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.

First off, I want to thank everybody who has contacted me on this. You've all had some great questions. I'm happy to report that I've been able to find answers for most of them. Hopefully, this information is useful--or, at least, educational for y'all.

Second, real quick, I want to clarify that, despite my fascination with viruses, I am not on their side. My heart goes out to the people in Mexico who have lost loved ones to this illness. I also sympathize with people here in the U.S. who are experiencing varying degrees of fear over this thing. I would much rather be talking about the science of viruses as a complete non-sequitur with no news hook at all. But, as the situation stands, I find that information (and, yes, a bit of humor) is the best way to tackle fear.

Now, without further ado, let's get on to the questions...

1. Various Inquiries About Cytokine Storm and Whether It's Going to Kill Us All
The name "cytokine storm" basically describes an over-reaction of a healthy immune system, that causes the body to attack itself. It can be triggered by many things, including viruses, although it's not common for human influenza A virus strains to cause it. Researchers suspect the cytokine storm effect played a roll in the 1918 flu pandemic, and may account for why that flu killed so many young adults, when normally, flu kills people with weak or underdeveloped immune systems: The very young, the old, the sick.

Based on the ages of many of the people dying in Mexico, there's been a lot of concern that the H1N1 swine flu virus is also killing via a cytokine storm effect, with the implication that this flu virus will be as deadly as the 1918 version. But, according to Andrew Pekosz, Ph.D, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, it doesn't look like H1N1 swine flu is causing cytokine storms in its victims.

The most pressing concern with swine H1N1 is not its ability to cause more severe disease, it is its ability to infect large numbers of humans because we don't possess any immunity to this particular novel virus strain. With respect to Mexico, I don't know...nor does anyone as far as I can tell...how many mild disease cases can be attributed to swine H1N1. I suspect there are a lot, in which case the number of deaths (as a percentage of total number of infected people) would be comparable to what we see with seasonal flu. I have no doubt that people have died of respiratory disease in Mexico, but I think we need much more information about how many total cases there are before we can say how virulent the virus is.

In other words, unless information gathering later tells us otherwise, you probably don't need to worry about cytokine storm with this flu virus.

2. Concerning Those Little Surgical Masks...And Other Forms of Prevention
Surgical masks can aid prevention, but only to a point. Viruses can pass through standard surgical masks. You're better off using a specialty mask with the designation N-95 or N-99. Those are available online or at pharmacies. But even that's not perfect. The virus can live for up to 2 hours outside the human body and it's likely to be on any surface an infected person might touch after sneezing, or sneeze on directly. Desks, doorknobs, computers...lots of things. Hand-washing and keeping your hands away from your eyes and face (and, if you have the flu, staying away from everybody else) are still the best ways to prevent transmission.

And, about antiviral medications like tamiflu. Those drugs could, theoretically, work as a preventative measure. But, according to Christine Layton, a public health policy analyst with the North Carolina-based non-profit research institute RTI International, that would be a REALLY bad idea. She says:

Influenza (like other viruses) can become resistant to antiviral medication. When this occurs, antiviral medications are no longer effective. The best way to prevent the development of resistant viruses (or bacteria) is to use antiviral (or antibiotic) medications only when infected with a virus which will respond to the medication."

Another great way to keep from getting swine flu: Don't got to Mexico. The State Department has said that all unessential travel to the area should be avoided. Do what they say, here. Even if it ends up costing you some money on airline tickets, the risk of picking something up---and, perhaps worse, spreading it to family, friends, and everyone you share an airplane with---just isn't worth it. You don't want to be responsible for that.

3. What About the Symptoms and Which are Deadly?
You know how everything seems to start off feeling like the flu? This, too. In fact, the cases in the US have been, essentially, no different from a seasonal bout of flu, like those many of us have already had this year. You get a fever. Your nose runs. You feel like a truck hit you. Then you sleep for a couple of days, eat some saltines, drink some pickle juice*, and you're good.

Obviously, though, this scenario is going down differently south of the border. Some of you wanted to know what, exactly, the flu was doing to kill those people. I'm not having much luck tracking down specifics to these cases, but most likely, the H1N1 swine flu kills people in Mexico the same ways seasonal flu kills 36,000-odd Americans every year. Flu can interact with chronic illnesses (such as asthma or heart disease) to make the symptoms of those chronic diseases worse--sometimes fatally worse. A flu infection can also lead to pneumonia, which inflames the lining of the lungs and fills them up with fluid--making it difficult to breathe, and sometimes causing death. Dehydration from diarrhea, and brain damage from sustained very high fevers, can also kill flu victims.

Even if you do have flu symptoms, the chances of you having swine flu are pretty low, unless you've recently been to Mexico or spend a lot of time around someone who has. In that case, you should call your doctor, rather than going to the hospital or to her office. The best way to keep swine flu from spreading is to keep it away from the public.

And, finally, remember that it's allergy season. I've got a runny nose right now, but if there's no fever and you've still got the energy to go about your regular life, it's probably not the flu at all.

*Or is that just my family?

4. Will There Be a Vaccine?
Apparently, yes. But not anytime soon. Christine Layton tells me that there are companies working on a vaccine for H1N1 swine flu, but the lag time on vaccine production is pretty gnarly. We're talking 3-to-6 months before anything can get out the door, and that's with development and production being fast-tracked. Because flu viruses tend to pretty quick on the mutation draw, the "wild" virus will likely be different from the one the vaccine is modeled on by the time it comes out. That doesn't mean a vaccine won't work, though. Flu vaccines often work on a "close enough" principal. Basically, if the virus the vaccine is based on is similar enough to the wild virus, the vaccine can still help your body mount a defense. It may not prevent illness altogether, but the illness you get might be more mild that what you'd have come down with otherwise.

That said, there's also a distinct possibility that, by the time a vaccine is out, H1N1 swine flu won't be a problem anymore.

5. The $64,000 Question
Many people emailed to ask why a virus that appears to be killing people in Mexico is producing illness that barely warrants a trip to the doctor here. Baby, if I could answer that, my pay grade would be a LOT higher. This is really the big, central mystery right now. And while there is no shortage of speculation, the fact is that (as of this writing) nobody has any frackin' clue. There is, however, a World Health Organization science briefing scheduled for tomorrow. Maybe we'll get some preliminary answers then. But I wouldn't bet on it.

6. "I Have Taken The Amino Acid Sequence of H1N1 Swine Flu and Turned It Into a Piece of Ambient Music. Does This Interest You?"
Yes, Stephan Zielinski. Yes, it does. You can listen to Stephan's appropriately haunting, sad and beautiful composition on his Web site.

Finally, a quote to bear in mind, from Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, as reported by the (hopefully) immortal Canadian Press medical journalist Helen Branswell:

"Anybody who thinks they know what this virus is going to do weeks, months or years from now really doesn't have a clue what they're talking about."

It's possible to take this quote several ways. I choose to look at it hopefully. Let's take worst-case-scenarios--and the people promoting them--with a grain of salt for now.

soDean writes "The FOSS video player / downloader Miro is asking its users to support development by 'adopting' a line of source code for $4 a month. Each adopted line of code comes personalized with a little avatar character that will grow older over the year. PCF, which makes Miro, says they think the project is the first of its kind and they believe it's a chance to 'to have a truly bottom up funding base.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's always disappointing to see reporters who know better assume that patents are somehow a reasonable proxy for innovation. It's pretty common, even though research has shown (many times over) that the two are not linked. Yet, that hasn't stopped Business Week from fretting about the US losing its lead in patents, suggesting that it's a sign of innovation moving elsewhere. Of course, it appears the source for the story is also Ocean Tomo -- the same company that fooled a reporter into believing that patent sales would increase during the recession, just weeks before Ocean Tomo's own patent auction was a disaster.

The real reason for the decline in patenting may actually be buried at the bottom of the article: companies are realizing that patents aren't particularly cost effective, and they're cutting back, focusing on actual innovation rather than throwing money away on the patent system.

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Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we introduced you to Dell's new all-in-one PC; taught you how to buy Tamiflu online; informed you of a violent robot uprising;

Joel showed us a cool photo of a 1980 Citroën Karin, Lego-inspired candles, and Avid's new logo. Oh, and a hand-cranked vibrator too.

Rob told us about sucky netbook Hackintoshesand free Peek upgrades in NY.

We also had a special theme day on running. Steven and Lisa put on their new kicks and ran to drink more beer with the GoWear Fit, and Lisa ran to start training for a marathon with Nike Plus. We also reviewed trail runners and explored whether running barefoot is better for you. Joel, who doesn't like running, tuned us into the new Pumgo pedal scooter.

Also...don't forget to check out the stylish robot.

number6x writes "LinuxDevices.com is reporting that the Open Invention Network has posted the details of three of the eight patents used by Microsoft in the Tom Tom suit (which Tom Tom settled last month), asking the community for prior art. These patents cover aspects of the FAT file system. You can find them on Post-Issue.org — see numbers 5579517, 5758352, and 6256642. OIN CEO Keith Bergelt believes that these three patents are of tenuous validity and will probably not survive a review. Bergelt believes that there's a good chance that the USPTO may well invalidate them before the end of the year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wanted to give everyone an update on The Free Summit that I'll be emceeing next month. We've lined up most of the speakers, so check out the agenda. As already mentioned, Chris Anderson will be doing the keynote, talking about some of the concepts from his new book on "Free" (I'm reading it now -- and it's great). There will also be two panels that should be quite interesting. One of the things that we wanted to ensure was that the panels we put together didn't just involve people who all agreed with each other (or with me, certainly), so that the discussion would remain quite interesting. So, on the panel about music, we're having Jim Griffin (who I've certainly clashed with in the past) from Choruss, the major record label-backed attempt to come up with a new business model for licensing music, Gigi Sohn from Public Knowledge, the public advocacy group that has taken a strong pro-consumer position on copyright issues, and Dave Allen from the seminal band Gang of Four, a big advocate of "free," and who now helps plenty of other bands learn how to embrace and profit from "free." It should be an exciting discussion.

We've also got a panel on the news business, involving Kara Swisher from AllthingsD/Dow Jones, Dan Gillmor, the director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship as well as one of the first "old school" reporters to jump on the participatory media bandwagon, Alan Mutter, a journalism professor/investor/entrepreneur/former reporter who's been a vocal critic of newspapers' decision to go free online (calling it "the original sin") and Marshall Van Alstyne, an economics professor from Boston University and MIT who has studied information economics and who recently debated with Mutter and others on the Freakonomics blog about news organization business models. There will also be a session from Alex Iskold (another person I've disagreed with in the past) who will be presenting on "the dangers of free."

What's great about this is that it really is a mix of folks with (sometimes starkly) different opinions -- but who all believe quite strongly in their positions and are willing to discuss and defend them. I'm hopeful that what comes out of all of this will be some great new insights from all sides about what "free" means in terms of business models and economics today.

Finally, we're excited to announce that, as a part of this, we'll be including a mini-Techdirt Greenhouse at the beginning of the event. For those who have followed Techdirt for a while, you may recall we ran a series of "idea workshops" called the Techdirt Greenhouse, where individuals would do short, 5-minute presentations not as a "demo," but to discuss a challenge they were facing -- and then we broke up the audience into workgroups to take on those challenges and come up with ideas/plans/suggestions. Those events were a lot of fun, and we received a ton of great feedback. We've been meaning to start them up again (and we still get emails from attendees demanding we do so), but have been too busy to focus on them -- so this is a good way to sneak in a mini-Greenhouse, and also get us geared up to do a full Greenhouse again in the near future. In this mini-Greenhouse, we'll be focusing on the challenges associated with using "free" in a business model. It should be a lot of fun...

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The Narrative Fallacy writes "According to BusinessWeek, Verizon Wireless is in talks with Apple to distribute two new iPhone-like devices that are not iPhones. (Apple has created prototypes.) AT&T's contract with Apple, which has not been made public, is believed to cover all models of the iPhone, but only the iPhone. So if Apple builds something that isn't an iPhone — and perhaps doesn't even make cellular calls — they won't be violating their exclusivity contract with AT&T, which runs through at least 2010. One device is a smaller, less expensive calling device described by a person who has seen it as an 'iPhone lite.' The other is a media pad, said to be smaller than a Kindle but with a bigger screen, that would let users listen to music, view photos, watch high-definition videos, and make calls over a Wi-Fi connection. (And read books?) Apple could use the prospect of an iPhone-esque device as leverage to prevent Verizon Wireless from introducing the Palm Pre, or at least to delay its introduction on Verizon's network. 'The media pad category might go to Verizon,' said one person who has seen the device. 'We are talking about a device where people will say, "Damn, why didn't we do this?" Apple is probably going to define the damn category.'" Reader stevegee58 writes with word that Verizon may be playing both ends against the middle. Marketwatch reports that Microsoft and Verizon are in talks to develop a touch-screen mobile phone that would run on Windows Mobile.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We found it rather ironic that, just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy was so adamant about passing a three strikes law to kick file sharers off the internet, he was being accused of copyright infringement himself, specifically for using music from the US band MGMT at an event and in two online videos without securing a license. Now, you might hope that this would cause Sarkozy to rethink his stance on copyright infringement. Instead, it looks like his political party has simply agreed to pay up and make the issue go away, while still pushing for the three strikes law. It sounds like they paid about 30,000 euros, which is a lot more than the single euro that Sarkozy's party initially offered (yes, seriously). No word on whether or not this counts towards the number of strikes on Sarkozy's internet connection.

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The NYTimes has a piece analyzing the policy discussions in the US around the question of what should be the proper stance towards offensive cyberwarfare. This is a question that the Bush administration wrestled with, before deciding that the outgoing president didn't have the political capital left to grapple with it. The article notes two instances in which President Bush approved the use of offensive cyberattacks; but these were exceptions, and the formation of a general policy was left to the Obama administration. "Senior Pentagon and military officials also express deep concern that the laws and understanding of armed conflict have not kept current with the challenges of offensive cyberwarfare. Over the decades, a number of limits on action have been accepted — if not always practiced. One is the prohibition against assassinating government leaders. Another is avoiding attacks aimed at civilians. Yet in the cyberworld, where the most vulnerable targets are civilian, there are no such rules or understandings. If a military base is attacked, would it be a proportional, legitimate response to bring down the attacker's power grid if that would also shut down its hospital systems, its air traffic control system, or its banking system?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's Steven Johnson's TED Talk about The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, "his book about a cholera outbreak in 1854 London and the impact it had on science, cities and modern society."

Sarahsukulele plays "Object of the Game" on ukulele. (via Ukulele Hunt)

Previously:

• Zoe plays "Optional Accessory" on ukulele
• Clara Belle plays "Summer Face" on ukulele
• Danielle plays "Dream a Little Dream of Me" on ukulele
• Taimane plays "Eleanor Rigby" on ukulele
• Ukuleleaya plays "Crazy G" on customized cake ukulele
• Kate Micucci plays "Dear Deer" on the ukulele
• Shelley Rickey plays "Tonight, You Belong to Me" on her handmade cigar-box ukulele
• Charley sings a song and plays her ukulele
• Sophie Madeleine plays "The Beard Song" on ukulele
• Megan plays "You and I" on ukulele
• Misanthrope Jackalope plays "The Maker" on ukulele
• Diane Rubio plays "Lulu's Back in Town" on ukulele
• Brittni Paiva plays "Glass Ball Slack Key" on ukulele
• Janet Klein plays "Tonight You Belong To Me" on ukulele
• Karinne Keithley plays "Sweet Child of Mine" on ukulele
• Hawaii82 plays "In Your Hawaiian Way" on ukulele

The FCC, under former chair Kevin Martin, suddenly took a much greater interest in fining network TV broadcasters for "fleeting expletives" -- generally live performances in which someone uttered a curse word. Prior to that, the FCC had generally ignored such "fleeting" uses and focused on more significant violations. So, when the FCC suddenly changed its policies and fined some TV networks, they sued, complaining that the change was arbitrary. In 2007, an appeals court agreed, calling the policy arbitrary and capricious. However, the Supreme Court has now reversed that, saying that it's within the FCC's power to make the determination of what policy it follows in regulating broadcast content.

However, the case is far from over. So far, this part of the case has only focused on whether or not the rule change was allowed. What hasn't been explored is that, if the rule change is allowed, is that new rule unconstitutional (as a violation of the First Amendment). That's the real question -- so all this stuff about whether the policy was arbitrary and capricious was more like the opening act for the First Amendment headliner that's about to happen. The case has now been sent back to the appeals court, where the free speech implications will be reviewed.

In the meantime, I'm still wondering why the liability should be on the broadcasters in the first place. If Cher or Nicole Ritchie utter a curse word while on live TV, how is that the network's fault? Beyond just the free speech questions, I'm trying to figure out why the liability should be on the networks at all.

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Vigile writes "With the release of AMD's latest budget graphics card, the Radeon HD 4770, the GPU giant is bringing a lot of technology to the table. The card sports the world's first 40nm GPU (beating out CPUs to a new process technology for the first time), GDDR5 memory, and 640 stream processors, all for under $100. What is even more interesting is that as PC gaming has evolved it appears that a $99 graphics card is all you really need to play the latest PC titles — as long as you are comfortable with a resolution of 1920x1200 or below. Since so few PC gamers have screens larger than that, could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Guardian's article about pianist Krystian Zimerman's political rant on Sunday at Disney Hall in Los Angeles (he announced that he'd no longer play in the US because of US military policies) contained this interesting tidbit:

At least some of his opprobrium appears to be personal. Shortly after 9/11, his piano was confiscated by customs officials at New York's JFK airport, who thought the glue smelled funny. They subsequently destroyed the instrument.

Polish pianist stops show with anti-US tirade

CNet is running a contest to give away 20 passes to Maker Faire San Mateo, May 30-31, 2009. Here's what "Geek Gestal" columnist Daniel Terdiman says about it:

The event's organizers have given me 20 passes to award CNET News readers. And all you have to do to win one is tell me, in 150 words or less, how you would use DIY to remake America (the event's theme).

It's a broad topic, I admit, and I'm sure there are an infinite number of ideas that could win. But in order to pick the best 20, I'm going to turn to my celebrity judge, MAKE magazine senior editor Phil Torrone.

So, send your 150-words-max ideas to me at daniel(dot)terdiman-*at*-cnet(dot)com by May 8 (please include the words "Maker Faire contest" in your e-mail subject line, as well as your full name in your e-mail), and maybe I'll be seeing you at Maker Faire.

Win free Maker Faire passes from CNET News

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Over at Offworld we've got news that'd make any office lackey proud: ready to dump his mainstream programming job and take the indie game dev world by storm, Rom Check Fail creator Farbs turned in his resignation in fitting fashion, by creating a playable take on Super Mario Bros that said everything he needed to say. See the post at Offworld to play the game for yourself and find links to his other collected creative output. Take this ROM and...: indie dev quits mainstream job via Super Mario - Offworld

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Douglas Rushkoff says:

I just had an enlightening conversation with counterculture heroine/outcast Joanna Harcourt-Smith, on my radio show The Media Squat (audio stream). She candidly addressed her and Leary’s role in becoming informants for the government, all in the context of Timothy’s imprisonment and Bush-style torture.

I haven’t fully digested everything we spoke about, but thought you should know about the show right away. There’s some new material in here, as well as a new perspective on a particularly dark moment.

Joanna Harcourt-Smith on the MediaSquat

Akido37 was one of many readers letting us know that US Sen. Arlen Specter has changed parties to become a Democrat. This gives the Democrats 59 seats in the Senate, and 60 if and when Al Franken gets seated from Minnesota. However, Specter said in his announcement that he will not be an automatic 60th vote for breaking Republican filibusters. While the senator's move seems to have surprised many Republicans, it is understandable to moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who said, "You haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words of how they [Republicans] view moderates. Either you are with us or against us." Specter noted that in his home state of Pennsylvania, 200,000 formerly Republican voters switched party allegiance last year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barence was one of several readers to send in word that the UK Home Office checked whether its interpretation of the law suited Phorm, before issuing advice on the legality of the controversial advertising service. The Home Office and Phorm entered a dialogue about the company's services back in August 2007, at Phorm's request. In an email sent to Phorm in January 2008, a Home Office official writes: 'I should be grateful if you would review the attached document, and let me know what you think.' After Phorm made deletions and amendments to the document, the Home Office sent another email to the company stating: 'If we agree this, and this becomes our position do you think your clients and their prospective partners will be comforted.' From the BBC: "Baroness Sue Miller, Liberal Democrat spokeswoman on Home Affairs, told BBC News: 'My jaw dropped when I saw the Freedom of Information exchanges. ... Anything the Home Office now says about Phorm is completely tainted.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nate Heasley, longtime friend of BB and occasional guest blogger for BB Gadgets, wrote to tell me about an event that he's helping to organize called LaidOffCamp NY. It's a two-day event this coming Friday and Saturday that is all about "hacking the job search." On Friday the event kicks off with a panel discussion and networking reception, and Saturday there will be an unconference about how to bounce-back from being laid-off, whether that's reinventing yourself, going back to school, finding your next gig, starting your own company, or just figuring out what to do with your free time. The event is free (donation suggested) and there are still tickets available. Even if tickets run out there will be an open casual-networking event on Saturday evening at the John Street Bar & Grill. Those who might want to help sponsor the event, contact Nate directly.

While many people falsely claimed that the server troubles Stardock dealt with recently, due to unauthorized copies of its new game Demigod effectively pinging its servers, showed how Stardock's trusting (no DRM) model doesn't work, that was clearly incorrect. Even throughout the stories last week, the execs at Stardock didn't seem particularly upset or worried about the fact that so many unauthorized copies were out there -- but about getting the servers set up properly to handle the load. And, now, as reader Christopher Chapman points out, Demigod has debuted as the number 3 best selling PC game, suggesting (yet again) that you can get plenty of sales even when you don't treat your customers like criminals.

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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.

I'll admit upfront: I have no reason for posting this other than the fact that it is freakin' adorable. Well, that and the fact that my cats are probably using toxoplasma gondii to control my brain.

ericatcw writes "Some OpenOffice.org insiders say Oracle's purchase of Sun is reinvigorating the long-stymied push to spin off the open-source project into a 100% independent foundation. Freeing itself from Sun's (and soon to be Oracle's) orbit will attract more developers and more vendor support, two perennial problems due to Sun's tight grip on the project, say supporters, who wonder which foundation model might work best: Mozilla, Apache or Linux. Others prefer to take their chances under Larry Ellison, saying Oracle's take-no-prisoners salesforce and grudge against Microsoft could benefit OpenOffice.org. Version 3.0 of the Microsoft Office competitor has garnered 50 million downloads in the last six months."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The residents of Tuscarora, Nevada are getting ready to fight the annual invasion of mormon crickets with the power of Rock-N-Roll. Trial and error has shown that the crickets don't think much of Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. The residents circle the town with boomboxes at regular intervals to drive off the millions of crickets. "It is part of our arsenal. You'll wake up and there'll be one sitting on your forehead, looking at you." says Laura Moore, an unemployed college professor and one of the town's 13 residents. The crickets devastate crops, cause slicks on the highway and evidently love rap.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wall Street Journal has an article exploring an interesting lawsuit in New Jersey, concerning privacy of employee comments in a private forum outside of work. In this case, some workers at a restaurant had set up a private MySpace group where they discussed work, including patrons of the restaurant and their supervisors. It's the typical sort of thing that people always joke about -- in the past, to each other in person, and these days online. The whole thing was private, and a way of joking around/letting off steam -- but, of course, one employee showed a supervisor, who initially laughed it off. However, the news spread up the chain of command, and the employee, who initially revealed the group, was forced to hand over her login to the group, which was used by the restaurant's managers, who then fired the creators of the group. The fired employees claim that the info was accessed illegally, violating wiretapping laws. That may be a difficult claim to substantiate, and could raise questions about what constitutes illegal access to such info (after all, the only reason supervisors found out in the first place was because one employee voluntarily shared the info). Still, it does seem like quite an overreaction to fire the workers because of this group.

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nandemoari alerts us to news over at DSLReports that Cablevision will be offering subscribers 101-Mbps download service, a new US record. That's fast enough to download an HD movie in less than 10 minutes. The package, known as "Ultra," will launch on May 11 and will cost $99.95 a month. Upload speed is 15 Mbps and there are no monthly limits. Cablevision is also doubling the speed of its Wi-Fi service, which is available free to subscribers using hotspots across the Northeast. "...the company will be launching a new 'Ultra' tier on May 11. The new tier features speeds of 101Mbps downstream and 15Mbps upstream for $99.95 a month. That's an unprecedented amount of speed at an unprecedented price, suggesting that Cablevision just took the gloves off in their fight against Verizon FiOS. ... Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella confirmed for me that the $99.95 price is unbundled, and the new tier does not come with any kind of a usage cap or overage fees."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I found this Arduino project really interesting and educational. They used several different techniques to get everything to work properly. I love the disclaimer of "way too many technologies". How true! However, it's not always about the practicality of a project, as much as it's about the process and documentation.

Here's my latest project. It involves way too many technologies for the sole purpose of controlling iTunes with Wii Nunchuck. Signal flow is almost uni-directional, so let's go from step by step from the Nunchuck to iTunes.

More about using an Arduino and Wii Nunchuck to control iTunes

In the Maker Shed:


More about the Arduino Mega in the Maker Shed

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Cataline Estrada's Disarming Dreams show is opening at Iguapop Gallery in Barcelona, on April 30th 2009.

Catalina Estrada has made us used to traveling within beautiful oneiric worlds filled with colors. Worlds built out of the the warmth emanated from the dreamed land she always longs for. But the dream is broken by the cold lightning of Colombia's reality. Reality above reality they cover one another to hide and make us oversight and forget the weakest, the children.

Disarming Dreams looks for those children hidden behind the mist. These children to whom the alienation and madness of the war has condemned to float in the limbo as lost souls awaiting to be reborn, awaiting to awake and discover that they were fooled, that their rifle was always made of plastic. - Pancho Tolchinsky

Miracle Jones writes "In an interview with Professor (and former Microsoft employee) James Grimmelmann at the New York Law School, who is both setting up an online clearinghouse to discuss the Google book settlement and drafting an amicus brief to inform the court about the antitrust factors surrounding "orphan books," he revealed that Google will be able to moderate the content of its book scans in the same way that they moderate their YouTube videos, leaving out works that Google deems "inappropriate" from the 7 million library books it has scanned. The Fiction Circus has called for a two-year long rights auction that will ensure that these "inappropriate" titles do not get left behind in the digital era, and that other people who are willing to host and display these books will be able to do so. There is only one week left for authors and publishers to "opt out" of the settlement class and retain their rights or raise objections, and Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive has been stopped from jumping on board Google's settlement as a party defendant and receiving the same legal protections that Google will get. A group of authors, including Philip K. Dick's estate, has tried to delay the settlement for four more months until they get their minds around the issue." In related news, Google is seeking a 60-day extension to the period in which it's attempting to contact authors to inform them of their right to opt-out of the terms of the settlement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amy Crehore says: Here is a special deal for music and art lovers -

Two new artist-signed prints for only $50 each (plus shipping). "Monkey Love Song" features a ukulele and "Deja Vu Waltz" has a guitar in it.

There are only 75 prints in each edition.

Printed on Hahnemuhle acid-free photorag 308 gsm paper with the absolute finest quality printer using superior ultrachrome inks (by Sterling Editions). Comes in archival sleeve with free postcards and a certificate of authenticity. Each print is signed and numbered by artist Amy Crehore.

Ten customers will receive small, signed pencil drawings tucked in his or her order (numbers will be chosen at random).

2 new prints by Amy Crehore

Last last year, the EFF publicly blasted Apple for threatening a wiki site, called BluWiki, that had been set up by a firm OdioWorks to reverse engineer interoperability with iPods and iPhones so that those devices could work with other software apps (such as Songbird), rather than being locked into iTunes. Apple had threatened the wiki site with a DMCA violation claim, and the EFF pointed out numerous problems with the DMCA claim. Now things have been kicked up a notch, as the site, along with help from the EFF have sued Apple to have the site declared legal. The EFF argument points out that an open discussion site alone is hardly violating the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, but perhaps the more interesting argument is the fact that the iTunes DB file, which is at the heart of this matter, is created by each user independently and is not encrypted. There are two interesting arguments here. First, since the file is not encrypted, there is no encryption to circumvent, thus no violation of the anti-circumvention clauses. Second, since the file is created by the user and his or her own interaction with the software, Apple has no claim on the copyright of the file. If there's any copyright at all, the argument goes, it belongs to the user, and thus they should have every right to do whatever they want with it. This should be a lawsuit worth watching.

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(MP4 download here). TechShop founder Jim Newton tells Boing Boing, "I'm very excited to tell you that TechShop Portland is now open!"

And that's great news for tinkerers, builders, and makers in Oregon. TechShop is an open-access public workshop that's kind of like a health club with heavy machinery and sparks instead of treadmills. Tinkerers, inventors, and hackers pay a membership fee, and in turn receive access to professionally-maintained gear, workshops, mentors, and a community of like-minded makers.

Above, a Boing Boing TV episode from 2008 in which we visited the first TechShop site in Silicon Valley, which has been open now for several years. Jim Newton, who is a lifetime maker, veteran BattleBots builder and former MythBuster, says they plan to open a number of locations around the US -- and eventually, the rest of the world.

Here's the original Boing Boing TV blog post, with more about TechShop.

Jim Newton and the TechShop folks explain:

TechShop is a 33,000 square foot membership based workshop that provides members with any skill level to have access to tools and equipment, instruction, and a creative and supportive community of like minded people so you can build the things you have always wanted to make.

TechShop is perfect for inventors, "makers", hackers, tinkerers, artists, roboteers, families, entrepreneurs, youth groups, FIRST robotic teams, crackpots, arts and crafts enthusiasts, and anyone else who wants to be able to make things that they dream up but don't have the tools, space or skills.

Here's more on the newly opened TechShop in Portland, Oregon.

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.

yahyamf writes "I have a lot of free educational content in the form of audio lectures and text, which I'd like to translate into as many languages as possible. I would also want to transcribe the audio and create audiobooks from the text. There are already several volunteers willing to contribute, but I need some web based software to manage all the work. Facebook is already doing something like this, but it is only for their content. I've also looked at Damned Lies, which is part of the Gnome project, but it doesn't seem to handle audio. Are their any other open source translation projects out there that I can customize and build upon?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brian Lawrence of GE's holographic project, explains how his team designed a system that stores 500GB on a single DVD.

Artist Daito Manabe shows off his LED enhanced smile. (Via Japan Probe)

Once again I have some money burning a hole in my pocket and I want to blow some (of course) on electronic gadgetry. And, as always, I turn to the readers of this blog for advice.

1. Is there a Linux or Windows equivalent of the Mac Mini? A headless, keyboardless, mouseless computer that doesn't cost too much, that isn't made by Apple. I already have three Mac Mini's, I love them, but I find myself interested in, even lusting for, an Asus EeeBox. Have you tried it? Do you like it? Any other choices?

2. For the same application, I've been thinking about getting a gamer platform, with a really fast CPU and lots of RAM. (An aside, the application is processing lots of text, which involves relatively little net traffic and doesn't require a persistent IP address. No need to pay Amazon $90 per month when I could buy a cheap computer for $300 and be done with it.)

3. I bought a Panasonic wifi webcam a couple of years ago, and it was pretty good, but it stopped working (maybe dropping it a few times had something to do with that). I want the same functionality without the wifi. I'm looking for Mac software that samples the built-in camera every minute and saves the result to a file. From there, I can write scripts to push it where I want it to go. Surprised to see this functionality isn't something Apple provides, but near as I can tell, they don't.

4. Still thinking about getting the FlipCam. That was the thing I didn't buy last time I tried to kickstart the economy.

Photographer/tumblogger Clayton Cubitt says, "Bolivia is the Saudi Arabia of lithium, the metal needed for the batteries that will power our electric car future. I saw this ITN report on News Hour the other night, and was stunned by the visuals and the story."

Above, the video report from ITN which ran on CNN. Below, snip from transcript for the related PBS NewsHour discussion:

Half a world away, Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, is going for a drive in an electric car. The French auto magnate, Vincent Bollore, whose company has developed the vehicle is showing him the prototypes.

Morales is a socialist determined to uphold the rights of Bolivia's indigenous people. He says the Americans are all imperialists, so the Frenchman sees an opportunity to win favor and get the lithium.

VINCENT BOLLORE, French businessman (through translator): It's you who controls the raw materials for the 21st and 22nd centuries. You're like Saudi Arabia. It's you.

LINDSEY HILSUM: In the Bolivian capital La Paz, they're dreaming about that pot of gold. A new socialist constitution says foreign companies exploiting the country's natural resources must reinvest all profits in Bolivia.

LUIS ALBERTO ECHAZU, Bolivian minister of mining (through translator): Any company which would like to work with us will have to develop industries here, otherwise there's nothing. It's very simple: We will not continue exporting raw materials for another 500 years. That is over.

Bolivia's Lithium Resources May Prove Hot Commodity (PBS NewsHour)

It's getting rather ridiculous to keep seeing companies offer "unlimited" services, only to later find out that they're not unlimited at all. Yakko Warner points out that this just happened to one guy in Pennsylvania, who along with a friend, tried to beat the world record for most text messages in a month (182,000) by messaging each other back and forth. They figured they were fine, because they each had unlimited text messaging plans, but after one of them sent 140,000 messages, he received a bill for $26,000 and learned that, for T-Mobile, "unlimited" actually means 100,000, and those additional 40,000 messages cost quite a pretty penny. To T-Mobile's credit, the company has agreed to let the charge slide, but it makes you wonder why it has that cap in the first place if it's advertising the service as unlimited (and then ignoring the cap when people pass it). Why not actually remove the limit?

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marpot writes "Does your school/university check your homeworks/theses for plagiarism? Nowadays, probably Yes, but are they doing it properly? Little is known about plagiarism detection accuracy, which is why we conduct a competition on plagiarism detection, sponsored by Yahoo! We have set up a corpus of artificial plagiarism which contains plagiarism with varying degrees of obfuscation, and translation plagiarism from Spanish or German source documents. A random plagiarist was employed who attempts to obfuscate his plagiarism with random sequences of text operations, e.g., shuffling, deleting, inserting, or replacing a word. Translated plagiarism is created using machine translation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeffkrulik says:

From the voluminous shelves of the National Archives, here are vintage Swine Flu PSAs from 1976.

For those who don't remember the great swine flu scare, here's a website I just googled.

(Thanks, Gord!)

graffiti archaeology
urban curators
m-city
glyphiti
geek graffiti 2007
hektor
stencilry
wk interact
written on the city
dan witz
park(ing) day

Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

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.

Note: No Mormons are mocked in the making of this posting.

In a Linda Richman-esque turn of events, Mormon crickets are neither Mormon, nor crickets. In reality, they're katydids whose religious proclivities (if any) remain unknown. The bugs' association with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints comes from stories told by early Mormon settlers in Utah about how thousands of the creatures swarmed in to devastate crops before being miraculously stopped by the arrival of a pack of ravenous seagulls. God worked in mysterious ways.

And continues to do so, apparently. Mormon crickets are still a periodic threat to farmers out west. Every so often (possibly prompted by weather patterns, but nobody's exactly sure), millions of Mormon crickets will band together into a pack--dense as 100 bugs per square meter--and march forward, devouring every scrap of plant life in their path. The flood of bugs can be nigh-on impossible to staunch. Besides eating up crops and lawns, they've been known to stop traffic, and come stomping right through people's homes. Discover magazine's Discoblog quotes a resident of Tuscarora, Nevada:

You'll wake up and there'll be one sitting on your forehead, looking at you

And you thought the scutigera coleoptrata was bad.

But the townsfolk of Tuscarora have found a Mormon cricket defense system almost as miraculous as the bugicidal seagull brigade. They blast the pests with rock. Yes, much like Manuel Noriega, the Tuscarorans claim Mormon crickets can be beaten into submission via thrashing guitar solos. According to Discoblog, entomologists aren't sure why this works, or even if it actually does. Although, if bugs really don't like Led Zeppelin, that would explain why my house was suddenly pest free that summer the neighbor kid spent learning "Smoke on the Water".

Interestingly, Mormon crickets have also invaded Washington D.C. political discourse. According to the Washington Post, a $1 million earmark, meant to help farmers protect their livelihoods from the all-devouring Mormon cricket masses, has been publicly mocked as unnecessary pork by none other than John McCain's Twitter account, which asked:

Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?

Image is provided by Katie Madonia, and was taken in Nevada in 2006.

Theo Watson just wrote an iPhone app to simulate spinning vinyl by spinning your phone. He writes:

The app uses the accelerometer of the ipod touch to control the speed of a ‘vinyl record’ on the ipod screen. Slowing down the record and speeding it up is just a matter of controlling how fast you spin the device. Next up scratching!

Made with openFrameworks.

More:

AR tag record scratching

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Hugh Pickens writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed suit against Apple to defend the First Amendment rights of BluWiki, a noncommercial, public Internet 'wiki' site operated by OdioWorks. Last year, BluWiki users began a discussion about making some Apple iPods and iPhones interoperate with software other than Apple's iTunes. Apple lawyers demanded removal of the content (pdf) sending a letter to OdioWorks, alleging that the discussions constituted copyright infringement and a violation of the DMCA's prohibition on circumventing copy protection measures. Fearing legal action by Apple, OdioWorks took down the discussions from the BluWiki site but has now filed a lawsuit to vindicate its right to restore those discussions (pdf) and seeking a declaratory judgment that the discussions do not violate any of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and do not infringe any copyrights owned by Apple. 'I take the free speech rights of BluWiki users seriously,' said Sam Odio, owner of OdioWorks. 'Companies like Apple should not be able to censor online discussions by making baseless legal threats against services like BluWiki that host the discussions.'" Random BedHead Ed adds ZDNet quotes EFF's Fred von Lohmann, who says that this is an issue of censorship. 'Wikis and other community sites are home to many vibrant discussions among hobbyists and tinkerers. It's legal to engage in reverse engineering in order to create a competing product, it's legal to talk about reverse engineering, and it's legal for a public wiki to host those discussions.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our pal Eric Gradman came up with a cool augmented reality set-up for an event which poses the musical question: If you put all sorts of personal information on your Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter accounts, would you want to walk around in the real world with that data literally hanging over your head? He writes:

I installed this device at an event I help run every month. When people registered for the event in advance, I asked them for their Facebook and Twitter IDs, and then collected as much information as I could about them before the event. Then at the event, everyone got a custom badge with a sort of 2D barcode. I used face tracking and superimposed their personal data in a thought bubble over their head.

The Cloud Mirror

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Recently on Offworld we saw Keita 'Katamari' Takahashi's Noby Noby Boy finally prepped for its first major update, with details of hair, bird, and marimba-based enhancements, and a new mode officially called, uh, 'Fart Boy.' We also saw the first video of Flashbang's GDC Experimental Gameplay session entry Shadow Physics, in which one hand controls a light source in a 3D space casting shadows on a back wall, while the other controls a shadow figure playing a 2D platformer inside that shadow. Elsewhere we saw lilt line, a new iPhone game described as a "retro rhythm racing beat 'em up action game with a dubstep flavour," listened to new chiptune/game music streaming radio feed 8bit FM, saw Daft Punk come to LittleBigPlanet, and got a sneak peek at the latest games from auteur and fantastically prolific Swedish indie dev Cactus. Finally we saw King of Kong documentary star Steve Wiebe set a new world record, coveted retro-clash Monster Hunter T-shirts and custom Bubble Bobble vinyl toys, assembled Castle Crashers papercraft, and, best of all, downloaded the new free Lite version of iPhone favorite game Drop7 -- and, with a new gameplay mode, it's an essential download for owners of the full game, too.

Jeanne sent in news of yet another overly aggressive trademark claim, this time on a blogger who just so happened to use the phrase "feel the fear and do it anyway" in a blog post. Apparently, that's also the title of some book that neither I nor the blogger in question has ever heard of -- but the author's lawyers insisted that since the title is trademarked, the blogger needed to add the (R) symbol after his quote, and include a message claiming "This is the registered trademark of Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. and is used with her permission." The blogger, Leo Babauta, has decided not to give in, pointing out how ridiculous it is to "privatize the English language" this way:

I find it unbelievable that a common phrase (that was used way before it was the title of any book) can be trademarked. We're not talking about the names of products... we're talking about the English language. You know, the words many of us use for such things as ... talking, and writing, and general communication? Perhaps I'm a little behind the times, but is it really possible to claim whole chunks of the language, and force people to get permission to use the language, just in everyday speech?

Well, that's for the lawyers to figure out, but trademark law is only supposed to apply to use in commerce, and it seems like a stretch to claim the blog post is use in commerce (though, since the blog has ads, the lawyers might disagree). However, the fact that the use of the phrase seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the book again raises questions about how this could possibly be considered confusing or dilutive of the mark. Either way, Barbauta makes a point we've been trying to make here for a long, long time:

As an aside, I think the idea of jealously protecting copyright and trademarks, in this digital age, is outdated and ignorant. You want your ideas to spread, and you should encourage people to spread your ideas, not put up all kinds of boundaries and restrictions and obstacles to that being done. This blog, for example, is Uncopyrighted, and will always be free, because I want people to spread my posts and ideas. I think it's actually good for me as a writer, and it's (not insignificantly) better for the writing community in general if we can share each others' work freely. I'm hoping that with posts like this, and the good work of thousands of other like-minded people, the old mindset of fencing off ideas and language will slowly change.

Exactly.

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Canon has announced a service notice for its PowerShot G10 compact camera. It addresses the appearance of lines in certain images shot with a specific batch of G10's. Affected cameras can be identified by their serial numbers, where the 4th and 5th digits correspond to the numbers listed in the notice. These cameras will be repaired for free by contacting the company's customer support center.

The BBC's Mark Easton has written a scorching blog-post about the Yarl's Wood detention centre, in which unsuccessful migrants to the UK are detained, including families with young children. Details about Yarl's Wood have come to light after England's Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green produced a report on the treatment of children there. Many of these children have spent their entire lives in the UK.

Border and Immigration Minister Phil Woolas justifies the inhumane treatment of children by arguing that once their parents have been sent to the substandard, inhumane Yarl's Wood, it would be even more inhumane to separate them from their children.

Another alternative might be to treat all deportees in a humane fashion.

Predictably, the BBC's comment board is filled with anti-immigration bigots who argue that the children should blame their parents for turning them into refugees who sought asylum in the UK.

My father was a refugee, born in a camp in Azerbaijan, to Red Army deserters who used stolen papers to transit Europe after WWII and secure transport on a Displaced Persons boat from Hamburg to Halifax. When I hear people talk blithely about how their society owes nothing to refugees, I try to imagine how they'd feel if they and their children found themselves living in a war-torn disaster-area, a climate-ravaged desolation, the midst of an ethnic cleansing. I wonder if they and their families were the beneficiaries of foreign aid during and after WWII. I wonder if they'd sit idly by and let their children die of malnutrition, be kidnapped and forced into child soldiery, or face mutilation from land-mines because the alternative required telling a lie to the British immigration authorities.

I try not to imagine the people who make that sort of remark stuck in a place like Yarl's Wood, denied their fundamental human rights, their children denied medical care and education -- because I don't think anyone should suffer that way.

Not even xenophobic bigots.

What sort of country sends a dozen uniformed officers to haul innocent sleeping children out of their beds; gives them just a few minutes to pack what belongings they can grab; pushes them into stinking caged vans; drives them for hours while refusing them the chance to go to the lavatory so that they wet themselves and locks them up sometimes for weeks or months without the prospect of release and without adequate health services?...

One boy of 11 told the children's commissioner:

"There was this woman, just shouting, shouting at my sister to get up. She was in bed asleep and she's only five so she was crying and the woman just kept shouting at her. She didn't have to do that. The search was bad. Why did they have to search my sister? She is only five, what is she going to have? They touch you all over and they're rough. It's rude."

The report explains how some children described officers as taking pleasure in the family's distress, including telling them that they were "going back to their own country" and laughing and making fun of them when they showed signs of distress or anxiety.

One child said that an officer had called his mother "stupid" and laughed at her crying and distress, while others were told that it was "tough" if they didn't like the officer's attitude...

What's more, many of the children complained about the lack of "comfort breaks" on the long journeys to detention. This had led to "accidents" in some cases. A chance to go to the lavatory was apparently denied "even when the vans stopped for petrol and, on at least two or three occasions, access to a toilet was denied throughout the whole journey despite urgent requests to stop..."

Children in detention at Yarl's Wood (Thanks, JJ!)

Justin Schunick points out a video demonstration of a 3D input system which senses the user's hand position, but without requiring the user to touch a controller or wear a trackable position indicator. From the provided description: "Utilizing the theory of electrostatics, we have designed a low-cost human-computer interface device that has the ability to track the position of a user's hand in three dimensions. Physical contact is not required and the user does not need to hold a controller or attach markers to their body. To control the device, the user simply waves their hand above it in the air."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "As GE, Google, Intel, IBM, Microsoft and others pile into the business of computerized medical files in a stimulus-fueled frenzy, BusinessWeek reminds us that electronic health records have a dubious history. Under the federal stimulus program, hospitals can get several million dollars apiece for tech purchases over the next five years, and individual doctors can receive up to $44,000. There's also a stick: The feds will cut Medicare reimbursement for hospitals and practices that don't go electronic by 2015. But does the high cost and questionable quality of products currently on the market explain why barely 1 in 50 hospitals have a comprehensive electronic records system, and why only 17% of physicians use any type of electronic records? Joe Bugajski's chilling The Data Model That Nearly Killed Me suggests that may be the case."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Billboard is noting that Taiwan has passed a "three strikes" law for ISPs to kick file sharers off the net -- except it's not clear that's really true. While that's what the headline says, the details sound a bit different. Taiwan did approve an amendment to copyright law, oddly "based on the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision against Grokster." Again, from the details provided, it sounds like it's based a lot more on the DMCA than the Grokster decision -- and nowhere is it explained why Taiwan would update its copyright law based on a US court case... The law sets up a notice-and-takedown provision (again, this is like the DMCA, not the Grokster case, which was about secondary liability), requiring ISPs to pass warnings on to users. Users are then able to file counter-notices.

What's not entirely clear, however, is how an ISP is supposed to "take down" content that is hosted on a user's own computer, or even how/why it should be responsible for what's on a user's computer. Instead, it seems more like the law just requires ISPs to pass on notices from copyright holders, and then has a three strikes provision where ISPs can restrict internet access. That doesn't sound mandatory, and it's not clear what the definition of "restrict" includes. It still doesn't make sense why ISPs would want to restrict their customers, but as long as the law isn't mandatory, then it hardly seems like a problem. ISPs have always had the ability to cut off users if they wanted to, so this hardly seems like a change.

The other interesting element of the new amendment is that:

ISPs are not automatically permitted to disclose the identity of individual copyright abusers. Only if an individual user submits a counter-request to restore content previously removed can their personal information be furnished to the rights holder.

At first, that may seem like a good thing. ISPs don't have to hand over private info on a mere accusation. It would be great if plenty of other countries followed that. But, what's troubling is the second part, whereby if a user files a counter-notice, their info can be given to the rights holder. That puts a massive liability on anyone if they wish to file a counter-notice, and will almost certainly create a massive chilling effect scaring most people in Taiwan from ever submitting a counter-notice, for fear of having their private info handed out. That means that copyright holders can have pretty free reign in demanding takedowns, knowing that most people won't bother filing counter-notices in order to protect their identity.

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Here's a piece on the WowWee RoboCommunity forums about adding LEDs lamps onto the head-stalk of your Rovio. One of the criticisms of the Rovio is the rather poor camera mounted in the head. The lack of lighting on the head-stalk doesn't help. If you try and look up at something with your robo-head, and there's inadequate lighting where you're looking, you're pretty much screwed. Adding these two bright-white LEDs can help (or at least I'd assume so).

WowWee Rovio Hack: Head-Mounted LED Lights

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The NYTimes is running a piece on the dilemma faced by Web entrepreneurs, particularly in social media companies: the developing world is spiking traffic but not contributing much to revenues. The basic disconnect when Web 2.0 business models meet Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East is that countries there are not good prospects for the advertisers who pay the bills. "Call it the International Paradox. Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results. ... Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there. 'I believe in free, open communications,' Dmitry Shapiro, the company's chief executive, said. 'But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it's very difficult to derive revenue from it.' ... Perhaps no company is more in the grip of the international paradox than YouTube, which [an analyst] recently estimated could lose $470 million in 2009, in part because of the high cost of delivering billions of videos each month."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a robo-blimp that some students at Colorado State University designed. They score points just for coming up with the name infraLED Zeppelin. The article includes PDF build instructions and a complete parts list.

Gadget Freak Case 139: The Autonomous Blimp [Thanks, Phillip!]

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The world of supercomputing and artificial intelligence has always been fascinated with games like chess, Go and poker -- where evaluating strategies for winning could be approached using vast computational resources. Another historical challenge for AI projects is the classic Turing Test, which requires an understanding of human communication in order to pass the test. So it's interesting to see IBM starting a project called Watson (named after IBM's founder, not Sherlock's assistant) to create a computer to compete on Jeopardy! against human contestants -- because doing so combines the goals of natural language processing and strategic game planning.

Obviously, though, Watson is more of a product demonstration than a serious research project to advance the field of computer science, but it's still a brilliant move, nonetheless, since the effort can be understood by anyone who watches popular game shows, and at the same time, the project studies a practical problem for algorithms. However, the game of Jeopardy! is somewhat trivial (no pun intended, honest) since Jeopardy's given answers all have matching questions -- and it doesn't really require true comprehension to guess (apparently, human contestants respond correctly about 85% of the time). Granted, Jeopardy! is a bit harder to play than Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, but Alex Trebek doesn't seem quite as computationally demanding as search engines can be (unless you count the audio/video Daily Doubles?). Still, IBM should be applauded for supporting its research as eye-catching PR campaigns -- while other companies like Microsoft are getting more attention for downsizing their research divisions.

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PictureCode has updated the standalone version of Noise Ninja, its noise analysis and reduction software. Version 2.2.0 features a new Sidekick mode enabling external image-editing applications such as Photoshop Lightroom to send files for automatic batch processing. This update also fixes a bug in the Mac version.

narramissic writes "A Dutch university has received a $3.3 million grant from the European Research Council to fund 5 more years of work on a Unix-type operating system, called Minix, that aims to be more reliable and secure than either Linux or Windows. The latest grant will enable the three researchers and two programmers on the project to further their research into a making Minix capable of fixing itself when a bug is detected, said Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a computer science professor at Vrije Universiteit. 'It irritates me to no end when software doesn't work,' Tanenbaum said. 'Having to reboot your computer is just a pain. The question is, can you make a system that actually works very well?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Another gem from the Evil Mad Scientist lab: edible circuit diagrams that help you visualize the delicious results of your electronic experiments: "Any number of chocolate-bar-like foods can be made into edible versions of integrated circuits. Kit Kat, Twix, and Mini Charleston Chews are small components that make good models of integrated circuits in long, skinny packages. Chocolate covered graham crackers are another good option. The aspect ratio is good for doing large-scale models of (e.g.) 8-pin DIP packages; These are the ones that we made into 555s."

Circuitry Snacks (via IZ Reloaded)

Newly released emails secured through a Freedom of Information request show that a UK Home Office official colluded with and offered guidance to Phorm, providers of illegal spyware that British Telecom infected its users' PCs with. BT deployed a secret test of Phorm that involved infecting its customers' PCs with the spyware, which then rewrote every web-page they viewed with BT's advertising, while gathering information on their browsing habits and delivering it to Phorm and its marketing partners. Subsequently, BT switched from running Phorm as client-side spyware and instead implemented it as a server-side spyware app that captured every web-page visited by affected BT subscribers and inserted BT ads and captured users' clickstreams for BT's marketing partners. The EU has initiated legal action against Phorm for violating European privacy and consumer-protection laws.

Now it transpires that a UK Home Office official provided guidance to Phorm, offering advice on how to skirt British law with a minimum of fuss, tenderly asking if the Phorm executives and partners could be "comforted" by Home Office assurances.

This is the same Home Office that has taken extraordinary measures to make Britain "secure," including inveigling UK ISPs into spying on their users' clicks, IMs, and emails, ordering them to retain all this personal information for years so that government snoops can consult it at will. They have also ushered in an unparalleled surveillance state characterized by CCTVs on every corner; illegal, indefinite DNA-logging of people who are exonerated of crimes (including children); they also attempted to exempt Members of Parliament from having to disclose the details of their expenses to the public.

It's hard to imagine the Home Office failing worse at protecting the public.

In an e-mail dated August 2007, an unnamed Home Office official wrote to Phorm's legal representative and said: "My personal view accords with yours, that even if it is "interception", which I am doubtful of, it is lawfully authorised under section 3 by virtue of the user's consent obtained in signing up to the ISPs terms and conditions..."

The Home Office official wrote to Phorm: "If we agree this, and this becomes our position do you think your clients and their prospective partners will be comforted."

Jim Killock, executive director of privacy campaigners, the Open Rights Group, said: "The Home Office's job is to uphold the law: not to reinterpret it for commercial interests. It's extraordinary, when you think of the blatant disregard Phorm showed towards UK laws in its secret trials, that this sort of lax attitude should be shown."

Home Office 'colluded with Phorm'

I just came across this really interesting instructable about controlling motors with the Arduino. It looks like a really simple, and cheap, way to use an L293D chip for use in robotics. Check out the link for all the details and code.

After long research and trial and error, I have came up to a new walkthrough regarding this nice chip, the L293D.Each project is one project and each one has its own unique power configurations, so you must be aware of the best battery choice and how to distribute voltage through your robot.

More about Controlling your motors with an L293D and Arduino

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino

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Arash and Kelly say, "Being full of ideas to make things and with the current downturn being so turbulent, we are offering three of our lampshade designs for you to spend time making, hacking, modifying and improving free of charge! You download the plans and make the lightshades using an A1 sheet, scissors, stapler and ruler.... Trace the designs and make them in your own time, with your own hands for free for yourself, loved ones and friends."

Illuminati (Thanks, Arash and Kelly!)

The British government says it has dropped its plans to create a central database "of all phone calls, e-mails and websites visited." Instead, it wants ISPs and phone companies to hold all of the info. A government minister says having all of the information in a central database represented an intrusion of personal privacy, and that having individual firms store it raised fewer concerns. That may be true, but privacy issues still exist; simply storing all the data in different places might mitigate some risk, but it certainly doesn't eliminate it. Meanwhile, the government wants to expand the data that communications companies must retain for 12 months, going beyond phone records and web sites visited. It also wants them to hold on to records of third-party information crossing their networks, including phone use and internet traffic from outside the country. And, to boot, it wants them to organize all of the data to make it easy for authorities to search. Two issues remain: first, again, throwing more and more data into the retention mix won't magically make the country safer, it just makes it harder to find useful data. Second, this seems like little more than a cunning political ploy to replace a pretty reprehensible plan with one that's only slightly less worrisome. The revised plan still raises plenty of issues, but hey, it's not as bad as the original plan, so it must be pretty good, right?

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

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judgecorp writes "Twitter is being criticized for spreading panic about swine flu. This is not just knee-jerk Luddism 2.0: it's argued that Twitter's structure encourages ill-informed repetition, with little room for context, while older Web media use their power for good — for instance Google's Flu Trends page (which we discussed last winter), and the introduction of a Google swine flu map." On a related note, reader NewtonsLaw suggests that it might be a good idea, epidemiologically speaking, to catch the flu now vs. later.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When we poached our Steven away from the editorship of Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, it kicked off a global search for an editor -- and now it can be told. Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, Steven unveils the new mutant at the helm:

I'm thrilled (and honored) to announce that I'll be handing over the editorial reigns at Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools blog to none other than writer, thinker, futurist, ranter Bruce Sterling!!!

I couldn't be more eager to read Cool Tools.

Bruce Sterling to edit Cool Tools

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Bruce Sterling's got some pretty good advice for understanding swine flu in perspective:

People freak out over "pandemics," even though we've got one of the worst pandemics in history, AIDS, raging through the carcass of the body-politic right now. Every once in a while you see a street demo or a charity show about AIDS. Carla Bruni is pretty big on fighting AIDS. Otherwise we just drop dead of AIDS in hecatombs, and the pandemic has become our business as usual. AIDS is an extremely fearsome disease, practically 100% lethal, yet it's hard work to get people to remain properly afraid of it.

*There is always some flu around and flu is always killing some people. Even when a raw mutant flu manages to kill off more people than a shooting-war, flu has never ravaged whole cities as cholera or the Black Death can do. As awful pandemics go, flu is like the snotty-nosed little sister of awful pandemics.

*So if you catch the new swine flu, you're very likely not gonna die.

*But since it is a flu, you're gonna kinda WISH you could die.

*You're not ACTUALLY gonna die unless your lips are turning blue, you have bad chest pains, you can't swallow water, you can't stand up, you're having seizures and you don't know where you are or what your name is. As this document suggests, you're gonna want to watch out for those symptoms.

Practical Tips for Combatting Swine Flu In Your Home

The Type Nesting Tumblr blog is a big ole repository of birds' nests built in sign-lettering, asking the musical question, "Do birds have a favorite font?"

Type Nesting (via Geisha Asobi)

(Image: Nest Egg by moocatmoocat (away))

Kevin Smith isn't just a great filmmaker, he's also a fantastic raconteur. Here he is telling the story of how he came not to make a Superman movie -- this is one of those classic Oh-My-God-Hollywood-Is-Full-of-Idiots stories, and Smith tells it like no one else.

Kevin Smith on Superman Returns (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Reader oxymoron alerts us to the news that Ireland has dumped e-voting machines, concerned both about the costs and the reliability and accuracy of the machines. It still amazes me that anyone is using these machines anywhere given the massive reliability and accuracy problems they've seen throughout the world. So it's great to see countries finally realizing that perhaps democracy is aided by actually having voting systems that people can trust, rather black boxes that make it that much easier for people to distrust.

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Just when you thought the retro vIdeo-game cupcake thing had reached its zenith, along come Trophy cupcakes with this Ms Pac-Man cupcake tableau to take it to a whole new level!

Ms. Pacman cupcakes from Trophy cupcakes (via Wonderland!)

David sez, "I recently photographed Art Fry, the inventor of the Post-it Note. After the shoot, I asked if he''d ever seen the Sticky Note Experiments video by Eepybird (the Mentos and Diet Coke guys). It turned out he hadn't. Well, I just happened to bring a copy of the video with me on my iPhone so I could show it to him. I filmed his reaction as he watched it."

EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

Post-it Note inventor watches Sticky Note Experiments (Thanks, David!)

Rhett sez, "This is what happens when you point 7 HD projectors on a building for advertising. Make the real world look like a video game."

The old mint in downtown SF painted by 7 perfectly mapped HD projectors. (Thanks, Rhett!)

The Locus Award shortlist has been posted -- this is the list of the best science fiction books and stories of the year, as chosen by the general public. I'm immensely gratified to say that I'm on the list three times, for my young adult novel Little Brother, my collaborative novella True Names (with Ben Rosenbaum), and my novelette The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away.

The whole list is a great jumping-off point for exploring the best written sf and fantasy of 2008!

2009 Locus Award Finalists

While taking a break from painting the inside of my new home studio/office this weekend, I tasted a glass of the blackberry pale ale that my friends and I have been working on for the past two weeks. The ale is a recipe we got from Brewer's Connection here in Tempe, AZ, and we added four pounds of frozen berries to the wort right at the beginning of fermenting (for a five gallon batch of beer). Freezing berries breaks their cell walls, allowing the juices to be released upon thawing, and the berries had to be "flash pasteurized" by pouring two pitchers of hot wort over them in the fermenting bucket before cooling down the rest of the wort. This sanitized the berries without ruining their flavor. The brewmaster at the store suggested using a fruit extract as an alternative, if we so desired. The color of the beer is just out of this world, and the flavor's pretty far up there, too.

Here's a review of the beer by RC, one of my brewmates' cat (photo by Matt Mets):

The first thing that I noticed upon opening the bottle was the sweet, delicate fruit aroma that had just the right punch of flavor to tease the palate and whet one's appetite. Unfortunately, the neck of the vessel proved impossible to drink from (neither head nor paw would fit), which meant that the beverage needed to be decanted to a more suitable container for tasting. After moving the liquid to a glass, the complex flavor of the drink was analyzed and found to have the same fruity kick as the initial whiff predicted, and was followed by light notes of hops, with a smooth finish. Overall, the the beer receives a rating of 9/10, with points removed for not being milk or heavy whipping cream.

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T-Mobile got a lot of press last week when it announced a new, tiny embedded SIM card to be used in connected devices like "smart" electrical meters. The new SIM is much smaller than the traditional stamp-sized cards, and the company says it can withstand exposure to the elements, making it ideal for machine-to-machine communications with outdoor devices, or in connected consumer electronic devices. However, The Register has a slightly different take on the new SIM, wondering if it's really driven by a desire to do away with removable SIM cards -- meaning T-Mobile could sell devices that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to use on other operators. As the site notes, the electronics on SIM cards are actually minuscule, but they're packaged in a bigger plastic housing to make them easier for people to handle. Theoretically, T-Mobile could use the new, smaller SIM in devices instead of today's standard SIMs, and encourage manufacturers to build them in such a way so that the tiny SIM was essentially impossible to remove. This might not make a lot of sense for handsets, but for other connected electronic devices, it could prove very attractive to operators, particularly if they're subsidizing those devices. It should be noted that this is purely speculation at this point, but given mobile operators' undying love of trying to lock in their customers, it wouldn't be too surprising to see it happen.

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

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Given the amount of attention and anxiety around "swine flu," the H1N1 virus, I thought it might be helpful to ask a health care professional with experience in this area to write a guest post for Boing Boing. My friend Stefanie Fletcher kindly obliged. She is a registered nurse who spends a fair amount of time in Mexico, and is involved with efforts to work with Mexican President Felipe Calderon's cabinet to import vaccines for H1N1 from the US.

Stephanie wrote this guest essay with information about the spread of the disease, precautions to take (or not take), and some observations about nutball "ZOMG-WERE-ALL-GONNA-DIE-ITS-THE-END-OF-THE-WORLD" rapture websites. - XJ

Swine Influenza Update
Stefanie Fletcher, RN ( stefletcher AT earthlink DOT net)

April 26, 2009
6:00 p.m. PST

The outbreak of the H1N1 strain of swine influenza in Mexico calls for caution, but not alarm.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that, people in the U.S. infected with the virus have either traveled to Mexico recently or have been exposed to someone returning from the country. The CDC originally thought the virus was a straightforward swine flu virus. However after closer analysis determined it is a new virus containing a mixture of swine, human and avian viruses.

The U.S. government to declare a public health emergency, reporting that there have been 20 confirmed cases of swine flu in the United States as of noon today. However, there have been no swine flu related deaths in the U.S. and only one patient has been hospitalized. U.S. outbreaks have occurred in Texas, California, New York, and Kansas.

Dr. Jose A. Cordova, Mexico's health secretary, announced that as of Sunday, 81 deaths in Mexico had been deemed "likely linked" to swine flu. . Of the 1,324 patients who were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms, 929 have been treated and released according to Mexican President Felipé Calderon. Dr. Cordova has requested closure of bars, museums, theaters, and churches in Mexico City.

The United States has not issued any travel warnings or restrictions. However, the Canadian government issued a warning to travelers because the public health agency was "tracking clusters of severe respiratory illness with deaths in Mexico." Meanwhile, American, United, and Continental Airlines have all declared they would waive change fees for travelers with tickets to effected areas in Mexico.

What is unique is that the virus, having made the "jump" from animals to humans, is now being transmitted via direct human-to-human contact.

Keep reading after the jump for more on how this has developed so far, who's at risk, how to protect yourself if you are at risk, and websites celebrating swine influenza's outbreak as a harbinger of the apocalypse.

Stephanie continues:

Keiji Fukuda, acting assistant general for health, security and environment at the World Health Organization, stated, "it's quite possible for this virus to evolve and become more dangerous to people."

People infected with the H1N1 strain will initially suffer generalized flu like symptoms, such as:

* Fever
* Muscle and joint pain
* Sore throat
* Malaise
* Cough
* Difficulty breathing

This strain of flu may progress to a serious respiratory illness within about five days.

Traveling to Mexico? Make sure your vaccinations are up to date, pay special attention to hand washing especially after coughing or sneezing, covering coughs and sneezes and stay home if you're feeling sick. The CDC also suggests you pay attention to local government announcements and follow any issued public health guidelines on your trip. Watch for any signs and symptoms of the flu upon returning home.

Reliable sources of information regarding the H1N1 influenza virus are:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The World Health Organization. And in Spanish, Secretaria de Salud del gobierno de Mexico.

Meanwhile, the UNRELIABLE sources are in full bloom. Rightwing and survivalist commentary ranges from decrying the swine flu as a bio-terror attack (Terror Pigs?) to celebrating this as the beginning of the Rapture.

www.raptureready.com and www.sodahead.com are the two with pretty clear blogs/Q&A portions dealing with the swine flu and end of the world issues.

---

UPDATE, April 27, 930am PT: First, per the CDC this morning - there is no reason to get a flu shot if you do not have symptoms. The current attenuated virus vaccines will not protect you - so the mask, hand washing, being aware of surroundings/people w/ symptoms is the only prevention - or not traveling (for now) to Mexico. There is a mid-to moderately high chance this will reach Guatemala this week - but it is really hard to tell - depends on the numbers of people coming/going from Mexico.

Also, at least to Mexico - the State Dept. will be issuing a Travel Advisory for Mexico - all "non essential" travel to be halted....

-- STEFANIE FLETCHER
email questions or comments to: stefletcher AT earthlink DOT net

Less than a month after the announcement of Six Days in Fallujah , a video game based upon a real-life battle between US Marines and Iraqi insurgents in 2004, Konami has decided that it is too controversial, and abandoned plans to publish the game. The developer, Atomic Games, has not commented on Konami's decision other than to say an announcement will be made soon. Konami told a Japanese newspaper, "After seeing the reaction to the video game in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and e-mail, we decided several days ago not to sell it." While the game did receive a great deal of criticism, others were optimistic, including several outspoken veterans of the Iraq war. One of the major complaints was that in researching the battle, Atomic Games reportedly interviewed several insurgents. This prompted speculation that the insurgents were compensated for their help, though Atomic later denied that was the case. Konami's decision also may have been influenced by the fact that they seemed to represent it as entertainment, whereas Atomic's president, Peter Tamte, was more hesitant to describe it as "fun." He said, "The words I would use to describe the game — first of all, it's compelling. And another word I use — insight."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lucas Murgida at 667 Shotwell from Chris Sollars on Vimeo.

Wonderful short documentary about artist / cabinet maker Lucas Murgida. He talks about some of the fun things he's done with the furniture he's made. For instance, he once made a cabinet and placed it on the sidewalk and hid in it. His goal was to remain hidden until the cabinet was moved from the public space to a private space. He also set up a unique locksmithing class.

Lucas Murgida at 667 Shotwell

After a bit of a (very public) back and forth, a district court in the high-profile Tenenbaum case was recently told that it cannot broadcast courtroom proceedings online, saying that it violated certain rules. This is something that Congress could change... and it sounds like some in Congress really are interested in doing so. Rep. John Culberson, an early supporter of using tools like Twitter and Qik to communicate with constituents, apparently pulled out his camera phone in the middle of a hearing with Supreme Court Justices Breyer and Thomas and started broadcasting live to his website, trying to show them how easy it is to do these days, and why they should allow broadcasting of court proceedings in action.

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jangel sends us to WindowsForDevices.com for news on a prototype device created by researchers from Microsoft and UC San Diego. It's a USB-based NIC that includes its own ARM processor and flash storage, and can download files or torrent while a host PC is sleeping. As a result, its inventors say, the "Somniloquy" device slashes power usage by up to 50x. The device requires a few tweaks on the host OS side save state before sleeping. The prototype works with a Vista host but the hardware comprising the NIC is based on a Linux stack. Here is the research paper (PDF).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maker Ken Delahoussaye. (Photo by ROBERTO GONZALEZ, ORLANDO SENTINEL / April 23, 2009)

Tech reporter Etan Horowitz wrote a nice piece in today's Orlando Sentinel about makers in his area of the country. Ken Delahoussaye, a MAKE contributor, is profiled. Here's a snippet:

Some of his other projects include a motion detector that plays a sound or video on his computer; a remote-control robot with a camera inside; and a tennis-ball launcher made with electric-scooter motors, a battery used for jump-starting a car and other parts.

"The biggest motivation for me is actually the building of the project," Delahoussaye said.

"Once it's built and it works, there is a satisfaction in that, but the awe is gone."

Etan also has some extra material, videos, and offers some interesting thoughts about pulling the article together on his blog. MAKE magazine is, of course (yay!), mentioned, and there are links to some of Ken's articles and other pertinent Make: Online pages.

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Last week there was a fair amount of coverage of the fact that Canadian regulatory agency, CRTC, had revealed private data on its website. That story, by itself, is interesting enough, but the followup from the CRTC was even more interesting. It claimed that since the CRTC's privacy policy stated that any data you gave it was a part of the public record, it was fine:

Note that all information you provide as part of a public process, except information granted confidentiality, whether sent by postal mail, facsimile, e-mail or through the Commission's website at www.crtc.gc.ca, becomes part of a publicly accessible file and will be posted on the Commission's website. This information includes your personal information, such as your full name, e-mail address, postal/street address, telephone and facsimile number(s), and any other personal information you provide.

Fair enough, right? After all, the privacy policy states right out that the data will be revealed. Except... as we've noted in the past, most people falsely believe that if a site has any privacy policy, it means their data will be safe. This situation highlights this exactly. Most people assumed that the existence of a privacy policy itself meant the data would be kept private -- even though the policy itself says otherwise. Most people never bother to read the policy, and assume privacy policy = privacy. The truth, of course, was that the CRTC's "privacy policy" was actually a "non-privacy policy," but most people had no idea.

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