are going to push a Flash that runs directly on TVs. 'Adobe Systems, which owns the technology and sells the tools to create and distribute it, wants to extend Flash's reach even further. On Monday, Adobe's chief executive, Shantanu Narayen, will announce at the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas that Adobe is extending Flash to the television screen. He expects TVs and set-top boxes that support the Flash format to start selling later this year.' With the ability to run Hulu, YouTube and others, the question of dropping your cable becomes a little bit more reasonable."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess's Blueberry Girl is a beautiful, affirming, inspiring picture book based on a poem that Gaiman wrote for Tash, Tori Amos's daughter (who is also Gaiman's god-daughter). The poem is a set of benedictions for girls, wishes for a realistically joyful life where what pain that comes only serves to make the pleasure sweeter. Vess (a well-known fantasy artist) has a distinctive style that gives the book much of its charm.

If you can read this without smiling or tearing up, you're made of sterner stuff than me.

...Dull days at forty, false friends at fifteen;
Let her have brave days and truth.
Let her go places that we've never been;
Trust and delight in her youth.

Ladies of Grace, and Ladies of Favour,
And Ladies of Merciful Night,
This is a prayer for a Blueberry Girl,
Grant her your Clearness of Sight.

Words can be worrisome, people complex;
Motives and manners unclear.
Grant her the wisdom to choose her path right,
Free from unkindness and fear.

Let her tell stories, and dance in the rain,
Somersaults, tumble and run;
Her joys must be high as her sorrows are deep,
Let her grow like a weed in the sun...

Blueberry Girl (US)

Blueberry Girl (UK)

murthydn writes "According to a Times of India article, 'India on Monday successfully launched its first all-weather spy satellite that will help security agencies keep a watch on the movements on the borders. The satellite has all-weather capability to take images of the Earth and would also be beneficial in mapping and managing natural disasters, such as floods and landslides, besides amplifying defence surveillance capabilities of the nation. It would also help keep track of ships at sea that could pose a threat.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Andrew's neglected subwoofer found new life as a mini guitar amp -

So I made the $5 Cracker box amplifier (makezine.com/09/crackerboxamp) almost a year ago, and the box I had put it in was falling apart, even though I had reinforced it with more cardboard.
Anyway, I was looking at it on my desk this morning, thinking about how it would be much better if I wasn't using the little 3 inch speaker I had in the box, when I looked over and saw this neglected subwoofer in the corner of my room that had never really been used (and probably never would be).
My first thought was to take the speaker out and use it for the amp, but when I was disassembling it, I noticed how well the subwoofer itself would work as a case for the amp. So I set to work fitting all of the pieces in, and a while later, I had a fully functional amp that looked and sounded much better than the original.
I may use the open "12v in" hole for a 9v in to power the amp in the future.

I too can attest to the goodness of the subwoofer-turned-guitar-amp design. With the plastic cover removed and speaker turned around, an old Altec Lansing sub has served me well as the affectionately named "Ol' Crappy" :P

(The name only refers to the rough aesthic - it actually sounds surprisingly good!)

Volume 09, page 104  The $5 Cracker Box Amplifier

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We've been anxious to see how this amazing calendar clock turned out since we first wrote about it last April. One year later, it's finished! Actually, it was finished in December -- the builder, Sean Gallagher, finished it over the holidays, as a present to himself. Really incredible design, engineering, and craftsmanship. And it's driven by the MAKE Controller.

Celestia archive at Negative Space
Celestia Clock Flickr set

More:
Make: Controller-driven celestial clock

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bruunb writes "Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt. 'We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,' said Oracle President Safra Catz."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few years back, there was a lot of attention paid to Jason Fortuny, a "griefer,' who posted a fake ad to Craigslist, and then published all of the responses he got publicly. One of the people who responded sued, and Slashdot alerts us to the news that a court has ordered a default judgment for him to pay $74,000. What's interesting is that the largest part of this, $35,001, is actually for copyright infringement. Since part of the ad Fortuny put up requested photos, the guy is claiming (correctly) that he owns the copyright on the photo he took, and Fortuny violated his copyright in publishing it. Another $5,000 is for privacy violations, and the remaining about is to cover attorney and court fees.

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Lorin, of Electric Western, writes:

People get excited about tubes, and they do some nifty things with them (even beyond audio). I'm trying to make working with them a little more accessible.

So, I published a Power Supply design for tube experiments - with redundant safety and small size in mind, am providing a kit of said design, and published a free 6SJ7 preamp which you CAN BREADBOARD with the above supply.

It's all here. I'd appreciate feedback.

Also, what is scary about making with vacuum tubes? Is it the 50 to 500V DC plate supplies? Is it the "don't open the TV/microwave" fear? I'd like to know. My bread-boarded preamp sounded just as nice as some $300 products I've seen for iPods and such. Maybe I'm just an idiot for pursuing this instead of a $2000 iPod enhancer design...

DIY: Experimenting with vacuum tubes

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Nexto, a manufacturer of portable backup storage devices, has announced the NVS2500 backup device claiming to offer back up speeds of up to 80MB/s. Primarily designed for video professionals, it is compatible with Compact Flash, SDHC and MemoryStick Pro, though its fastest speeds are reserved for SxS media. Built around a 2.5” SATA hard drive, it offers eSATA/USB and FireWire support. It also allows simultaneous backup to both its internal HD and an external USB hard drive. It also features a 2.4" preview LCD, rugged construction and a free-fall sensor for maximum drive protection. The NVS2500 is available in 160GB, 250GB, 350GB and 500GB storage capacities.

It seems that some folks are beginning to explore a rather important topic: the value of certain types of links. In the past, people generally assumed that all web traffic was effectively equal, and no matter how you got it, it didn't much matter. But it's clear that's not really true. For example, some people note that traffic from a site such as Digg is often not very "useful" traffic, because people come, see the one page, do nothing else, and never come back (this isn't entirely true in our experience, but it's mostly true). And, of course, there are newspapers who claim the same thing is true about Google News -- even to the point that some are suggesting that, even if it brings in less traffic, newspapers should block Google from scraping them so that visitors have to find those news sites via other means.

Along those lines, Fred Wilson has started exploring the value of links from different places, with a focus on "passed" or "earned" links -- basically links that someone "passed on" rather than were found via a search engine. The hypothesis was that such "passed links" were more valuable, and from a conceptual level it makes some amount of sense. If someone you know or trust sends you to a link, you're more likely to click and pay attention to that link. Fred does some investigating of this, with a limited amount of data, and isn't quite sure it's true (from what he's seen), though he admits that the data is limited.

I think this is definitely an important subject for websites to investigate -- but I find the initial suggestion (blocking one source because the "value" of those visitors is low) to be quite silly and backwards. That's deciding that because a certain type of user isn't worth that much, you should ignore them all together. I would think the smarter means would be to simply treat those visitors differently, and focus on recognizing where they come from, and then looking to provide value based on that fact. You won't capture everyone, but you can certainly do a better job of funneling people in a certain direction based on where they're coming from and what they're likely looking for based on that information. It's not something that we do here, but it's about to be added to the "things to do" queue.

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destinyland writes "Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York is developing flexible nanotubes inserted under the skin to create a handheld display — inside your hand. They wirelessly receive data and display reminders and text messages, and the concept has also been broadened to suggest endlessly programmable digital tattoos, while Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics is also exploring the concept of the body as 'a platform for electronics and interactive skin technologies'." That middle link is quite old, but is still loaded with interesting links.

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Francesco sez, "Phlatboyz are about to release the new and really improved Phlatprinter MK2: a special type of CNC machine (created by Mark and Trish Carew) that anyone can build with materials purchased at a local hardware store."

The Phlatpriner MK II (Thanks, Francesco!)

The Maker Shed is having a huge Spring cleaning sale. Now is the perfect time to pick up a Pololu 3pi robot for a really great discount. Not sure what the Pololu 3pi robot does? Not sure how to program it? Not a problem, I did a how-to a while back. Don't forget to pick up an Orangutan USB Programmer and 3pi Expansion Kit with cutouts since they're on sale too!

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

More about the Pololu 3pi robot from the Maker Shed

Related:

How-to Tuesday: Getting started with the 3pi

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Kim sez, "The sequence of paintings by a Spanish artist called Fernando Vicente is called Vanitas, meditations on the fading of beauty and the inevitability of death, basically."

Fernando Vicente: Vanitas

Fernando Vicente (Thanks, Kim!)

Breeze is an incredible marquetry artist. A few years ago, he stayed with us while showing his work at the Duxbury Art Association. My mother saw his work and commissioned a custom designed table inspired by her photos of Costa Rica.

T. Breeze VerDant...started his woodworking experience by building a log cabin from his own trees and rocks, hauling the logs by hand with a "come-along". He consequently demolished buildings for building materials and built another home entirely from lumber he harvested selectively from a friend's forest (thereby saving it from being clear-cut). Expressing ones self through house building is a tedious method of expression. It also consumes a lot of trees, which "Breeze" has an affinity for. "My mother knew where to find me at dinner time, she'd stick her head out of the door of the kitchen and yell.... upwards!". Breeze has run power lines, studied and practiced massage and the healing arts; He is a singer/songwriter/guitarist/poet and an activist for peace and the environment. Breezes aim with wood is to create and share the greatest amount of beauty while consuming the smallest amount of wood. Breeze has been practicing marquetry full time since 1988.

I love musical instruments. Music is sacred, it's an accessible realm that tells me that there is more that the consensus reality. It comes from within. To do the marquetry on the guitars is just great...to help create an object that has active function in the world. People hold the guitars as special to themselves and make beautiful music with them.

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An anonymous reader writes "The construction of first next-generation Westinghouse nuclear power reactor breaks ground in Sanmen, China. The reactor, expected to generate 12.7 Megawatts by 2013, costs 40 billion Yuan (~US$6 billion; that's a lot of iPods.) According to Westinghouse, 'The AP1000 is the

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mentalist and conjurer Derren Brown's taking a new show called "Enigma" on tour across the UK. Derren's a terrific performer who does an absolutely baffling mentalist act that combines applied psychology, prestidigitation, and a fabulous performing style that'll have you scraping your jaw off the theatre floor. We caught him in London last year and were just delighted. All the stuff you've seen him do on TV and YouTube? He does stuff that's that cool, except there's no camera, no edits -- nothing that could be used to simply trick you. The fact that he's a "psychic"-busting skeptic only makes it all cooler, since you know that there's a trick in there somewhere, but damned if you can find it. (Or at least, if you can, you're a lot smarter than me!)

Tour 2009

Slashdotters are eagerly debating the answer to this provocative question, posed by Travalas, who needs gear that'll run unattended in Bangladesh:

Last year I moved to Rural Bangladesh. My work is pretty diverse, everything from hacking web apps to designing building materials. Increasingly a Linux VM on my MacBook Pro is insufficient due to storage speed/processing constraints and the desire to interface more easily with some sensor packages. There are a few issues that make that make a standard server less than desirable. This server will generally not be running with any sort of climate control and it may need to move to different locations so would also be helpful if it was somewhat portable. The environment here is hot, humid and dusty and brutal on technology and power is very inconsistent so it will often be on a combination of Interruptible Power Supply and solar power. So a UPS is a must and low power consumption desirable, so it strikes me that an Integrated UPS a la Google's servers would be handy. Spec wise it needs to be it needs to be able to handle several VM's and some other processor storage intensive tasks. So 4 cores, 8GB of ram and 3-4 TB of SATA storage seems like a place to start for processing specs. What sort of hardware would you recommend without breaking the bank?

Apart from the normal background radiation of dumb Internet answers ("Why don't you buy an RV and use it to house the armed guards you'll need?") there's some good techy discussion there.

Rugged Linux Server For Rural, Tropical Environment?

Maker Revolution is an event put on by Willoughby and Baltic on April 25 and 26 2009 in Boston

Join Willoughby & Baltic April 25 & 26 for the Maker Revolution. As part of Cyberarts Boston, the two-day event will focus on do-it-yourself art and technology and will include art, performances, presentations and hands-on workshops. This event is free and open to the public. WHAT: The Maker Revolution: Willoughby & Baltic present at Microsoft Startup Labs WHERE: One Memorial Drive (accessible from the Kendall T and Main St.) WHEN: April 25 and 26: Saturday 1 to 6, Sunday 1 to 6

.

Mitch Altman, Bre Pettis and Jimmie Rodgers will present recent projects, and there should be plenty more fun to be had.

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Brazilian radio-cops are handing out $20,000 fines to satellite hackers who bounce their ham signals off FLTSATCOM -- an array of disused US military satellites -- using them as range-extenders for purposes as diverse as trucker-chatter to avoiding the logging cops in illegal Amazon logging operations:

To use the satellite, pirates typically take an ordinary ham radio transmitter, which operates in the 144- to 148-MHZ range, and add a frequency doubler cobbled from coils and a varactor diode. That lets the radio stretch into the lower end of FLTSATCOM's 292- to 317-MHz uplink range. All the gear can be bought near any truck stop for less than $500. Ads on specialized websites offer to perform the conversion for less than $100. Taught the ropes, even rough electricians can make Bolinha-ware.

"I saw it more than once in truck repair shops," says amateur radio operator Adinei Brochi (PY2ADN) "Nearly illiterate men rigged a radio in less than one minute, rolling wire on a coil."

Brochi, who assembled his first radio set from spare parts at 12, has been tracking the Brazilian satellite hacking problem (.pdf) for years.

Brochi says the Pentagon's concerns are obvious.

"If a soldier is shot in an ambush, the first thing he will think of doing will be to send a help request over the radio," observes Brochi. "What if he's trying to call for help and two truckers are discussing soccer? In an emergency, that soldier won't be able to remember quickly how to change the radio programming to look for a frequency that's not saturated."

The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown

(Photo: Divulgação/Polícia Federal)

The Telegraph celebrates the recently departed Clement Freud (writer, grandson of Sigmund, chef, politician, broadcaster) with this clip of the delightful old codger telling "the funniest joke ever told." I laughed aloud -- and I loved his Grimble kids' books, which were weird, subversive and funny in just this way.

Did Clement Freud tell the funniest joke ever told?

From the MAKE Flickr pool

• Compact LED matrix wearable

• Solar sculpture provides a mini sunset

• Arduino vs. Simon

• Cardboard box slide duplicator

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An anonymous reader writes "eReader.com seems to have begun applying distribution restrictions to its library. I first noticed that there was a FAQ page about distribution restrictions this morning. When I tried to order a few books this afternoon I simply couldn't — a large banner on the order confirmation told me the books had distribution restrictions. I checked a number of titles but it seems a large number of books are no longer available to non-US citizens like me. It is interesting to note that this policy change got implemented shortly after Barnes&Noble purchased Fictionwise. I have no idea if the new owners are behind this new policy but it seems crazy to restrict sales of ebooks. I've bought dozens of ebooks from eReader the past 4 years. I still have 15 dollar store credit but cannot buy any of the books I am interested in." (Right now, the link that should display these new geographic restrictions returns an error message that says the page is being updated.) Sounds like Barnes & Noble is taking its cues from Apple.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "eReader.com seems to have begun applying distribution restrictions to its library. I first noticed that there was a FAQ page about distribution restrictions this morning. When I tried to order a few books this afternoon I simply couldn't — a large banner on the order confirmation told me the books had distribution restrictions. I checked a number of titles but it seems a large number of books are no longer available to non-US citizens like me. It is interesting to note that this policy change got implemented shortly after Barnes&Noble purchased Fictionwise. I have no idea if the new owners are behind this new policy but it seems crazy to restrict sales of ebooks. I've bought dozens of ebooks from eReader the past 4 years. I still have 15 dollar store credit but cannot buy any of the books I am interested in." (Right now, the link that should display these new geographic restrictions returns an error message that says the page is being updated.) Sounds like Barnes & Noble is taking its cues from Apple.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tonight's podcast.

To subscribe, add this address to your podcatcher:

http://scripting.com/rss.xml

A bit of housekeeping -- the podcast now has a name -- Rebooting the News. Perfect name, cause it's got the technical side with rebooting, and boot is the first part of bootstrapping. And News is what it's all about.

I hope you enjoy this show!!

We're going to start recording our weekly podcast in about 20 minutes at 6PM Pacific, so I have to hurry up and put my notes together! I love a deadline.

I loved this classic exemplar for Jay's Curmudgeon Studies J-school curriculum, esp the part where he says that some (huge) percentage of everything in the world originated in his word processor (I'm exaggerating).

The exact quote: "Several studies have shown that more than three-quarters of the news you see, hear or read anywhere is at least derivative of something that originally appeared in a newspaper." I have a very neat rebuttal -- 100 percent of everything you read in a newspaper originally appeared in the world unless they got it wrong, which happens far too often.

The sources originated everything Mr. Brinkley -- and last time I checked -- we don't get paid bupkis, so that part of the news system should make the transformation pretty well.

I watched Bill Moyers on Friday, he had David SImon from The Wire who is a great writer, but contradicts himself when it comes to the Baltimore reporters. In the first part of the 50-minute interview he says that the reporters never really got the story and were' never effective. But in the second part he says the opposite, and laments their failure, though he doesn't blame bloggers, that's the least of it.

The problem with all the curmudgeons is that they stop at hand-wringing, no one wants to talk about next steps to reboot the news. As you know if you're a regular listener to the podcast, I think we're far along in the reboot.

I want to talk about the 40-twits app, and next steps.

Briefly about my visit at Nieman in Cambridge last week with Josh Benton and Zach Seward.

I want to talk about Oprah joining Twitter, and what might be coming next.

And of course I want to talk about whatever Jay wants to talk about.

Jay's 40-twits page actually just has 20 for now.

ballooner writes "A group of Cornell University graduate students are attempting to break the Amateur Radio Ballooning duration record this weekend. The project is a continuation from last year when some other Cornell grad students broke the altitude record. The progress of the team can be tracked via their Twitter feed or by monitoring their APRS beacons. For all the HAMs out there, downlinks are available on a 30m wavelength, too."

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