BoingBoing points us to an interesting story involving Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who apparently gave a recent talk questioning the need to protect privacy online. That caught the attention of Joel Reidenberg, a law professor at Fordham, who teaches an Information Privacy Law class. As part of that class he includes an assignment for the class to try to dig up information on someone online, in order to prove how much information is out there. Last year, he chose himself. This year, given Scalia's comments, he had the class put together a dossier on Scalia, which was not released publicly, but did include a bunch of private info about Scalia that was dug up online. Apparently Scalia was not amused, saying:

I stand by my remark at the Institute of American and Talmudic Law conference that it is silly to think that every single datum about my life is private. I was referring, of course, to whether every single datum about my life deserves privacy protection in law.

It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg's exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any.

Now, to be fair, Scalia does have a point that not every single datum about anyone's life should be considered private. But it's equally silly to lash out and call the decision to give the assignment "abominably poor judgment." That seems like Scalia is suggesting security through obscurity is reasonable, and exposing why it's not is poor judgment. It's hard to see how that makes sense.

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Ben Shultz, a PhD student in Geography at the University of Tennessee, is conducting research on innovation and creativity in DIY and makers communities for his dissertation. The survey is completely anonymous and takes less than 10 minutes to complete.

Ben says:

In academics we have traditionally viewed innovation and creativity from the perspective of a large corporation. But we have overlooked the incredibly innovative and creative ideas that come out of the DiY community.

With its substantial web presence and an ethos based on sharing and repurposing knowledge, the DiY movement changes how and where innovations come about. Rather than protecting innovations or charging for access, the DiY community freely reveals designs from start to finish on the Internet. The non-hierarchical, open manner in which creative media are produced in this setting democratizes the innovation process and opens creative pursuits to a geographically distributed public.

As part of my research, I'm conducting a simple web-based survey to get an idea of where makers are (I'm in geography after all!), how they share knowledge, and what influences their creative endeavors.

With my dissertation, I plan to reciprocate the DiY ethos and keep my research as open as possible. I am keeping a blog of all my research progress, including write-ups and aggregated results, and inviting anyone interested to use the information. You can check out my blog, DiY Dissertation. I hope to offer you back useful and interesting information on both the research process and the DiY community.

You can access the survey here or use the following URL:
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YouTuber Startwave's SX-150 guitar is rather excellent -

a quick and terrible demonstration of my modded sx-150. i replaced the original slide thingy with a softpot from trossen robotics and i added an fsr (force sensitive resistor) to control volume or crazy resonance distortion (if the res is switched on). sounds nice, very expressive and fun to play. this is recorded dry, with no fx.

The ribbon controller neck looks quite playable - gig-worthy even. This mod is somewhat similar to one featured in the volume of 'Otona No Kogaku' included with the kit. I just wish he demoed a bit more riffing as the little we did hear seemed to hold much potential.

In the Maker Shed:


SX-150 Analog Synthesizer Kit

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Ziest points us to NY Times piece on the battle over the site of Nicola Tesla's last failed experiment. Tesla's laboratory, called Wardenclyffe, located on Long Island, has been put up for sale by its current owner, Agfa Corp. Local residents and Tesla followers were alarmed by a real estate agent's promise that the land, listed at $1.6 million, could "be delivered fully cleared and level." Preservationists want to create a Tesla museum and education center at Wardenclyffe, anchored by the laboratory designed by Tesla's friend, Stanford White, a celebrated architect. "In 1901, Nikola Tesla began work on a global system of giant towers meant to relay through the air not only news, stock reports and even pictures but also, unbeknown to investors such as J. Pierpont Morgan, free electricity for one and all. It was the inventor's biggest project, and his most audacious. The first tower rose on rural Long Island and, by 1903, stood more than 18 stories tall. ... But the system failed for want of money, and at least partly for scientific viability. Tesla never finished his prototype tower and was forced to abandon its adjoining laboratory."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NPR contributor Chana Joffe-Walt produced a great piece for Planet Money which analyzes the economic model behind the pirates of Somalia (and other locales.)

[I]ssues of criminality and the potential for violence aside, a closer look at the "business model" of piracy reveals that the plan makes economic sense. A piracy operation begins, as with any other start-up business, with venture capital.

J. Peter Pham at James Madison University says piracy financiers are usually ethnic Somali businessmen who live outside the country and who typically call a relative in Somalia and suggest they launch a piracy business. The investor will offer $250,000 or more in seed money, while the relative goes shopping.

"You'll need some speedboats; you'll need some weapons; you also need some intelligence because you can't troll the Indian Ocean, a million square miles, looking for merchant vessels," says Pham, adding that the pirates also need food for the voyage -- "a caterer." Yes, a caterer.

"Think of it as everything you would need to go into the cruise ship business," Pham says. "Everything that you would need to run a cruise ship line, short of the entertainment, you need to run a piracy operation."

Listen: PLANET MONEY - Behind The Business Plan Of Pirates Inc.

Lucas123 writes "A case was filed with superior courts in California and Massachusetts involving a former EMC top executive who is trying work for HP. The case is throwing into relief Massachusetts's and California's differing approaches to non-compete clauses in employment contracts. California courts have argued that non-competes hamper a person's ability to traverse the marketplace freely for work, while Massachusetts courts say the agreements actually afford freedom to develop technology without the fear of IP theft."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While we've noted that the various studios, such as NBC Universal have, in the past, laughed off the idea that people would ever cancel their cable TV service in favor of just getting their content online, they're clearly waking up to the problem. That's why they freaked out about services like Boxee, despite the fact that Boxee is just a TV-optimized browser for legal content. Still, Saul Hansell, over at the NY Times, gets to the heart of the matter, by noting that the content providers have kept jacking up their prices to cable providers, and those costs keep getting passed on to users. Right now, it hasn't been a clear problem, as subscribers have increased, but the costs keep getting higher, and it's eventually going to drive customers to seek alternatives. We've seen this in the past, of course: Hollywood execs try to squeeze more and more out of people now with no thought for how that will impact revenue in the future. That's not a very good way to run a business, and the TV content providers are going to start discovering that sooner rather than later, if they don't start paying attention.

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Spotted on the MAKE Flickr pool: Mark Demers, of SpikenzieLabs, created this simple, handsome laser-cut LCD stand to interface (via I2C) with Arduino. He says he plans on adding some cabinet lighting, via LEDs, to make the etched labels near the buttons more visible.

LCD Stands - Wood

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OSXGlitch writes "A post on TechCrunch this morning extends the rumor that Apple wants to buy Twitter with part of their massive cash reserve (estimated at nearly $29B). The Twitterverse is alive with speculation that the price being discussed is $700 million. This goes against reports that Twitter's founders aren't interested in selling, and that they estimate the value of the company at around $250 million. Two questions: How do we all feel about the possibility of Apple owning Twitter? And, can Twitter decline an offer that is nearly three times their estimated worth?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have been sending in the BoingBoing post about how the various YouTube videos on Warner Music Group subsidiary Sire Records are all broken due to "copyright claims" from WMG. This isn't a new story, as we've been among those covering the YouTube-Warner Music dispute since December when it became public. Plenty of Warner artists have been screwed over by this move, having their official videos pulled down because Warner demands YouTube pay it for the free service of hosting those videos. You would think, with bandwidth costs being what they were, WMG would be thrilled that a company like Google is willing to host them totally free and manage the infrastructure.

So, this particular story isn't new or surprising, and doesn't involve (as the original implies), WMG accusing itself of piracy. However, it does raise a separate question. How backwards are Warner Music and its various sub-labels that they still have taken down YouTube videos embedded on their official sites. After all, it's been more than four months since this dispute began. You would think that whoever is in charge of running these websites would have stopped using YouTube embeds a long time ago. It's really not that difficult to replace a YouTube embed with a locally hosted one. However, the fact that Warner hasn't done so pretty much makes the point, doesn't it: the company apparently doesn't have the tech talent to host its own videos. That's a lot sadder a statement than having just taken the officials videos down in the first place.

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A few conservatives kindly pointed out that the entry about the Republican Clown College was not fair and balanced. So, in the interest of fairness and balance, here's a little light hearted conservative-made humor poking fun at liberals -- a "Liberal Hunting Permit."

No Bag Limit - Tagging Not Required. May be used while under the influence of alcohol. May be used to Hunt Liberals at Gay Oride Parades, Democrat Conventions, Union Rallys, Handgun Control Meetings, News Media Association, Lesbian Luncheons, and Hollywood Functions. MAY HUNT DAY OR NIGHT WITH OR WITHOUT DOGS

Liberal hunting permit

As a little kid, maybe five or six, one of my first remembered moments of heightened mechanical curiosity was over a Dippy Bird that somebody gave us. I have this very vivid memory of being utterly fascinated by it and wondering how it worked. The answer has been decades in coming. Here, MAKE Contributing Editor Bill Gurstelle, talks about Methylene Chloride, a plastic weld, and its use in powering Dippy Birds.

Methylene Chloride is the bonding agent I used to attach one piece of polycarbonate plastic to another piece when I was constructing the firepiston (see Feb 13 post in this blog.) MC works well because it's thin and penetrates into seams well and does a good job of dissolving the plastic so it solvent welds together.

Coincidentally, I found out, while researching that methylene chloride is the same stuff used in the Dippy Birds to make them go up and down. The science of Dippy Birds, according to the How Stuff Works website, are this:

1. When water evaporates from the fuzz on the Dippy Bird's head, the head is cooled.
2. The temperature decrease in the head condenses the methylene chloride vapor, decreasing the vapor pressure in the head relative to the vapor pressure in the abdomen.
3. The greater vapor pressure in the abdomen forces fluid up through the neck and into the head.
4. As fluid enters the head, it makes the Dippy Bird top-heavy.
5. The bird tips. Liquid travels to the head. The bottom of the tube is no longer submerged in liquid.
6. Vapor bubbles travel through the tube and into the head. Liquid drains from the head, displaced by the bubbles.
7. Fluid drains back into the abdomen, making the bird bottom-heavy.
8. The bird tips back up.

Methylene chloride is also used, apparently, in decaffeinating coffee. The MSDS says the stuff is somewhat dangerous, but apparently, not so much that it cannot be used in Dippy Bird toys - at least until someone complains.

Methylene Chloride and Dippy Bird Science

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An anonymous reader sends along a sharp and snarky article that takes Google to task for taking longer than expected to award $10M in its competition to find and fund world-bettering ideas. The submitter comments, "After using its tenth birthday as occasion to solicit philanthropic ideas from Web users through its Project 10^100, Google appears to have backed off from its commitment to provide $10 million in funding to the winner. While the company was supposed to reveal the Project 10^100 winner in February, Google has since delayed the vote once and now suspended it indefinitely, due to the overwhelming response — Google says it received 150,000 entries. A Google spokeswoman wouldn't commit to a new date, saying only it would be delayed 'for a while longer.' She further apologized for the company's 'over optimistic assumptions about how quickly we could analyze all the ideas that we've received.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

You just knew this would happen. A week after we wrote about how Twitter's openness towards third party developers helped build up its reputation and the willingness of developers to work with it, a story comes out contradicting the main point of the original story. Via Techmeme, we learn that Twitter shut down a service called StatTweets from a company called StatSteet, that provided stats on various sports teams. Since then, Twitter has apparently been quite unresponsive to the developer in his attempts to resolve the issue. Twitter did outline three causes for killing his accounts, though none seem particularly convincing.

There's a copyright claim on the logos, though you could make a pretty strong argument that the use of the logos is legit (there may be some extenuating circumstances, but it doesn't sound like any sports teams complained -- and the guy says he's willing to change the logos if that's the problem). Second, was a complaint about "mass creation" of new accounts. This is obviously to stop spammers. But it's quite clear that StatTweets isn't a spam system, so a quick review should have knocked out that reason. The final reason is if you're accused of "squatting" on a username, but it sounds like the usernames were unique and weren't just the name of various sports teams.

While there's a decent chance that this is an honest mistake on the part of Twitter, it's a sign of some of the growing pains facing the company. I know I've been trying to reach the company about something for the past few weeks and have found it impossible to get any response whatsoever. It's no surprise that employees at the company are busy, given all the attention Twitter has received lately, but the company risked user mutiny a year ago when it had trouble responding to downtime complaints. If it also starts having customer service issues, it again may present an opportunity for people to go elsewhere.

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An anonymous reader writes "The release last week of the US copyright blacklist is beginning to generate a backlash in countries around the world. Reports from Canada, Europe, and Asia all note that the US claims are very suspect and that the report is little more than an attempt to bully dozens of countries into following the US DMCA model."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Download this video in MP4.)

This year marks the 40th anniversary of an important milestone in internet history -- the development and successful link of the first host-to-host internet connection.

On April 7 1969, Steve Crocker of UCLA circulated around a memo entitled 'Request for Comments, the first of thousands of "RFCs" documenting the design of ARPANET and the Internet. A few months and many memos and experiments later, in October, 1969, Charley Kline at UCLA sent the first packets on ARPANET as he tried to connect to Stanford Research Institute. Below, a copy of the transmission log.

Boing Boing Video is celebrating internet history in the months to come with a look back at the people, devices, and places that are part of our shared internet history.

In today's episode of the show, we revisit an episode hosted by monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner, in which we explore the "Cyberpipe" museum of internet history in Slovenia, where computers and networking devices from those early years can be found. Cyberpipe is hosting related retro-tech exhibits throughout 2009.

Closer to home for our viewers in the US, the Museum of Computer History in the San Francisco Bay Area offers a world-class repository of exhibits, and their website includes a helpful timeline of key events that led to today's web.

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. (Special thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic).

Marc Palm, did a swell job with this muppet themed tribute to R. Crumb's cover for Janis Joplin's "Cheap Thrills" LP. (UPDATE: Here's a large version of the artwork.)

For this show [Muppet Rawk II group show at Ouch My Eye Gallery] artists had to take an existing rock album cover and re-image it with Jim Henson's Muppets. You could use any Muppet and it the art had to be 12" x 12".

When I got to join in on this I searched a little bit for some cool covers. The previous show had some gems in them see here. I knew that I had to do something really cool. So when I ran across Cheap Thrills over and over in lists of the "best rock covers ever". Someone had to do this cover with Muppets! I wasn't sure if I could really do it, but I thought I'd bite off more than I could chew and do it myself.

Cheap Thrills with Muppets Rawk

Previously:

Drew Friedman paints Robert Crumb presenting Cheap Thrills album cover to Janis Joplin

OMG, these four and six-legged robot races, line-following competitions, are amazing. And pretty hysterical. Like the Boston Dynamics bots, and some of the other robots we've covered here, these are sort of unsettling in how biological they're movements and behaviors feel.

Via Society of Robots

More:

• Boston Dynamics Big Dog (new video)
• Insanely cool, creepy "LittleDog" robot

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Brobible interviewed author R.U Sirius about his excellent book, Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars on Drugs.

You devote a whole chapter to The Beatles. Listening to "Sgt. Pepper's," we're not surprised, but were the mop-top lads from Liverpool toking up backstage with Ed Sullivan in the early days?

R.U. Sirius: The Beatles were turned on to pot by Bob Dylan in the summer of '64, so they weren't getting stoned before the historic Ed Sullivan appearances and it's generally accepted that they didn't get high while touring until the last tour in 1966. They had a hilarious poolside trip with Peter Fonda and members of The Byrds on that tour. They did lots of speed pills and alcohol during their early days in Hamburg, Germany. They were pretty much a punk band in Germany, although no one used that label at the time.

Which bands or musicians were the worst junkies and just couldn't survive without the stuff?

R.U. Sirius: Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers were the world's biggest junkies. Some of your readers may not be familiar with them because they were never mainstream but they were hugely influential. Thunders came out of the New York Dolls. The Heartbreakers were huge in New York City in the late '70s and really influenced London Punk, particularly the Sex Pistols. They were going to call themselves The Junkies.

From the Beatles to Sid Vicious, "Everybody Must Get Stoned"

axjms writes "New York Magazine has a confessional/abdication from the man who wrote the software that turns mortgage into bonds and those nasty little things called CMOs. An interesting first-person account from a coder whose work reached far beyond what he or anyone could have anticipated."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Life Inc., is a guest blogger.)
I've been working on a year-long PBS Frontline project called Digital Nation, which will culminate as a one-hour tv documentary next January. We're looking a whole lot of subjects, all from the perspective of how what it means to be human is changing as we migrate further into the digital realm (if that metaphor even holds). We're posting as much video as possible as we go.

The above piece about the "infantry immersion trainer" looks at the integration of virtual simulations into military training, as well as for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder after tours of duty. The weird part for me - well, the two weird parts - were that this training was also developed, in part, to "desensitize" soldiers to certain aspects of war. They say it is to lessen the effects and reduce post-traumatic stress. But all of the psychologists I've spoken with since then say it doesn't work like that - that the stress simulations just compound the total stress. And, second, that I had nightmares for a good week after all this - less from the shooting of civilians part than the little driving simulation, which reminded me of a fatal car crash back in 1985.

I guess the lesson for me was that the resolution of the simulation is a lot less important than the intention and mindset with which one approaches the experience. As with any hallucinatory experience, set and setting are everything.

(Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Life Inc., is a guest blogger.)
I've been working on a year-long PBS Frontline project called Digital Nation, which will culminate as a one-hour tv documentary next January. We're looking a whole lot of subjects, all from the perspective of how what it means to be human is changing as we migrate further into the digital realm (if that metaphor even holds). We're posting as much video as possible as we go.

The above piece about the "infantry immersion trainer" looks at the integration of virtual simulations into military training, as well as for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder after tours of duty. The weird part for me - well, the two weird parts - were that this training was also developed, in part, to "desensitize" soldiers to certain aspects of war. They say it is to lessen the effects and reduce post-traumatic stress. But all of the psychologists I've spoken with since then say it doesn't work like that - that the stress simulations just compound the total stress. And, second, that I had nightmares for a good week after all this - less from the shooting of civilians part than the little driving simulation, which reminded me of a fatal car crash back in 1985.

I guess the lesson for me was that the resolution of the simulation is a lot less important than the intention and mindset with which one approaches the experience. As with any hallucinatory experience, set and setting are everything.

Xanthir writes in to point to this Guardian article about viral videos that highlights the "Rap Chop" video that's currently got over a million views on YouTube. If you haven't seen it (and I hadn't), it's basically taking a silly infomercial for an "as seen on TV" chopping device, which you can see here: ... and remixed it into a techno tune, with some music, cuts and (of course) Autotune to turn the guy's voice into music, and you get this: As both Xanthir and the writer at the Guardian note, after watching the remix, they felt like buying the device. Either way, once again, we're seeing the convergence of a few different topics we tend to talk about here, including the creativity of remixed content and the benefits of making advertising into really good and desirable content, so it doesn't even feel like advertising. And, of course, there are copyright questions. The video is almost certainly infringing on the original, but it's yet another example where it would be a bad idea to try to enforce the copyright (and it doesn't look like the company has even tried to do so, which is good).

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Dave of Grain Edit says, "It's a Spanish board game for kids with some really bizarre images."

Loto de Socorrismo: The Morbidly Funny Game for Kids

James McP writes "According to an article on Archaeology, fake artifacts being sold on eBay have caused the bottom to drop out of the low-end artifact market. This outcome is exactly opposite to what archeologists feared would happen when eBay came on the scene. A side effect of more and more forgers getting in on the act has been a dramatic increase in high-quality fakes that can fool experts and illicit collectors alike, lowering the price for high-end artifacts as well. It's a lot less cost-effective to go tomb raiding than to make your own fakes, especially since selling fake artifacts isn't really illegal."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lots of great stuff in the latest Harper's Weekly, including this paragraph about the swine flu hullabaloo:

Swine flu, renamed under pork-lobby pressure to "influenza A (H1N1) virus, human," and referred to as "killer Mexican flu" by anti-immigration activists, had infected 985 people, or 0.0000145 percent of the world's population. Twenty countries reported infections; one death from the flu was confirmed in the United States; and 25 people had died in Mexico, where a cute five-year-old boy named Edgar Hernandez was presented to the media as "patient zero." Mexico shut down for five days to contain the illness, China began to quarantine Mexicans, and Vice President Joe Biden appeared on television and counseled U.S. citizens to avoid airplanes, subways, and classrooms, which led to protests by the travel industry. "I think the vice president misrepresented what the vice president wanted to say," explained Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Egypt, which has no cases of the flu, ordered all its pigs killed, especially slum pigs; police at Manshiyat Nasr slum fired tear gas and rubber bullets at rioting Coptic Christian pig farmers. Geneticists continued to sequence the flu's genes. "Atgaaggcaa tactagtagt tctgctatat," read the opening line of the segment-four hemagglutinin gene. "Acatttgcaa ccgcaaatgc agacacatta."

Harper's Weekly on Swine Flu

When guitarist Joe Satriani sued Coldplay for copyright infringement last December, Techdirt readers were quick to point out lots of other songs that sound similar (a great example of the importance of the conversation). Keyz noted that both songs sound a lot like a 1973 Cat Stevens tune.

Guess who else noticed?

Cat Stevens (whose name is now Yusuf Islam) has accused Coldplay of copying his melody from the "Foreigner Suite" (feel free to compare). He told the U. K. Sun, "there's been this argument about Coldplay stealing this melody from Joe Satriani, but, if you listen to it, it's mine! It's the Foreigner Suite, it is!" He claimed that his decision whether or not to pursue this legally will "depend on how well Satriani does" (this wouldn't be the first such lawsuit from Islam).

The problem is, once you think about this for 6-8 seconds (the length of the melody in question)... it's just insane. Is Islam threatening Satriani too? If Coldplay used his melody, isn't Satriani also guilty? Does Satriani still feel that dagger through his heart if the melody wasn't even "his" to begin with? What about the Creaky Boards, who also claimed the song as theirs a year ago? What about all the other songs that sound similar -- Pounding (Doves), J'en Ai Marre (Alizee), Honesty (Billy Joel), Frances Limon (Enanitos Verdes), Hearts (Marty Balin)? At what point does it become obvious that it's more likely that no copying took place than that everyone is guilty of plagiarism? If anything, this accusation strengthens Coldplay's claim that this was just a coincidence.

A cynic might assume these are just blatant money grabs or publicity stunts; Satriani is demanding "any and all profits," Islam is waiting to see how well Satriani does and the accusation comes the day before his latest album release. Also, a cynical approach would explain why Islam seems to be threatening Coldplay instead of Satriani (hint: which song has made more money?), unless Islam's just letting Satriani do all the work and planning to lay claim on whatever he captures. Unfortunately, I think there may be a little honesty (no, not the Billy Joel song...) to Satriani's "dagger to the heart" comment and Islam's exclamation of "it's mine!" (my precious...). The success of "Viva La Vida" has provided the incentive to actually make these accusations real, but they do seem to be rooted in some sense of actually feeling wronged; these artists really seem to believe some sort of injustice has occurred, that no one else would have come up with the same few notes over the same few chords except by "stealing" from them. Of all people, musicians ought to know there are only so many ways to combine chords. Worrying about who came up with the idea "first" is yet another case of favoring invention over innovation, of giving a rather meaningless importance to chronology when it's really the way in which people connect with the art that's most important.

There have been successful copyright infringement lawsuits over melodies in the past, but I'm not sure that there has been such a high profile case like this with multiple people claiming infringement. Hopefully, the overlapping accusations of plagiarism backfire and actually suggest there was no wrongdoing so that a silly and complex web-of-royalties scenario is avoided for what was most likely independent creation. Here's to hoping that another two or three artists add to the chorus of accusations, further demonstrating how ridiculous this all is!

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

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Hebiclens / WMxdesign used an image editing program to put clown makeup on the faces of prominent conservatives. I like the pastel color palette he used, as you don't often see it on clowns.

RNC Clown College

Mike writes "Law prof Eugene Volokh blogs about a US House of Representatives bill proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others that could make it a federal felony to use your blog, social media like MySpace and Facebook, or any other Web media 'to cause substantial emotional distress through "severe, repeated, and hostile" speech.' Rep. Sanchez and colleagues want to make it easier to prosecute any objectionable speech through a breathtakingly broad bill that would criminalize a wide range of speech protected by the First Amendment. The bill is called The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, and if passed into law (and if it survives constitutional challenge) it looks almost certain to be misused."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are some great opportunities here for cyber-cartographers and others to share and explore technologies and applications, and to extend both mapping and what is thought of as mapping.

There's a great trailer on the site. If nothing else, this is a good way to introduce people to what it is we mean by "geospatial" or even "mapping" these days.

We live in the Global Location Age. “Where am I?” is being replaced by, “Where am I in relation to everything else?”

Penn State Public Broadcasting is developing the Geospatial Revolution Project, an integrated public media and outreach initiative about the world of digital mapping and how it is changing the way we think, behave, and interact.

The project will feature a web-based serial release of eight video episodes—each telling an intriguing geospatial story. Overarching themes woven throughout the episodes will tie them together, and the episodes will culminate in a 60-minute documentary. The project also will include an outreach initiative in collaboration with our educational partners, a chaptered program DVD, and downloadable outreach materials.

Few things are as exciting as receiving a mailer offering a free pre-paid cremation. Imagine my disappointment, however, to open the envelope and discover that the cremation service actually costs money.

It looks like other people have been burned by this cremation offer, too.

Likely the absolute coolest speaker design I have seen to date - Matt's 'Speaker House' was built from scrap and found materials after his previous set met an unfortunate end. Visit the audio domicile in his photostream.

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An anonymous reader writes "One day before Amazon is scheduled to unveil its widescreen Kindle aimed at newspaper readers, the e-commerce giant has been awarded its first US patent for an e-book reader. The new patent, D591,741, is a design patent which protects the look and feel of the Kindle shell, not for fundamental technologies. Those patents are mostly held by E Ink Corp., which makes the 'liquidless paper' display. Sony, IBM, and the Discovery cable TV network also have e-book patents. Amazon, though the leading e-book seller, has none, but the patent award indicates they've applied for at least four recently." Also in Kindle news, PC World has a brief article up on the larger-screen Kindle DX (expected to launch Wednesday), including pictures first spotted on Engadget.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Life Inc., is a guest blogger.)

My friend and neighbor Helaine Olen just got a nice piece into Slate about the way that our finance gurus let us down. It's the same story I've been looking at for the past decade, but told in a pretty immediately accessible way - particularly for Slate's audience. While Helaine concludes that she'd be satisfied with a genuine apology from the finance industry for how badly they served personal investors, I feel like I want more: an admission that they were actually successful in their industry's greater quest, which was to enact the greatest redistribution of wealth to the wealthy since about 1300. Let's hope it isn't followed by disastrous unemployment and a plague this time, too. Excerpt:

Years ago, when I wrote a popular financial makeover feature for a major national newspaper, one of our subjects asked if he should be plowing his more than $50,000 in savings into gold. It was 1997 and gold was trading at a little more than $300 an ounce. The financial planner assisting with the piece laughed dismissively, and the question never made it into the final write-up. Well, my bad. As I write, gold is hovering around $900 an ounce.

For more than two decades, as income inequality increased and job security decreased, Americans lapped up personal finance columns, books, and television shows. We thrilled to stock tips and swooned at sensible strategies for using dollar-cost averaging to invest in no-load index funds. Buy and hold, my friends! The annualized gain for the S&P 500 stock index over time is more than 10 percent! You, too, can turn into the millionaire next door. Carpe diem, folks! Seize the financial day!

The advice proffered by the vast majority of analysts, would-be gurus, and television pundits came down to one word: stocks. Some, like CNBC's infamous Jim Cramer, advocated stock-picking strategies. Others encouraged mutual funds. But very few--at least of those that could get publicity via mainstream outlets--doubted the efficacy of the market.

The End of Personal Finance (Slate / The Big Money)

(Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Life Inc., is a guest blogger.) One of the best things about spending the bulk of a decade researching a single topic is how much cool stuff you find. While working on the film version of Life Inc., we became addicted to Internet Archive's film libraries. This one, a cartoon produced by John Sutherland, defends the principles of capitalism against the anti-competitive ideas of Lefties. The most honest aspect of the film is that it readily admits that for capitalism to work, industry must continue to grow.

(Photo: a cc-licensed snapshot from Namibia by Flickr user Waterwin.)

Snip from a NYT article about a new study by a group of geneticists which pins the origin of humankind to a spot on the coast of southwest Africa near the Kalahari Desert. The study is said to be the largest ever of its kind on African genetic diversity. The researchers say Africans are descended from 14 ancestral populations that typically correlate with language and cultural groups.

Locations for the Garden of Eden have been offered many times before, but seldom in the somewhat inhospitable borderland where Angola and Namibia meet.

A new genetic survey of people in Africa, the largest of its kind, suggests, however, that the region in southwest Africa seems, on the present evidence, to be the origin of modern humans. The authors have also identified some 14 ancestral populations.

The new data goes far toward equalizing the genetic picture of the world, given that most genetic information has come from European and Asian populations. But because it comes from Africa, the continent on which the human lineage evolved, it also sheds light on the origins of human life.

The research team was led by Sarah A. Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, and reported in in a recent issue of Science: "The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans." (via Ned Sublette)

Right before Apple finally implemented variable pricing in iTunes it wasn't hard for many to predict that it would backfire badly on the major record labels as they tried to jack up prices. So, it should come as little surprise to find out those predictions appear to be entirely accurate. New reports say that the major record labels are losing revenue from variable pricing. Unit sales are dropping to the point that revenue is less as well. That's just bad business no matter how you look at it -- and totally preventable if they knew their own business. Plenty of people made it clear that sales would drop with higher prices, and it's amazing that the execs were unable to accurately predict how much.

Sometimes when we question the motives of entertainment industry execs, people say that we're being unfair in questioning the "intelligence" behind those moves. We're told over and over again that industry execs are much smarter than we are, and they know better than we do. And yet, almost everything that has been predicted has come true... over and over again. The industry keeps doing things that at least make it appear that it has trouble understanding the long-term implications of almost every move it makes. Perhaps they are smart. And perhaps it's all part of some grand plan. But, to date, the only evidence we've seen is that nearly every move made by the industry has backfired, and resulted in less revenue coming in, while those who predicted alternative and embraced alternative business models are finding tremendous success. At what point do we stop assuming that the legacy industry execs "are smarter" and recognize that they seem too focused on the old way of doing business to recognize how to competently change course?

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From the MAKE Flickr pool

Arduino co-founder David Cuartielles shares pics of his new interface for sound exploration, the Peacock -

It is an instrument for live performace or personal exploration of both live and digitized sounds. You can get sound from an SD card or record it through its mic-in. The sound will be looped and affected in different ways by different effects and digital filters.

The device is built around Cuartielles' Smapler audio sampling board with amplifying circuit and orange LEDs for good measure. The design seems reminiscent of classic antique radio and speaker cabinets, but realized in laser cut plastics - very cool. Read more about the Peacock on the BlushingBoy blog.

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Here's a simple tutorial on how to make Skype and other VoIP calls using 3G on a jailbroken iPhone:

Yet another reason why I am glad to have a jailbroken phone. Yup, this one is limited to those who are jailbroken, or willing to jailbreak. Anyway, it is possible, even easy to make VoIP calls on the iPhone using a cellular connection, which in my case is AT&T's 3G network.

[via iPhoneFreak]

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ruphus13 writes "When Mark Shuttleworth was asked what role WINE will play in Ubuntu's success, he said that Ubuntu cannot simply be a better platform to run Windows apps. From the post, according to Shuttleworth, '[Windows and Linux] both play an important role but fundamentally, the free software ecosystem needs to thrive on its own rules. it is *different* to the proprietary software universe. We need to make a success of our own platform on our own terms. if Linux is just another way to run Windows apps, we can't win. OS/2 tried that ...' The post goes on to say, 'Linux simply isn't Windows (nor is Windows Linux) and to expect fundamentally different approaches (and I'm not just thinking closed versus open) to look, feel, and operate the same way is senseless.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mentioned in a NYT article by John Markoff about tools such as Tor used in places like China and Iran to route around internet censorship, this word of a new browser-based toolkit.

Political scientists at the University of Toronto have built yet another system, called Psiphon, that allows anyone to evade national Internet firewalls using only a Web browser. Sensing a business opportunity, they have created a company to profit by making it possible for media companies to deliver digital content to Web users behind national firewalls.

The danger in this quiet electronic war is driven home by a stark warning on the group’s Web site: “Bypassing censorship may violate law. Serious thought should be given to the risks involved and potential consequences.”

Psiphon is here, and on Twitter. Here's a snip from their launch press release:

At the heart of the new venture is Psiphon’s Managed Delivery Platform (MDP), in which large-scale producers of content push their media through Psiphon’s proprietary cloud-based system to consumers in denied environments.

On the user end, the free service is encrypted, requires no software to download, is multimedia capable, and can even work through mobile smart phone platforms, such as the iPhone.

Users can sign on to Psiphon in a variety of ways: through email invites from trusted friends and colleagues, for example, or through Psiphon’s innovative “right2know” technology, which allows media producers to show consumers in censored environments content which is not available to them.

On the web: psiphon.ca

I was browsing FriendFeed yesterday and saw Scoble had started a thread on the new Kindle, which was being dismissed by the tech press as a "Hail Mary pass" to save the news industry. I don't see it that way. I like the Kindle, esp for reading the news, but a Kindle with a bigger screen might make the news even more attractive. Do I think it will work? I don't know, but why not give it a try.

So I called BlogTalkRadio, then called Scoble and we did a quick podcast, that started out talking about the Kindle, but turned to gadgets, the iPhone, the MIT Tech Review slam of Clay Shirky and myself, and on to opportunities for the Palm Pre to zig where Apple zags. They could let the software market run without control from the mother ship, see what happens. Maybe there are some great X-rated apps for mobile devices?

As always, you can subscribe to my podcasts using a podcatcher or iTunes.

Audrey Kawasaki has posted images, details, and in-progress shots of her upcoming solo show in Tokyo, "Watching Shadow."

Law prof Eugene Volokh blogs about a U.S. House of Representatives bill proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others that could make it a federal felony to use your blog, social media like MySpace and Facebook, or any other web media "To Cause Substantial Emotional Distress Through "Severe, Repeated, and Hostile" Speech." Oh lordy, there goes 4chan.

Here's the relevant text:

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both....

["Communication"] means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; ...

["Electronic means"] means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.

Jacob Sullum at Reason thinks the proposed law is stupid, too.

It was bad enough that a grandstanding U.S. attorney successfully prosecuted Lori Drew, a Missouri woman who participated in a cruel MySpace prank that apparently precipitated the 2006 suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier, under an anti-hacking law that clearly was not intended for this sort of situation. Now Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and 14 of her colleagues want to make such prosecutions easier through a breathtakingly broad bill that would criminalize a wide range of speech protected by the First Amendment. The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would make it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to transmit an electronic communication ("including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages") "with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person...to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior."

(Thanks, Glenn Reynolds)

Recently on Offworld we looked at length at Infinite Ammo's Paper Moon (above), the most recent game on Blurst (the web-portal from Minotaur China Shop creators Flashbang) and saw how even it's planar-3D platforming worked perfectly in a time-limited high-score setup: imagine a monochrome silent-movie paper-cut-out Mario that you'll want to play five times in a row, and you're getting close. We also saw our unabashed iPhone love Eliss get reworked with a smoother difficulty curve and additional levels, after -- it seems -- most everyone was subtly abused by the original, and played both the first demo for the now-officially-released long-anticipated Plants Vs. Zombies and a text adventure based on what it's actually like to attend the Game Developers Conference. Elsewhere we saw the most horrifying version of Mario 64 ever captured on film, remembered what it was like to compile computer programs by mail (!), dug up early plans to make a CD-ROM addon for the NES (!), and wished we were in Montreal for this 8-bit/chiptune showcase and Kokoromi member game jam. Finally, our quick-serve 'one shot's for the day: a belated birthday wish from the creator of a game about restrained gentle-lady catfights, and Polytron's Fez, deconstructed, found while guest blogger Tiff Chow dug up these adorable hand sewn and huggable handhelds.

Urlesque posts this appreciation for the work of time-lapse aficionado Andrew Curtis. Happy Cinco de Mayo. (thanks Stephen Lenz)

half_cocked_jack writes "What are the classic books of science from throughout history? I'm currently reading On the Origin of Species on my Kindle 2, and it's sparked an interest in digging up some of the classic books of science. I'm looking for books from the ancient and medieval worlds and books from the golden ages of scientific discovery. Books like: Galileo's The Starry Messenger; Newton's Principia; Copernicus's On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres; and Faraday's The Chemical History of a Candle. I know that I can likely find these books in a format I can use on my Kindle (found a few on Gutenberg already), but what I need is a checklist of these books to guide my reading. Suggestions?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few friends have sent over Jason Pontin's "manifesto" for saving newspapers and magazines, where he supposedly slams "new media" thinkers like Clay Shirky for "folly and ignorance" and "[knowing] nothing about the business of media." That's a bit harsh. I'm fans of both Pontin and Shirky, both of whom I tend to think are dead on right a lot more often than they're wrong -- so it's quite interesting to try to find the points where they disagree. Unfortunately, I don't think they actually disagree very much. I think the Shirky that Pontin describes isn't the actual Clay Shirky. Pontin claims:

"Shirky believes that the coming decades will see a variety of nonprofit experiments whose funding sources will be similar to those that have sustained him as an academic, such as endowments, sponsorships, and grants."

Really? He's discussing the same Shirky analysis that many of us discussed a couple months back, and I don't see anywhere that Shirky claims that journalism will be a bunch of nonprofit experiments involving endowments. At the very end he says that one experiment of many would likely include "sponsorship or grants or endowments" but he doesn't say that's all of the experiments at all. And I don't think anyone denies that there will be such experiments (and nowhere does Shirky claim they'll be nonprofit). In fact, even Pontin admits in his article that sponsorships are big revenue drivers these days. So he seems to first be dismissing Shirky, but what he's dismissing isn't what Pontin is talking about... and later he basically admits that one of the business models Shirky mentions is a good one. So why bash Shirky?

Pontin then makes a second mistake in tossing aside the idea that "amateurs" have a place in the modern journalistic endeavor, stating:

The comparative advantage of mainstream media is not the ownership of presses, but the collaboration of professionals. The creation of good journalism is a tremendously laborious process, requiring an infrastructure more expensive than any press. The illustration and design of stories has an infrastructure, too. Developing an audience that will attract particular advertisers requires another infrastructure. Selling advertising requires yet another. These structures, which allow publications to reach large, coherent audiences, can exist only within complex organizations, mostly businesses.

He's right that it is a laborious process that requires quite a lot of infrastructure, but Pontin offers no support for the final sentence, claiming that these structures can only exist within businesses. Hell, ten years ago, I'm sure people would say the same thing about the creation of an online encyclopedia. Or the ability to market and distribute popular music.

Finally, Pontin seems to confuse the idea that everyone can participate in the media-making business with the idea that professionals aren't needed. No one that I know says that editors and professional journalists go away. It's just that their role changes, and the wider community participates in the overall process.

That said... if Pontin had simply skipped over the opening half of his discussion and jumped straight to his recommendations on what publications should do, I'd agree with almost everything (and, oddly, I'd bet Shirky would agree with most of them too, despite his "folly and ignorance.") The recommendations are mostly common sense, along the lines of what Shirky and other media commentators have been saying for a while. Give customers what they want. Don't try to charge for stuff that no one will pay for. Cut back on the excess and overlap. Focus on more interesting and creative ways to connect those who want to reach your community to that community, while being careful to not let it impact editorial. That's all good advice, but nothing particularly new. The problem is that it's not what most publications have been doing. Also, I'd argue that Pontin still misses the biggest point, which isn't a surprise given his earlier dismissal of participatory media: many people want to be more involved in the media process, whether it's commenting, sharing or even helping to report on the story. Any modern publication is going to need to enable those activities. Otherwise people will go elsewhere. But, of course, I speak from a position of folly and ignorance, so take that for what it's worth.

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Keith writes:

In early February, a correspondent pointed me to Jeff Keyzer’s mightyOhm blog. I immediately ran across his homebrew PID-controlled soldering hotplate and improvements, and immediately knew I had to have one.

I contacted Jeff through his blog and he was great about sharing his knowledge. He’d built his hotplate using the last of some surplus parts he’d picked up at a now-closed store in the Valley and was considering ordering a batch of parts to make a few for all the folks inquiring about them, but hadn’t done so yet. I was eager, decided it’d be quicker to make my own (and three months later, that may actually have been correct), and went off to eBay to find myself some parts.

Copycat PID-controlled solder hotplate

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Here are a couple more excerpts from The Fat Man and Circuit Girl show. In the first clip, Jeri converts an optical flatbed scanner so that it rotates around an object (like her FACE!) and scans inward.

In the second, she makes a cloud chamber with a toy tank (a tank in a tank) to move the Americium 241 (taken from a smoke detector) radiation source around. In the resulting cloud chamber, you can see alpha emissions, background radiation, and the effects of magnets on alpha radiation. It's amazing that all you need to create such a cloud chamber is little more than a clear plastic tub, some magnets, a rag with alcohol on it, some dry ice, and a bright light source (oh, and the radioactive material). Nice to see our pal Steve Davee in the vid.

The Fat Man and Circuit Girl

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wjousts writes "Technology Review has an article comparing various search results from Wolfram Alpha and Google. Results vary. For example, searching 'Microsoft Apple' in Alpha returns data comparing both companies stock prices, whereas Google top results are news stories mentioning both companies. However, when searching for '10 pounds kilograms,' Alpha rather unhelpfully assumes you want to multiply 10 pounds by 1 kilogram, whereas Google directs you to sites for metric conversions. Change the query to '10 pounds in kilograms' and both give you the result you'd expect (i.e. 4.536 kg)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in December, the RIAA claimed that it had discontinued its strategy of filing lawsuits against individual file sharers. Specifically, the RIAA's letter to Congress stated "we discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August." While we've pointed out in the past that this is wholly untrue, some Hollywood lawyers took us to task, claiming the RIAA never said anything of the sort (even as RIAA lobbyists have been pushing that exact story to the press over and over again). It seems the entertainment industry wants to have it both ways. They want to claim they gave up the lawsuits when it suits them as a publicity stunt, but when you corner them, they want to claim that they never said they'd stop filing lawsuits. So, the lawsuits keep coming. As Ray Beckerman has noted, there are still new lawsuits being filed on a regular basis. Once again, the RIAA's original claim appears to have been nothing more than a PR stunt to get newspapers to claim the group had given up on its backwards legal strategy, when the truth is quite different.

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jammag writes "It's long been one of those exceptionally hard-to-quantify numbers: exactly what percentage of the desktop PC market is held by Linux? Doubters suggest it hovers around a negligible one percent, while partisans suggest it's in excess of 10 percent. Bruce Byfield explores the various sources of estimates, dismissers' and fan boys' alike, and guesstimates it might realistically be 5-6%. Still, he admits, 'the objectivity of numbers is often just a myth.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post's Security Fix is reporting that hackers broke into servers at the Virginia health department that monitors prescription drug abuse and replaced the homepage with a ransom demand. The attackers claimed they had deleted the backups, and demanded $10 million for the return of prescription data on more than 8 million Virginians. Virginia isn't saying much about the attacks at the moment, except to acknowledge that they've involved the FBI, and that they've shut down e-mail and a whole mess of servers for the state department of health professionals. The Post piece credits Wikileaks as the source, which has a copy of the ransom note left behind by the attackers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joe Bowers built this Macro Controller for his Xbox 360. It uses an Arduino receiving inputs from a Wii Classic Controller. The Arduino outputs into a wireless XBox Controller. It functions like a normal controller, but when you press the shoulder buttons and the "+,-" buttons, you get combo moves that would normally require more work.

Xbox Macro Controller - How to

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davidmwilliams sends in his IT Wire review of how Windows 7RC1 performs on an Acer Aspire One netbook. Summing up: it runs, it won't win any speed competitions, you won't want to play Crysis on it, and it's pretty OK for light-duty, everyday tasks. In related news, several readers have noted that Windows 7 RC1 is now available; one anonymous reader notes "This time, Microsoft was smart not to limit the time that it's available or the number of keys. It will be up for download until July, so there's lots of time to grab a copy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From the MAKE Flickr pool

JoeLMutantE's DIY step sequencer looks about as high-end as it gets. Dubbed the Project Stella, the rack-mountable monster was created as an antidote to standard linear interfaces -

Stella is an analog step sequencer based on an old P3 sequencer kit. It has been made trying to make some different to the standard 16 step linear sequencing of those TR-style sequencers.
It has two rounds of 16 knobs each one, and designed on an orbital/elllipse line. I have tried to randomize to the maximum the fact to add musical notes. When you see one linear step sequencer, automatically divides on a grid of four steps, and this one makes the music creation to sound very rigid. Avoiding that "griding" effect, the results is that the music is more natural and so different.

See more of the interior and build on the relevant photoset.

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While the major record labels keep insisting that BitTorrent and tracker sites are somehow evil and need to be shut down, more and more indie artists and labels are recognizing that they actually are quite useful promotion and distribution platforms. We've pointed to some in the past, but the latest is a label called Honor Roll Music, which is promoting one of its popular acts by buying ads on isoHunt, the popular BitTorrent site. The ad links to a torrent file so people can easily download the music of the band, Awesome New Republic. Of course, if the major record labels had their way, these creative promotion techniques wouldn't be allowed. Sometimes when we talk about innovative business models, defenders of the old system say that those are fine, but there's no reason to change copyright or stop these lawsuits because those models still work. Yet, this shows how that's not true at all. If the entertainment industry successfully shuts down these sites, it precludes these types of models and promotions. Once again, we see how this is really all about stomping out innovation rather than any legal issue.

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Toycutter is blog that showcases some of the coolest action figure mods, vinyl toy customizations, and other figurative toy hacks.

Toycutter

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GamePolitics writes "Seven anti-war protesters were arrested in Philadelphia on Saturday during a protest rally and march which targeted the Army Experience Center, a high-tech recruitment center which uses PC and Xbox games and simulations to attract potential recruits. GamePolitics was on hand to cover the protest, and took video of the arrests. A local news station also reported on the rally, and the Peace Action Network released a statement saying, "In its desperate approach to meet recruiting numbers, the military is teaching the wrong values to teenagers. Sugarcoating combat experience with virtual war is a dishonor to those with real war experience."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In recent years, various state regulators, desperate to dredge up extra tax income, have targeted VoIP providers, using the infamous "like a duck" test, to say that since they look like a traditional telephone service, they need to pay taxes like one -- despite the fact that they don't make use of the same infrastructure (which is part of the reason why telco services were taxed in the first place). A couple years ago, an appeals court rejected this theory in Minnesota, and now an appeals court has come to the same conclusion in Nebraska, stating that VoIP services, such as Vonage, are not telecom service providers, and thus are not responsible for taxes such as the Universal Service Fund. Of course, this also contradicts some other rulings... so perhaps we'll eventually see this in the Supreme Court as well.

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An anonymous reader notes that this weekend, ReadWriteWeb discovered a security hole on several McAfee sites, which lets any attacker piggyback on the company's reputation and brand in order to distribute malware, Trojans, or anything else. The submitter adds an ironic coda to McAfee's epic fail: "In the 'how to HTML Injection' section, the author provided the four steps needed to execute a simple, no-brainer injection, but unfortunately, exposed a hole in NY Times website when they republished the article. While the author changed the offending text to an image, the Times is still using the original story which redirects directly to ReadWriteWeb [via XSS]." From the RWW post: "During tests this weekend, we discovered the company who claims to 'keep you safe from identity theft, credit card fraud...' has several cross-site scripting vulnerabilities and provides the bad guys with a brilliant — albeit ironic — launching pad from which to unleash their attacks."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of folks have sent in the news that Coldplay is doing a promotion whereby they'll be giving away a free CD at every live show and will also make the tracks available for free download on the band's website. The album itself is live tracks recorded during the current tour. As the band notes:

"Playing live is what we love. This album is a thank you to our fans - the people who give us a reason to do it and make it happen."

It's great to see another well-known band learn that "free" can have quite a bit of value, though this does seem a bit more gimmicky than any well-thought-out strategy. Giving away a physical product is nice, but expensive, and unlikely to be a difference maker for those going to shows. Still, it is nice to see a band not freaking out about free and looking for more ways to actually connect with and reward their fans, rather than trying to punish them like some others.

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Mia Farrow is on a hunger strike to support Darfur refugees and has been posting videos on her YouTube channel. The LA Times reports that 75 other people so far have pledged on Farrows site to either fast for three weeks or eat the same kind of rations the refugees are eating.

Gabriel Stauring, who helped organize the site, expressed concern for Farrow, with whom he said he'd traveled to Darfur last summer. "You’ve seen Mia’s size," he said. "There’s no way she can go that long without doing permanent damage. We want to convince her that if we have somebody else that is famous and that would draw attention, that she should stop." Stauring suggested that more recognizable names might be joining the effort soon.

Also striking is Pam Omidyar, a founder of the philanthropic group Humanity United, and the wife of EBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Omidyar has been eating the refugee meals for 18 days, according to her blog on fastdarfur.org.

Mia Farrow hits day nine of online hunger strike for Darfur

Howard Rheingold sez, "Aaron Stapley and Sarah Castelblanco made this video (featuring interviews with me, among others) about the way lone wolves and small operators are able to leverage their creative work with tools and methods. The video was originally inspired by this BB post by Cory about how BB readers are coping with the econopocalype."

Muscle Up! (Thanks, Howard!)

Here's a good explanation of the workings of the "watchclock," a device carried by watchmen in order to allow their employers to check up on their patrolling. It's one of the earliest examples of a sophisticated device intended to control the behavior of its user.

The key, literally, to the watchclock system is that the watchman is required to "clock in" at a series of perhaps a dozen or more checkpoints throughout the premises. Positioned at each checkpoint is a unique, coded key nestled in a little steel box and secured by a small chain. Each keybox is permanently and discreetly installed in strategically-placed nooks and crannies throughout the building, for example in a broom closet or behind a stairway.

The watchman makes his patrol. He visits every checkpoint and clicks each unique key into the watchclock. Within the device, the clockwork marks the exact time and key-location code to a paper disk or strip. If the watchman visits all checkpoints in order, they will have completed their required patrol route.

The watchman's supervisor can subsequently unlock the device itself (the watchman himself cannot open the watchclock) and review the paper records to confirm if the watchman was or was not doing their job.

Who Watches the Watchman? (via Kottke)

A woman in Mansfield, TX spent a day chasing off aggressive bargain-hunters who were responding to a Craigslist posting offering her tetherball and and basketball hoop for free. The ad had allegedly been placed by her neighbor, a cop who didn't like having them visible next door. By the end of the day, the bargain-seekers had managed to make off with both.

Sherry Johnson Huwitt was standing at her kitchen window in her bathrobe shortly before dawn a couple of weeks ago when two strangers pulled up and started loading the portable basketball goal from the side of her house into a truck.

Sherry Johnson Huwitt says that when she recently confronted strangers who were about to haul off a portable basketball goal from outside her house, they told her the item had been offered for giveaway in an ad on Craigslist.

When the Mansfield woman ran outside to confront them, they said they weren't stealing because the item was offered for the taking on Craigslist.

"What the hell is Craigslist?" she asked.

Huwitt had never heard of the advertising Web site and hadn't posted any such ad. Someone else did: Free basket ball goal and tether ball pole. At dead end of roadway beside my home...(address) dont knock its placed out there for you to come get. will delete when gone. thanks.

Mansfield woman says Arlington officer offered her possessions on Craigslist without her consent (via Consumerist)

Jon.Laslow writes "I'm getting a lot of pressure from managers to switch to soy-based toner cartridges for our laser printers because they are 'greener.' The problem is, the only information I can find on them is from sales pitches; and the reviews all seem to be user testimonials. Do you have any experience soy-based printing products? Did you have any issues with them, and how was the print quality?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jon Haddock's latest hand-cranked automaton reenacts the infamous "Don't Tase Me Bro" with adorable mechanical figurines.

Andrew Meyer (Don't Tase Me Bro) (via Make)

I'm particularly fond of artwork that brings the internet into the gallery in a physical way. This hand-cranked wooden atomaton entitled "Andrew Meyer (Don't Tase Me Bro)" is by Jon Haddock.

In the Maker Shed:

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For some unclear reason, this weekend there was a fair amount of press coverage of the fact that Italian officials are suing The Pirate Bay in court. This lawsuit has been ongoing, so there really isn't much new -- other than the recent verdict in Sweden, which is now in dispute over conflict of interest charges against the judge in the case. In Italy, the case first made news last summer, when a prosecutor on the case ordered ISPs to start blocking The Pirate Bay. However, what was really odd was that ISPs weren't just told to block the site, but to funnel all the traffic to a site run by the major record labels. That was quite questionable. Even if The Pirate Bay were found to be illegal, to hand that traffic over to the labels raises plenty of ethical questions. Either way, a judge rejected the ban for the time being, though it could be reinstated later.

But what's struck me is how many of these sorts of stories have been coming out of Italy lately, raising lots of questions about officials there and how they view the internet. The other high profile case involves the decision to charge Google execs with criminal charges because some kids put up a questionable video on YouTube -- which YouTube took down within hours of finding out about it (and, which officials used to track down the kids who misbehaved in the video). It's difficult to think up any reason that would make Google execs criminally liable for a video of dumb kids being uploaded to its site. We're still wondering why other tools used in the video aren't also being charged (for example, one part of the video involved kids throwing a tissue box at a disabled boy -- so, clearly, the execs at the tissue-maker should be equally liable).

However, that's hardly all of the oddities coming out of Italy lately. Of course, like France, the country is looking to implement a three strikes law, but has also required all blogs to register with the government. Then there were the folks who ran an online music store, where they had officially licensed the music for sale, but the IFPI claimed they didn't get all the right licenses, and an Italian court sent them to jail for this (rather than just fining them or passing an injunction). Oh right, and Italian cops have been asking for a back door to listen to Skype calls. And... finally, recently we wrote about a law that the gov't was considering that would ban anonymity online in Italy -- and it just so happened that the law was written by entertainment industry representatives. Add all these up, and it seems that Italy appears to be an incredibly anti-Internet country. You'd have to imagine that can't be good for business.

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Mark Kleiman says,

Last year U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave a public speech questioning the need for more privacy protections.

This year a Fordham University law professor teaching a course on privacy gave his class the project of turning up publicly available information on Scalia.

The fifteen-page dossier completely flipped Scalia out.

"It seems that Professor Reidenberg successfully created an active learning environment where his students took control and learned the subject in a way they will not soon forget."

Read: Fordham Law Class Collects Personal Info About Scalia; Supreme Ct. Justice Is Steamed.

Snip: His class turned in a 15-page dossier that included not only Scalia's home address, home phone number and home value, but his food and movie preferences, his wife's personal e-mail address and photos of his grandchildren, reports Above the Law.

If you are interested in following this story, including a discussion of privacy and ethical considerations, here is a link to a blog which provides further detail.

Read: Justice Scalia's Dossier: Interesting Issues about Privacy and Ethics

JohnForDummies points us to an article in the Wall Street Journal about video game developers who are embracing business models that focus on getting a core group of fans to pay. While the article credits Kevin Kelly's well-known essay on 1,000 True Fans, I have to admit I'm having a little trouble seeing how this is really all that different than the old "shareware" market. While these developers are focused on adding more value for paying subscribers (and are only targeting a small and attainable number of paying users), I still think it's a risky business model to focus on selling anything that can be easily copied. The focus should be on finding real scarcities that can be sold...

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It's confusing when your mind plays tricks because it's playing many roles.

1. It is the subject of the trick (it's doing the tricking).

2. It is the object of the trick (it's being tricked).

3. It is perceived by the mind to be something other than what it is (the trick worked).

4. And the mind perceives itself misperceiving (it's aware the trick worked).

5. You can see this never ends.

In the early days of the blogosphere we called this: watching them watch us watch them watch us watch them watch us. We're still doing it, many years later -- and it was going on long before the blogosphere. Humans are all about watching, mostly watching other humans, and in doing so hoping to learn something about themself. To the extent that we're aware that there are things that are not human, we tend to anthropomorphize them -- treat them as if they were human.

Sometimes the tricks are willful, but usually it all happens below the consciousness. I play willful tricks all the time. To quit smoking there's a lot of trickery involved. My mind has trained itself to believe many things that are untrue about smoking. Some examples: Without smoking I will die. I use smoking to solve problems. I can't quit. Of course you can. If you put your foot down and said "Enough of this foolishness" to yourself, as an adult to a child, there would be no argument. But you never say that, because you don't want to quit and in order not to, you have to believe you can't.

It's so incredibly complicated. Mostly because there are so many observers all in one body. With so many different versions of the truth it's hard to sort it all out.

Now when you add millions of people to the mix, as you do on the Internet, without the normal cues and gestures that give you some idea of where the other people are coming from, the amount of trickery, conscious and unconscious, goes way up.

When someone says something emotional about another person, based only on knowing them through the Internet, they're really describing how they feel when they're reading what that person has written.

When someone says "He's really angry" what they really mean is "I feel angry when I read his writing."

There's no way you can know if someone is angry or not, esp if you're just reading. And if you were right, you're talking about an emotion that occurred in the past, when he or she was writing what you are reading now. To respond to this person as if he is angry now would be a mistake. Think about how quickly emotions pass. I can be angry or scared and in five minutes be relaxed and feel safe. Watch a child, their emotions shift in fractions of a second. All you can be sure of is how you feel. And given all the tricks you're playing on yourself all the time, maybe you're not actually so sure.

Photographs by Nicola "Okin" Frioli: SWINE FLU - MEXICO CITY. (Thanks, Antinous, and anonymous BB commenter)

The GPI writes with a story about Scott's Space Wars, a piece of gaming history: "This game was written by the famous game author Scott Adams, who founded Adventure International, the first multimillion dollar PC game company. It was founded over 30 years ago and developed for early 8-bit home PCs, i.e. TRS-80, Apple II, Atari. Scott's Space Wars is the first graphics game that was ever written at home, for a 16-bit home computer. The original source code is available as photos of the original 1975 hand-written manuscript. The last purchaser of the manuscript paid $197,500 in 2005. A brief video shows how the game was played."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's a link to a new tumblog that collects photos of delicious, healing hospital meals from around the world. (Thanks, Reno!).

Despite widespread reports last week that New Zealand was going to scrap its copyright laws, and start from scratch, Tom Rix writes in to point out that New Zealand officials are now denying this report and saying they're still working on a new version of the copyright amendment that was a source of tremendous controversy recently. Too bad. While it's likely that any new law (from scratch or just as an amendment) would be driven by corporate interests, it would have been an interesting experiment if the country could have been convinced to really revisit copyright laws.

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• Horno de leña
• TeaLED: LED + batería + cajita + switch
• Notas MIDI con el Arduino
• Open Sorce Orchestra
• Campos eólicos de CFE

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nandemoari sends along word that Apple has picked up Richard Teversham, a senior Executive from Microsoft's European Xbox operations, ending his 15 years of service to Redmond. Some press accounts assume that Teversham's role may lie in beefing up the games scene on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Forbes goes farther, opining that Apple "appears to be preparing an all-out assault on the handheld gaming market." Other reporting associates the hire with Apple's recent buildout of chip-design expertise.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The LA Times has tracked down the reasoning for why SMS text messaging is limited to 160 characters. Basically, one guy working on the project figured that was plenty after typing a bunch of sentences out and noticing that most were less than 160 characters. There was no serious additional research done on it. It just sorta stuck once implemented. In an age where so many things are user-tested to death, it's kind of nice to know this was almost an accident of history, based on the reasoning of one guy.

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In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, refurbish, etc.

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This week, we finish out our Shop Shelf series with a column on beloved tools, parts, and supply catalogs. I don't know about you, but I've always had a "thing" for catalogs. Maybe it's the tool fetishist in me, maybe it's the ravenous American consumer, or maybe it's the techno-utopian who thinks that the right tool, the right part, the right material, will make everything... well all right. Whatever it is (and it's probably all of these things or more), I love my catalog collection and always get a little thrill whenever a new edition shows up in my mailbox. And at least the catalogs themselves are free, so it's a very cheap thrill.

Apparently, I'm not the only catalog coveter. The query I sent to my maker network returned tons of results, too many to detail here (so some are simply listed at the end of the piece). As always, please chime in with Comments and tell us what are some of your favorite catalogs.

Digikey

If you peer onto the shop shelves of every electronics geek in the US, chances are, the Digikey catalog will be spotted there. I don't remember a time when I didn't have one on my shelf. I even remember having a healthy respect for Digikey before I started messing with hardware and electronics, as I'd watch my wirehead friends ogling the components, spec'ing parts, and tearing into their Digikey orders when they arrived. I remember thinking: "Man, these guys sure are excited by this incomprehensible catalog and all of these strange components I can't begin to understand." Now I understand.

 

Jameco

Jameco has a soft spot in my Charliplexed heart, as it was the first electronics catalog I started ordering tools, parts, and kits from. I started ordering from their computer parts catalog, got the electronics catalog, and fed my early electronics interest from there. One of the first things I bought from them was a 35-piece computer/electronics tool set. I still use many of the tools (e.g. the solder sucker) from that set on a nearly daily basis. And I still order from Jameco on occasion and have always been happy with their products and the customer service.

 

All Electronics

Another catalog that's always been in my collection. I haven't ordered anything from them in years, but I always enjoy scanning their offerings.

 

Electronics Goldmine
Dan Barlow of HacDC writes: Electronics Goldmine offers discounts on SMT components, and often has cool, weird stuff like IC masks and wafers. They also have a special robot section.

 

MPJA
A bunch of my maker buds recommended the venerable Marlin P Jones & Assoc catalog. MAKE's Collin Cunningham writes: "MPJA has some awesome prices on a variety of electronics equipment. I recently picked up a Mastech Dual 0-30V benchtop power supply for under 200 beans and I'm quite happy with it. They also have dirt-cheap toggle switches and some unusual surplus items, like a security camera mount I found useful for shooting macro/project builds."

 

Newark
A catalog I've never even seen in person but one that shows up on a lot of recommendation lists for electronic component catalogs. And like all of the other catalogs here, it's sent free of charge, and it looks to be the size of a phonebook. And like most of the catalogs here, there are online and PDF versions, if you don't need the dead tree edition.

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