krou writes "In Dec. 2006, we discussed the Espresso Book Machine. Well, on April 27 the bookseller Blackwell will launch a three month trial of the machine in its Charing Cross Road branch in London as a 'print on demand' service for shoppers in an effort 'to consign to history the idea that you can walk into a bookshop and not find the book you want.' When the trial begins, it will be able to print any of some 400,000 titles; Blackwell's overall goal is to extend this to a million titles by the summer, and to spread out more machines to the rest of its sixty stores once it works out pricing. Currently, they charge shelf price for in-print books, and 10 pence per page for those out of print (about $55 for a 300-page book), but are analyzing customer behavior to get a better pricing model. Says Blackwell chief executive Andrew Hutchings: 'This could change bookselling fundamentally. It's giving the chance for smaller locations, independent booksellers, to have the opportunity to truly compete with big stock-holding shops and Amazon... I like to think of it as the revitalization of the local bookshop industry.' Their website notes that in addition to getting books printed in-store, in future you will be able to order titles via their site. (They also mention that one of the titles you can print is the 1915 Oxford Poetry Book, which includes one of Tolkien's first poems, 'Goblin's Feet.')" You'll also be able to bring in your own book to print — two PDF files, one for the book block and one for the cover.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yesterday I wrote about the Lotus 1-2-3 of twitters, but it may not be obvious why there will be more than one network of networks -- so let me explain.

1. Twitter is growing fast.

2. Its use as a medium for news has become apparent. I've been saying that for a long time. It's both the front room and back room for news. How it's delivered and how it's produced.

3. Umair Haque suggested the NY Times buy Twitter. Of course it's too late for that. Pretty soon Twitter will be able to buy the NY Times.

4. I think it's pretty obvious that Twitter is on a trajectory to become one of the major media networks, a Turner, Fox, NBC, Time-Warner, Viacom, Disney. When it's apparent to more of the heads of these companies, they're going to start wondering why their stars are on Twitter and not on their own network.

5. The thought has probably also popped into the heads of the people at Twitter. They will try to make deals with some or all the media companies. They have a lot of power, and should be able to cut good deals. But as the negotiations go forward, it will become apparent to the execs that these guys are competitors. They will consider Make vs Buy. If they're smart, they'll do their deals with Twitter at the same time doing deals to get their own network going.

6. Luckily for the other media companies, users are portable. I'll explain. Say Ashton Kutcher (someone who I had never heard of until he showed up at a tech industry conference last year) decides to cut a deal with a major studio to head a new twitter-like network. Could happen. They'll get their network built, quietly, then start leaking it with teases on billboards of course, but also (you guessed it) on Twitter. When Oprah sees him do his network, she'll want one. And so will Larry King and Shaq, and all the celebs who have yet to make a splash on Twitter. Brad Pitt and Ed Norton will call theirs The Fight Club. George Clooney's will be Oceans Million. Prince will hang out in Paisley Park. And you think Apple won't have one? It might have a 140-char limit, but it won't just be text.

There's a lot of money to be made in these networks and it costs so little to start one. An average Hollywood film costs two or three times as much as all the money Twitter, Inc. has raised so far. Spiderman 3 cost $258 million. That's just one movie. And over time the cost will come way down. That's why I suggested that FriendFeed get a clone ready, now -- so they can do deals with the media companies when they're ready. Which might happen any week now, if it hasn't already happened.

Remember, it's not Kansas anymore, the house fell on the witch and Ev and Biz are wearing the Ruby-red slippers. Click your heels three times and say "There's no place like home."

Yours truly, over and out, Dave

An anonymous reader writes "Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a famous 'Quant,' has long been a strong critic of the use of mathematics and statistics in the financial markets. He has been very vocal in his books The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness. In his article on edge.org, he says 'My outrage is aimed at the scientist-charlatan putting society at risk using statistical methods. This is similar to iatrogenics, the study of the doctor putting the patient at risk.' After the recent financial crisis, wired.com ran an article titled 'Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street' in which the quant David Li and his Gaussian Copula were crucified — we discussed it at the time. Now, I've recently been admitted to a graduate program of good repute in Computational & Applied Mathematics. There is a wide range of subjects in which you can pursue your PhD, one of them being Financial Mathematics. I had a passing interest in it for quite some time. In the current scenario, how advisable it is to pursue a PhD in this topic? What would my options be five years down the line? Will the so-called 'quants' still be wanted by the banks and other financial institutions, or will they turn to more 'non-math' approaches? Would I be better off specializing in less volatile areas of Applied Mathematics? In short, what is the future of Financial Mathematics in light of the current financial crisis?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MaulerOfEmotards sends along an in-depth followup, from the Swedish press, of our discussion the other day about the biased trial judge in the Pirate Bay case. "The turmoil concerns Tomas Norström, the presiding judge of The Pirate Bay trial, who is suspected of bias after reports surfaced of affiliation with copyright protection organizations. For this he has been reported to the appeals court (in Swedish; translation here). The circus around the judge is currently focused on three points. First, his personal affiliation with at least four copyright protection organizations, a state the potential bias of which he himself fails to see and refuses to admit. Secondly, Swedish trials use a system of several lay assessors to supervise the presiding judge. One of these, a member of an artists' interest organization, was forced by Mr. Norström to resign from the trial for potential bias. The judge's failure to see the obvious contradiction in this (translation) casts doubts on his suitability and competence. Thirdly, according to professor of judicial sociology Håkan Hydén (translation), the judge has inappropriately 'duped and influenced the lay assessors' during the trial: 'a judge that has decided that "this is something we can't allow" has little problem finding legal arguments that are difficult for assisting lay assessors to counter.'" Click the link below to read further on Professor Hydén's enumeration of "at least three strange things in a strange trial." On a related note, reader Siker adds the factoid that membership in the Pirate Party exploded 150% in the week following the verdict. The Pirate Party now surpasses in size four smaller parties in Sweden, and is closing in on a fifth. Political fallout could ensue as soon as June, when an election for EU parliament will be held.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Floppy Disk Notepad - More DIY How To Projects

Pocket notes are such a better way to remember than depending only on the gray matter software. Maybe you have a box or twelve of old floppy disks. If you can find the ones with software labels like Aldus Pagemaker, or the like, all the better.

Is it earth shattering? No, but it might be fun, festive, creative or even a bit of a business idea...this might be a decent project to do with kids, add a little page layout and do a little hands-on, and let the creative instincts run free.

One question I come up with periodically, is what to do with the old pocket notes. They are something of a time capsule of weeks or days, and sometimes it seems a shame to toss them into the fireplace. Sometimes I come across some from just before a trip or deep into a project and it brings back the experience pretty vividly. What do you do with your old pocket notes?

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

ericatcw writes "There was a flurry of excitement earlier this week when the first Google Android netbook, the Skytone Alpha 680, was spotted by Slashdotters. Now, Computerworld has scored an exclusive interview with Skytone's co-founder. Among many tidbits, he reveals that the Alpha 680 builds upon the success of last year's $180 Alpha 400, which shipped 100,000 units, mostly in Europe under names such as Elonex OneT; that the new Alpha 680 will weigh 1.5 pounds, 25% less than the first Eee 701 netbook; that its ARM11 chip (basically the same as the one used in the iPhone) can handle YouTube video; and that he hopes to have Chinese manufacturing partners producing the $250 Alpha 680 within 3 months."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Philip K Dickhead sends in a piece from the Australian media, a couple of weeks old, that hasn't seen much discussion here. In a class-action lawsuit in Australia against Merck for its Vioxx anti-arthritis drug, information has come out that the company developed a "hit list" of doctors who had expressed anything but enthusiasm for the drug. Vioxx was withdrawn from the market in 2004 because it causes heart attacks and strokes. Merck settled a class action in the US for $4.85 billion but did not admit guilt. "An international drug company made a hit list of doctors who had to be 'neutralized' or discredited because they criticized the anti-arthritis drug the pharmaceutical giant produced. Ttaff at US company Merck & Co. emailed each other about the list of doctors — mainly researchers and academics — who had been negative about the drug Vioxx or Merck and a recommended course of action. The email, which came out in the Federal Court in Melbourne yesterday as part of a class action against the drug company, included the words 'neutralize,' 'neutralized,' or 'discredit' against some of the doctors' names. It is also alleged the company used intimidation tactics against critical researchers, including dropping hints it would stop funding to institutions and claims it interfered with academic appointments. 'We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live,' a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read to the court by Julian Burnside QC, acting for the plaintiff."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Combat Wombat writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "A strain of flu never seen before has killed up to 60 people in Mexico and also appeared in the United States, where eight people were infected but recovered, health officials said on Friday. Mexico's government said at least 20 people have died of the flu and it may also be responsible for 40 other deaths. [The government] shut down schools and canceled major public events in Mexico City to try to prevent more deaths in the sprawling, overcrowded capital. ... Close analysis showed the disease is a mixture of swine, human and avian viruses, according to the CDC. Humans can occasionally catch swine flu from pigs but rarely have they been known to pass it on to other people. Mexico reported 1,004 suspected cases of the new virus, including four possible cases in Mexicali on the border with California.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Saul Hansell of the NY Times has an interesting post analyzing AT&T's earnings report and highlighting the enormous stakes involved in the renewal of its exclusive contract to distribute Apple's iPhone in the United States. Hansell does some rough calculations: 'If the average iPhone customer brings in $90 a month, or $1,080 a year in revenue, and the operating profit margin stays constant at 26 percent, that means an iPhone customer represents at least $561 in operating profit over a two-year contract,' says Hansell. 'Put another way, if the company gets 2.5 million new customers a year because of its iPhone exclusivity, the deal represents at least $700 million a year in operating profits — profits that it could lose if Verizon sold the iPhone, too.' With those sort of numbers, AT&T has every reason to make Apple an offer it can't refuse to keep its exclusive deal for another few years. Of course, the incentives for Verizon are presumably the mirror image, so expect Verizon to come to Cupertino, checkbook in hand, to see what sort of deal they can make. 'The benefit of somewhat more iPhone sales from wide distribution is likely to be swamped by a huge bid from AT&T to keep exclusivity, and an equally high bid from Verizon to win some (or maybe even all) of the business for itself.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "It's fitting, in this 400th anniversary of the astronomical telescope, that the Telescopio Nationale Galileo (TNG) in the Canary Islands would be used to uncover the most distant object ever seen by mankind. The gamma-ray burst from April 23, a powerful explosion from a dying star, was detected by the Swift satellite using on-board gamma-ray and X-ray instruments. A flurry of activity led to the remarkable discovery that the event occurred roughly 630 million years after the Big Bang. This makes GRB 090423 the most distant known event!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Media scholar Henry Jenkins and Babylon 5 creator Joe Straczynski are doing a double-header at MIT on May 22, and it's open to the public. Sounds like a hell of a way to spend an evening.

Previously known best for his role as the creator of the cult science fiction series Babylon 5 and its various spin-off films and series. Straczynski wrote 92 out of the 110 Babylon 5 episodes, notably including an unbroken 59-episode run through all of the third and fourth seasons, and all but one episode of the fifth season.

His early television writing career spans from work on He-Man, She-Ra, and The Real Ghostbusters through to The New Twilight Zone and Murder She Wrote. He followed up Babylon 5 with the science fiction series Jeremiah.

Straczysnki also enjoys continued success as a comic book writer, working on established superhero franchises, such as The Amazing Spider-Man, Supreme Power and Thor, as well as his own original series, such as Rising Stars, Midnight Nation, The Twelve, and The Book of Lost Souls. He is also a journalist, publishing over 500 articles in such periodicals as the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Writer's Digest Magazine, and TIME Inc.

He was one of the first television producers to actively engage his fan community online and has consistently explored the interface between digital media and other storytelling platforms.

2009 Speaker: J. Michael Straczynski (Thanks, Andrew!)

Here's another look at Episode 7 of Make: television. Individual segments after the jump.

Bike along with Ali Momeni and his fleet of mobile video projectors that transform public spaces into massive sound and light shows. In the Workshop, John Park combines a used treadmill motor and PVC pipe to build a wind generator, and William Gurstelle tests hardware on a giant trebuchet. The Maker Channel features a balloon organ, a ball-fetching autonomous robot, and a lie-detector wristband.

Get the m4v, subscribe in iTunes, watch in HD on Blip

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Make: television | Digg this!

mariushm writes "After deciding to shelve metered broadband plans, it looks like Time Warner is cutting off, with no warning, the accounts of customers whom they deem to have used too much bandwidth. 'Austin Stop The Cap reader reader Ryan Howard reports that his Road Runner service was cut off yesterday without warning. Acording to Ryan, it took four calls to technical support, two visits to the cable store to try two new cable modems (all to no avail), before someone at Time Warner finally told him to call the company's "Security and Abuse" center. "I called the number and had to leave a voice mail, and about an hour later a Time Warner technician called me back and lectured me for using 44 gigabytes in one week," Howard wrote. Howard was then "educated" about his usage. "According to her, that is more than most people use in a year," Howard said.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alex and Bilal have been working on creating their part of a concert with no sound.

Waves and Signs: A conference and workshop on low-frequency vibration with a performance and dance party. _

A project by Wendy Jacob with students and faculty from MIT and Gallaudet University, school for the deaf.

Photo from Connors934 on Flickr

If you are looking for an exciting sensory perception tonight, head on over to CAVS!

Acting as a silent speaker, a raised floor at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies will be activated to insert low-frequency vibrations into the space of architecture. The floor will be used alternately as a platform, instrument, and stage for an event in three parts.

In the first part, the floor will be used as a platform on which to hold a dialog (in speech and sign) between artists, designers, scientists and students. In the second part, the floor will be used as an instrument in a workshop on resonant vibrations. In the third part, the floor will become a stage for performances and a silent dance party. This project is part of an investigation of the politics of experience.

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

Z80xxc! writes "Paul Thurrott's WinSuperSite reports that Windows 7 will include a built-in virtual machine with a fully licensed copy of Windows XP Professional SP3. The VM runs in a modified version of Virtual PC, and applications running in the VM can interact directly with the host operating system as if they were running on the Windows 7 installation itself. While details are scarce for now, it looks as if this feature will only be available as a (free) addon for Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7. Also, a processor supporting hardware virtualization will be required, indicating that this is perhaps aimed more at power users and corporate users, rather than consumers. Microsoft confirmed the feature last night."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ruphus13 writes "OStatic has an interesting article on remembering the first time you used Linux. Quoting: 'I'm not sure if the admission that I remember my first Linux installation much more clearly than any date with my first boyfriend or my first date with my husband is a really wise thing to put in writing. I will freely admit it wasn't quite as anxiety-inducing as a date, and the long-term relationship that sprang from it taught me quite a bit about myself, how I learn, and how to passionately load kernel modules at boot. So, what was your first Linux experience?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Picture from Landon Cox, 360VL, Inc.

Landon has a great site with loads of evidence from his hardware and software explorations.

Looking for a way to fly your Green Geek flag a bit? Check out the network controlled AC outlet:

The impetus for this came when I was at work at a client...their offices are about 70 miles from where I live. I have 3 servers at home which are housed in the crawl space under my office where they are out of the way, don't pollute my workspace with fan noise, and don't put out heat I have to live with. One of the servers wasn't responding even though I had network access to the rest. It was just dead and I needed to bounce it with a hard reboot but I couldn't given my geographical circumstances.

Using a $69 Linux embedded board (an Atmel NGW100), an AVR microcontroller relay board, open source development tools (WinAVR), and some home-brewed software and electrical elbow grease, I now have a system I can use to hard boot a server remotely.

Check out the rest of the site as well: Landon's stuff is eye opening. I found his site to be well designed, with lots of information on projects, past and present.

Particularly useful is the approach he takes to posting on his site:

When I'm working on projects, sometimes I build or create things to see if I understand the problems or issues. For that reason, a lot of it is temporary, has no particular purpose, but might be amusing or educational. That's what this site is all about.

This site's content includes topics on hardware, sensors, microcontrollers, software, firmware, techniques I've used or discovered. It's really a stash for things I'm learning and want to share or just keep around for reference.

This is kind of like having an open notebook so that the world can see your projects, maybe long after you have moved on to the next shiny thought. By providing ourselves with a place to park our ideas while they are hot, we don't have to try and remember them later when other people get around to joining our interests.

I asked him for an update on the remote controlled power outlet project:

The project is still in use though because the servers don't belly up that much, it doesn't get exercised too much. If it was on a household device, that would be a different story. :-)

If I was going to do it again how would I do it differently? One thing is I would make the control between the NGW100 base station and the relay board a wireless link....not 802.11, but XBee. That way the NGW100 could be located more easily with my hubs and other internal wired network devices, but my servers, which are not in the same area, can still be controlled.

Would be nice to have a small web app running in the NGW100 to serve outlet status.

So, a little bit of hardware change. More software features.

Your work does not have to be complete to show it off. The process and the individual steps are valuable in themselves. Somebody else may be inspired to take your idea in a new direction, or maybe you will want to come back to it months or even years later. If you are willing to show off your documentation process, please share it with us in the comments.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

On this day in way back in 1874 Marchese Guglielmo Marconi was born. At the beginning of the 20th century he played a pivotal role in the development of wireless communication. By incorporating and refining preexisting technologies, Marconi's radiotelegraph sent messages over unprecedented distances. In 1902 his experimental transmissions made it all the way across the atlantic ocean. Marconi's developments most benefitted seagoing vessels of the era - perhaps most famously in 1912 when messages sent from the Titanic's "Marconi room" brought the aid of others. But these historical achievements all trace back to an attic Pontecchio, Italy, where Marconi began his research years before, tinkering and building his own equipment.

The Marconi Collection at the Museum of Science, Oxford documents a variety of equipment produced by the Marconi Co. like the above induction coil. For more info on the man and his life, be sure to visit the relevant entry on Wikipedia.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

Red Leader. writes "MAYA Design just released an excerpt from one of their forthcoming books as a white paper. The paper offers a different perspective on cloud computing. Their view is that cloud computing, as currently described, is not that far off from the sort of thinking that drove the economic downturn. In effect, both situations allowed radical experiments to be performed by gigantic, non-redundant entities (PDF). This is dangerous, and the paper argues that we should insist on decentralized, massively-parallel venues until we understand a domain very, very well. In the information economy, this means net equality, information liquidity, and radically distributed services (and that's pretty much the opposite of 'cloud computing' as described today). While there is still hope for computing in the cloud, it's hard not to wonder if short-term profits, a lack of architectural thinking about security and resilience, and long-term myopia aren't leading us in the wrong direction."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the policemen who participated in the assaults on the London G20 protesters had earlier posted to his facebook that he couldn't "wait to bash some long haired hippys."

The police officer's profile page on social networking site Facebook contained a message apparently written by Pc Ward at 2017 BST on 1 April.

It stated: "Rob Ward can't wait to bash some long haired hippys up @ the G20."

Twenty minutes later another Facebook user posted a reply that said: "Dats bad but good in da same way lol [laugh out loud]."

Pc 'eager to hit G20 protesters'

An anonymous reader writes "Slate argues that we're going about verifying humans on the Web all wrong: 'As Alan Turing laid out in the 1950 paper that postulated his test, the goal is to determine whether a computer can behave like a human, not perform tasks that a human can. The reason CAPTCHAs have a term limit is that they measure ability, not behavior. ... the random, circuitous way that people interact with Web pages — the scrolling and highlighting and typing and retyping — would be very difficult for a bot to mimic. A system that could capture the way humans interact with forms algorithmically could eventually relieve humans of the need to prove anything altogether.' Seems smart, if an algorithm could actually do that."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Intellectual Property Colloquium, a podcast for lawyers, has a one-hour show up about the reasons that DRM is the most reviled consumer technology in the market today. It includes interviews with Ed Felten and Randy Picker, testimony from the FTC's DRM hearings, and is hosted by UCLA Law's Doug Lichtman. Fascinating listening that makes a good stab at unpicking the tech and the law of DRM.

Everyone Hates DRM

MP3 download

(via EFF Deep Links)

Mary sez, "The Diamonds of Metro Valley is a DIY feature film, made almost entirely on green screen, with full scale people and small-scale, hand-made models, sets costumes, props etc. We completed special effects in After Effects shot-by-shot. The plot of DMV is inspired by diamond heist films of the 1970's, but with an added tinge of the retro-futuristic. Some exciting sequences include a twelve inch robot growing to the height of a three story building, numerous gun-battles and explosions, and a thirteen minute car chase created with model cars on a green screen conveyor belt, composited with live action. It's taken us almost 4 years from start to finish, as each scene in DMV has multiple design and digital effects elements, but we think this effectively contributes to the unique look of the project. We expect to be done in a couple months. The site has our trailer, a synopsis and some info on the main characters. "

The Diamonds of Metro Valley (Thanks, Mary!)

Todd Vanderlin is working on using AR markers with OpenFrameworks to use a real record to scratch virtually. Check out the video or his Flickr set.

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

Al writes "Tech Review has an article about the progress being made on prosthetic arms that can be controlled using nerves that once connected to the missing limb via muscles in the chest. Todd Kuiken, director of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago's Center for Bionic Medicine has pioneered the technique, which has so far given more than 30 patients the ability to control a mechanical prosthetic simply by thinking about moving their old arm. Those who have had the procedure report using their arm to slice hot peppers, open a bag of flour, put on a belt, operate a tape measure, or remove a new tennis ball from a container. The next step is to add sensing capabilities to the arms so that this information can be fed back to the reconnected nerves."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's a huge shame, but the EU Parliament has voted to extend copyright on performances from 50 to 70 years despite the fact that this breaks the deal made with the public, goes against the entire purpose of copyright law and has been shown to cause significant harm to the music business. The various member states still need to agree to this individually, but it's ridiculous that it could even get this far. This is a huge boost for some record labels and some big name musicians, who will simply pad their earnings at the expense of new and struggling musicians. If you want a sense of how ridiculous the whole thing is, just read this section of the linked article:

The measure must still be passed by individual countries, and even if this is done by this summer, only recordings made in the 50 years before that point will qualify for the extended copyright.

This means that Sir Cliff [Richard] will lose control of income from his first hit, Move It, as well as from Living Doll, his fourth single, written by Lionel Bart and recorded in late April 1959, which sealed Cliff's place as Britain's answer to Elvis Presley.

This will not necessarily dismay him. Sir Cliff was unavailable for comment yesterday at his holiday retreat in Barbados, but when he travelled to Brussels last year for talks on the proposals he said: "I'm absolutely fed up with singing Living Doll but I have sung it constantly since 1959 because every time I sing it live, it generates sales of the original record and royalties to me."

Poor Cliff Richard. He's at his holiday retreat in the Bahamas, consoling himself over the fact he no longer has to sing a song he hates just to generate royalty checks... but his other songs from 50 years ago will just keep paying off.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The latest joke of a lawsuit from Hollywood, over Real Networks' RealDVD software, began today. The movie studios were actually able to get the judge to close the courtroom and kick out the press, despite not following the normal procedures to request such a move. If you haven't followed the case at all, basically Hollywood is suing RealNetworks for making software that allows you to back up your own DVDs, though it places significant limitations on them. What's really odd about this is that there are tons of free DVD rippers out there that put no restrictions whatsoever. In Real's case, it puts significant limitations on the backup copies -- and courts have shown in the past that making a backup of a digital good is accepted as fair use. Taking Real's product off the market makes almost no sense at all.

However, it seems like Hollywood's argument is based on the claim that Real somehow is using "hacker" technology in its product that violates the DMCA. It's not clear why using hacker technology should make the situation any different than having built your own. The MPAA is also claiming that there is no fair use defense to backing up a DVD, which is difficult to believe, given that fair use covers backups of music and software. What makes a movie so different? Well, the MPAA, of course, will claim (as it did in a previous case, against 321 Studios) that the encryption makes it illegal.

And that's where the problems come in. Thanks to the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA, an action that is clearly fair use (backing up a movie) becomes illegal not because of the backup, but because of the circumvention of the DRM. That should go against all common sense: if the action itself is legal fair use, why should it matter how it's done (or who made the software)? Unfortunately, we don't often see common sense win out in these cases... and the early reports from the court room suggest that the judge is siding with the MPAA. Perhaps this isn't a surprise. Marilyn Hall Patel is the same judge who declared Napster illegal as well, despite a strong safe harbor defense. In this case, she told RealNetworks:

"They have the copyright. That's the issue here right? They have the copyright. They have the right to exclude."

That's actually a somewhat scary quote from the judge who should know better. Copyright does give them a right to exclude, but a limited right, which is supposed to be weighed against the rights of consumers, including their rights to fair use for things like (drum roll....) making a backup.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Gamefly, the popular video game rental service that operates through the mail, has filed a complaint with the Postal Regulatory Commission about the high number of games that are lost or stolen in the mail. The complaint (PDF) asserts that the postal service's automated sorting machines have a tendency to break a small percentage of discs, and that preferential treatment is given to DVD rental services like Netflix and Blockbuster. "According to Gamefly's numbers, it mails out 590,000 games and receives 510,000 games back from subscribers a month. The company sees, depending on the mailer, between one and two percent of its games broken in transit. ... Even if you assume the number is one percent, and a game costs $50 to replace, that's an astounding $295,000 a month in lost merchandise. ... That's not the only issue — games are also stolen in transit, which has lead to the arrest of 19 Postal Service employees."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cheap automatic aquarium feeder on the go. - More DIY How To Projects

Zach, one of my 9th grade students showed me this last week.

Hey, maybe you should really mess with your fish by modifying this idea to feed them every time you download files to your thumb drive. It really could be feast or famine, depending on what your file habits are. If you want something more involved, then check out John Park's excellent VCR cat feeder build.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!

While The Pirate Bay ruling is now quite tainted, and about to go through at least an appeal if not a full retrial, it seems that the entertainment industry has wasted no time at all using the ruling to threaten a bunch of other sites, telling them that the're next if they don't shut down. In fact, some already are shutting down, as they'd rather not deal with a similar lawsuit.

Obviously, the entertainment industry still thinks it won this case. But, as we noted when the ruling came out, it's actually quite a loss for the industry, because it makes them think the legal response is working. Their reaction to the result highlights that. But look a bit closer at the details and you realize just how badly the industry is shooting itself in the foot (repeatedly). Lots of people have pointed to the fact that the Pirate Party in Sweden has rapidly grown in membership, making it one of the larger political parties in the country, and its political ambitions are growing.

But... even more interesting, as pointed out by Michael Scott is the news that The Pirate Bay itself has seen its own traffic and popularity grow noticeably thanks to the trial. Once again, the entertainment industry's strategy has only driven more people to find out about the site and what it does. What's amazing is that the entertainment industry should already know this. After all, what kicked this whole trial off was a big raid which briefly shut down The Pirate Bay, but which also put the site into the worldwide media, and massively increased awareness of the site... a trend that only grew as the press coverage continued.

By far, the biggest promoter of The Pirate Bay has been the entertainment industry itself. If the Pirate Bay guys owe the entertainment industry any money at all, it should be for all the promoting the entertainment industry has done for the site.

Meanwhile, as Hollywood stupidly celebrates all this as a victory, others are noting that the next generation of file sharing systems coming down the road will be nearly impossible for the entertainment industry to stop. The entertainment industry doesn't even realize what battle it's fighting, which is why it still thinks this trial has been a victory.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Congress is apparently holding hearings this week about behavioral advertising -- the controversial online practice of targeting ads to people based on where they surf. In the past, Congress has suggested that firms such as NebuAd that do this are breaking the law. However, it appears that AT&T may have been less than truthful in its own testimony. The company took a hardline stance against behavioral advertising that wasn't clear and set up as an opt-in approach. Yet, as MediaPost notes, a top behavioral advertising company named Audience Science, lists AT&T as a customer and has a testimonial on the site. When a Congressional Rep asked AT&T's policy VP who was testifying about the company (accidentally calling it "Audio Science"), AT&T claimed it didn't have a relationship with the company. When the MediaPost reporter asked Audience Science about all of this, AT&T's logo suddenly disappeared from the company's website.

Now, it seems quite likely that this is all a rather innocent mistake -- and the AT&T VP, Dorothy Attwood, simply didn't know about the company's relationship with Audience Science. AT&T is a big company, and certainly the left hand might not always know what the right hand is doing -- but that's a big part of the problem here. Even when an official company policy might be to avoid these sorts of things, there's as half decent chance that someone lower down on the totem pole has signed off on a deal to make use of these technologies.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

FP writes "On Friday morning, lawyers urged a federal judge to bar RealNetworks from selling software that allows consumers to copy their DVDs to computer hard drives, arguing that the Seattle-based company's product is an illegal pirating tool. RealNetworks' lawyers countered later in the morning that its RealDVD product is equipped with piracy protections that limits a DVD owner to making a single copy and a legitimate way to back up copies of movies legally purchased. This legal battle began with a restraining order last October which stopped the sale of RealDVD. More coverage is available at NPR. The same judge who shut down Napster is presiding over the three-day trial." Reader IonOtter points out that later in the day, Judge Patel sealed the court after DVD Copy Control Association lawyers "argued that public testimony of aspects of the CSS copy-control technology would violate trade secrets."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I like this slideshow of a runaway bull in a china shop supermarket. Apparently, the animal was relatively well-behaved, demolishing just some produce displays before heading back out the door. "'On the hoof' shopping Irish style" (BBC News)

Longtime recycling maven and CRAFT contributor Tiffany Threadgould is a busy, busy girl these days.

Besides running her really clever recycling and reuse company, RePlayGround, she's working on articles for Craftzine.com, writing a book, and is one of the stars (yes, I said it, she's a star!) of the new show Garbage Moguls, in which she works as a product designer for the company Terracycle.

The company is taking garbage and making useful things out of this trash, thereby robbing the landfill of more content. Terracycle is home to a lot of different personalities, who keep you highly entertained for the hour-long show. There's plenty of research and development, a look into the process of brainstorming, some bickering, flirting, failure, and some redemption to boot. Above is a shot from the show where Tiffany's not licking a cookie wrapper but a coworker named Albe doesn't have any qualms about doing just that.

And here's a preview of the show, which premiered this past Wednesday on Earth Day. You should definitely record this on your DVR-of-choice or tune in this Saturday, April 25th, at 10 p.m. Congrats, Tiffany, and we hope it's a flyaway hit (just like the kite)!

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