Slatterz writes "Acer's UK managing director has revealed the day that Windows 7 systems are expected to begin shipping. Bobby Watkins said that Acer will start offering systems sporting the new Microsoft operating system on 23 October, confirming earlier reports that Windows 7 would ship ahead of Microsoft's original target of early 2010."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's Jay's week for the source of inspiration, so I'm bringing a different topic to our weekly potluck of speculation about Rebooting The News.

Obviously we're going to talk about Twitter's suggested users list.

Last week: 1. Jay was put on the list, 2. Got the surge in new followers, then 3. Asked to be taken off, and 4. Was taken off.

You can see the effect on his follower count in this graph. I took a screen shot because it will scroll off over time. It's stunning. Very clearly, being on the SUL has a dramatic effect on your count.

We've talked about conflicts of interest among journalists, but haven't talked about the same thing for tech people. Mike Arrington tried to ignite a scandal around me over something that happened at UserLand in 2002, when I was on the vendor side (and a blogger, which is part of what blogging was and is about). I responded, not with a blanket dismissal such as "Vendors don't have conflicts of interest" -- because I believe they do. They can get themselves out of conflict by divesting and/or disclosing. I guess most people felt that what I did wasn't so bad, because the hatefest never came about, and Mike looked bad, as if he was trying to deflect attention away from an article I had written the day before, about the conflicts that arise from accepting a large gift from a vendor you cover, without disclosing it when you write about them.

Today we'll find out, from Jay, what it means for a professor of journalism, and for an ordinary human being to receive such a gift.

In the course of the public discussion last week, I said that if I were put on the Suggested Users List, I would ask to be removed, and if the request wasn't honored, I would delete the account. I don't want the distortion it causes. I don't see Twitter as an advertising medium, I am not a journalist and could ethically receive a gift from a vendor, even so I would refuse it. I don't believe that Twitter should be getting in the middle of the relationship between users of its service. That's sacred territory. This is a matter of net neutrality. Could someone like Mike, who writes passionately about net neutrality in his TechCrunch column, possibly not see this?

Anyway, all this is a preamble for where I want to take this, because while these ethical issues are central to the trust between writers and readers, the economics of the web are goverened by another conflict, one that is very rarely talked about. I'd like to get it out there.

Here's the story...

1. Google makes a lot of money from advertising.

2. If one were to define advertising, it seems to me you'd have to include the idea of intrusion. An ad intrudes on your experience, it's a sidebar, it's something you wouldn't think of on your own. If you're already humming my jingle, I don't have to pay someone to play it for you. Or so it seems.

3. As search gets better, it will obviate the need for intrusion. A perfectly targeted ad at some point stops being intrusive and starts becoming information. If you get me the commercial fact that I need at precisely the moment I need it, you don't have to impose on me, I will welcome that.

4. Google is in the business of getting you the exact fact or link that you're looking for as quickly as possible.

5. Its advertisers pay money to get you their link before you find one in the search results.

6. But if they're the same link, maybe the advertiser will stop paying? Or if the customer believes that a better link is in the first search results rather than on page 5 or not there at all? The customer, perfectly happy, never has a reason to go where the ads direct them.

Now, I know that there are other forms of advertising, ones that program you to think a certain way, but you don't see those kinds of ads on Google. Maybe they'll have to change, because as the search engine gets better and better, which it should (right?) the ads will play less of a role.

We know that companies don't always play fair.

There was the case of GM sabotaging the public transit system in Los Angeles.

A lot of companies profited from the war in Iraq. If you don't believe they helped get that war going, I have a nice bridge to sell you. Special price. Just for you.

Closer to home, the recent price drop in laptops, the netbooks, show that there was some kind of price fixing going on before that, a collusion between the vendors to keep prices high. So we know that the tech industry is capable of the same dirty economics as other industries.

When Google has to cut its own revenue stream by enhancing search, will they do it? So far the competition has made this easy for them, but just this week Wolfram Research has been wooing the analysts with their new way to do search. Maybe this isn't the challenger that will push Google to seriously upgrade search, if not, surely at some point it will happen.

I don't know how you feel, but it seems to me that search has been pretty constant for the last few years. It's been a long time since the quantum improvement that Google offered over Infoseek, Alta Vista, et al.

This week on the CRAFT blog we saw:

Incredible Electronic Dress Game Controller Cufflinks
Pimp My Swine Flu Mask
Tarina O-Ring Necklace
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Slatterz writes "All this panic over a strain of flu got these people thinking about some of the more virulent computer pandemics that have hit in recent years. While a computer virus pales in seriousness to a human outbreak, malware attacks can still take a huge toll on businesses throughout the world. This list of the top ten worst viruses includes some interesting trivia, including ARPANET's Creeper virus in 1971, how early attempts at copy protection resulted in Brain, and MyDoom's denial of service attack on SCO."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In Malawi, like in many other developing countries, the bicycle is king for transportation and cargo carrying.

The bikes we saw a few years ago were primarily Chinese or Indian manufactured. They looked like the old 3 speeds once widely available in the states. On the back of nearly every one was a sturdy steel rack, many of the racks were customized for load carrying. In 4 weeks in Malawi, I only saw one bike without a rack. He was probably riding it to the shop to have a rack put on it.

Regular people used bike taxis to get around. The passenger would sit on a padded cushion on the rack, hook his or her feet onto the axle and hold on. It was an amazing balancing act. The way that the Malawians moved such incredibly awkward, bulky and heavy things on their heads and bicycles gives me great respect for developing world athleticism.

They were probably all one speeders. Gears or changing hubs would probably break, and become costly or difficult to repair. Even the western style mountain bikes that I saw had the derailleur bypassed or removed and the chain shortened.

Often the bikes would have a simple set of tools tied onto the frame for emergency repair. In Mulanje I met up with an amazing man using a scratch built welder to fix bicycles and other steel devices.

To see more of my photos from this theme, click on the OnBike tag on any of the photos.

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/travel_places/Put_it_on_a_bike';

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Ant writes with this depressing story about how public schools sometimes work: "This six-page Los Angeles Times article shares its investigation to find 'the process [of firing poor teachers] so arduous that many school principals don't even try (One-page version) of the article), except in the very worst cases. Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare ...'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

kanewm writes with a snippet from Portable-Ebook-Reader.NET: "Samsung's new, highly portable e-book reader, dubbed 'Papyrus,' will be available in Korea in June 2009 and in the UK and North America sometime later (likely within several months)." As the site notes, though, this lacks some features of the Kindle, the obvious choice for comparison in the American market.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There's still time to start making or just watch this week's Weekend Project: Animal Detector . You can view the video here, or subscribe in iTunes to get all our Weekend Projects and PDFs delivered each week.

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It was raining on Friday, and I went for a long walk up and down the hills, very vigorous -- but I got soaked and so did my iPhone. After taking its last picture and uploading it to Flickr, it died. It wouldn't respond to attempts to revive it, so I took it down to the AT&T Store in downtown Berkeley and bought a replacement for $199.

My old iPhone truly was old, this bright shiny new one is so much nicer -- and faster. And the restore process worked flawlessly. Everything from the old phone was backed up on my Mac, and when I inserted the new one it asked if I wanted to restore it from the old image. I said yes. It took a long time, but I lost nothing, except passwords, which is the right way for it to work.

So now I have a new iPhone and where almost everything was broken on the old one, nothing is broken on this one. So the iPod functions work, and it can play videos -- the old one couldn't do eitehr of these things. All my headphones work with the new one, the old one had a non-standard jack for headphones (yes, I know I could get an adapter, but I can't manage to keep track of things like that, it was pointless).

But I still want to bring a music/video player with me because the iPhone, apparently -- can't multitask! If I'm watching a movie and it's going through a boring spell, or I just want to listen to the dialog, why can't I check my email or Twitter -- or look something up on Google? When I use my laptop I can do all these things and watch a movie.

And I'm reminded how shitty the keyboard is on the iPhone, and think it's a paradox that Apple's COO says netbooks have "cramped" keyboards. The iPod has the worst keyboard. Even if I type something correctly, there's a pretty good chance it'll change it to something ridiculous. When the Newton first came out people used to laugh at how it would mess things up. The iPod really isn't much better, but people stopped laughing. I wonder why? Cook is wrong -- my Eee PC has an infintely better keyboard than the iPhone, and you know something -- it costs less than an iPhone too.

Anyway -- net-net -- it's a nice new toy to have. In a way I'm glad the old one broke.

Vincent West writes with this excerpt from The Register: "Spy chiefs are already spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a mass internet surveillance system, despite Jacqui Smith's announcement earlier this week that proposals for a central warehouse of communications data had been dumped on privacy grounds. The system — uncovered today by The Register and The Sunday Times — is being installed under a GCHQ project called Mastering the Internet (MTI). It will include thousands of deep packet inspection probes inside communications providers' networks, as well as massive computing power at the intelligence agency's Cheltenham base, 'the concrete doughnut.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists say that sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate a huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River. Steven Goodbred, an Earth scientist at Vanderbilt University, says that size and distribution of material would require a high velocity wave and strong currents to move it, and it is unlikely that short bursts produced in a storm would suffice. "If we're wrong, it was one heck of a storm," says Goodbred. An Atlantic tsunami is rare but not inconceivable, says Neal Driscoll, a geologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is not associated with the research. The 1929 Grand Banks tsunami in Newfoundland killed more than two-dozen people and snapped many transatlantic cables, and was set in motion by a submarine landslide set off by an earthquake."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

A team of archaeologists, architects and computer scientists have put together the first fully comprehensive three-dimensional images of Rome's catacombs, using laser scanners. Which is both cool, and reminds me of a couple of underground adventures in Rome that I wanted to tell you about.

The Golden Palace of Nero
As you may or may not know, the Emperor Nero pissed a lot of people off. However, to use the words of noted archaeologist Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Nero also "gave the best parties, ever." The Domus Aurea is sort of a testament to both aspects of the Emperor's public persona. Built purely as a pleasure palace (Nero actually lived elsewhere), the entire complex is thought to have encompassed anywhere between 100 and 300 acres. Gilded within an inch of its life, the Domus Aurea also featured tons of marble, intricate mosaics, frescoes, and an artificial lake. Basically, the Domus Aurea was where the magic happened--the hippest party pad this side of "Cribs".

Then, after some particularly bad press that ended in a coup, Nero killed himself in A.D. 68.

Photo of interior from the Domus Aurea via Sarah Goldsmith under Creative Commons.

Over the next 1400 years or so, the Domus Aurea went from being a symbol of that guy everybody hated; to a sort of proto-Home Depot/scrap yard for less-reviled construction projects to pick over; to a completely forgotten ruin buried under layers of other buildings. Despite sitting on a hillside overlooking the Colosseum, nobody knew it was there until the 15th century, when artists discovered a weird "cave" filled with beautiful works of art. The Domus Aurea ended up becoming the inspiration for many of the Renaissance-era churches of Rome. In fact, there's period graffiti in the Domus Aurea signed by the likes of Michelangelo and Raphael (and, also, incidentally, the Marquis de Sade).
Still in the process of being excavated, the Domus Aurea is open to tourists, but on a limited basis. Baker and I went through it in 2007. Besides being an amazing experience (you wear hard hats and the in-English tour is led by an archeologist), it's also a great insider-y feeling thing to do as a tourist. You can't just walk into the Domus Aurea whenever you please. Hell, you probably wouldn't know it was there if you weren't informed. Instead, to get a tour, you have to call ahead to order advance tickets for a specific time slot. I think there's only something like 5 per day.

If you're in Rome and you want the tour, you can call 06.39967700, which is the current ticket request number according to The Beehive, my favorite hostel in Rome.

The Basilica of San Clemente
On the surface, San Clemente looks a lot like many of the other ornately decorated churches of Rome. Dating to the 12th century, the interior is gorgeous, but, if you're an average tourist who's spent two or three days church-hopping in Rome, somewhat unremarkable.

Photo of 12th century basilica interior courtesy Juan Desant via Creative Commons.

What makes San Clemente special is what lies beneath. Take the stairs down from the 12th century church, and you'll find yourself in a previous incarnation of the Basilica that dates to the 4th century. The light is bad down there, but below you can see a crappy, but passable, picture I took from that level of the church.

But you know what's even cooler than an old church with an older church underneath it? An even older building underneath that. You can actually go further down, and further back in time, to the ruins of 1st century AD Roman buildings, which were likely the location of a temple to Mithras, a sun god whose mystery cult some scholars think may have heavily influenced early Christian ritual and belief. It's pretty badass. Unfortunately, the lighting really sucks down there. I've got no photos from that level and I wasn't able to come up with creative commons shots from other sources, either. Although the church's official Web site has some neat renderings and a few pics that you can see. I didn't get a guided tour of the Basilica, so I know less about its history. But it's definitely worth a peek if you're in Rome and love old, underground things.

Results from last weekend's Northeast Regional competition for the MATE ROV challenge were released the other day:
1st Overall-High Tech High School, Lincroft, NJ

2nd Overall-Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Cambridge, MA

These teams will compete at the international competition in June against the regional winners from across the world.

Marine Advanced Technology Education Center MATE is an annual contest where students form groups to create an underwater ROV to solve a problem.

Each team had 5 minutes to set up their equipment, 20 minutes to complete the mission tasks and 5 minutes to break down their gear and clear the pool deck.

Jill Zande, competition coordinator passed along a few links:

As for information about the competition, you can certainly find the challenges, etc. on the MATE web site.
Regional contests have their own web sites - and links to photos!

Since these are student build vehicles, troubleshooting and problem solving are incredibly important. In preparation for the safety check and underwater mission, many of the teams spent time fine tuning their vehicles. It was great to see young people focused on the solutions they needed, rather than getting held back by the obstacles they faced. The teenagers were in charge of and responsible for their success on this project.

There are at least a thousand ways you could screw something up on a project and cause it to fail. There are always loads of obstacles, reasons that it can't be done, tough challenges. At the same time, there are usually a small handful, maybe as few as four or five ways that just about anything can be done, sometimes fewer. The students I saw at the MATE competition were showing that they had the ability to focus on the five successful paths as they bumped into the thousands of problems they encountered on their project. We can't all be winners, but these people, the ones who focus their attention and effort on the four or five possible solutions are all makers, problem solvers, forward looking people in an essential quest for the elusive solution.

During the competition, there were also two commercially made ROVs that people could try out. It was a lot of fun to see teenagers and even younger kids driving around an ROV on their own.

Did you participate in one of the MATE regional competitions? If you did, tell us how it went for your group. Please add your photos to the MAKE Flickr pool, and if you could, please use these tags: MATE2009, MATERegionals2009, and for the Northeast regionals at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy: MATERegionalsMMA2009. If your group competed in another regional, try to set the tags for that so that we can find all the pictures and video easily. If you are using YouTube or some other system, you can use the same tagging system as well.

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A modern druid who calls himself "King Arthur Pendragon" faces his arrest for his refusal to quit his protest vigil at Stonehenge:

Shortly after the deadline expired today, he said he had no intention to leave. "We have opened a bottle of mead and we are drinking to Stonehenge. I have done a short ritual and spell of protection, calling on the kings of old.

"I am still here so I am in breach of the order as they see it but I have as much right as anyone else to be here. I am not blocking the byway; other tourists park along there. I am not going to go, I am battening down the hatches and continuing my lawful right to protest and my equal right to religious practice."

Pendragon started protesting with consent from the Council of British Druid Orders after last year's summer solstice. The government scrapped plans to remove fences around Stonehenge, build an underpass and grass over the A344 in 2007.

Stonehenge protester King Arthur Pendragon defies eviction order

Frances from Bloomsbury sez,

To celebrate the Creative Commons release of Lawrence Lessig's latest book, Remix, Bloomsbury Academic are hosting a competition called REMIX THE REMIXER. Prizes include a 'remixed' book signed by Cory Doctorow, a copy of Remix signed by Lessig himself and £200 (about 300 USD) worth of any books from Bloomsbury Publishers.

Here's how the competition works: Find any video, interview, or written work of Lessig's, mash it up with another piece of Lessig's work and create something new. It can be a video (3 min max), photo or text. Just remix any of Lawrence Lessig's existing work and create something that is new, unique and creative.

Bloomsbury Academic will be hosting the competition on their Facebook fan page. All you need to do is search for the event (Remix the Remixer) on Facebook, submit your remix on the event's wall, and you've entered the competition. Submission deadline is the end of May, after which public voting will begin.

Remix was shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award and according to the Guardian 'Lessig...is a lawyer who gets things changed not for the benefit of corporations but to unleash the creative potential of ordinary people in a digital age.' Remix is published by Bloomsbury Academic in the UK, priced at £12.99.

Bloomsbury Academic is committed to putting its research-led publications online on CC NC licenses.

Remix the Remixer (Thanks, Frances!)

Saul Hansell writes in the NY Times about how various services offered by cable companies affect their spending and their revenue. As it turns out, a lot of the cost increases and investment needs are coming from television and video services rather than internet connectivity. The scramble for high-def and rising licensing fees for programming seem to be the biggest headaches for Comcast and Time Warner right now. Quoting: "By all accounts, Web video is not currently having any effect on the businesses of the cable companies. Market share is moving among cable, satellite and telephone companies, but the overall number of people subscribing to some sort of pay TV service is rising. (The government's switch to digital over-the-air broadcasts is providing a small stimulus to cable companies.) However, if you remember, it took several years before music labels started to feel any pain from downloads. As the sour economy and the Web start putting more pressure on the cable companies, they may be forced to consider breaking up the big bundles of channels they now insist that consumers buy and instead offer individual channels or smaller groups of channels on an à la carte basis."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At last, something to do with that pile of toilet paper tubes you've been saving all these years! (There's no point denying it; we know how you are.) Then again, you'd be lucky to have the mad skillz of sculptor Junior Jacquet, who's made a career out of sculpting cardboard. His toilet paper tube faces, on display over at LOUDreams , are pretty amazing realizations of the hidden potential of even the most mundane objects.

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Glyn sez, "The UK government has already spent several hundreds million pounds installing a secret mass internet surveillance system at the same time as the home secretary has been telling the public they would not do it and instead would consult on internet monitoring. The program is called 'Mastering the Internet' MTI the kind of name you would expect and an evil genus to come up with. MTI is a major part of the government's Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP). Lockheed Martin has already be awarded contracts worth £200 million and Detica has also won a contract while GCHQ has been allocated a budget of £1 billion over three years. So it is well past the planning stage. The Regulation of interception powers act allows for the inclusion of such interception 'black boxes' - but the order has to be laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House. If this has not happened - and it hasn't - then any ISP installing a 'black box' will be acting illegally."

Spy chiefs are pressing ahead with secret plans to monitor all internet use and telephone calls in Britain despite an announcement by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, of a ministerial climbdown over public surveillance. ... The £1 billion snooping project - called Mastering the Internet (MTI) - will rely on thousands of "black box" probes being covertly inserted across online infrastructure. ... Jacqui Smith announced that she was ditching controversial plans for a single "big brother" database ... However, she failed to mention that substantial additional sums - amounting to more than £1 billion over three years - had already been allocated to GCHQ for its MTI programme.

Just this morning, I was saying to myself, "I wonder if a journalist asked Jacqui Smith, 'Is there anything that you believe the public has the right to keep private from the government?" whether her answer would be "No."

Seriously, I believe that Jacqui Smith believes that it is proper and good for the government to know literally everything about every person in Britain. And I bet she'd admit it, too, if pressed to name stuff that she things isn't the government's business.

Jacqui Smith's secret plan to carry on snooping (Thanks, Glyn!)

FrankKarlitschek writes "At last year's KDE Conference Akademy, the vision of the Social Desktop was born and first presented to a larger audience. The concept behind the Social Desktop is to bring the power of online communities and group collaboration to desktop applications and the desktop shell itself. One of the strongest assets of the Free Software community is its worldwide group of contributors and users who believe in free software and who work hard to bring the software and solutions to the mainstream. A core idea of the Social Desktop is connecting to your peers in the community, making the sharing and exchanging of knowledge (PDF) easier to integrate into applications and the desktop itself. One of the ideas was to place a widget on the desktop where users can find other KDE users in the same city or region, making it possible to connect to these people; to contact them and collaborate. If a user is starting KDE for the first time, he has questions. At the moment, a lot of the support for KDE users is provided through forums and mailing lists. Users have to start up a browser and search for answers for their questions or problems. The community is relatively loosely connected; it is spread all over the web, and it is often hard to verify the usefulness and accuracy of the information found somewhere out on the web. Although it works relatively well for experienced users, beginners often get lost."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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

I may regret this. Last night, I started playing Foldit, a free computer game that's rapidly becoming every bit as addictive as, say, Crayon Physics Deluxe, which is, to say, dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

On the plus side, I will at least be losing productivity for a good cause. Released about a year ago, Foldit is a puzzle game that harnesses the power of human putzing to help scientists unravel the mysteries of protein structure. Long chains of amino acids folded in on themselves like a biochemical game of Twister, proteins do most of the heavy lifting around your body; moving and storing important molecules like oxygen and iron, controlling your growth, making your immune system work ... they're kind of a big deal. Scientists know the genetic sequence of proteins, as well as many of their functions, but still don't know a lot about how and why the amino acid chains twist and turn into their complex shapes.

That's where Foldit comes in. Computer programs could calculate all the possible protein shapes, but it would take far longer than the average researcher's life span. Instead, the University of Washington team that developed Foldit is hoping that human game-players can figure things out faster.

After playing a series of practice challenges that teach the rules--basically the laws of physics as applied to protein structure--players are then set on tasks that use their natural 3-D problem solving skills to pin down the best structures for certain proteins. The hitch: Game developers don't know what the "best" answer is, so you can't get any hints. And points are awarded not by how close you're getting to the known solution, but by how much energy would be needed to hold a real-life protein in the shape you've created. The real challenge comes from competing against other players to make the highest-point-collecting version of a specific protein.

Researchers hope to use the game play to make better protein structure prediction software, based on gamers' strategies; to have players figure out the mysteries of proteins that don't yet have a known structure; and to create challenges that let players design new proteins that could fill some real-world needs---like disabling a specific virus.

All of which are fine and noble answers for you to toss out there when your boss asks what, exactly, you're doing fiddling with a computer game on company time.

Many thanks (I think) to Mun-Keat Looi, the Twitter friend who turned me on to Foldit.

secmartin writes "A couple of weeks ago, Google's CEO mentioned to investors that they might start charging YouTube's users for viewing content: 'With respect to how it will get monetized, our first priority, as you pointed out, is on the advertising side. We do expect over time to see micro payments and other forms of subscription models coming as well. But our initial focus is on advertising. We will be announcing additional things in that area literally very, very soon.' With the recent Disney-Hulu deal, Google is under increasing pressure to generate more revenue and at the same time attract more premium content. That means we might see payment options coming even sooner than expected, with control over the pricing models being handed over to the studios providing that content, like the way Apple caved in over variable pricing on iTunes. This raises an important question: would you actually pay for premium content on YouTube and other sites, or will this draw viewers away to other video sites?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vincent West writes with news of a Russian project currently underway to populate the Arctic Circle with 70-megawatt, floating nuclear power plants. Russia has been planning these nuclear plants for quite some time, with construction beginning on the prototype in 2007. It's due to be finished next year, and an agreement was reached in February to build four more. According to the Guardian: "The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, the oil firm which is also Russia's biggest company. It would allow Gazprom to power drills needed to exploit some of the remotest oil and gas fields in the world in the Barents and Kara seas. The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "How'd you like a job where you get fired if you DON'T view porn at work? Newsweek reports on Facebook's internal police force of 150 staffers who are charged with regulating users' decorum, hunting spammers and working with actual law-enforcement agencies to help solve crimes. Part hall monitors, part vice cops, the $50,000-a-year 'porn cops' also keep Facebook safe for corporate advertisers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "How'd you like a job where you get fired if you DON'T view porn at work? Newsweek reports on Facebook's internal police force of 150 staffers who are charged with regulating users' decorum, hunting spammers and working with actual law-enforcement agencies to help solve crimes. Part hall monitors, part vice cops, the $50,000-a-year 'porn cops' also keep Facebook safe for corporate advertisers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Although I won't sacrifice my own microwave to replicate this experiment showing the surprising effects of nuking a mobile phone, I'm glad that one of the web's many amateur scientists did so and recorded the outcome.

My Cell phone company is evil! (Thanks, Fipi Lele!

One of the hard problems of bulk book-scanning is the distortion in the scanned images arising from the bowed center of the book as it lies open. Google's clever solution to this is to paint the book with infrared light, and then use two infrared cameras to generate a 3D model of the book, which can be used to correct the scans.

Turns out, Google created some seriously nifty infrared camera technology that detects the three-dimensional shape and angle of book pages when the book is placed in the scanner. This information is transmitted to the OCR software, which adjusts for the distortions and allows the OCR software to read text more accurately. No more broken bindings, no more inefficient glass plates. Google has finally figured out a way to digitize books en masse. For all those who've pondered "How'd They Do That?" you finally have an answer.

The Secret Of Google's Book Scanning Machine Revealed (via Memex 1.1)

My wife brought home a pair of these Ash satin tennis-shoes this week -- iridescent green, laced with a length of ribbon. They're just great -- makes me wish they had a men's version.

Ash Viper Satin Lace Up, Green Satin

IEEE Spectrum has a great package of articles covering 25 Microchips that shook the world. All of your faves are there: the 555, the 6502, the 8088, the TI TMC0281 (which ET used to phone home), the PIC 16C84, the WD1402A (aka the first UART chip), the Z80, and the Sh-Boom coprocessor. The wha? Here's the entry:

Two chip designers walk into a bar. They are Russell H. Fish III and Chuck H. Moore, and the bar is called Sh-Boom. No, this is not the beginning of a joke. It's actually part of a technology tale filled with discord and lawsuits, lots of lawsuits. It all started in 1988 when Fish and Moore created a bizarre processor called Sh-Boom. The chip was so streamlined it could run faster than the clock on the circuit board that drove the rest of the computer. So the two designers found a way to have the processor run its own superfast internal clock while still staying synchronized with the rest of the computer. Sh-Boom was never a commercial success, and after patenting its innovative parts, Moore and Fish moved on. Fish later sold his patent rights to a Carlsbad, Calif.-based firm, Patriot Scientific, which remained a profitless speck of a company until its executives had a revelation: In the years since Sh-Boom's invention, the speed of processors had by far surpassed that of motherboards, and so practically every maker of computers and consumer electronics wound up using a solution just like the one Fish and Moore had patented. Ka-ching! Patriot fired a barrage of lawsuits against U.S. and Japanese companies. Whether these companies' chips depend on the Sh-Boom ideas is a matter of controversy. But since 2006, Patriot and Moore have reaped over US $125 million in licensing fees from Intel, AMD, Sony, Olympus, and others. As for the name Sh-Boom, Moore, now at IntellaSys, in Cupertino, Calif., says: "It supposedly derived from the name of a bar where Fish and I drank bourbon and scribbled on napkins. There's little truth in that. But I did like the name he suggested."

The piece has all sorts of interesting historical tidbits this.

One of the articles in the section is by David X. Cohen, co-creator of Futurama. The introduction to the piece reads:

On 14 November 1999, an episode of "Futurama," the animated sci-fi comedy series conceived by "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, jolted computer geeks with a display of technological acumen absolutely unprecedented in prime-time entertainment. In the episode, "Fry and the Slurm Factory," a character named Professor Farnsworth points his F-ray at the head of the show's famously ill-tempered robot, Bender. It reveals a little rectangle, apparently a chip, labeled "6502."

In the article itself, Cohen writes:

I spent a good percentage of my high school years programming the Apple II Plus in 6502 assembly language, so I have fond memories of long nights alone with this chip. My greatest 6502 achievement was a video game I called Zoid that was played heavily by me and my father and no one else. Incidentally, Zoid incorporated digitized speech (me saying the word "Zoid," slowed down to make it mightier), which was pretty rare at the time. The digital audio for that single syllable used much more memory than the entire program. I tried to sell the game to Broderbund Software, but I knew I was in for bad news when the return letter they sent me started with a misspelling of my name.

The entire special section is eminently readable, educational, entertaining, and definitely worth your time.

25 Microchips That Shook the World

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lithis writes "NOvA, a new neutrino detector, is being built in northern Minnesota. MPR has information on the project's funding and the International Falls Daily Journal talks about the environmental issues. This detector will complement the MINOS neutrino detector in the Soudan Underground Laboratory."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

lithis writes "NOvA, a new neutrino detector, is being built in northern Minnesota. MPR has information on the project's funding and the International Falls Daily Journal talks about the environmental issues. This detector will complement the MINOS neutrino detector in the Soudan Underground Laboratory."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck paid science publishing juggernaut Elsevier to publish a fake peer-reviewed scientific journal, Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine.

What's wrong with this is so obvious it doesn't have to be argued for. What's sad is that I'm sure many a primary care physician was given literature from Merck that said, "As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications...." Said doctor, or even the average researcher wouldn't know that the journal is bogus. In fact, knowing that the journal is published by Elsevier gives it credibility!

These kinds of endeavors are not possible without help. One of The Scientist's most notable finds is a Australian rheumatologist named Peter Brooks who served on the "honorary advisory board" of this "journal". His take: "I don't think it's fair to say it was totally a marketing journal", apparently on the grounds that it had excerpts from peer-reviewed papers. However, in his entire time on the board he never received a single paper for peer-review, but because he apparently knew the journal did not receive original submissions of research. This didn't seem to bother him one bit. Such "throwaways" of non-peer reviewed publications and semi-marketing materials are commonplace in medicine. But wouldn't that seem odd for an academic journal? Apparently not. Moreover, Peter Brooks had a pretty lax sense of academic ethics any way: he admitted to having his name put on a "advertorial" for pharma within the last ten years, says The Scientist. An "advertorial"? Again, language unfamiliar to us in the academic publishing world, but apparently quite familiar to the pharmaceutical publishing scene.

Merck Makes Phony Peer-Review Journal (via /.)

Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails iPhone app, "NIN iPhone," has been removed from the iPhone store. Apple says that they censored it for "objectionable content." I just heard that they've also removed the comic version of my story Anda's Game for the same reason. The publisher says that they believe this beheaded orc is the objectionable content in question. So much for Apple as a benevolent dictator, well-suited to acting as guardian of what sorts of things you should and should not be allowed to run on your devices (remember, the company has also gone to the Copyright Office's DMCA hearing to protest the legalization of jailbreaking, hoping to make it illegal for you to install apps from outside of the App Store on your phone).

Apple Rejects Nine Inch Nails iPhone App

Madeline sez, "To protest the casting of white actors in Asian and Inuit roles for the live-action production of 'The Last Airbender,' (based on the animated series 'Avatar: The Last Airbender,' which features primarily Asian iconography, calligraphy, and fight choreography), fan Glockgal began making t-shirts that read 'This is not a tan' and "Aang can stay Asian and still save the world.' Viacom, one of the companies which owns a license for the series, has ordered Zazzle.com to take down her storefront. Glockgal has since re-released the designs with the words 'CENSORED BY VIACOM' in large, friendly letters across them."

AVATAR: ZAZZLE/VIACOM FAIL (Thanks, Madeline!)

Ian sez, "The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is hosting a two-day celebration of the 'rite of spring,' with a celebration of all Japanese culture -- ancient and modern. It's remarkable to see all the cherry blossoms in a park in the middle of the city. It's even more remarkable to see hundreds of cosplayers enjoying the gardens and displaying their talents for thousands of fans and mundanes."

Sakura Matsuri--Japan comes to Brooklyn (Thanks, Ian!)

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, the prince from the UAE who made a video of himself brutally torturing a businessman with whom he had a dispute, has been implicated in 25 further video-recordings of other assaults.

In the leaked video, the prince sets fire to his victim's testicles, sticks a cattle-prod up his anus, beats him with a board with a nail through it, scourges him with a whip, rubs salt into his wounds, and then runs over him repeatedly with a Mecedes SUV (you can hear the bones break).

The UAE's national firewall is blocking stories about this (see the screengrab above). I know that a number of US firms have supplied the UAE with firewall services -- I'd be interested in any detail any Boing Boing reader has about the blocking shown above: did it come from a company that also supplies moral guardianship to western kids in their schools?

"I have more than two hours of video footage showing Sheikh Issa's involvement in the torture of more than 25 people," wrote Texas-based lawyer Anthony Buzbee in a letter obtained by the Observer.

The news of more torture videos involving Issa is another huge blow to the international image of the UAE. The oil-rich state has been keen to develop relations with wealthy western politicians, universities and corporations and to promote an aura of moderation and tolerance. But the shocking video of Issa torturing Afghan grain merchant Mohammed Shah Poor, whom Issa said had cheated him in a business deal, has heavily dented the UAE's reputation. Particularly damaging was the apparent involvement of a policeman in the torture and the impunity with which Sheikh Issa could act, even after the tape emerged. He is a senior prince related to powerful members of the ruling family in Abu Dhabi.

But now it appears the initial tape could just be the beginning of the problem. The new tapes apparently also involve police officers taking part in Issa's attacks, and some of his victims in the as-yet-unseen videos are believed to be Sudanese immigrants.

Torture-tape Gulf prince accused of 25 other attacks (via Warren Ellis)

Hugh Pickens writes "Don't believe everything you read on the internet is a good rule to follow, but it turns out that you can't even believe a 'peer reviewed scientific journal' as details emerge that drug manufacturer Merck created a phony, but real sounding, peer-review journal titled the 'Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine' to publish data favorable to its products. 'What's sad is that I'm sure many a primary care physician was given literature from Merck that said, "As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications...."' writes Summer Johnson in a post on the website of the American Journal of Bioethics. One Australian rheumatologist named Peter Brooks who served as an 'honorary advisory board' to the journal didn't receive a single paper for peer-review in his entire time on the board, but it didn't bother him because he apparently knew the journal did not receive original submissions of research. All this is probably not too surprising in light of Merck's difficulties with Vioxx, the once $2.5 billion a year drug that was pulled from the market in September 2004, after a study showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke in long-term users resulting in payments by Merck of $4.85 billion to settle personal injury claims from former users, but it bears repeating that 'if physicians would not lend their names or pens to these efforts, and publishers would not offer their presses, these publications could not exist.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Photo via the Telegraph UK

Sara Wilson likes to make things seem to go away. One of her recent works, an apparently invisible car, is featured at the Telegraph UK:

Her work, created as part of her drawing and image making course at the university, creates the illusion that the car is see through.

She speaks about her work in the Times article:

"I was experimenting with the whole concept of illusion but needed something a bit more physical to make a real impact...People have been stopping in the street to look and coming up and almost bumping into it, so it's had the desired effect."

Sara is a student of Drawing and Image Making at the University of Central Lancashire, where the university Office of Buzz Creation featured her work:

Sara commented: "I was experimenting with the whole concept of illusion but needed something a bit more physical to make a real impact." she said.

Matthew Scarlett, one of her school mates wrote about some of her other performance and visual work as well. In his blog, he shows some of his own intricate papercraft.

Hey, it's end of the semester here in the Northern Hemisphere. What amazing creative and engineering projects are you and your friends working on finishing off? Showcase them here by sending in some links to the best things that you hardworking, underslept students have been toiling over. If you have photos, send it over to the MAKE Flickr pool. Add EndOfSemesterProject to make it easier to find.

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jarrettwold2002 writes "Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails announced via his Twitter account today, 'Apple rejects the NIN iPhone update because it contains objectionable content. The objectionable content referenced is "The Downward Spiral."' The initial NIN Access iPhone app garnered much fanfare (Wired article, Guardian article) and was approved by Apple. The update has been rejected due to an album reference. If Nine Inch Nails is having problems with censorship and approval what kind of problems are you having with the iPhone app approval process?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DefenseSupportParty writes "I recently traveled via an unnamed airline, and stupidly checked my laptop. Unfortunately, the screen broke in transit and they refuse to take responsibility for it, claiming that it could have been broken before the flight. I'm not really in the mood to replace the screen if I have to pay for it, as I have other laptops that I can use. At the same time, I don't want to waste computing power that could be put to good use. I've thought about the common stuff: file server, SETI@Home, but I'd like to do something a little more creative. Does anyone have good ideas for a relatively powerful laptop without a display?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over on the PC World blogs, Phil Shapiro has penned a glowing piece about MAKE, entitled "Exit Newsweek - Enter MAKE Magazine," on the news that Newsweek may be going the way of the dinosaur. The piece is filled with wonderful, flattering quotes about MAKE:

If you haven't seen this magazine yet, check out the inspiring, amusing and instructive MAKE magazine blog. That same spirit of inventive adventuring bounces off every page of MAKE magazine. Whoever is editing that magazine has high standards. When I read MAKE magazine, I not only learn new things, I become more creative. That magazine puts me into a creative mood: It gets me thinking about constructing creative solutions to a host of different things in my life. The spirit of that magazine is "yes, we can," which is why it's no surprise that our new president remarked in his inaugural speech: "... the risk-takes, the doers, the makers of things."

He suggests that everyone call their local libraries and ask them to subscribe to MAKE (Shaprio himself works in a Maryland library), if they aren't carrying it already. That way, if Newsweek leaves the rack, there'll be a worthy replacement. Which IS a good idea. Call you library and make sure they carry MAKE!

He also suggests that libraries create Maker Rooms, mini-hacker spaces where people can learn new tech and DIY skills. That's actually a great idea for using public libraries, which have suffered so much in the age of the web. They could have TechShop-like spaces, with fab lab equipment, surface mount soldering tools, and other gear that's too expensive or specialized for most people, and the training and resources on how to use it all.

Exit Newsweek - Enter MAKE Magazine

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Moved to poetry by last weekend's Maker Revolution, Jonathan penned this:

Haiku on Maker Revolution:
Seeing Legends Talk
Sitting Round the Geek Camp Fire
Watching People Make

The Maker Revolution @ Microsoft Startup Labs from Boston Cyberarts on Vimeo.

Bre had a spiffy time as well:

We printed airplane wings, dodecahedrons, and chess pieces. Then I gave a talk about rapid prototyping. We met cool people who are doing cool things. Big thanks to everyone who shared their passion with us at this event.

Photo from Fred0 on Flickr

Jonathan also wrote a rundown of the first day's events in the sidebar of his Flickr set on Maker Revolution:

The first day of Maker Revolution at the Microsoft Startup Labs in Cambridge was a great day for Boston Area Makers (and others who came in from as far as CA).

Jimmie Rodgers, Bill T Miller, and Derek Hoffend started with a panel on Circuit Bending.

Meanwhile, the Cupcake CNC by MakerBot Industries was plugging away printing out opensource 3D Designs from Thingaverse.com. The term "Geek Campfire" was coined and twittered (for the ages) and the incredibly meta shot of a shot of a shot of a shot of a video of the CCNC was taken.

Later, Bre Pettis spoke on the de-centralization of manufacturing.

Mitch Altman was also on hand to show off his fabulous creations and had a few pairs of his relaxing glasses to calm and soothe us.

Jimmie also had a circuit bending workshop which taught us how to get more from the Staples "That Was Easy" button.

Finally, there were a few art exhibits on hand which bridged the gap between art and interactive objects.

All in all, a fantastic event for Boston Area Makers.

Did you check out Maker Revolution? Do you have photos or video of the event? Add them to the MAKE Flickr pool, and tag them with MakerRevolution so we can all find them.

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