smolloy writes "The world's first X-ray laser (LCLS) has seen first light. A Free Electron Laser (FEL) is based on the light that is emitted by accelerated electrons when they are forced to move in a curved path. The beam then interacts with this emitted light in order to excite coherent emission (much like in a regular laser); thus producing a very short, extremely bright, bunch of coherent X-ray photons. The engineering expertise that went into this machine is phenomenal — 'This is the most difficult light source that has ever been turned on,' said LCLS Construction Project Director John Galayda. 'It's on the boundary between the impossible and possible, and within two hours of start-up these guys had it right on.' — and the benefits to the applied sciences from research using this light can be expected to be enormous: 'For some disciplines, this tool will be as important to the future as the microscope has been to the past.' said SLAC Director Persis Drell."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

smolloy writes "The world's first X-ray laser (LCLS) has seen first light. A Free Electron Laser (FEL) is based on the light that is emitted by accelerated electrons when they are forced to move in a curved path. The beam then interacts with this emitted light in order to excite coherent emission (much like in a regular laser); thus producing a very short, extremely bright, bunch of coherent X-ray photons. The engineering expertise that went into this machine is phenomenal — 'This is the most difficult light source that has ever been turned on,' said LCLS Construction Project Director John Galayda. 'It's on the boundary between the impossible and possible, and within two hours of start-up these guys had it right on.' — and the benefits to the applied sciences from research using this light can be expected to be enormous: 'For some disciplines, this tool will be as important to the future as the microscope has been to the past.' said SLAC Director Persis Drell."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anonymous Swine writes "Monsanto, a US based multinational biotech company, is causing a stir by its plan to patent pig-breeding techniques including the claim on animals born by the techniques. 'Agricultural experts are scrambling to assess how these patents might affect the market, while consumer activists warn that if the company is granted pig-related patents, on top of its tight rein on key feed and food crops, its control over agriculture could be unprecedented. "We're afraid that Monsanto and other big companies are getting control of the world's genetic resources," said Christoph Then, a patent expert with Greenpeace in Germany. The patent applications, filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization, are broad in scope, and are expected to take several years and numerous rewrites before approval.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stun gun maker Taser is notoriously overprotective of its brand, even pushing judges and medical examiners never to list a Taser as a cause of death. However, this latest, as pointed out by Dave Title has the company going "virtual." Taser is suing Second Life because of virtual Tasers found in the game. Specifically, Taser seems upset that these virtual stun guns are being sold next to pornographic material, which (the company claims) will harm its brand. I'd argue that going around suing everyone probably does a lot more harm.

Of course, Second Life parent corp. Linden Lab doesn't actually make or sell these things, but just provides the platform -- so you might think that the company is protected by safe harbors. Except... one of the little loopholes in safe harbor rules is on trademark claims, which mostly aren't covered by either the DMCA's safe harbors or the CDA's. However, it should be covered by common sense (which is not so common, unfortunately).

If the virtual Tasers actually do infringe on Taser's trademark, then it seems that the liable party should be the user who made/sold them in the first place -- not Linden Lab, the platform creator. On top of that, there's the big question of whether or not this is actually trademark infringement at all. You could make an argument that users might believe that virtual Tasers were somehow endorsed by the company itself, but do such products really "harm" the Taser brand? Again, it seems a lot more harm is being done to the brand by silly lawsuits. And, yes, people will point out (they always do!), that the company has an obligation to protect its marks, but there are better ways to do so than suing.

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AndreV writes "In another attempt to dehumanize our bar games, a Canadian engineer has turned the classic game of billiards on its head with his BilliardBots pet project, which consists of a series of remote-controlled mobile robots meant to replace the standard cue sticks normally used to pocket pool balls. While in his version the basic rules remain, unlike regular billiards, players in this version simultaneously rush to pocket their designated balls (they don't take turns), 'thus it's very competitive and fast,' the creator says. In order to keep tight reins on the mechatronic ball handlers' movements, he adapted a pair of Playstation controllers and says that playing 'requires dexterity, like a video game,' to control their 3.5-m/sec-maximum speeds. The 'bots are designed simply but effectively, using a 3-by-3-by-3-inch metal frame with an electronic board, two motors and rechargeable battery packs. Using a Bluetooth wireless communication protocol, its commands come from the wireless controller with single or double joystick selectable control (the other buttons are not used). Its other parameters are software programmable, such as maximum acceleration rate, maximum speed and maximum rotation speed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AndreV writes "In another attempt to dehumanize our bar games, a Canadian engineer has turned the classic game of billiards on its head with his BilliardBots pet project, which consists of a series of remote-controlled mobile robots meant to replace the standard cue sticks normally used to pocket pool balls. While in his version the basic rules remain, unlike regular billiards, players in this version simultaneously rush to pocket their designated balls (they don't take turns), 'thus it's very competitive and fast,' the creator says. In order to keep tight reigns on the mechatronic ball handlers' movements, he adapted a pair of Playstation controllers and says that playing 'requires dexterity, like a video game,' to control their 3.5-m/sec-maximum speeds. The 'bots are designed simply but effectively, using a 3-by-3-by-3-inch metal frame with an electronic board, two motors and rechargeable battery packs. Using a Bluetooth wireless communication protocol, its commands come from the wireless controller with single or double joystick selectable control (the other buttons are not used). Its other parameters are software programmable, such as maximum acceleration rate, maximum speed and maximum rotation speed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A TV reporter forgets he is live, not taped, and utters Deadwood's trademark expletive. The look on his face when he realizes what he has done, and the repercussions that will follow, is haunting. (Via Arbroath)

I imagine a lot of grown ups will want this, too.

PediSedate is a medical device consisting of a colorful, toy-like headset that connects to a game component such as the Nintendo Game Boy system or a portable CD player. Once the child places it on his or her head and swings the snorkel down from its resting place atop the head, PediSedate transparently monitors respiratory function and distributes nitrous oxide, an anesthetic gas. The child comfortably becomes sedated while playing with a Nintendo Game Boy system or listening to music. This dramatically improves the hospital or dental experience for the child, parents and healthcare providers.

PediSedate (via MedGadget)

maxheadroom writes "Google has released an open source browser plugin that provides a JavaScript API for displaying 3D graphics in web content. Google hopes that the project will promote experimentation and help advance a collaborative effort with the Khronos Group and Mozilla to create open standards for 3D on the web. Google's plugin offers its own retained-mode graphics API, called O3D, which takes a different approach from a similar browser plugin created by Mozilla. Google's plugin is cross-platform compatible and works with several browsers. In an interview with Ars Technica, Google product manager Henry Bridge and engineering director Matt Papakipos say that Google's API will eventually converge with Mozilla's as the technology matures. The search giant hopes to bring programs like SketchUp and Google Earth to the browser space."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

maxheadroom writes "Google has released an open source browser plugin that provides a JavaScript API for displaying 3D graphics in web content. Google hopes that the project will promote experimentation and help advance a collaborative effort with the Khronos Group and Mozilla to create open standards for 3D on the web. Google's plugin offers its own retained-mode graphics API, called O3D, which takes a different approach from a similar browser plugin created by Mozilla. Google's plugin is cross-platform compatible and works with several browsers. In an interview with Ars Technica, Google product manager Henry Bridge and engineering director Matt Papakipos say that Google's API will eventually converge with Mozilla's as the technology matures. The search giant hopes to bring programs like SketchUp and Google Earth to the browser space."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot points us to the news that BT is blocking its mobile broadband subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay, claiming that it's a self-regulation effort in order to remain in "compliance with a new UK voluntary code." It appears to have something to do with the already controversial self-censorship program being managed by the Internet Watch Foundation, which has already blocked access to parts of Wikipedia and the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. At what point do people realize that any such demand to "block" certain types of content will overblock and harm perfectly legitimate sites and technologies?

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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.

"Taliesin is really a great example of the later Prairie style. It's where the architecture school is, during the summer session anyway, because Olgivanna, Frankie's third wife...or maybe his fourth, I can't remember, liked to have everybody down at Taliesin West in Arizona in the winter. The students build their own shelters out in the desert and everybody is supposed to learn how to play an instrument."

"Uh, huh. That's neat."

"He built Taliesin for his second wife, who he stole from a client. Of course, she ended up being killed by that ax murderer."

"Wait. What?"

This is pretty much verbatim from a conversation I had with my husband (then boyfriend) on one of our early dates. Get into a relationship with a second-year architecture student, and it's pretty much expected that you'll end up hearing a LOT about Frank Lloyd Wright--his design philosophy, his work history, even some little gossipy snippets about his rather sketchy dating life. But the ax murder thing? That, I was not expecting.

True story, though.
Wright did, in fact, run off to Europe with his client's wife, Martha "Mamah" Borthwick Cheney, in 1909, leaving her husband and his wife (and six children) behind. It was the sort of thing polite Victorian society was willing to overlook in an artist, but not in a neighbor. When Wright and the de-Cheneyfied Borthwick returned to the states, they left Wright's old digs in Chicago behind and moved to rural Wisconsin, near Wright's maternal family. There, they lived happily in sin (Wright's ex not being willing to grant a divorce) in a house that Wright meant to embody everything that was good about his architectural style.

The idyll ended in 1914. Wright was off at work and Borthwick was dining with her two children from her previous marriage and several of the Taliesin staff. As they ate, another staff member named Julian Carleton locked them in, poured kerosene around the house and lit a match. When the diners managed to bust their way out, Carleton hacked them to death with an ax. Of the nine who sat down to eat, only two survived. Borthwick and her children were killed. The whole thing turned into a media sensation. "Murderer of Seven: Sets Fire to Country Home of Frank Lloyd Wright Near Spring Green," declared one newspaper. The Wisconsin State Journal, on the other hand, went for something a bit more Rupert Murdoch-esque (and also inaccurate), with the headline "Insane Negro Kills Five in Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Love Bungalow'".

To this day, no one has a clear idea of what drove Carleton to grisly murder. Wright had apparently threatened to fire him at some point before the murders, but there doesn't seem to have been any hints of what was to come. Even his wife, who also worked for the Wrights, had no idea of what he'd been planning. And Carleton himself wasn't talking. Although captured alive by authorities after the murders, Carleton had drunk acid and died a few days later in jail.

Image courtesy viZZZual.com.

Jaydiohead is a mash-up album of Jay-Z an Radiohead. Git yerself some while the gittin's good. (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has requested permission to file a response to the amicus curiae brief filed by the Free Software Foundation in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Boston case against a Boston University grad student accused of having downloaded some song files when in his teens. In their proposed response, the RIAA lawyers personally attacked The Free Software Foundation, Ray Beckerman (NewYorkCountryLawyer), and NYCL's blog, 'Recording Industry vs. The People'. The 9-page response (PDF) — 4 pages longer than the document to which it was responding — termed the FSF an organization 'dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying computer programs', and accused the FSF of having an 'open and virulent bias against copyrights' and 'blatant bias' against the record companies. They called 'Recording Industry vs. The People' an 'anti-recording industry web site' and stated that NYCL 'is currently subject to a pending sanctions motion for his conduct in representing a defendant' (without disclosing that plaintiffs' lawyers were 'subject to a pending motion for Rule 11 sanctions for their conduct in representing plaintiffs' in that very case)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has requested permission to file a response to the amicus curiae brief filed by the Free Software Foundation in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Boston case against a Boston University grad student accused of having downloaded some song files when in his teens. In their proposed response, the RIAA lawyers personally attacked The Free Software Foundation, Ray Beckerman (NewYorkCountryLawyer), and NYCL's blog, 'Recording Industry vs. The People'. The 9-page response (PDF) — 4 pages longer than the document to which it was responding — termed the FSF an organization 'dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying computer programs', and accused the FSF of having an 'open and virulent bias against copyrights' and 'blatant bias' against the record companies. They called 'Recording Industry vs. The People' an 'anti-recording industry web site' and stated that NYCL 'is currently subject to a pending sanctions motion for his conduct in representing a defendant' (without disclosing that plaintiffs' lawyers were 'subject to a pending motion for Rule 11 sanctions for their conduct in representing plaintiffs' in that very case)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make: Repairs is a new, periodic column we're launching today, written by Kyle Wiens and the fine folks at iFixit.com. As you probably know, iFixit is the go-to source for Apple-related do-it-yourself repair info and parts and for gadget first-look teardowns. Kyle, Luke, and company are in a unique position to know what the common complaints and sticky-points are in DIY personal tech repair. In Make: Repairs, they'll provide answers to some of these more commonly-requested or gnarlier repair questions. When we asked them to come up with an idea for the first installment, they thought the iPhone front panel replacement was a natural. They say it's their most-purchased part and it's a slightly finicky repair.

So, without further ado, let's replace some iPhone glass.

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Replacing the iPhone front panel glass
By Kyle Wiens and the iFixit crew

Imagine this scenario: You're late for a meeting. Making matters worse, you discover that your bike tires are extremely low. As you're hastily pumping away on the tires, The Boss buzzes your iPhone 3G. He usually doesn't call your personal number, but this time, it is personal -- his butt's on the line, since you're bringing the presentation to the meeting. You're juggling too many things in your head, including the virtual beating you're going to get for being late, all the while not realizing that the sweat on your hands is sliming your phone. In a split-second, it happens: your iPhone squirts out of your well-oiled mitt and begins an up close and personal conversation with Mr. Concrete. The result? A cracked iPhone 3G screen! (not to mention an even-more furious boss when you finally get to work). While we can't help you get a new job, we can show you how to fix your cracked iPhone 3G screen.

The first thing to know is what part you actually need to replace. On the original iPhone, the glass, touchscreen digitizer, and LCD display were all inseparably glued together. Fortunately, Apple changed this design and the iPhone 3G front panel glass is not glued to the LCD behind it. This is great news, because most of the time when you break the glass, the LCD itself is fine. The front panel is available for sale separately and is a bit cheaper than the LCD itself (see parts and tools listed below).

Opening the iPhone 3G is definitely simpler than the first-gen phone. The original required a wide array of tools (including a dental pick) to remove the back panel. Apple's designers decided to be nicer with the 3G, but weird tools like suction cups (see how it's used below) are still needed to make the opening procedure easier. Removing two Phillips screws and a small pull with the suction cup will open the 3G. Don't pull too hard, however, as several cables still hold the two sides in place.

Disconnecting the display assembly from the rest of the 3G is as easy as 1-2-3 -- literally. Apple was nice enough to number the black ribbon cables "1," "2,? and "3," allowing for a no-brainer disconnecting procedure. However, people attempting this at home should be careful to not break any connectors while removing them.

There are six screws that prevent the display from being separated from the front panel. The screws are very small and have #00 Phillips heads. An injudicious flick of the wrist will misplace them forever, so take care to keep them in a safe place. Scotch tape is your friend. We like to tape each set of screws down to a sheet of paper and write down where they came from.

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PRS, the UK's music licensing agency, recently reached out to us after a series of posts we wrote which (to say the least) portrayed their organization negatively. We had a cheerful email exchange that basically left off with us disagreeing on just about everything -- but especially over PRS's tactics, such as demanding a woman running a stable pay for a license because she played music to her horses, just because a few other employees (who didn't listen to the music) occasionally stopped in. Then there's the demands against auto mechanics and police stations because employees were listening to music (in private areas) loud enough that it could be heard in other rooms where the public might visit. Oh, and then there was the demand that a children's charity pay up for singing Christmas carols. And, then there's my personal favorite: calling up small businesses, and if music is heard in the background, demanding the purchase of a license.

If you want to understand the sort of incentives that create such ridiculous and self-defeating PR nightmares, take a look at a recent job posted by PRS (thanks to Kaden for alerting us to this). Officially, the organization is looking for a "copyright investigator," but the actual job is in "sales." These "investigators" have "revenue targets" and can earn a bonus for bringing in excess revenue beyond their targets. That's not creating a situation where these investigators are told to go find violators. It creates a scenario where they're encouraged to find anyway humanly possible to squeeze pretty much anyone for cash.

The PR guy from PRS who contacted us tried to make the case that PRS is just a little non-profit looking out for the best interests of musicians, but when it's setting up its sales people with incentives to come up with any bogus reason to pressure everyone into purchasing a license to listen to music they already legally purchased, something is clearly wrong. This is a group that's effectively been handed a monopoly in the UK and appears to be abusing its power, not as a little harmless non-profit, but as an organization that handles an awful lot of money and has empowered its sales people to threaten small businesses if they don't pay up.

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Jyms writes "As technology changes, so hubs routers and switches are upgraded, but does the cabling need replacing, and if so, how often? Coax gave way to CAT 5 and CAT 5e replaced that. If you are running a 100Mbit/s network on old CAT 5, can that affect performance? Do CAT 5(e) cables get old?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jyms writes "As technology changes, so hubs routers and switches are upgraded, but does the cabling need replacing, and if so, how often? Coax gave way to CAT 5 and CAT 5e replaced that. If you are running a 100Mbit/s network on old CAT 5, can that affect performance? Do CAT 5(e) cables get old?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

narramissic links to IT World's A Layman's Guide to Bandwidth Pricing, writing "Time Warner Cable has, for now, abandoned the tiered pricing trials that raised the ire of Congressman Eric Massa, among others. And, as some nice data points in a New York Times article reveal, it's good for us that they did. For instance, Comcast says it costs them $6.85 per home to double the internet capacity of a neighborhood. But the bit of the Times article that we should commit to memory is this:'If all Time Warner customers decided one day not to check their e-mail or download a single movie, the company's costs would be no different than on a day when every customer was glued to the screen watching one YouTube video after another.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

narramissic links to IT World's A Layman's Guide to Bandwidth Pricing, writing "Time Warner Cable has, for now, abandoned the tiered pricing trials that raised the ire of Congressman Eric Massa, among others. And, as some nice data points in a New York Times article reveal, it's good for us that they did. For instance, Comcast says it costs them $6.85 per home to double the internet capacity of a neighborhood. But the bit of the Times article that we should commit to memory is this:'If all Time Warner customers decided one day not to check their e-mail or download a single movie, the company's costs would be no different than on a day when every customer was glued to the screen watching one YouTube video after another.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brandon has scored a major coup: Electronic Arts has presented Offworld with access to the concept art for Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure, one of the most interesting games to come out this year, both in play and in art direction. Brandon's put together a galley showing the environments, characters, and enemies. It's an awesome peek into the creative act that happens before pixel is ever put to sprite. We hope this will just be the first of many "Concept Albums" on Offworld.

DrO says: "I wanted to point out to you that some people on LiveJournal came up with an idea of inserting dry spaghetti into hot dogs, then boiling it, and coming out with amusing culinary constructs that kids seem to love."

Legofesto says:

For a few years now I've been recreating actual events from the War on Terror in LEGO. The notorious Abu Ghraib torture photographs, Guantanamo Bay, Israeli war crimes and the rape in Mahmudiya by US troops have all been recreated.

One of the images is the recreation of Waterboarding, a particularly medieval form of torture. With release of the torture memo this week, check out the sculpture via the link.

Waterboarding recreated in LEGO

I have to admit that I was among those who thought it was in incredibly poor taste and somewhat offensive when a Texas lawmaker recently suggested that Asian Americans with complex names should be required to change their names to reduce confusions and problems with matching up names to voting rolls. However, now it appears that the same thing is happening in China itself. According to the NY Times, the Chinese government is forcing people to change their names in an effort to modernize its own ID database. Apparently, the computer system being used can't handle some of the rarer Chinese characters, even though such characters are popular among some families as a way to give their children a distinct identity. It still seems in poor taste and somewhat offensive, but still somewhat fascinating to compare the two stories.

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An anonymous reader writes "From a University of Wisconsin-Madison announcement: 'In early April, Adam Wilson posted a status update on the social networking Web site Twitter — just by thinking about it. Just 23 characters long, his message, 'using EEG to send tweet,' demonstrates a natural, manageable way in which "locked-in" patients can couple brain-computer interface technologies with modern communication tools. A University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering doctoral student, Wilson is among a growing group of researchers worldwide who aim to perfect a communication system for users whose bodies do not work, but whose brains function normally.' A brief rundown of the system: Users focus on a monitor displaying a keyboard; the interface measures electrical impulses in the brain to print the chosen letters one by one. Wilson compares the learning curve to texting, calling it 'kind of a slow process at first.' But even practice doesn't bring it quite up to texting speed: 'I've seen people do up to eight characters per minute,' says Wilson. See video of the system in action."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "From a University of Wisconsin-Madison announcement: 'In early April, Adam Wilson posted a status update on the social networking Web site Twitter — just by thinking about it. Just 23 characters long, his message, 'using EEG to send tweet,' demonstrates a natural, manageable way in which "locked-in" patients can couple brain-computer interface technologies with modern communication tools. A University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering doctoral student, Wilson is among a growing group of researchers worldwide who aim to perfect a communication system for users whose bodies do not work, but whose brains function normally.' A brief rundown of the system: Users focus on a monitor displaying a keyboard; the interface measures electrical impulses in the brain to print the chosen letters one by one. Wilson compares the learning curve to texting, calling it 'kind of a slow process at first.' But even practice doesn't bring it quite up to texting speed: 'I've seen people do up to eight characters per minute,' says Wilson. See video of the system in action."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The amazing and talented Jeri Ellsworth was at Notacon 2009 last week, and among other things, was showing off this awesome Nintendo purse. There are no details on it, but I'll see if I can't get more info from Jeri.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Retro | Digg this!

An anonymous reader writes "China based Skytone famous for making skype headsets have brought out a $100 device, the Alpha-680 netbook running Google Android for its OS. The device has Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB ports and an SD card slot. After watching the video though, I get a feeling that the boot time is somewhat long. IMO good enough for browsing." Also on the Android front, ruphus13 points out what the maker claims is the first "fully realized" non-mobile Android device (though I think there were some other non-mobile gadgets on diplay at CES), a set-top box from Motorola based on Android. According to the linked post, it's "capable of playing DVDs and CDs, transferring music and video to a mobile device, and ripping and storing files" and "will have a full-featured Chrome-like browser."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "China based Skytone famous for making skype headsets have brought out a $100 device, the Alpha-680 netbook running Google Android for its OS. The device has Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB ports and an SD card slot. After watching the video though, I get a feeling that the boot time is somewhat long. IMO good enough for browsing." Also on the Android front, ruphus13 points out what the maker claims is the first "fully realized" non-mobile Android device (though I think there were some other non-mobile gadgets on diplay at CES), a set-top box from Motorola based on Android. According to the linked post, it's "capable of playing DVDs and CDs, transferring music and video to a mobile device, and ripping and storing files" and "will have a full-featured Chrome-like browser."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Matt Cutts reminds us via Twitter that we're coming up on the 10th anniversary of TVs being required to have the v-chip, and what an utter failure this program has been, despite hundreds of millions spent on it (including tons of taxpayer money for "education"). Cutts points to a 1996 NY Times opinion piece accurately predicting what a waste the V-Chip would be, and it seems to be quite right. The fight over the V-Chip, if you don't remember, was in some ways similar to some of the arguments about violent video games today. It involved lots of politicians grandstanding about needing to "protect the children" from the dangerous effects of seeing violence on TV (despite a serious lack of real evidence of any impact). Then it required TV makers to install this chip, followed up by $550 million "education" campaign. And the result? A dismal failure and a waste of money. A 2007 FCC analysis (warning: pdf) of the program isn't impressed:

Based on the studies and surveys conducted to date, we believe that the evidence clearly points to one conclusion: the V-chip is of limited effectiveness in protecting children from violent television content. In order for V-chip technology to block a specific category of television programming, such as violent content, it must be activated. However, many parents do not even know if the television sets in their households incorporate this technology and, of those who do, many do not use it.

But do politicians learn? Of course not. They still grandstand and still talk about the need to protect the children, and push for laws to get their names in the headlines.

But because there are no metrics and no official process for review to make sure a law actually does what it claims it's supposed to do (and, of course, no backup plans), these laws get passed, hundreds of millions of dollars get wasted... and we're left a decade later with a total waste and failure.

At what point can we at least get new laws to require a review period to see if they actually do what they're set out to do, and then reject the ones that fail?

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A Texas man killed his victim by shooting him and beating him with the barrel of a gun. During deliberations, the jury consulted the Bible and found this passage:

35:16 And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.

The murderer said his Constitutional rights were challenged, and took it to the Supreme Court, which turned away the challenge.

Does this mean that you can be executed for working on Sunday?

Exodus 35:2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.

Court Turns Down Challenge To Jury's Use Of Bible

Download MP4 for this episode. 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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Boing Boing Video is teaming up with Institute for the Future and Sun Microsystems to launch The Digital Open, a global expo for youth innovation.

Above, a video we produced with IFTF and teen 'web talent Charis Tobias, to invite young people around the world to join in.

Here's a snip from the launch announcement:

"What can you make with technology that will change the world, invent the future--or even just make life a little easier or more fun?"

Institute for the Future, in partnership with Sun Microsystems and Boing Boing, invite youth worldwide, age 17 and under, to join us as we explore the frontiers of free and open innovation. Running from April 15 until August 15, 2009, the Digital Open: An Innovation Expo for Global Youth will accept text, photos, and videos documenting projects at DigitalOpen.org from young people around the world, all licensed under one from a list of free and open software licenses.

Youth can submit projects in a variety of areas, ranging from the environment, media, and community, to the more traditional open source domains of software and hardware. Additionally, the Digital Open will provide resources and links to help them learn more about free and open technology movements, from figures like Richard Stallman to organizations like Creative Commons.

(...) Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future emphasized the participatory nature of the project. "The Digital Open is more than just a competition," she says. "It's about recognizing and encouraging kids to follow their passions while giving them community experiences that further encourage or challenge their best thinking."

The top project in each of the eight Digital Open categories will be selected by a panel of approximately 20 judges, including David-Michel Davies (Webby Awards) Lawrence Lessig (Harvard/Creative Commons), David Pescovitz (Boing Boing!) and Dale Dougherty (Make).

Winners receive a tech prize package including a PeeCee mini laptop running the OpenSolaris operating system, a video camera, a solar-powered flashlight, and other goodies.

The Digital Open.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion affirming a ruling that will be cheered by digital fair use proponents for allowing a fair use of students' work when their teachers electronically file students' written work with the turnitin.com Web site so that newly submitted work can be compared against Turnitin's database of existing student work to assess whether the new work is the result of plagiarism. The court stepped through the fair use analysis, dropping positive notes that affirm commercial uses can be fair uses, that a use can be transformative 'in function or purpose without altering or actually adding to the original work,' and that the entirety of a work can be used without precluding a finding of fair use. Techdirt suggests that all of these points could have been helpful to Google in defending its book scanning efforts, 'since it could make pretty much the identical arguments on all points.' Unfortunately Google caved in that lawsuit and settled, 'denying a strong fair use precedent and making Google look like an easy place for struggling industries to demand cash.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion affirming a ruling that will be cheered by digital fair use proponents for allowing a fair use of students' work when their teachers electronically file students' written work with the turnitin.com Web site so that newly submitted work can be compared against Turnitin's database of existing student work to assess whether the new work is the result of plagiarism. The court stepped through the fair use analysis, dropping positive notes that affirm commercial uses can be fair uses, that a use can be transformative 'in function or purpose without altering or actually adding to the original work,' and that the entirety of a work can be used without precluding a finding of fair use. Techdirt suggests that all of these points could have been helpful to Google in defending its book scanning efforts, 'since it could make pretty much the identical arguments on all points.' Unfortunately Google caved in that lawsuit and settled, 'denying a strong fair use precedent and making Google look like an easy place for struggling industries to demand cash.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion affirming a ruling that will be cheered by digital fair use proponents for allowing a fair use of students' work when their teachers electronically file students' written work with the turnitin.com Web site so that newly submitted work can be compared against Turntin's database of existing student work to assess whether the new work is the result of plagiarism. The court stepped through the fair use analysis, dropping positive notes that affirm that commercial uses can be fair uses, that a use can be transformative 'in function or purpose without altering or actually adding to the original work,' and that the entirety of a work can be used without precluding a finding of fair use. Techdirt suggests that all of these points could have been helpful to Google in defending its book scanning efforts, 'since it could make pretty much the identical arguments on all points.' Unfortunately Google caved in that lawsuit and settled, "denying a strong fair use precedent and making Google look like an easy place for struggling industries to demand cash.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As the recording industry continues to freak out about videos on YouTube without compensation, the whole media sensation Susan Boyle phenomenon is showing how such videos on YouTube clearly act as promotion for the music. Paul Kedrosky notes that Boyle's now famous rendition of a song from Les Miserables has shot the Les Mis CD up from a rank of 1,000 to 32 on Amazon's sales charts, while Mathew Ingram notes that tickets for the live performance of Les Mis have also skyrocketed. And the recording industry still claims that Google is somehow "exploiting" music while giving it all this promotion? Rob Hyndman chimes in, wondering just how many DMCA notices prevented similar results elsewhere. Indeed.

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I have practiced yoga on and off since I was a teenager, but in recent years, more off than on. Recently, when friends, colleagues, and family all seemed to be pointing out with greater frequency that I seemed particularly stressed (read: a total pain in the ass to be around), I made a commitment to switch that back to "on." It's been pretty great. I'm happier. The more I practice, the more centered I feel, physically, mentally, emotionally. And, the less of a total pain in the ass I am.

Yoga isn't about the accessories, and I loathe the idea that you have to have just the right gear, just the right teacher, just the right whatever to practice. You don't. But a good mat can really help. So when I got back into the groove of regular practice, I checked out a bunch of different mats -- from the ultra-thick black ones, to the "towel" kind folks like to use with "hot yoga," to the thin cheap synthetic ones. I have a stack of 8 of them sitting in the corner in this room, as I type this review.

But I've found my favorite now -- the just-released Revolution "eco" mat by PrAna.

It's sticky enough to help grip your fingers, palms, soles, and toes when you're doing balance poses -- and, truly, every pose involves some element of balance. It's 30" wide, much wider than standard mats and better fit for taller yoga students like myself. It's lightweight enough that I can carry it comfortably on my back in the cool little carrying sack they sell. It's thick enough that I don't feel the need to add extra cushioning during practice on poses that can be hard on the bones. It's made of all-natural materials, so I'm not investing in future landfill cruft. The sticky part took a little getting used to in poses where I tend to drag the tops of my feet accross the mat in transition from one asana to the other, but now that I've been with it for a few weeks -- I don't know, it's like sleeping in a nice new bed, or moving into an awesome new home. It's familiar now, and just feels like an extension of my body.

I recently met PrAna creative David Kennedy, a friendly surfer who pops a mean Adho Mukha Svanasana. We practiced together (it was one of the most enjoyable BB review demos I can recall). I asked him to talk with us about some of the engineering considerations that went into the mat's design.

His reply follows, after the jump.

While working out the design in the lab (read: yoga studio), we were faced with two major challenges. First, almost all eco materials had failed when it came to the issue of gluing, most glues are toxic. Second, as with most eco-initiatives, there is a significant hurtle to creating the best performing product, yet crafting it mindfully.

Beginning with the eco-movement that progressed mats away from PVC, we chose Natural Rubber as a base layer. Natural rubber is a specialty rubber product developed with the most advanced raw materials and chemistries. It is strong, resilient and does not contain plasticizers or VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds) making it the eco- friendly choice for this application. On the other hand, PVC itself does not biodegrade, and it remains on the shelf, in the environment, or in the landfill. When burned in a landfill, PVC releases dioxin, hydrochloric acid, and other toxins. It is extremely difficult to recycle, which is why so little of it is recaptured.

With our base material in place, next we challenged the construction by asking 'how do we do more with less?'. After quite a bit of eco-engineering, we eventually identified two key factors to accomplish this; using Vulcanization to bond the materials instead of toxic glues, and implementing a dual scrim to stabilize the mat and limit surface stretch.

To clarify further, vulcanization is the process of curing natural rubber with heat and pressure, to produce saturated double bonds which increase strength, resiliency and durability. Although vulcanization is a 19th century invention, the history of curing rubber dates back to prehistoric times through the inventive prowess of the ancient Aztecs. Because it requires great heat, the process was named after the Roman god of fire, Vulcan. The other vital performance element, the scrim, is a thin sheet of light-weight, woven cotton. When applied within the rubber layers, the scrim limits stretching and provides a strong, stable practice surface. The dual scrim also promotes surface integrity by helping the mat to lay flat and eliminate bunching as you shift weight during poses.

Enough marketing engineerese. Here's my verdict: within a couple days of using the loaner mat I received for the review, I made plans to buy several for yoga-practicing friends. I really like it.

Revolution Yoga Mat by prAna (amazon.com, thanks Griffin de Luce + DK!)

* The phrase "Attention-Conservation" was stolen from Bruce Sterling.

dragoncortez writes "According to this Deseret News article, University classrooms will be obsolete by 2020. BYU professor David Wiley envisions a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free. He says, 'Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living ... today's colleges are typically tethered, isolated, generic, and closed.' In the world according to Wiley, universities would still make money, because they have a marketable commodity: to get college credits and a diploma, you'd have to be a paying customer. Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dragoncortez writes "According to this Deseret News article, University classrooms will be obsolete by 2020. BYU professor David Wiley envisions a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free. He says, 'Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living ... today's colleges are typically tethered, isolated, generic, and closed.' In the world according to Wiley, universities would still make money, because they have a marketable commodity: to get college credits and a diploma, you'd have to be a paying customer. Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dragoncortez writes "According to this Deseret News article, University classrooms will be obsolete by 2020. BYU professor David Wiley envisions a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free. He says, 'Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living ... today's colleges are typically tethered, isolated, generic, and closed.' In the world according to Wiley, universities would still make money, because they have a marketable commodity: to get college credits and a diploma, you'd have to be a paying customer. Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dragoncortez writes "According to this Deseret News article, University classrooms will be obsolete by 2020. BYU professor David Wiley envisions a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free. He says, 'Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living ... today's colleges are typically tethered, isolated, generic, and closed.' In the world according to Wiley, universities would still make money, because they have a marketable commodity: to get college credits and a diploma, you'd have to be a paying customer. Wiley helped start Flat World Knowledge, which creates peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free, or bought as paperbacks for $30."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ever since the first TechShop opened in the San Francisco bay area, I've been dying for one in Downtown Denver. Well, my dreams have been answered - Club Workshop is a well-equipped public access workshop, where you can craft your projects using their machine tools, rapid prototyping machine, laser engraver/cutter, woodworking tools, and welding equipment. Naturally, they also offer classes so you can learn how to use these tools.

This maker-friendly spot will host the first meeting of the Denver Maker's group, and I've been invited to be the guest speaker. I'll give a presentation on the build process behind my Pong/Asteroids Watches and discuss some of my projects, including how to tinker with carbon fiber.

Link: Club homepage
Date: Thursday, April 23th, 2009 - 7pm
Location: Club Workshop 999 Vallejo St. Denver 80204 (centrally located near I-25 & 8th Ave., on the East side)

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Ten years ago today, Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered their campus armed to the teeth and killed 12 students and one teacher, and wounded 23 other people. Then they killed themselves. In the hysteria following the tragedy, many people attempted to blame video games for the violence. A decade later, Youth Radio's Noah Nelson looks at whether the correlation between video games and violence correlation is still all the rage. From Youth Radio:

“What we’ve found is that violent crime has decreased dramatically starting in 1996 while video games sales have soared. More than doubling last year,” said Dan Hewitt, a spokesman for the Entertainment Software Association the trade association for the video game industry. He cites a report that contrasts the Department of Justice numbers on violent crime and sales figures for games. Hewitt contends that “if there was some type of causal connection between video games and real life violence that the rate of real lifer violence would actually be going up, but actually the opposite is true.”

(Dr. Karen Sternheimer, a professor of Sociology at USC and the author of “It’s Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture’s Influence on Children”) says that because a game is “interactive it seems like logically that it could cause some kind of casual effect.” She notes that the decline in the rate of violence “is most notable in youth, especially juveniles.” While the data and the perceived connection don’t agree, the perception remains “compelling because it’s really easy for us to understand.” The professor points to Dave Cullen’s recent book on Columbine that paints a picture of Klebold and Harris as “not just everyday kids who played video games, and just kind of became crazy from too many video games. These were seriously disturbed individuals. We make a really big mistake when we overlook issues like that.”

In many ways what happened at Columbine High is a kind of prologue to the wave of violence that has shocked the country in recent weeks. A wave that adds weight to Professor Sternheimer’s assertion that “we don’t just have a health care crisis-- we have a mental health care crisis in this country.”

"Legacy Of Change: Gaming After Columbine"

New podcast: Sidebar to last Sunday's Rebooting The News podcast with Jay Rosen, relating the blogger assignment desk idea to Hypercamp, which is a more comprehensive blueprint for how blogging becomes the backbone of news in the future.

Also a response to Kevin Marks and Steve Gillmor who, in comments, asked me to clarify a blog post about mixing data with Facebook and/or Twitter structures. Mystically they all seem to relate.

Finally, a tribute to the hippie-surfer culture of California.

PS: You can subscribe to this podcast in iTunes. It's the second command in the iTunes Advanced menu. Paste this URL into the dialog that appears and click OK.

Ubunchu, a manga-style comic for kids about the joys of running the Ubuntu Linux operating system (this post is being composed on an Ubuntu laptop -- the only OS I've used for a couple years now*). It's a free, CC-licensed PDF, and it's been translated into a very large number of languages, and there are more editions to come.

Ubunchu! The Ubuntu Manga is now in English (via Geekdad)

*Yes, I know I haven't written up my notes on switching to Ubuntu yet. I will, someday.

Geon Lasli writes "Reporters caught up with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Moscow to get his take on Oracle's deal to buy Sun Microsystems for US$7.4 billion. Ballmer was at a loss for words: 'I need to think about it. I am very surprised.' According to a source, IBM hadn't given up on purchasing Sun and was blindsided by Oracle's move. I guess IBM must be regretting playing tough 2 weeks ago. Unknown to outsiders, Sun had probably found the Oracle lifeboat before they decided to pull the plug on the deal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Geon Lasli writes "Reporters caught up with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Moscow to get his take on Oracle's deal to buy Sun Microsystems for US$7.4 billion. Ballmer was at a loss for words: 'I need to think about it. I am very surprised.' According to a source, IBM hadn't given up on purchasing Sun and was blindsided by Oracle's move. I guess IBM must be regretting playing tough 2 weeks ago. Unknown to outsiders, Sun had probably found the Oracle lifeboat before they decided to pull the plug on the deal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Glyn sez, "BT and other mobile broadband providers are blocking access to The Pirate Bay, as part of a "self-regulation" scheme. The warning page states the page has been blocked in 'compliance with a new UK voluntary code'. It may be some thing to do with the UK's P2P process. PC Pro is reporting that the block is in partnership with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and that 'all five of the UK's major mobile operators have agreed to participate.'"

Wait, what? The IWF is supposed to be in charge of blocking child porn -- now it's copyright too? Good grief. What next?

"This uses a barring and filtering mechanism to restrict access to all WAP and internet sites that are considered to have 'over 18' status," the warning states. It goes on to list a series of categories that are blocked, including adult/sexually explicit content, "criminal skills" and hacking.

It's not stated which category The Pirate Bay breaches, although the site does host links to porn movies.

BT's warning message advises customers to contact customer services if they want the block on the site to be lifted. The message also invites users to seek further information on the self-regulation scheme on the Internet Watch Foundation's website, although an IWF spokesman denies any involvement with the mobile filtering scheme.

BT blocks off Pirate Bay (Thanks, Glyn!)

You see it all the time with companies in trouble, where they are able to renegotiate certain contracts for the sake of saving the overall business. So, I have a lot of trouble with Hollywood studios claiming that they simply can't figure out a way to offer movies online, because the contracts they signed won't let them. In the link above, Slate's Farhad Manjoo tries to figure out why the movie studios aren't offering up a decent, easy to use online movie service, and unfortunately falls for the studios' claims that they know they need to get online, but they just can't because of "a byzantine set of contractual relationships between many different kinds of companies studios, distributors, cable channels, telecom companies, and others." That sounds good, and it's no surprise to see Hollywood lawyers jump all over this as a defense -- but it's laughable. If the studios, distributors, cable channels, telecom companies and others actually realized how quickly the market is changing, they'd rush to change those contracts. No, it wouldn't be easy, but it is doable. Not doing so is a cop out from a group of folks who don't want to change and are hoping that things "just work out."

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As part of our Spring cleaning sale in the Maker Shed we are offering the no-solder LED clock kits at a great discount. Take your pick in either Red or Blue, they're both a lot of fun to build. I posted a build a while back and have enjoyed the clock ever since. When they're gone, they're gone, so pick one up while you can.

With the LEDkit™ solderless clock kit, you create a giant -- 9" x 5" -- super bright self-standing clock only 1/8" thick that keeps accurate time -- even during power failures up to 1 minute.

Your finished clock will change brightness at the push of a button, the digits fade smoothly when the time changes, and you can automatically synchronize multiple clocks.

This kit is easy to assemble & no soldering required. The unique wiring pattern doesn't need a traditional PCB with tiny parallel tracks on it. Simply twist the LED leads directly to other leads. Only six conductors enter the panel.

More about the Red or Blue LED Clock kit from the Maker Shed

Related:

Build: No solder LED clock kit from the Maker SHED

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Margaret Talbot of The New Yorker wrote a piece about people who use old and new types of amphetamines to boost alertness and concentration.

Cephalon, the Provigil manufacturer, has publicly downplayed the idea that the drug can be used as a smart pill. In 2007, the company’s founder and C.E.O., Frank Baldino, Jr., told a reporter from the trade journal Pharmaceutical Executive, “I think if you’re tired, Provigil will keep you awake. If you’re not tired, it’s not going to do anything.” But Baldino may have been overly modest. Only a few studies have been done of Provigil’s effects on healthy, non-sleep-deprived volunteers, but those studies suggest that Provigil does provide an edge, at least for some kinds of challenges. In 2002, researchers at Cambridge University gave sixty healthy young male volunteers a battery of standard cognitive tests. One group received modafinil; the other got a placebo. The modafinil group performed better on several tasks, such as the “digit span” test, in which subjects are asked to repeat increasingly longer strings of numbers forward, then backward. They also did better in recognizing repeated visual patterns and on a spatial-planning challenge known as the Tower of London task. (It’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.) Writing in the journal Psychopharmacology, the study’s authors said the results suggested that “modafinil offers significant potential as a cognitive enhancer.”

Brain Gain: The underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs

blantonl writes "Brazilians all over the country are using modified amateur radio equipment to communicate with each other using US Military communications satellites — effectively creating their own CB radio network on the backs of the US Military. Recent efforts to crack down have resulted in arrests of some of the users, however the behavior still continues today."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

blantonl writes "Brazilians all over the country are using modified amateur radio equipment to communicate with each other using US Military communications satellites — effectively creating their own CB radio network on the backs of the US Military. Recent efforts to crack down have resulted in arrests of some of the users, however the behavior still continues today."

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.

They said it couldn't be done. "They" say a lot of things. And if the story of mediocre-painter turned master-art-forger Han van Meegeren teaches us anything, it's that the gate-keepers don't always know what they're talking about.

If there's one thing sure to make me latch onto a bit of history like dried Jet glue on the fingers of architecture students, it's real-life stories that come out seemingly tailor-made for Greek theater. Naturally, you'll find a longer version of this tale in Be Amazing.

Fool the Art World
Launching his career in the 1920s and 30s, Dutch painter Han van Meegeren utterly failed to take critics by storm. Apparently committed to toiling on realistic portraiture while everybody else was trying to be Picasso, van Meegeren seemed doomed to the fate of a "never was." But when a critic derided his work as "lacking originality," the frustrated artist hatched a plan that would prove his talent and make his foes look like idiots. Ironically, the plan involved abandoning any pretense at originality whatsoever. Instead, van Meegeren set out to become the greatest art forger who ever lived; not merely copying known works of his hero, Jan Vermeer, but producing new paintings that would combine Vermeer's literal and artistic signatures with van Meegeren's own critically panned style of painting. Van Meegeren originally planned to create just one of these paintings, make it an international sensation and then reveal the truth to a very small and sorry art world. But plans--as plans are wont to do--went awry.

Fool Yourself
To pull off the deception, van Meegeren learned how to mix Renaissance-era paints, prepare canvasses the way Vermeer would have and artificially age his paintings. The result: The Disciples at Emmaus, a never-before-seen, newly discovered Vermeer that was quickly a hit with art collectors across Europe. In fact, the whole thing was so successful that van Meegeren abandoned the "expose critics as frauds" step of his plan and, instead, sold Emmaus for the equivalent of $4 million, and began work on another "Vermeer". Over the next five years, he went on to sell another $60 million worth of forged art.

Fool the Nazis, Fool the Allies and Almost Get Yourself Killed
The long con came to a screeching end in 1945, when Allied forces found a previously unknown Vermeer hidden in a salt mine along with piles of other Nazi-pilfered works of art. Using the Third Reich's infamously well-organized record keeping, authorities tracked the piece to Field Marshall Herman Goering, who'd bought it from some Dutch art dealer named van Meegeren.

Brought in for questioning, van Meegeren refused to give up the name of the painting's rightful owners and was sent to prison on charges of treason, a crime punishable by death. Six weeks on death row and van Meegeren cracked, announcing somewhat histrionically that he'd painting the thing himself. Awkwardly, nobody believed him.

The painter was given one final chance. If he could forge another painting, charges would be dropped. Armed with his art supplies and court-appointed witnesses, van Meegeren turned out another "Vermeer" that shocked both jailers and art critics with its verisimilitude...and turned van Meegeren from a traitor into a public hero who'd outwitted the Nazis. Of course, authorities were not 100 percent forgiving. Although the charge of treason was dropped, van Meegeren did spend a year in jail for profiting off forgery.

Photo of Han van Meegeren, painting his final "Vermeer" for the Allies, taken by George Rodger for Time & Life Pictures -- Getty Images and used under fair use.

It doesn't matter what you say, but the way in which you say it. (via Why, That's Delightful!)

Ioan Ghip made this tweeting cat door with an RFID reader and some keychain tags attached to his cats' collars. The door only lets the cats in (not the neighbor cats) and tweets which one is going in or out, complete with a picture.

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CrustyFace writes "Cybernit reports that the Starter Edition version of Windows 7 will only allow the user to run 3 applications at once. Targeted at notebooks, this doesn't seem like such a bad limitation, however it is a bold move from Microsoft, and it will be interesting to see how the operating system sells."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CrustyFace writes "Cybernit reports that the Starter Edition version of Windows 7 will only allow the user to run 3 applications at once. Targeted at notebooks, this doesn't seem like such a bad limitation, however it is a bold move from Microsoft, and it will be interesting to see how the operating system sells."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While everyone's been focused on The Pirate Bay trial in Sweden, who knew something similar was happening in Taiwan? Michael Scott points us to the news that a Taiwanese court has found the file sharing app Foxy to be illegal. There's not much in the way of details, other than to suggest that the company behind Foxy has shut down. The report also notes that some other file sharing services in Taiwan have been sued -- but one was "cleared of charges because it merely provided a way to transfer information, images, videos and text." Isn't that what most file sharing apps do?

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Recently on Offworld we saw our first guest post by maker, writer, and 'shoddy Cammy' Tom Armitage of infovore.org, who takes a look at a recent post by BioShock 2 designer Steve Gaynor on 'architecting the unreal.' Elsewhere we saw that a new Fallout game is due for release next year (though not a sequel or an expansion), this time from some of the original series creators at Obsidian, and saw that indie favorites Introversion have a near-complete Nintendo DS version of their global thermonuclear wargame Defcon (above) that they're hoping to release by the end of the year. We also saw a huge slew of new Uniqlo games T-shirts now revealed, new third party hacks, tools and mods for 2D Boy's World of Goo, Donkey Kong playable on the open-source 8x8 LED handheld Meggy Jr. RGB, and retro computers coming together to sing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Finally, we downloaded levels for Hand Circus's iPhone platformer Rolando and saw a new colonial theme for its upcoming sequel, watched the first footage of ngmoco's 3D spherical tower defense game, cleared off our calendar for an LA-based Poketo show featuring Her Space Holiday and Tokyo illustrator PCP, and watched newly uploaded and gorgeously shot video of Blip Fest 2007 featuring the 8-bit happy hardcore of Virt and Polytron musician 6955 doing a blissed-out shoegaze deconstruction of Fez's theme song.

Adafruit points to these kits for building weather station monitoring instruments (humidity, temperature, solar radiation sensor, lightening strike counter, and wind speed and direction) and other environmental test instruments (soil moisture).

Hobby Boards weather kits

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mask.of.sanity writes "Over a 1000 students were accepted into the fifth year of the program from 70 countries and will work on about 150 open source projects with mentor organisations. The program, created in 2005, has exposed some 2500 students to "real-world" software development and opened employment opportunities within mentor organisations and in fields relevant to their academic study. The United States scored the lion's share with 212 accepted students; 101 from India; 55 from Germany; 44 from Canada, 43 from Brazil. The Dominican Republic, Iceland, Luxembourg and Nigeria were new entrants to the program each with a single accepted student. Check out the slideshow summary of some project highlights, with hyperlinks back the detailed project pages."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mask.of.sanity writes "Over a 1000 students were accepted into the fifth year of the program from 70 countries and will work on about 150 open source projects with mentor organisations. The program, created in 2005, has exposed some 2500 students to "real-world" software development and opened employment opportunities within mentor organisations and in fields relevant to their academic study. The United States scored the lion's share with 212 accepted students; 101 from India; 55 from Germany; 44 from Canada, 43 from Brazil. The Dominican Republic, Iceland, Luxembourg and Nigeria were new entrants to the program each with a single accepted student. Check out the slideshow summary of some project highlights, with hyperlinks back the detailed project pages."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Alan from Hacked Gadgets has a clever way of repurposing a video cassette tape. This is a great project, and he has a nice cave setup, too. His video shows what the project does, and he does a decent job explaining the reasons and theory behind the build.

This project turns a old VHS Tape into a USB storage drive. It looks like a normal VHS cassette tape except for the USB cable that sticks out of the shell. All of the project guts are hiding in the areas around the clear windows so that when you have a quick look at the front of the tape all seems normal. When plugged into a computer the VHS Tape Storage Drive will act as a normal USB drive except when the drive is accessed the tape reel will turn and the windows will light up. This will keep at least one of my VHS tapes out of the landfill.

In his Flickr set, you can see lots of the details and steps.

After you have converted your VCR into a cat feeder like John Park or James Larsson in MAKE, Volume 03, you might have a few extra tapes on your hands, so this is just one of the zillions of ideas we will need for all those surplus video cassettes.

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Bruce demos his blinky synthing sphere built with Arduino and dubbed 'Diver' -

An Arduino sound project, Diver is an instrument inspired by old Analog Sequencers and Theremins. It allows creating a four-note looped melody which can be manipulated in real-time with knobs that can assign upto 5 octaves for each note. Each knob lights up to indicate it’s position in the loop.

The top of Diver houses a sensor which can be used to control the tempo of the loop in real-time. Use Diver in live performances or at home to produce awesome loops, melodies and special effects.

An all-out raver by night, the Diver seems an unassuming little spacepod by day - the lit knobs are a nice touch. More demo videos including the above-mentioned sensor control can be seen on Bruce's blog.

In the Maker Shed:


Bare Bones Arduino Board Kit (Unassembled)

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suraj.sun writes "Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks. Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

suraj.sun writes "Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks. Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You would think with the PR nightmare surrounding capped broadband that forced Time Warner Cable to at least temporarily back off limiting broadband, that other broadband providers would be a lot more careful. However, Gigaom reports that some AT&T U-verse customers are discovering the broadband that AT&T is selling them is capped with low limits, but they're not being told about these limits until after they're locked in. It would seem like this is the sort of thing that the FTC has been known to frown upon -- not to mention it's also the type of thing that gets people pretty upset in a hurry. It really is amazing how hamfisted the broadband providers seem to be when it comes to marketing their broadband plans.

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Kloomba turned a cassette mechanism into a magnetic tape reading robot -

Made almost entirely out of a boombox, this little bugger can go forward, backward, and turn, all while dragging its tape head around and broadcasting whatever it finds (A scape made of tape) to a radio for your glitchy listening pleasure.

Not to be confused with other boombox bots Witnessing this little guy ride atop a shiny "Tapescape" is likely an interesting site as well as sound.

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Barence writes "BT and other mobile broadband providers are blocking access to The Pirate Bay as part of a 'self-regulation' scheme with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). BT Mobile Broadband users who attempt to access the notorious BitTorrent tracker site are met with a 'content blocked' message. The warning page states the page has been blocked in 'compliance with a new UK voluntary code.' 'This uses a barring and filtering mechanism to restrict access to all WAP and internet sites that are considered to have "over 18" status,' the warning states. It goes on to list a series of categories that are blocked, including adult/sexually explicit content, 'criminal skills' and hacking. It's not stated which category The Pirate Bay breaches, although the site does host links to porn movies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barence writes "BT and other mobile broadband providers are blocking access to The Pirate Bay, as part of a "self-regulation" scheme with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). BT Mobile Broadband users who attempt to access the notorious BitTorrent tracker site are met with a "content blocked" message. The warning page states the page has been blocked in "compliance with a new UK voluntary code". "This uses a barring and filtering mechanism to restrict access to all WAP and internet sites that are considered to have 'over 18' status," the warning states. It goes on to list a series of categories that are blocked, including adult/sexually explicit content, "criminal skills" and hacking. It's not stated which category The Pirate Bay breaches, although the site does host links to porn movies."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jay from the free sf zine Heliotrope sez, "Neil Gaiman, Lou Anders, Bryan Talbot, Hal Duncan, Catherynne M. Valente, Chris Roberson, Paul S. Kemp and Rhys Hughes contributed fiction and articles that were part of an issue of Heliotrope that was an appreciation to the legendary writer, Michael Moorcock. This issue went live online today (and is obviously free)."

Heliotrope Issue 5 (Thanks, Jay!)

Giant robotic spiders have struck again. First it was Liverpool, England, now it's Yokohama, Japan. It's painful to watch as terrified humans in white shirts and black slacks, stuck to the underbelly and carapace, struggle to free themselves.

La Machine (the "theatrical engineers" who created this mechanical monstrosity) [via Laughing Squid]

More:
Photos of La Machine's giant spider!

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Sal sez, "Three years after Cory's novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town,' somebody actually made a router that does what the fictional mesh-network routers from the book could do. The Fonera 2.0 made by FON, (the Spanish WiFi sharing people) is released today (barring the occasional retail glitch) for 45 euros. It comes complete with OLPC's mesh-networking system. You can plug it into Ethernet or a 3G dongle. Share your bandwidth with any other router in range that implements OLPC's mesh-networking standard. The Open WRT software is designed to run on just about any hardware so you do not actually have to buy a Fonera to join the fun. The software is based on Open WRT, which in turn is based on the Linksys WRTG54G firmware which the community forced Cisco to open-source (since it made use of Busybox + Linux Kernel). As a result of this we now have a router far more featured than the most expensive access point you can get in the shops, costing a fraction of the price and based on entirely free firmware. With a few of these we could all build community networks like the one from Cory's book."

Fonera 2.0 (Thanks, Salim!)

Yup, last week's Handmade Music party was entirely off the hook and awesome. Full fledged performances by E-Squared and Peter Edwards of Casper Electronics. Plus a hauntingly interactive piece by Ranjit Bhatnagar and a demo of Eric Archer's Dronematrix handheld synthstrument. Good times - and of course more to come next month! (5/21/09 to be specific)

Download the m4v file or subscribe in iTunes

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prostoalex writes to tell us The Daily Mail has an interesting look at current research in the field of running and injuries related to running. Most of the evidence pointed at a lack of any need for running shoes. Some of the more interesting points: the more expensive the running shoes, the greater the probability of getting an injury; some of the planet's best and most intense runners run barefoot; Stanford running team, having access to the top-notch modern shoes sent in for free by manufacturers, after a few rounds of trial and error still chose to train with no shoes at all."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

prostoalex writes to tell us The Daily Mail has an interesting look at current research in the field of running and injuries related to running. Most of the evidence pointed at a lack of any need for running shoes. Some of the more interesting points: the more expensive the running shoes, the greater the probability of getting an injury; some of the planet's best and most intense runners run barefoot; Stanford running team, having access to the top-notch modern shoes sent in for free by manufacturers, after a few rounds of trial and error still chose to train with no shoes at all."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Patti of New World Geek sent us the link to this sweet little profile of Port Townsend, Washington tin artist Loran Scruggs who makes toys and sculptures out of tin cans and other tin cast-aways.

Process: Tin Toys by Loran Scruggs

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Anonymous, having driven the Church of Scientology into bankruptcy, has now declared war on the entertainment industry -- apparently, they're upset that the record companies aren't suing enough P2P sites:

We have been watching you. We are focusing all our eyes on your multiple organizations. As you are watching this video we are currently planning our next attack. You have already angered us greatly and now, all you can do is pray that we will show mercy. We will strike from every possible direction. You will not know who we are or what our next move will be. We have no central leader, no government, nobody to tell us what to do. We operate on the principles of free speech and anonymity. The very principles which the verdict against the pirate bay dot org is threatening to destroy. And this is why we attack. Because deep down we know that together, as a unit, we can ban together and defeat you, the great oppressor, who has been present since the dawn of man.

It is true that by using file sharing networks we may be committing a crime. But there is no crime greater than favoring one company over another in the corrupt eyes of the law. The founders of thepiratebay.org are awaiting their jail sentence and the founders of isohunt.com and btjunkie.org are living free with no worries from the law. We strike because we know that it is not about legality, it is not about lawlessness, it is not about going against your principles, as you obviously have none. It is about Justice, true justice that only a member of our organization can see. And believe me, we are many. And we will all carry out Justice that the rest of the world will not.

Message to Anti-Piracy (Thanks, Judge!)

I'm not entirely sure why, but it appears that a bunch of folks in the northern parts of Europe are doing some rather interesting analyses of the recording industry in that region. Perhaps it's the fact that so much attention has been placed on those regions thanks to file sharing services like The Pirate Bay and Mininova (both based there), but either way, we keep seeing studies from such countries that seem worth talking about. Last month, it was a detailed and fascinating study on file sharing in the Netherlands, which suggested (again) that it was a business model issue rather than a legal one, and now a bunch of folks have sent in a study from Norway claiming that those who download are much more likely to buy music than those who don't. We've seen analogous studies saying similar things in the past, so this is no surprise.

Separately, a couple weeks ago someone sent in (and I have to apologize, because I can't find who it was now) a long but fascinating study from Finland on the history of two of the more successful record labels (warning: pdf file) in that country. The key finding shouldn't be all that surprising. Both record labels were more successful when they focused not on how to make the most money, but on experimenting with new business models and embracing the music for the sake of the art, rather than solely as a business proposition. This is a point that often seems to get lost in these discussions. If you focus on doing something you love, the opportunities to make money tend to provide themselves. If you focus just on making money, you often find that you hate what you do... and the money isn't as readily available.

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Here's an hilarious video in which Seth Godin enumerates the essential broken-ness of many contemporary things, and takes a stab at explaining why all this broken junk continues to exist.

This is broken

On Monday Bethesda announced a new title in the popular Fallout series called New Vegas, set for release sometime in 2010. It's planned for the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. They said it wasn't a sequel to the highly-acclaimed Fallout 3, but rather a brand new game set in the same universe, though they confirmed that it will be similar in style to Fallout 3. The new game will be developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a studio containing members of the original Fallout team, which Bethesda's Pete Hines discussed in an interview with Shacknews. The Fallout series also made headlines earlier this week when Bethesda trademarked the name for TV and film.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the complaints we've had about the patent system and current patent law is that the law clearly says that patents should only be granted on things that are new and non-obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art (the so-called PHOSITA). In the past, we've questioned why the USPTO doesn't actually make use of skilled practitioners in determining obviousness of patents. Some patent system supporters claim that doing so is somehow unfair -- but it's exactly what the patent system calls for. It seems odd that a patent examiner should be asked to judge what a person skilled in the art thinks of a patent without ever asking a person skilled in the art. However, Dan Wallach, over at Freedom To Tinker, takes this idea a step further to ask why no one talks about requiring juries in patent trials to be made up of PHOSITAs. While he admits the idea is probably impractical, it does seem like a reasonable question. Juries are notoriously inclined to side with patent holders, often because they don't know enough about the technology to know whether or not the patent is valid. While I agree with Wallach that this is probably impractical, it does make you wonder if there are better solutions that actually get those skilled in the art to weigh in during patent trials, rather than actively keeping them out.

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KentuckyFC writes to tell us that scientists from the UK and Germany are proposing a third kind of quantum tunneling. They propose that a quantum particle is capable of changing into a pair of "virtual particles" capable of passing through a potential barrier before changing back. The supposition also provides some interesting methods of possibly testing string theory. So many interesting and useful possibilities, I guess that just means it will be debunked faster than other scientific theories.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've never quite understood why e-voting software shouldn't be required to be public information. For the sake of actually allowing an open and transparent voting system, it's hard to understand how any governing body would allow proprietary software to be used. There's simply no way you can prove that the system is fair and transparent if the counting mechanism is totally hidden away. For years, the big e-voting firms have simply shrugged this off, but it looks like they're at least open to discussing it. A trade group representing the big e-voting firms has put out a whitepaper discussing open source voting systems, where all they really do is show that they don't actually understand much about open source technologies.

First, they claim that, even though they understand that "security through obscurity" isn't effective, "there remains some underlying truths to the idea that software does maintain a level of security through the lack of available public knowledge of the inner workings of a software program." Computer Science professor Dan Wallach does a nice job responding to that claim:

Really? No. Disclosing the source code only results in a complete forfeiture of the software's security if there was never any security there in the first place. If the product is well-engineered, then disclosing the software will cause no additional security problems. If the product is poorly-engineered, then the lack of disclosure only serves the purpose of delaying the inevitable.

What we learned from the California Top-to-Bottom Review and the Ohio EVEREST study was that, indeed, these systems are unquestionably and unconscionably insecure. The authors of those reports (including yours truly) read the source code, which certainly made it easier to identify just how bad these systems were, but it's fallacious to assume that a prospective attacker, lacking the source code and even lacking our reports, is somehow any less able to identify and exploit the flaws. The wide diversity of security flaws exploited on a regular basis in Microsoft Windows completely undercuts the ETC paper's argument. The bad guys who build these attacks have no access to Windows's source code, but they don't need it. With common debugging tools (as well as customized attacking tools), they can tease apart the operation of the compiled, executable binary applications and engineer all sorts of malware.

Voting systems, in this regard, are just like Microsoft Windows. We have to assume, since voting machines are widely dispersed around the country, that attackers will have the opportunity to tear them apart and extract the machine code. Therefore, it's fair to argue that source disclosure, or the lack thereof, has no meaningful impact on the operational security of our electronic voting machines. They're broken. They need to be repaired.

The next oddity, is the claim that if a problem is found in open source software, then it won't get fixed as quickly, because you have to wait for "the community" to fix it. That completely mistakes how open source software works. Again, Wallach points out how silly that is, noting that plenty of commercially-focused companies run open source projects, including maintaining and contributing code to the project. If these companies were to open source their code, there's nothing stopping them from continuing to improve the security of the code. There's no need to wait around... The paper has other problems as well, which Wallach discusses at the link above. To be honest, though, it's quite telling that these firms don't even seem to understand some of the basics of how open source software works.

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Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's found this smashing ad for Honeywell electronic mail from the dawn of time. I think that around the time this ad ran, I was still riding my bicycle around the Honeywell parking garage around the corner from our house in suburban Toronto. I remember thinking at the time that Honeywell must make something to do with beekeeping.

Ad: Honeywell's Electronic Mail

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Researchers at the BI Norwegian School of Management conducted a study that concluded that downloading infringing copies of music strongly correlates buying above-average amounts of music. The music industry says that this doesn't prove that downloading from P2P entices people to buy music, and you know what? I think they're kind of right.

The Norwegian study closely matches the findings from a Canadian study a few years ago. Both studies show that people who download a lot buy a lot of music -- and other research and interviews I've conducted suggest that downloading a lot of music is also correlated with doing other music-related stuff, like attending concerts, making mixes for friends, playing music, recording music, and so on.

There's a simple explanation for this: if you really love music, you do lots of music-related things. If you're in the 20 percent of fans that buys 80 percent of records, you're probably in the 20 percent of downloaders that download 80 percent of music, the 20 percent of concertgoers that buy 80 percent of the tickets, and so on. The moral is that music superfans love music and structure their lives around it.

Which means that when the music industry targets "the worst offenders" in its legal campaigns against downloaders, the people they're attacking are the ones who are spending the most on music.

Now, does this mean that downloads end up interfering with sales of music, or not? My guess is that it's a little of both. As Tim O'Reilly wrote, Piracy is Progressive Taxation. Obscure acts probably get more sales than they lose. Modestly well-known acts probably lose and gain about the same. Very famous performers probably lose a little. This has been the conclusion in the quantitative studies in music and books to date, and it makes sense to me.

Unsurprisingly, BI found that those between 15 and 20 are more likely to buy music via paid download than on a physical CD, though most still purchased at least one CD in the last six months. However, when it comes to P2P, it seems that those who wave the pirate flag are the most click-happy on services like the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3. BI said that those who said they download illegal music for "free" bought ten times as much legal music as those who never download music illegally. "The most surprising is that the proportion of paid download is so high," the Google-translated Audun Molde from the Norwegian School of Management told Aftenposten.

Study: pirates biggest music buyers. Labels: yeah, right

eldavojohn writes "The sweet sweet melodies of Queen and the late Freddie Mercury are reproduced by hardware almost as old as the song is. 'There are millions of computers sitting idle at home consuming fantom electricity. Let's see where all that power is going. This is dedicated to all fans of Queen and hey let's not forget about Mike Myers and Dana Carvey of Wayne's World. Please note no effects or sampling was used. What you see is what you hear (does that even make sense?) Atari 800XL was used for the lead piano/organ sound, Texas Instruments TI-99/4a as lead guitar, 8 Inch Floppy Disk as Bass, 3.5 inch Hard drive as the gong, HP ScanJet 3C was used for all vocals. Please note I had to record the HP scanner 4 separate times for each voice. I tried to buy 4 HP scanners but for some reason sellers on E-Bay expect you to pay $80-$100, I got mine for $30.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instructables user travis7s made this RC Nerf tank with lots of neat features like a wireless camera with laser sight and onboard sound system.

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Who is Mark Twain? from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

Julia from HarperStudio sez, "We're publishing a book of previously unpublished pieces by Mark Twain called WHO IS MARK TWAIN? (UK, US) and Flash Rosenberg illustrated a section read by John Lithgow."

Who is Mark Twain, Harper Studio

Buy Who is Mark Twain?, UK

Buy Who is Mark Twain?, US

(Thanks, Julia!)

As newspapers are struggling with the question of whether or not to charge for content online as their print subscribers decrease, Aaron Martin-Colby points us to an article about how some magazines are also looking to increase the subscription fees for their paper magazines. Over the past few years, many magazines have followed the natural progression in a competitive market, and continually dropped their subscription prices, and made up the difference with advertising. Yet, some magazines are trying to buck that trend. The article highlights The Economist and People as examples of magazines who recently raised prices and still saw subscriptions rise. It will be interesting to see if that's sustained, however.

Oddly, the article doesn't even mention the internet as competition -- which seems to be leaving out a big part of the equation. The Economist and People are the sorts of magazines that people have subscribed to for many years, with a strong loyalty. So, I can see them sustaining subscribers even with a modest price increase -- but as alternative sources become more and more popular, you have to wonder if people will start to question if it's worth paying so much, when there's content that's just as good (if not better) available for free online.

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Kerrieanne writes to tell us that Australian telecommunications giant Telstra has become the first major player down under to lay down the law with respect to social media. Still recovering from the shakeup surrounding a Telstra worker using the name of the communications minister on Twitter, they have released a six-page set of guidelines on the use of Facebook, Twitter, and other similar websites for both company and personal use. "Under the guidelines, which are backed up with the threat of disciplinary action, employees using sites on official Telstra business should disclose who they are, ensure they do not give away confidential information and treat other users with respect. They are required to complete an accreditation process and undergo training to update their 'knowledge on emerging social trends and evolving best practice in social media.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Matti Niinimäki says, "I have always liked the voice of William S. Burroughs and I've always wanted to do something with the Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups clip. Now I have. Also includes a cut-up example by Brion Gysin." Cut-Ups (video, on Vimeo, thanks Richard Metzger)

When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went online only last month, traffic to its website dropped 20%. Some described this as a sign that the concept was a failure, but we found that hard to believe. The company had laid off 80% of its staff, massively cut its costs... and still retained 80% of its traffic? That's fantastic. Yet, people still seem to miss that point. The Wall Street Journal recently looked at a similar story, involving a newspaper in Finland that had gone online only a while back, and saw its traffic decline between 11 and 22% (depending on how you measure traffic) over a period of about five months. But, the WSJ article buries some of the important details: such as the fact that the paper also significantly cut its newsroom when it made the switch and publishes fewer articles. It also brushes over the fact that when the news became more relevant (focusing on the financial crisis) traffic came right back up to old levels.

Yet, the article still frames this as a "surprising" failure?

It's as if people were pulling just the bad news out of incredibly positive news. Both of these stories show that you can massively cut costs without a corresponding drop in readership. And, on top of that, if you actually provide real value to people, then you can grow the traffic as well. That all seems like good news -- except for folks who seemed to think that you could magically keep all the same traffic while doing a tiny percentage of the work.

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danah boyd tweet-points to this "chilling story of educator in a sexting mess," and says "We should all be horrified by the prosectors' obsession with 'sexting'." Ting-Yi Oei, the Virginia high school teacher in question, is male. All charges against him have since been thrown out of court. But as in the case with Julie Amero, that final acquittal doesn't erase the personal and professional damage caused -- nor does it make up for the reckless tech-stupidity of prosecutors and school officials involved in the case.

Ting-Yi Oei's "sexting" witchhunt story begins about a year ago, when a fellow teacher told him about a rumor that some teens at the school were texting naked self-portraits around to one another.

I called a student I thought likely to have such a picture into my office. In the presence of the school's safety and security official, he quickly admitted that he did. He pulled out his phone and showed us an image of the torso of a woman wearing underpants, with her arms crossed over her breasts. Her head was not in the picture. The 17-year-old student claimed not to know who the young woman was or who had sent him the photo.

I immediately took the picture to the principal, who instructed me to transfer it to my office computer in case we needed it later. Being unfamiliar with camera features on cellphones, I asked the school's technology resource teacher for help, but he didn't have an immediate solution. The student then said that he could text the picture to my cellphone. That left the problem of getting it to my computer, whereupon the boy said that I could send the picture to my school e-mail address.

In hindsight, of course, he could have sent it directly to my computer himself. But it never occurred to me that my actions could be regarded as suspect: I was conducting a legitimate school investigation with children's welfare in mind, and I did so in the presence and with the full knowledge of other school officials.

I interviewed more students with the security specialist, but we found no more pictures and were unable to identify the woman in the photo. We concluded that she probably wasn't a student at the school. I reported our findings to the principal and assumed that the matter was closed.

I left the building quickly that day -- the start of spring break -- to join my wife, Diane, at a doctor's office to discuss her upcoming surgery for a potentially malignant tumor. I told her about the sexting photo, but we had other things on our minds. When I returned to school two days after break ended, I confronted a new problem: The boy with the photo on his cell was now in trouble for having pulled a girl's pants down in class (another teen phenomenon known as "flagging"). I informed his mother that I was suspending him, and in the discussion I also told her about the earlier incident. She was outraged that I hadn't reported it to her at the time. She called me at home that night at 10 p.m. and again at 7 a.m. the next morning, agitated and demanding that the suspension be revoked and threatening to involve an attorney. I told her as calmly as I could that the suspension was for the deliberate act of pulling down the girl's pants. A couple of days later, after an appeal hearing with the principal and me, she shouted at me, "I'll see you in court!"

The story quickly takes a turn for the surreal. Soon, the teacher who claims he sought only to protect the kids he taught was himself charged with possession of child pornography. Read the rest of the saga here: My Students. My Cellphone. My Ordeal. (Washington Post)

Adam sez,

<img src="http://craphound.com/images/normdollar.jpeg"
Republicans in DC know Al Franken won the Minnesota Senate race.

But they are bankrolling Norm Coleman's continued court challenges and are encouraging him to drag this thing out forever. For them, it's worth it to keep shelling out money to block the seating of Senator Franken.

Put simply, the incentives are all wrong. But this weekend, some online folks launched a new campaign to set the incentives right.

Howard Dean's Democracy for America teamed up with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (founded by former MoveOn.org organizers and Aaron Swartz, the co-inventor of Reddit and RSS) to launch www.NormDollar.com.

At that site, people are asked to give a "Dollar a Day to Make Norm Go Away" -- with the funding going to help progressive candidates defeat congressional Republicans in 2010.

The theory: If Republicans up for re-election in 2010 see the progressives who are out to defeat them get an infusion of donations each day that Coleman is obstinate, they and their funders will call Coleman and say, "Your time is up. Concede!"

So far, it's working. In less than one weekend, Norm Coleman has raised over $20,000 to help progressive candidates -- and that number grows by the hour.

NormDollar (Thanks, Adam!)

644bd346996 writes "Newsweek has an article about the latest weapons in the US military's arsenal. The iPod Touch and the iPhone are being adapted as general purpose handhelds for soldiers in the field. 'Apple gadgets are proving to be surprisingly versatile. Software developers and the US Department of Defense are developing military software for iPods that enables soldiers to display aerial video from drones and have teleconferences with intelligence agents halfway across the globe. Snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan now use a "ballistics calculator" called BulletFlight, made by the Florida firm Knight's Armament for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Army researchers are developing applications to turn an iPod into a remote control for a bomb-disposal robot (tilting the iPod steers the robot). In Sudan, American military observers are using iPods to learn the appropriate etiquette for interacting with tribal leaders.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This Wednesday night will be the first-ever Pop-Up Magazine, a live performance/reading featuring more than a dozen writers, editors, designers, photographers and filmmakers who contribute to publications like Wired, The New Yorker, NY Times Magazine, This American Life, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's. Come watch features, mini-features, Q&A's, essays, lit reviews, photos, and more from folks like Michael Pollan, the Kitchen Sisters, Joshua Davis, Larry Sultan, Todd Lappin and me...

I've been given the unofficial "Gallagher/Carrot Top slot." What that means: I'll be reviewing and demoing gadgets.

Tickets are already sold out (wow!). BUT, if you register via email, you'll be the first to know about the next Pop-Up, and you'll also be put on the waiting list in case any seats do open up for Wed., April 22nd, 7:00 pm at the Brava Theater.

If you're there, do come say hi after!

A bunch of folks have been sending in the NY Times story about how the online comic xkcd is going to be putting out a book, and that it's being done avoiding the traditional book publishing process. There are some key quotes in there, including:

In fact, the xkcd story previews the much more likely future of books in which they are prized as artifacts, not as mechanisms for delivering written material to readers. This is print book as vinyl record -- admired for its look and feel, its cover art, and relative permanence -- but not so much for convenience.

And then there's the more important point about Randall Munroe not worrying about copying of the content -- and instead focusing on the other direction:

Publishing a book is an extension of the selling of items like T-shirts and posters, which pays the bills, he said, to a "free culture" mind-set about the cartoons themselves. "We have been encouraging people to share things, saying that it is a good business decision," he said....

One trick in transferring the material from online to print has been how to recreate the "title text" that comments on the strip when your cursor hovers over it.

"It's not supposed to be a punch line, but hopefully if you didn't laugh, you'll laugh at this," he said. The title text will appear where the tiny copyright notice would appear on a traditional strip.

Does that mean that the book won't carry a traditional copyright and instead take its lead from the online comic strip itself, which Mr. Munroe licenses under Creative Commons, allowing noncommercial re-use as long as credit is given?

"To anyone who wants to photocopy, bind, and give a copy of the book to their loved one -- more power to them," he said. "He/She will likely be disappointed that you're so cheap, though."

It's been clear from pretty much the beginning that Munroe understands that getting more widely known is a lot more important than worrying about "piracy," and it's great to see him take that attitude even further.

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