shiroobi writes "Wow! $24-40 USD a pop? This would seem to mean that every TV is already marked up with this cost now that ATSC tuners are required. Looks like Vizio is fighting something like this already against Funai."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

shiroobi writes "Wow! $24-40 USD a pop? This would seem to mean that every TV is already marked up with this cost now that ATSC tuners are required. Looks like Vizio is fighting something like this already against Funai."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ruby writes in to let us know that a Dutch website, Miljoenhuizen.nl, has been found liable for the way that Google summarized the content on the website. Google, of course, has algorithms that try to summarize the contents of a page in a snippet so that you know what's behind the link, and how it relates to the search that you do. As a part of that, it often will show parts of sentences connected by ellipses, and that's what happened here. The snippet on Google read:

Complete name: Zwartepoorte Specialiteit: BMW...This company has been declared bankrupt, it has been acquired by the motordealer I have worked for Boat Rialto...

This upset Zwartepoorte, an auto dealer, who felt that this summary falsely stated that it had gone bankrupt... so it sued the underlying site. It's quite surprising (on a number of different levels) that it didn't sue Google as well (or instead). However, the court actually agreed that this was the fault of the original website owner, and told Miljoenhuizen.nl to fix the website so that Google wouldn't summarize the site that way. It's hard to fathom how this could possibly be Miljoenhuizen.nl's fault, though apparently someone from Miljoenhuizen.nl suggested that it could control that in the courtroom -- which likely resulted in the judge's ruling.

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An anonymous reader writes in to note that GM will sell its Hummer brand to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. of China, a little-known industrial firm. For now, the deal will save 3,000 jobs in the US. (The military HumVees are made by a separate company and are not involved in this deal.) "As part of the deal, some GM plants will continue to build the Hummer brand for the new owner, at least for awhile. The company said its Shreveport, La., plant will keep building Hummers for the new owner until at least 2010. ... GM said it sold 5,013 Hummers worldwide in the first quarter, down 62% from the 13,050 that it sold in the same period the prior year." AP coverage has more details on GM's planned divestitures, including the shedding of Pontiac, Saturn, and Saab.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes in to note that GM will sell its Hummer brand to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. of China, a little-known industrial firm. For now, the deal will save 3,000 jobs in the US. (The military HumVees are made by a separate company and are not involved in this deal.) "As part of the deal, some GM plants will continue to build the Hummer brand for the new owner, at least for awhile. The company said its Shreveport, La., plant will keep building Hummers for the new owner until at least 2010. ... GM said it sold 5,013 Hummers worldwide in the first quarter, down 62% from the 13,050 that it sold in the same period the prior year." AP coverage has more details on GM's planned divestitures, including the shedding of Pontiac, Saturn, and Saab.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yahoo has a contest site for makers called Make It Green. You can submit you own green DIY projects and the inventors chosen by the winner judges get "$2,500 and a share of the sales, and possibly appear on the Everyday Edisons TV show."

So far, 51 ideas have been submitted. My favorite idea so far is for a home mulch maker. I wish the site had more details about how it worked. It takes a lot of energy to chew up a tree and the wood chipper I bought a couple of years ago ended up choking on all but the puniest of branches when the blades became just a little dull. Make it Green

It's pretty clear that Apple's policies covering what iPhone applications are acceptable for its App Store are pretty absurd and arbitrary. The company has repeatedly blocked applications that could allow users to access content Apple deems "objectionable" -- like an e-book reader that can display the Kama Sutra, among thousands of other books -- when that same content is accessible through the iPhone's built-in web browser or other applications. This rejection process led the Electronic Frontier Foundation to ask the Copyright Office to grant a DMCA exemption covering the jailbreaking of iPhones, so they could be used with any app the user wanted instead of just Apple-approved ones, as well as other phone unlocking techniques. Apple, of course, responded by saying that jailbreaking was copyright infringment.

The company may have now unwittingly given a little more juice to the EFF's claims that the approval process is arbitrary, censorial and anti-competitive, though, by rejecting an application that displays the EFF's RSS feed. Not because they dislike the EFF (ostensibly), but because it contained "objectionable content" in the form of a blog post that linked to a YouTube video containing the f-word in a subtitle. Once again, this content is available elsewhere on the iPhone, namely via the web browser and YouTube app pre-installed on the device, reinforcing the asinine nature of the rejection. Whether this will help the EFF's case with the Copyright Office -- or help change Apple's policy -- remains to be seen. But for now, it still looks like Apple's app rejection process is a digital equivalent of a "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" sign.

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

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uninet writes "Over the course of a few days last week, I was able to spend a good deal of time with Verizon's amazing little MiFi 3G router. It admirably performed its task of providing speedy Wi-Fi Internet to other devices via an EvDO Rev. A connection. Ironically, the device even improved the experience of using the iPhone, making it usable for surfing where its native network (AT&T) doesn't even connect."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

uninet writes "Over the course of a few days last week, I was able to spend a good deal of time with Verizon's amazing little MiFi 3G router. It admirably performed its task of providing speedy Wi-Fi Internet to other devices via an EvDO Rev. A connection. Ironically, the device even improved the experience of using the iPhone, making it usable for surfing where its native network (AT&T) doesn't even connect."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over at Offworld, after Sony's marathon two hour E3 press conference, I've summed up the most important highlights which -- surprisingly, after recent rampant leaks -- did have some secrets in store, including: * a new PlayStation 3 motion control setup to rival Microsoft's Natal and Nintendo's enhanced MotionPlus Wii controller * a fresh lineup of third party PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable exclusives from GTA creators Rockstar, Square Enix with a new online Final Fantasy, and Konami's Hideo Kojima with a new PSP exclusive Metal Gear Solid sequel * more PSP as music/video media center integration * and new additions to its overarching socially-enabled 'play, create, share' lineup See E309: the 5 things you need to know about Sony's press conference for the full details.

My friends Kelly and Erik at Homegrown Evolution have an interesting post about another one of their least favorite plants -- the poisonous Yellow Oleander.

Thumbing through a book of toxic and hallucinogenic plants, I finally manged to i.d. the neighbor's shrub that looms over the staircase to our front door. The popular name given for this plant in the book was "suicide tree", so named for its use in Sri Lanka, though I've found other plants with this same moniker. The scientific name is Thevetia peruviana, and it's also known as "lucky nut" (can we change that to unlucky nut please), Be Still Tree (presumably because you'll be still if you eat any of it), and yellow oleander (it's a relative of Southern California's favorite freeway landscaping flower).

Yellow Oleander - another "Least Favorite Plant"

Gascoyne Bowman makes and sells this useful and attractive shiv cosy at her Criminal Crafts Etsy store.

A stylish hands free carry all for your concealed weapon of choice. Polar fleece sheath, will hold a blade five inches in length with a two-inch width. The outside is embelished with rinestone strand and skull and daggers trim. The sequined garter is elastic and should fit most leg sizes, keeping your little secret safely tucked away.

Drawn! has a review of Kevin Dart's cool new art book about a 1906s Japanese spy girl, Yuki 7, called "Seductive Espionage"

The concept: creating a “globe-trotting female superspy” set in the mid-60’s through fictional movies, complete with posters, lobby cards, and trailers—all with the look and feel of the 1960’s Bond era, with a dash of extra influences as well. Kevin what inspired him for the project on his blog:

I combed through some folders of reference I had collected over the last few years, immersing myself in campy Euro-spy film posters, 1960’s Thai pop music album covers, and mid-century modern architecture. I went back and re-watched some of my favorite spy films like “You Only Live Twice” and discovered new ones like “Deadlier than the Male”. A world slowly started to form in my head and I could feel hundreds of backlogged ideas and unfinished stories suddenly collide into one cohesive mass. Later on, I realized Yuki 7 had been building for years even though she arrived in a flash of insight.

Book: Kevin Dart’s Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7

(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube )

In today's edition of Boing Boing Video, guest-host Todd Lappin explores a massive collection of historical military vehicles tanks collected by an eccentric Silicon Valley multimillionaire. The recently-departed Jacques Littlefield amassed one of the world's largest and most significant collections of this type, and his collection is now overseen by the nonprofit Military Vehicle Technology Foundation. Snip from their description:

Our goal is to acquire, restore, and interpret the historical significance of 20th and 21st century military vehicles. Domestic and foreign combat vehicles such as tanks, armored cars, self-propelled artillery, and other technically interesting mobile platforms are the focus of the collection. We also maintain an extensive technical library that describes many vehicles down to the part level. Aside from the vehicles, there are towed artillery, antitank, and antiaircraft guns. Military support equipment, inert ordnance, and accessories round out the collection.

The foundation is supported by public donations, and you can make one at their website if you dig what they do. To make arrangements for tours, you can email tours.mvtf at gmail.com. To arrange access to the collection for commercial purposes: permissions.mvtf at gmail.com.

The "tank tour" BBV shot for this episode was organized by BB pal Karen Marcelo and Dorkbot SF. They put on interesting events like this every month! Karen says,

June, 2009 is the 7 year anniversary of dorkbotSF. We have two cool events coming up, hope the some of the Boing Boing readers will come out for them! First one is jun 3 - at Greg Leyh's lightning lab. A live demo of scaled-down model of greg's 12-story Tesla coils, debut of Marc Powell's new software, and cool light printer from Jonathan Foote.

Then Jon Sarriugarte is hosting a big bash on the 20th! snail car, muffin cars, tesla roadster makers, fireworks, omega recoil's tesla coils, blacksmithing, etc. and he said more surprises he doesnt want to mention in advance!

Where to find Boing Boing Video: 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.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to shooter-producer extraordinaire Eddie Codel and to our host Todd Lappin.)

bmullan writes "Dailymotion, one of the world's largest video sites, announced support for Open Video. They've put out a press release, a blog post on the new Open Video site, and an HTML 5 demo site where you can see some of the things that you can do with open video and Firefox 3.5. (You can get the Firefox 3.5 beta here.) Dailymotion is automatically transcoding all of the content that their users create, and expect to have around 300,000 videos in the open Ogg Theora and Vorbis formats."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bmullan writes "Dailymotion, one of the world's largest video sites, announced support for Open Video. They've put out a press release, a blog post on the new Open Video site, and an HTML 5 demo site where you can see some of the things that you can do with open video and Firefox 3.5. (You can get the Firefox 3.5 beta here.) Dailymotion is automatically transcoding all of the content that their users create, and expect to have around 300,000 videos in the open Ogg Theora and Vorbis formats."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There certainly have been plenty of stories of incredibly dumb criminals bragging about their crimes on social networking sites -- only to realize too late that the police use such sites too. The latest is a bank robber who bragged about the robbery on Myspace, saying "On tha run for robbin a bank Love all of yall." Of course, the police didn't happen to notice this until they were tipped off by someone who recognized the guy in a television report that flashed a photo of the suspect. However, it makes it a bit harder to defend when the guy effectively confessed on MySpace.

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Too Lazy to Login writes "Wired reports that, based on her previous decisions, Sonia Sotomayor will likely affirm high damages (read: RIAA excessive) in cases where copyright claims are at issue. Good thing I'm not a betting man, because I'd have guessed the exact opposite." We discussed the nominee's cyberlaw record in general last week.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Too Lazy to Login writes "Wired reports that, based on her previous decisions, Sonia Sotomayor will likely affirm high damages (read: RIAA excessive) in cases where copyright claims are at issue. Good thing I'm not a betting man, because I'd have guessed the exact opposite." We discussed the nominee's cyberlaw record in general last week.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Laughing Squid's chief cephalopod Scott Beale took a bunch of great short videos and photos of Maker Faire this year.

I first heard about it through @rmack, more here on Mashable, many other media reports coming out now.

It's fun to watch the ebb and flow of the crowd in this time-lapse video of Maker Faire 2009, shot by Bill Sherman.

Coryoth writes "The widely held belief that there is disparity in the innate mathematical abilities of men and women has been steadily whittled down in recent years. The gender gap in basic mathematics skills closed some time ago, and recently the gap in high school mathematics has closed up as well, with as many girls as boys now taking high school calculus. Newsweek reports on a new study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that begins to lay to rest the remaining argument that it is at the highest levels of mathematics that the innate differences show. Certainly men dominate current academia, with 70% of mathematics Ph.D.s going to men; however that figure is down from 95% in the 1950s. Indeed, while there remain gaps in achievement between the genders, the study shows that not only are these gaps closing, but the size of the gap varies over differing cultures and correlates with the general degree of gender inequality in the culture (as defined by World Economic Forum measures). In all, this amounts to strong evidence that the differences in outcomes in mathematics between the genders is driven by sociocultural factors rather than innate differences in ability."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Coryoth writes "The widely held belief that there is disparity in the innate mathematical abilities of men and women has been steadily whittled down in recent years. The gender gap in basic mathematics skills closed some time ago, and recently the gap in high school mathematics has closed up as well, with as many girls as boys now taking high school calculus. Newsweek reports on a new study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that begins to lay to rest the remaining argument that it is at the highest levels of mathematics that the innate differences show. Certainly men dominate current academia, with 70% of mathematics Ph.D.s going to men; however that figure is down from 95% in the 1950s. Indeed, while there remain gaps in achievement between the genders, the study shows that not only are these gaps closing, but the size of the gap varies over differing cultures and correlates with the general degree of gender inequality in the culture (as defined by World Economic Forum measures). In all, this amounts to strong evidence that the differences in outcomes in mathematics between the genders is driven by sociocultural factors rather than innate differences in ability."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Photo of dragon’s blood tree by Piotr Kot.

The LA Times has a neat photo gallery of Yemen’s Socotra Island.

Isolated from continental land masses for 18 million years, Yemen’s Socotra Island showcases an alien-like landscape with unusual plants and animals, such as the blood dragon tree, pictured, and desert rose. Its high degree of biodiversity has earned it the name the “Galápagos of the Indian Ocean.”

Socotra Island's beautiful and bizarre landscape

"Although nobody has been poisoned, this at the very least is an irregular way of slaughtering poultry," said a health official in China about a restaurant that has been forbidden from serving meals prepared from chickens killed by poisonous snake bites.

I couldn't bring myself to watch the video of the chef killing a chicken with a snake bite, but here it is if you are interested.

Snake-bite chicken 'off the menu' (Via Arbroath)

Martin Thornkvist, who runs a (very cool) indie record label in Sweden that believes in treating fans right, has written up an opinion piece where he tries to envision the role of the record label in five years. The opening is certainly right in line with my feelings of optimism for the music industry:

When it comes to the future of music I've always consider myself an optimist.

For one I'm certain that musicians and music fans have a prosperous future ahead of them. That's because music is the single most important ingredient in the music business soup and music is of course a result of artists' creative minds. And it's when musicians interact with listeners that a window for business is opening. Not before, and not just because some A&R person, marketeer or CEO open their wallet. That the relationship between musicians and fans is the foundation to the business is the single most important piece of knowledge that we all have to submissively recognize. This is the key to the future for the middle men we call record labels – we have to encourage the interaction and realize that it will live without us.

We as middle men have to remember that we always need to convince our customers (musicians and fans) why they should engage with us. Music on plastic discs or plain mp3s just ain't enough anymore. Competition is hard and consumers don't take bullshit anymore. If they love something you don't offer, they'll go create it themselves.

The whole thing is worth reading, but the final paragraph makes a really important point that we've discussed in the past, but which often gets forgotten in trying to understand trendlines and the music business. It's that storage is growing ever bigger and ever cheaper at an incredibly rapid pace -- and as such it won't be all that long until you can carry every song ever recorded on a device in your pocket:

In five years a hard drive available to ordinary consumers will carry 35 TB of data. Data = music. 35 TB = 2.5 million songs. Watch this development closely. It's easy to get blinded by Spotify, but imagine when file sharing on the street means transferring the entire music history. At least it is a wild card. Anyhow it seems that we will have to work on better ways of charging for music than 1 dollar a song. Don't you think?

Indeed. When you can carry every song ever... do people really think that $1/song is going to make sense?

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An anonymous reader sends along a piece in Cosmos about new dissension to the current prevailing wisdom on dinosaur posture. The researchers admit that blood pressure presents an unresolved obstacle to their model of dinosaur heads held high. "The current depiction of the way giant sauropod dinosaurs held their necks is probably wrong, says a new study. 'For the last decade the reigning paradigm in palaeontology has been that the big sauropod dinosaurs held their necks out straight and their heads down low,' said co-author Matt Wedel, who researches biomechanics at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. But 'our research [now] suggests that this view of sauropods is simply incorrect, based on everything we know about living animals,' he said." The researchers worried that some other team might beat them to publication, so obvious did they consider their methodology of looking at living animals to gain insight into the biomechanics of extinct ones.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader sends along a piece in Cosmos about new dissension to the current prevailing wisdom on dinosaur posture. The researchers admit that blood pressure presents an unresolved obstacle to their model of dinosaur heads held high. "The current depiction of the way giant sauropod dinosaurs held their necks is probably wrong, says a new study. 'For the last decade the reigning paradigm in palaeontology has been that the big sauropod dinosaurs held their necks out straight and their heads down low,' said co-author Matt Wedel, who researches biomechanics at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. But 'our research [now] suggests that this view of sauropods is simply incorrect, based on everything we know about living animals,' he said." The researchers worried that some other team might beat them to publication, so obvious did they consider their methodology of looking at living animals to gain insight into the biomechanics of extinct ones.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John from the CC-friendly music label Vosotros sez,

Learning Music is a band from Los Angeles. They write and record an album every month. In partnership with vosotros, all of their music is licensed under Creative Commons and offered via a subscription series called Learning Music Monthly. Subscribers can receive a CD every month in their mailbox - or donate any amount for digital access to the band's entire catalog. They also post mix stems and handwritten sheet music on their "contribute" page to encourage remixes and covers.

But the fourth issue, called Geochemistry, is more than just an album of songs. It's a collection of music videos from ten different Los Angeles filmmakers. Unlike the process for most music videos, these songs were written after the films were completed, creating sounds to fit the images, rather than the other way around.

This month's video single, "All In A Summer's Day", features brilliant animation by Tony Moore.

All In A Summer's Day (Thanks, John!)

I'm really looking forward to what our next guest blogger, William Gurstelle has in store for us. I met Bill a number of years ago when he started writing how-to articles to MAKE and since then he's become a good friend and inspiration.

He's one of those people who is curious about everything under the sun, and the only way he can satisfy his curiosity is by rolling up and sleeves and getting his hands dirty. For MAKE, he's written about potato cannons, Tensegrity towers, ornithopters, Stirling engines, giant whistles, bullwhips, taffy pullers, gunpowder, mast photography and dippy bird science. He also appears on Make: television as a host and technical consultant.

Bill says:

I’m very pleased to be your guest blogger for the next couple of weeks. I guess I’ll begin by introducing myself.

I’m a engineer, a writer, and I give talks, sometimes on cruise ships. (It’s good work when you can get it.) I like to write and talk about technology, especially if it the fun sort of tech that shoots, flies, flops, or goes boom. I spend a lot of time in my workshop out back which I like to call the Barrage Garage.

In 2001, I wrote Backyard Ballistics, which is a book of PG-13 science projects, all of which go whoosh or boom at some point in their fabrication or operation. It’s a weird little niche I concede, but by golly, it’s my niche and I try to make the most of it.

My other books include The Art of the Catapult, Whoosh Boom Splat, Building Bots, and Adventures from the Technology Underground, all of which tread inside my strange little space of book store real estate.

I’m also a contributing editor at MAKE Magazine (I wrote, among other projects, the Jam Jar Jet Engine, The Hamster Powered Night Light, Orly the Ornithopter, and my personal favorite, the the Taser Powered Spud Gun.) That led to a stint writing for and appearing on air on Make: television, the national television show that’s carried on most PBS stations.

And today, my sixth book comes out. It’s entitled Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. I’ll describe in more detail in post to follow shortly, but it’s the kind of book that the world needs more of.

There aren't any huge surprises from Nintendo: more games in existing franchises, more hardware, but more riffs on existing themes. But we knew that was; it's how they're riffing that is always interesting. To whit: The new "Wii Vitality Sensor" (I titter so you don't have to), a heart rate monitor that clips onto your finger that will let the Wii know when you're really blissed out. Brandon's got everything you need to know about Nintendo's upcoming product lineup, including new titles (New Super Mario Bros. sidescroller! A create-your-own-minigame WarioWare: DIY title?!) and such over at Offworld.

Eric M writes in to let us know that JD Salinger is suing the author and publisher of a new book that claims to be the sequel to Salinger's famous The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger is claiming that the book infringes on his copyright -- which may be a big challenge. Now this is an area of copyright law where a lot of lawyers disagree, but in general an unauthorized sequel doesn't necessarily infringe copyright. Copyright covers the specific expression, not the idea -- and since a "fan" sequel isn't likely to decrease interest in the original (in fact the opposite is likely to be true), there's unlikely to be a finding of copyright infringement. Of course, the specific details may matter and cases have gone in all different directions on this. There is, for example, the famous lawsuit about the book The Wind Done Gone, which was a retelling of Gone With The Wind from a different perspective. A lower court issued an injunction to block the sale of a book, but eventually it was allowed. There are certainly other potential claims that Salinger could make -- but the article specifically says it's a copyright issue, which seems like a tough sell.

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bonch writes "Last.fm and CBS vehemently deny sharing any user data with the RIAA, contrary to previous reports. One anonymous party calls it 'irresponsible journalism,' and Last.fm goes so far as to suggest it is a target of slander. Carla Duckworth of the RIAA confirmed, 'We've made no such request for this information.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bonch writes "Last.fm and CBS vehemently deny sharing any user data with the RIAA, contrary to previous reports. One anonymous party calls it 'irresponsible journalism,' and Last.fm goes so far as to suggest it is a target of slander. Carla Duckworth of the RIAA confirmed, 'We've made no such request for this information.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over at BB Gadgets, Rob posts about this unusual QWERTY handlebar grip.

Electro-harmonix launched a new blog series where they highlight ways their pedals are used on guitars to create very un-guitar sounds. For example, the blues harmonica you hear in the track above is actually a guitar. Effectology, Vol. 1: Electric Guitar plays Blues Harmonica

As someone targeted for perpetual failure by the designers of most keyboards, I'm happy to read The Register's report that "A British inventor has submitted a patent application for a wacky touchscreen keyboard design which, he claims, could spell the end for accidental key presses."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As someone targeted for perpetual failure by the designers of most keyboards, I'm happy to read The Register's report that "A British inventor has submitted a patent application for a wacky touchscreen keyboard design which, he claims, could spell the end for accidental key presses."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So we've had plenty of stories about modern technology moving into the courtroom, but the issue is usually over jury members using Twitter, using Google or using Facebook. And there was the one case that involved witnesses text messaging each other from the stand. In all of these stories, the end result is the judge getting pissed off about the fact that the tech had been brought into the courtroom. However, this latest story is really quite incredible. Apparently a judge "friended" on Facebook one of the lawyers in an ongoing case (via Michael Scott). On top of that, the judge was found to have Googled information about the defendant, and even visited the defendant's own website -- which the judge admitted influenced how he felt about the defendant. The judge later disqualified himself from the case and has now been reprimanded for these actions. Still, while I can understand a jury member doing some of these things, you would think a lawyer would know better.

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An anonymous reader writes "Net speculation has swirled about the DOJ being stacked with media company-friendly attorneys who will throw the consumer under the bus, but in one of the first rulings, the Solicitor General defended network DVRs, mentioned cloud computing and a music locker — which has to be a first for a Supreme Court brief. Michael Robertson chronicles the latest developments and you can read the brief for yourself."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Net speculation has swirled about the DOJ being stacked with media company-friendly attorneys who will throw the consumer under the bus, but in one of the first rulings, the Solicitor General defended network DVRs, mentioned cloud computing and a music locker — which has to be a first for a Supreme Court brief. Michael Robertson chronicles the latest developments and you can read the brief for yourself."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instructables user CarlS writes:

For this project, we wanted to build a lower cost, lower precision XY table for an installation at TeleToyland. The goal is to allow web users to draw shapes in a sand box, so we wanted a simple XY table that is easy to control from a web application. Since we already have the Web to Hobby Servo connection working well for other installations, using a hobby servo was the desired approach. Most homebrew CNC XY tables use motors like steppers and acme screw drives, but we don't need that much precision, and they are a bit slower than we'd like. The Hobby Servo approach also gives us absolute position control, and helps keep the cost down too - using industrial servos would be great, but a lot more expensive. We were also looking for a lower cost way to do the linear glides - trying to avoid costly linear bearings etc.

You can test it out yourself here!

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

Early-on in the life of Twitter I tried to figure out how it works behind the user interface, and was told I couldn't, that it was very complex, and I shouldn't try. This bothered me then, and it bothers me even more now. After all, I'm an experienced software engineer, with a number of products under my belt, some quite complex. If I can't understand it, who can? And if they say I can't, do they?

We know the networks we're building on Twitter are very fragile things, but they're more fragile than most users have been willing to comprehend, because we can't find out how it works. We have to trust that the company knows, and that they will continue to operate it as they have in the past. However we don't have any right to that service, and if they restricted it or took it away we would have no recourse.

Of course it would be a disaster for them as a company, but such disasters have happened before and they certainly will happen again. And what do we actually know about the people who run Twitter? Not all that much. They don't tweet a lot, and when they do, they tend to be short messages, and often cryptic.

So while Twitter is useful and fascinating, even intriguing, is it simple?

It it not simple.

Yesterday I posted the results of a study of who the people who work at Twitter follow on Twitter. This is important because it is the source of their Suggested Users List, which in turn determines who new users will follow. People and organizations who are placed on this list see a substantial surge in followers, often in the hundreds of thousands. How much this is worth was the subject of a recent Guardian story.

It was easy for me to adapt the crawler to also generate a table for the people of the NY Times. I don't know exactly why this is interesting, but it seems people are curious to know if they make it onto the radar of the people at the Times.

If there's continuing interest I'll refresh both these tables from time to time.

teh.f4ll3n writes "25 years ago a Russian (Soviet) researcher thought of one of the world's most popular games. It is now that we celebrate its 25th anniversary. 'Twenty-five years ago, inside the bowels of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a young artificial intelligence researcher received his first desktop computer — the Soviet-built Elektronika 60, a copy of an American minicomputer called a PDP-11 — and began writing programs for it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

teh.f4ll3n writes "25 years ago a Russian (Soviet) researcher thought of one of the world's most popular games. It is now that we celebrate its 25th anniversary. 'Twenty-five years ago, inside the bowels of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a young artificial intelligence researcher received his first desktop computer — the Soviet-built Elektronika 60, a copy of an American minicomputer called a PDP-11 — and began writing programs for it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

teh.f4ll3n writes "25 years ago a Russian (Soviet) researcher thought of one of the world's most popular games. It is now that we celebrate its 25th anniversary. 'Twenty-five years ago, inside the bowels of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a young artificial intelligence researcher received his first desktop computer — the Soviet-built Elektronika 60, a copy of an American minicomputer called a PDP-11 — and began writing programs for it.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

JJ points us to an unfortunate story that the Obama administration appears to be siding against an intellectual property treaty agreement that would have helped blind and visually impaired individuals by allowing "the cross-border import and export of digital copies of books and other copyrighted works in formats that are accessible to persons who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic or have other reading disabilities, using special devices that present text as refreshable braille, computer generated text to speech, or large type." As the article notes, exceptions to copyright law for the production of books for the blind is common, and effectively this would expand that to ebooks. Many had hoped that the administration would support it... but:

Assurances coming into the negotiations this week that things were going in the right direction have turned out to be false, as the United States delegation has basically read from a script written by lobbyists for publishers, extolling the virtues of market based solutions, ignoring mountains of evidence of a "book famine" and the insane legal barriers to share works.

It continues to be a massive disappointment that politicians keep bowing down to corporate pressure when it clearly goes against the very purpose of copyright law.

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An anonymous reader writes "Two days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square 'incident,' several high profile Internet sites have been blocked in mainland China. These include Twitter.com, Flickr.com, Live.com, and Bing.com. While Internet blocks are common enough in mainland China, blocking such high-profile sites is unusual. In addition, blog reports suggest even state-owned television broadcasts are suffering multiple instances of muting lasting several seconds (again, not unusual for some foreign stations broadcast over cable, but unusual for local state-owned media) suggesting state security, online or through other technology, has tightened significantly, perhaps in anticipation or discovery of protest plans."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Two days ahead of the Tiananmen Square 'incident' several high profile Internet sites have been blocked in mainland China, these include Twitter.com, Flickr.com, Live.com, and Bing.com. While Internet blocks in mainland China, blocking such high profile sites is unusual. In addition, blog reports suggest even state-owned television broadcasts are suffering multiple instances of muting lasting several seconds (again, not unusual for some foreign stations broadcast over cable, but unusual for local state-owned media) suggesting state security, online or through other technology, has tightened significantly, perhaps in anticipation or discovery of protest plans."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The folks from BotJunkie and OhGizmo were at Maker Faire and did a nice job of Twittering it and posting on their sites. Here's a link to a brief gallery of robot pics on BotJunkie and a Tesla Coil video and some awesome pics on OhGizmo.

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Life2Death writes "I've been working with computers for a long time, and every once and a while someone close to me has a drive go belly up on them. I know there are big, expensive recovery houses that specialize in mission-critical data recovery, like if your house blew up and you have millions of files you need or something, but for the local IT group, what do you guys use? Given that most people are on NTFS (Windows XP) by the numbers, what would you use? I found a ton of tools when I googled, and everyone and their brother suggests something else, so I want to know what software 'just works' on most recoveries of bad, but partially working hard drives. Free software always has a warm spot in my heart."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Life2Death writes "I've been working with computers for a long time, and every once and a while someone close to me has a drive go belly up on them. I know there are big, expensive recovery houses that specialize in mission-critical data recovery, like if your house blew up and you have millions of files you need or something, but for the local IT group, what do you guys use? Given that most people are on NTFS (Windows XP) by the numbers, what would you use? I found a ton of tools when I googled, and everyone and their brother suggests something else, so I want to know what software 'just works' on most recoveries of bad, but partially working hard drives. Free software always has a warm spot in my heart."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We might not be necessarily live from E3, but that may be all the better, as it turns out, for staying on top of all the developments coming out of the show. A wrapup of yesterday's goings-on: we catalog the 7 things you need to know about Microsoft's press conference, the first gameplay trailer of Beatles: Rock Band, the first video and artwork for Valve's Left 4 Dead 2, six minutes of the Wii's Boy and His Blob remake, and LucasArts announces both a Monkey Island remake for PC and Xbox 360, and a new Wii and PC Monkey Island episodic series. Elsewhere in more indie developments, prolific Swedish indie designer Cactus shows off his gloriously lo-fi shooter/platformer Air Pirates, Minotaur China Shop developers Flashbang finally show what the Wars in their upcoming Crane Wars will be, and retro-inspired artist Olly Moss returns with more Penguin book covers for games. Finally, we took a deeper look into what Sony's leaked announcement of a new all-digital-delivered PSP might mean for indie devs, the Noby Noby Boy team does an awesomely touching analog version of GIRL reaching Mars, an Etsy user creates a horrifyingly cute version of Silent Hill, and the day's 'one shot's: Polytron show work in progress Fez, and the first look at the iPhone generative music puzzle game xgon.

caffeinejolt writes "Despite all the hype surrounding new browsers being released pushing the limits of what can be done on the Web, Firefox 3 has only this past month overtaken IE6. Furthermore, if you take the previous report and snap on the Corporate America filter, IE6 rules the roost and shows no signs of leaving anytime soon. Sorry web developers, for those of you who thought the ugly hacks would soon be over, it appears they will linger on for quite a bit — especially if you develop for business sites."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adafruit Industries' Limor Fried used her lasercutter to make plastic business cards that can be snapped apart into a miniature spirograph. "Adafruit business cards - Laser cut SPIROGRAPH cards!"

Jay asked, in a recent RTN podcast, why simplicity is so important. I don't think I had ever been asked this question, and it had been a long time since I considered any other way, so I didn't have an answer prepared. I fumbled.

It has bothered me ever since, but not as a front-burner thing -- I still accept the value of simplicity as a given. As I build layers of software, the simpler I make each layer, the higher I can build. If you don't design to hide complexity behind interfaces, you get overwhelmed by the complexity sooner, and your project can't do as much. Early in my career I often scrapped multiple levels and went down to the roots and rebuilt. Once I understood what the higher levels looked like, it exposed deficiencies in the lower levels. Reworking the lower levels allowed me to build higher. (It happens in other technologies too. For example, the design of office buildings changed radically once elevators had been invented.)

The ultimate interface is where you pass off to another user, and a whole new human brain comes into it. As a designer, I try to present a conceptual model to the user that's as simple and predictable as possible. This allows them to focus on their work without mine getting in their way. In the movies they call this "suspension of disbelief." The user gets so wrapped up in the story they forget it's a movie. It starts feeling like life. Even so, I like to create things that can be explored beneath the surface. If you want to "lift the hood" I know you'll see a puzzle, but I hope it's approachable.

As I discussed in this week's RTN, I'm working my way through Season 1 of James Burke's Connections series. It aired on PBS in 1978. Yesterday I watched the final episode in the series. It was even more fascinating than the previous nine. Its message is so important that it's worth taking time away from the innovations of our day and to talk about the process of innovation itself, and why it's dangerous. Yes, that's right -- dangerous. I've known this all along, and I've tried to publish warnings, but Burke does it with a breadth I've never approached.

There was a time, not too long ago, when anyone who wanted to could understand any invention that our lives depended on. Look around and look past the computer monitors and hard drives. Look at a door, for example, a hinge, a door knob, the door itself. All of this technology is transparently simple, and at one time, not that long ago, it was leading edge. I suppose paint might be hard to understand, but if you really wanted to understand how it was made, you could. It might take some time, and you would have to talk to an expert or read a book, but it wouldn't take much time to understand it.

But why bother understanding it? Burke asks. Isn't it enough to just use it and enjoy it and let it sustain your life? Yes, it is, until you have to make a decision about it. Or until it fails.

If you had asked me a year ago if we would live to see the financial system melt down, I would say yes, it's the one thing I'm most scared of. Like many others, I listened to experts talk about the aftermath of the collapse, reporters from famous newspapers, economists, radio show hosts. One thing I heard over and over was that no one actually understood how the system worked. Yet we had built our economic system, our lives, on it. Let me repeat that so it sinks in. No one understood how it worked.

It's only in its unraveling that we're learning how our economy works.

But that's far from the only system that no one understands.

Think about all the technology you depend on to live that you don't understand, and ask yourself if anyone understands it.

What if you went to the ATM and all your money was gone? What if everyone went to the ATM and all their money was gone? Think it can't happen? It did happen in post-Katrina New Orleans.

That's just one vector. Think about food supply, sewage treatment, water, transportation, education, law enforcement, health care, defense. We're making decisions about all these things every day whether we know it or not, and like the financial system, some people understand parts of these systems, but it's likely that no one understands the whole thing.

At the end of the series Burke lays out a set of choices we faced in the late 70s. We could continue along as we have been through all of history, or we could change course. It's now 30 years later and we didn't change course, and it seems we're not likely to. But if you're an innovator, you have a choice. You can create new things with an emphasis on being understandable to the people who use them, not just at the surface level, but under the hood too. It often takes more work to make it hard to understand. But even if it takes more work, it's worth doing it simply, helping create the sense that technology is understandable, because imho that's the key to moving forward in a way that might just work.

Update: Example of perfect simplicity. View Source in web browsers.

While the entertainment industry has been working over time to try to stop file sharing in Spain, court ruling after court ruling has found that personal file sharing is perfectly reasonable and legal -- and that sites that merely link to content rather than host it (i.e., search engines and trackers) aren't breaking copyright law either. In the latest such case, a judge found that a guy who downloaded and shared over 3,000 movies wasn't violating copyright law, because it was all for personal use with no intent to profit.

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In my latest Guardian column, "Search is too important to leave to one company - even Google," I make the case that Google's algorithms are editorial decisions, and that so much editorial power is better vested in big, transparent, public entities than a few giant private concerns:

It's a terrible idea to vest this much power with one company, even one as fun, user-centered and technologically excellent as Google. It's too much power for a handful of companies to wield.

The question of what we can and can't see when we go hunting for answers demands a transparent, participatory solution. There's no dictator benevolent enough to entrust with the power to determine our political, commercial, social and ideological agenda. This is one for The People.

Put that way, it's obvious: if search engines set the public agenda, they should be public. What's not obvious is how to make such a thing.

Search is too important to leave to one company - even Google

angry tapir writes "Qualcomm has showed off a version of Asustek Computer's Eee PC based on its Snapdragon processor at the Computex exhibition, including one running Google's Android operating system. The new laptop — which Qualcomm calls a smartbook — is thinner and lighter than current members of Asustek's Eee PC netbook lineup because the 1GHz Snapdragon processor that it uses does not require a heat sink or a cooling fan."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Moldover's SyncoMasher combines 5 distinct music controllers into one console - and looks as if it was pulled straight out of a DJ's TARDIS. While the device received plenty of play from faire attendees, I managed to squeeze in a quick interview with its creator.

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EconolineCrush writes "AMD's latest 'Istanbul' Opterons add two cores per socket, for a grand total of six. Despite the extra cores, these new chips reside within the same power envelope as existing quad-core Opterons, and they're drop-in compatible with current systems. The Tech Report has an in-depth review of the new chips, comparing their performance and power efficiency with that of Intel's Nehalem-based Xeons. Istanbul fares surprisingly well, particularly when one considers its performance-power ratio with highly parallelized workloads."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MAKE subscriber Florin points out this thorough rundown on 7-segment display usage, even covering the basics of multiplexing with the common component -

Since the digits share the same data bus, each digit will have the same number displayed, like the wheel on the picture, to change the number the “data guy” rotates the wheel. So how can we display 1234 you might ask, well wee need another guy, the selector, which will leave only one digit to be seen, all the others are shut off, by synchronizing the “data guy” and the “selector guy ” so they operate at the same time, when the wheel is at the 1111 position, the selector opens the first window, when at 2222 it opens the second and so on. By changing the data and selecting the digits at many times per second the human eye will see a steady image with 1234, the display refresh rate should be above 50 times in 1 second, otherwise the image may flicker.

Whether you consider yourself a "data" or "selector guy" (or gal), the tutorial seems handy way to get acquainted with such concepts. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!

Late last year, Psion kicked off a ridiculous legal fight, claiming that it owned the trademark on the word "netbook" and all of the companies offering "netbooks" today were infringing. While it is true that Psion had a (very different) product called a netBook many years ago, it had stopped offering it in the market, and the generic use of "netbook" was clearly referring to the new generation of small/cheap computers, having absolutely nothing to do with Psion's netBook. The whole purpose of trademark law is to avoid confusion of customers or some sort of misappropriation of brand value built up by the holder of the mark. That clearly was not the case here at all... and yet Psion continued to fight on. This week, the company finally withdrew its trademark claim after reaching some sort of "amicable settlement" with Intel. In all likelihood, this means Intel paid Psion to go away, though, one can hope that enough trademark attorneys explained to Psion that the company had almost no chance of succeeding in pushing its claim forward. There are certainly plenty of borderline trademark cases, but it's difficult to see how this one would even be in the same zipcode as a legitimate claim.

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This idea has been talked about for a while, but it looks like it's finally starting to move forward: creating a market for buying/selling shares in startups outside of a full public offering. As you may know, right now, (with a few exceptions) the stock in a startup is basically illiquid in that it can't be bought and sold outside of a full funding round. The downside of that is that it really does lock up the value for many employees who have to sit on the stock and hope that one day the company is sold or goes public. That's become an even bigger issue this past decade as the IPO market for tech startups has been pretty dim -- due to a combination of factors, including (among other things) the dot com bubble burst, regulations like Sarbanes Oxley and even the real estate bubble (diverted plenty of money that could have gone towards IPOs into both real estate and alternative investments).

The new plan, from a company called InsideVenture and backed by a bunch of VCs is what they're calling a "hybrid public-private offering," nicknamed a "Hippo." And it is basically just what it sounds like -- a mix between a private fundraising and a public market. Companies that go through the process will file the standard earnings reports with the SEC -- but the initial shares will be sold to member investors prior to the offering being final. I'm all for experiments of this nature, though there certainly are questions about whether or not this will really catch on. Many may see it as "what a company does if it can't IPO" which could attach a stigma to companies that go this route. Also, I still think that the old "quarterly reports" system needs a reboot involving radical transparency, so I'm not sure that reinforcing the old quarterly report system (which stunts long term vision for short term results) is really such a good idea.

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ThousandStars tips a new piece by Julian Sanchez, the guy who, in case you missed it, brought us a succinct definition of the one-way hash argument (of the type often employed in the US culture wars). This one is about the dangers of a certain kind of oversimplifying, as practiced routinely by journalists and bloggers. "This brings us around to some of my longstanding ambivalence about blogging and journalism more generally. On the one hand, while it's probably not enormously important whether most people have a handle on the mind-body problem, a democracy can't make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics. On the other hand, I look at the online public sphere and too often tend to find myself thinking: 'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.' This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Olympus has published the third installment of its video series celebrating the 50th anniversary of its Pen cameras. The compact, cropped-format cameras evolved into the Pen-F, one of the smallest mass-market interchangeable lens cameras ever made. The site says there will be another installment next week but, with few milestone Pen series cameras left to cover, its layout appears to leave room for more videos. Coincidentally, Olympus has said there would be more news this summer about its Micro Four Thirds camera, a distinctly retro mockup of which has been shown at recent trade shows.

Chris O'Brien over at Silicon Beat had a great time at Maker Faire. In answering the question "What is Maker Faire?," he ends up with an optimistic view of how we can use Maker Faire to take back our technology.

How do you boil down an event where someone spent 13 years building a life-size working version of the Mouse Trap game? Or a steam-driven motorcycle out of wood? Or a solar-powered recycling unit that processes fish poop to fertilize a vegetable garden? Or teaches people how to re-purpose their old clothes with its variety of sewing and craft techniques?

---

It's tech, but it's more than that. It's geeky, but it's for everyone. It's an overwhelming sensory experience that's still one of the most family-friendly events I've ever attended.

---

On a basic level, it's one of these events that reminds me why Silicon Valley is one of the most thrilling places on earth. It's easy to get cynical about this place sometimes when it seems everyone gets wrapped up in chasing money, status, and success. But strip that away, peel back the sometimes stifling hand of the corporations, and the heart of Silicon Valley looks something very much like Maker Faire.

If you went to Maker Faire and want to share your experiences, write about it, post your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool, and tag your work with Maker Faire, Maker Faire 2009 or #MF09 on Twitter and Flickr.

If you were not able to get physically to Maker Faire, you can still join the fun by finding the most interesting photos, videos, and other info. Create your own Maker Faire mashup of the event and put it online. There is a complete list of all the makers. Many of the organizations and people have web addresses that can help you find out more. Let us know in the comments where to find your Maker Faire Mashup!

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Back in March, YouTube began blocking music videos for users in the UK after it said the PRS, the country's music licensing body, was charging royalties so high that it was losing money every time a user watched a video. As Mike pointed out at the time, "Google is making the point to PRS: you need us much more than we need you." It looks like that point's been made, as the PRS last week cut its streaming royalty rates by more than half, and is now basically begging YouTube to remove the block, since the site was at one point responsible for 40 percent of PRS' online plays. It looks like maybe the PRS is beginning to understand that without useful distribution (like that provided by YouTube), its members' content loses a lot of value, and that in turn, moves it makes to hamper distribution (like high royalty rates) actually serve to destroy value, not deliver it.

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

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Berto Kraus writes "As one of the most tech-oriented students in my art-oriented institution, I'm usually the one with the laptop. This causes frequent requests from other students to read mail, check some site, or connect it to the projector to display a file from their Flash drive. For the sake of my privacy, the health of my laptop, and my own peace of mind, I'm reluctant. But telling my compatriots to go to our building supervisor and ask him for a desktop-on-a-cart, as they should do, is considered rude and unfriendly. Now, I could dual-boot Ubuntu, or carry around a Linux-on-a-stick. Or I could embed the computer in my skull. For many reasons, none of these solutions is ideal. So I'm asking you, insightful and funny Slashdotters, what would you do to keep your PC personal at school?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Corynne McSherry from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Apple has rejected an iPhone application that exclusively displays content from EFF's RSS feed. Apparently it objects to an EFF blog post that linked to Brad Templeton's Downfall remix (also mentioned on Boing Boing last week, BTW). The parody includes the fleeting appearance of the f-bomb in a subtitle."

This is just the latest example of the failings of Apple's iTunes App Store approval process, which has been revealed to be not just anti-competitive, discriminatory, censorial, and arbitrary, but downright absurd. Just last month, Apple was widely criticized when it rejected the Eucalyptus e-book reader because it could access the public domain translation of the Kama Sutra (Apple quickly reversed course on that one).

Let's be clear: we are not saying that Apple has to carry apps it doesn't like in its App Store. But iPhone owners who don't want Apple playing the role of language police for their software should have the freedom to go elsewhere. This is precisely why EFF has asked the Copyright Office to grant an exemption to the DMCA for jailbreaking iPhones. It's none of Apple's business if I want an app on my phone that lets me read EFF's RSS feed, use Sling Player over 3G, or read the Kama Sutra.

Apple Rejects EFF Updates App, Claims Parody Content Is Objectionable (Thanks, Corynne!)

In 1940, "foreign limousines" came with hot and cold running water in a washbasin on the front fender:

THIS new foreign limousine has a hot and cold water folding wash-basin of aluminum built into its right front fender. Beneath the hood is a 2-compartment tank holding two and a half gallons of water. The hot water section is heated by exhaust gases passing through a spiral pipe. The two faucets give water of any desired temperature. The basin is automatically emptied when it is folded into the fender.

Where Do They Keep The Towels? (Feb, 1940)

National Geographic celebrates the first monkeys in space with a photo-feature of the poor little primates in their capsules:

A squirrel monkey named Baker peers out from a 1950s NASA biocapsule as she's readied for her first space mission. Baker and a rhesus monkey named Able launched aboard a Jupiter AM-18 rocket on May 28, 1959 -- 50 years ago this week. The pair returned to Earth alive after a 15-minute flight, becoming the first primates to survive a trip into space. Miss Baker, as she came to be known, spent the latter part of her life at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. She died of kidney failure in 1984 at the ripe old age of 27.

SPACE MONKEY PICTURES: 50-Year Anniversary (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Nokia's Get Out and Play campaign is that rare beast: a marketing-driven viral Flash/video thinggum that's actually clever and wonderful! It's an implementation of classic Nokia games (Snake, Breakout) as stop-motion-animation 2.5D playable games and videos, made using people. To play the Breakout game, click through below, then watch the video, then play away!

Get Out and Play (via Red Ferret)

These custom sonogram cufflinks let you show off photos of your little bun-in-oven as you go about your daily round in French cuffs.

Sonogram Photo Cufflinks

I wish there were a way to fashion my metal crutches into something this stylish. Instructables user wholman made this chair from some wooden crutches and a bit of extra wood.

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Jonathan works for a company that makes promotional USB drives. There may have been a few lying around to stir up his answer to the question "What am I going to wear to Maker Faire?"

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Over at the New York Times, Saul Hansell has written a post about online music based around an interview with the CEO of Tivoli Audio, which has been building radios that can connect over WiFi to internet radio stations. Hansell contends that internet radio will be the dominant form of digital music, ahead of downloads and "lots of other ways" to listen. It's an interesting argument, particularly when it's juxtaposed against the backdrop of a floundering terrestrial radio business and the struggles of satellite radio. It's also one that's likely to create a lot of pushback from download devotees, such as Hansell's first commenter, who chimes in with "keep your hands off my music." Sure, the freedom from restrictive playlists that do-it-yourself digital music offers is powerful, and terrestrial radio may not be particularly satisfying for many people, but it's important to realize that the term "radio" takes on a much broader meaning online than it does in the terrestrial broadcast context. There's still a lot of room for curated musical experiences -- which used to solely be the domain of broadcast DJs -- whether it's in the form of human-programmed streams, algorithmically or genre-based channels, podcasts, MP3 blogs or even social-network recommendations. And, as Hansell points out, there's a real convenience factor at play as well. What online radio offers is the ability to take many of traditional radio's good aspects, like convenience and exposure to new music, while doing away with the aspects that turn off so many listeners, whether it's annoying DJs, too many ads, or the wrong choice of music. It then takes these aspects, puts them in different formats, and expands them across tens of thousands of different kinds of music. So while the traditional idea of "radio" may be struggling a bit, its online evolution will keep going strong.

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

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Anne Sage, of fantastic design blog The City Sage, points us to the "Send Me Your Head" project. Artist Karen Schmidt is seeking headshots for 3" x 3" paintings. "A portrait a day, maybe," Schmidt says. Send Me Your Head

So-called Continuous Ink Systems (CIS) are after-market goodies that attach to your inkjet printer, replacing the pricey consumable ink cartridges with permanent cartridge-heads that are continuously refilled from external ink bottles connected by silicone tubing. So to replace the ink in the printer, you just pour more ink in the bottles. Here's a good review of an aftermarket CIS system priced at $250 (which still seems like a lot to me since it's basically just a couple hundred grams of injection molded plastics.)

The idea of a CIS is simple enough, and beautifully subversive of the military-industrial-inkjet complex, but it's received surprisingly little attention from the DIY community. Eddie Matejowsky of Brisbane, Australia, has one of the very few pages I could find on DIY CIS, and its records of his experiments--both successful and otherwise--make very interesting reading for those interested in the idea.

Know of other cool pages about this? Drop me a link in the comments!

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In Capitol v. Thomas, the RIAA's Minnesota case scheduled for trial on June 15th, the defendant's new attorneys have filed a motion to suppress all of the evidence procured by MediaSentry, on the ground that it was obtained in violation of state and federal criminal statutes. The defendant's brief (PDF) accuses MediaSentry of violations of the Minnesota Private Detectives Act, the federal Pen Register and Trap and Trace Devices Act, and the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. The motion is scheduled to be argued on June 10th."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's no secret that Warner Music has been struggling -- employing a highly questionable strategy of shutting down or suing all sorts of useful services that make its music more valuable, and then demanding ridiculous payment terms or equity in any company that might help them survive... all while the company slowly goes bankrupt. Following what can only be called a disastrous 2008, the company has shown a minor improvement in 2009, but it has all the indications of a dead cat bounce. The company was in desperate need of cash, and was able to get a loan of $1.1 billion last week to ease some of those concerns... but at a staggering 9.5% interest. Meanwhile, the guys over at Hypebot are wondering why WMG's top two executives were given $6.25 million in bonuses last year as the company was collapsing. And with some back of the envelope calculations, they note that the company could save hundreds of millions of dollars by dropping the bonuses and using the money to pay back the debt earlier, saving on some of the massive interest payments that are on the way.

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Glenn Greenwald's appropriately angry screed on Obama's support for the new Graham-Lieberman secrecy law. I say +1, every word. For shame. Snip:

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.

Just imagine if any other country did this. Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country's judiciary -- applying decades-old transparency laws -- ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country's President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence. What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people?

Obama's support for the new Graham-Lieberman secrecy law (Via Daily Siege)

Siker writes in to tell us about the experience of email transfer service YippieMove, which ditched VMware and switched to FreeBSD jails. "We doubled the amount of memory per server, we quadrupled SQLite's internal buffers, we turned off SQLite auto-vacuuming, we turned off synchronization, we added more database indexes. We were confused. Certainly we had expected a performance difference between running our software in a VM compared to running on the metal, but that it could be as much as 10X was a wake-up call."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Siker writes in to tell abou the experience of email transfer service YippieMove, which ditched VMware and switched to FreeBSD jails. "We doubled the amount of memory per server, we quadrupled SQLite's internal buffers, we turned off SQLite auto-vacuuming, we turned off synchronization, we added more database indexes. We were confused. Certainly we had expected a performance difference between running our software in a VM compared to running on the metal, but that it could be as much as 10X was a wake-up call."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've discussed in the past how absolutely useless most facial recognition systems are. Their error rates (both types of errors) are way too high to be even remotely useful. At best, they're potentially (though, not definitely) useful for advertising purposes, where a false read isn't that big of a deal. However, apparently some states are using facial recognition software to try to make sure the photo on the license matches with other photos of the individual -- but the software sucks so bad that it can't recognize faces when you smile. So, the states using the software, Arkansas, Indiana, Virginia, or Nevada are supposedly telling people they can no longer smile on their driver's license photos. Apparently finding software that actually works wasn't an option.

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One of the nifty little techno-trinkets Solarbotics was handing out to lucky folks at the Faire was their new NunChucky. This tiny PCB allows you to utilize the Wii Nunchunk as a project controller on a microcontroller module without having to cut the connector off the Nunchuck (so you can still use it with your console). The thoughtful design on the NunChucky board features two sets of interface pads, lock notches so it securely "clicks" into place when plugged into the controller, and tie-down holes for securing ribbon-cable extensions. The board comes with both 4-pin male and 4-pin female headers. It retails for US$3.

NunChucky Wii Nunchuck I2C Breakout

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