Just as we saw how stricter laws on unauthorized file sharing increased the demand for encryption services in Sweden, Dan alerts us to the news that new encryption services are popping up in France in response to that country's recent approval of a law to kick file sharers off the internet. And so the cat and mouse game continues. Perhaps at some point, rather than fighting new technologies and consumer wishes, some of these politicians and copyright holders will decide to embrace the technology and use it to their advantage. Otherwise, they're just going to find that they'll keep passing ever more useless laws, driving people to newer and newer technologies to get around those laws.

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CryptoZoo is a new real-world game launched by my Institute for the Future colleagues, in partnership with the American Heart Association. There are games scheduled in San Francisco and New York City this weekend and next weekend, but you can play anywhere, anytime. Game designer Jane McGonigal says, "There’s an after-dark night chase and a daytime chase in both cities.. Night-time is a bit more adventurous, daytime more playful and family friendly." From the game description:

It's a secret world of strange, fast-moving creatures...

Your city is full of strange creatures, hiding in plain sight. But to catch a glimpse of them, you have to keep up...

Learn how to run with the most mysterious species on the planet: bounce like springboras, slalom like whip zananas, crouch-run like ninja rabbits, spin like swingdogs, jump like tiptrees, and swing like the summit monkeys.

You've never moved like this before. And once you've run with the cryptids, you'll never move the same way again.

CryptoZoo

Al writes "Technology Review has a story about a start-up company that has developed a more-accurate and less-invasive way to read a patients thoughts. Neurolutions, based in St Louis has developed a small implanted device that translates signals recorded from the surface of the brain into computer commands. The device, which is less invasive than implants and more accurate that scalp electrodes, uses a grid of electrodes placed directly on the surface of the brain to monitor electrical activity. This technology is currently used to find the origin of seizures in patients with uncontrolled epilepsy before surgery. But the company says it could also help paralyzed patients control a computer and perhaps prosthetic limbs using their thoughts. Tests involving more than 20 patients have shown that people can quickly learn to move a cursor on a computer screen using their brain activity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On BBG, our Rob's found a very very clever little DC inverter for the car:

Assuming your car has a mug holder, it's an unexpectedly clever and useful design. But it is also $30. [Thinkgeek]

Behold! A styrofoam coffee cup power inverter

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Video Savant has sent in the news that St. Louis Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa is suing Twitter, claiming that the company is guilty of trademark infringement, cybersquatting and misappropriation of likeness and name, because someone set up a fake Tony La Russa profile. He claims that he tried to contact the service and was unable to get them to take down the fake profile (which seems odd, since the company has apparently been pretty good about taking down fake accounts upon request). However, when he was unable to do that, he filed the lawsuit. Either way, it's difficult to see the lawsuit going very far. While (tragically) there is no section 230 or DMCA-type safe harbors for trademark, common sense should make it clear that it's not Twitter that's the liable party here (if there's any liability), but whoever created the account. Even then, it's difficult to see this getting very far. The use wasn't "in commerce" which should preclude most trademark claims, and the nature of the fake La Russa tweets suggests that anyone who read them would likely realize that it was a parody of the real La Russa. Still, there was a similar issue recently with Kanye West getting angry over fake users on Twitter -- but it hardly seems like something worth suing about. If the person is so famous, then it's not hard for them to (as West did) point out that the profile is fake, and it shouldn't much matter any more.

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Craft reported on ran a contest to see who could come up with the coolest uses for carpet samples, and the winners came up with some jim-dandy ideas. I remember getting books of these as a kid and spending days making stuff out of them.

Carpet Sample Project Contest Winners

(William Gurstelle is Boing Boing's current guest blogger. His new book Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously is on sale everywhere. Follow him on Twitter: @wmgurst)

In Stephen Talbott's interesting book, Devices of the Soul, he makes a case that there's too much technology in our lives. One observation in particular struck me: people spend less time observing and experiencing the natural world directly. So much is intermediated by other, electronic stuff. Says Talbott:

"The Net can only teach a boy about trees, but he won't understand them. The information from the net or a book is fragmented and decontextualized. It will never carry the same force as first hand experiences."

Yup, I agree. So, I decided to spend some time exploring my own back yard. Is there really anything new and exciting back there? You bet.

Recently I was given a new type of handheld digital and optical microscope. The new generation of digital microscopes are wonderful little devices for taking a very, very close look at stuff in the house and garden. I hooked it up to my netbook computer and ran around the neighborhood annoying ants and beetles.

I spent the whole afternoon looking at stuff and taking pictures. Skin cells, fabrics, seeds, and of course, bugs, were just part of the wild menagerie of things I examined. Corny, maybe, I found it way cool, and I'm no little kid.

While I was observing an ant from my garden, I noticed it seemed have an even smaller insect crawling over its thorax. So I zoomed in for a closer look. Yeow - I guess even ants have their problems!

I posted it to YouTube and then used YouTube's simple editing tools to add titles, highlights, and a soundtrack. The whole video probably took less than hour to record, edit, and post.

Click here to see the movie I made of the ant, or watch it in the embedded viewer above.

I made the video using a Celestron 44306 Handheld Digital Microscope. Incredibly, the street price is under $100. Better than any toy, this new, cheap world of digital microscopy is an example of bridging Talbott's gap between the old and the new ways of observing the world .

I'm going out to my backyard and now and see what else is going on.

Bad news for freedom. Snip from WIRED Threat Level piece by David Kravets:

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed lawsuits targeting the nation's telecommunication companies for their participation in President George W. Bush's once-secret electronic eavesdropping program. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker upheld summer legislation protecting the companies from the lawsuits. The legislation, which then-Sen. Barack Obama voted for, also granted the government the authority to monitor American's telecommunications without warrants if the subject was communicating with somebody overseas suspected of terrorism.

Full story here. Image courtesy Billboard Liberation Front.

UPDATE: EFF and ACLU plan to appeal the ruling:

EFF and the ACLU are co-coordinating counsel for all 46 outstanding lawsuits concerning the government's warrantless surveillance program. Additionally, EFF is representing the plaintiffs in Hepting v. AT&T, a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of millions of AT&T customers whose private domestic communications and communications records were illegally handed over to the National Security Agency.

"By passing the retroactive immunity for the telecoms' complicity in the warrantless wiretapping program, Congress abdicated its duty to the American people," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Now it is up to the Court of Appeals to stand up for the Constitution, and reverse today's decision."

smurphmeister writes "My wife and I recently moved up to the world of cell phones, after taking our sweet time to make sure this whole newfangled technology was going to stick around. We moved the old landline phone number to her phone, so we're disconnected from the pole. Now the question is, what to do with the copper already in our house? My first thought was an intercom system, but that just seems so old school! So what ideas do you all have for what to do with the 4 little wires running to every room of my house?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "An examination of a new "digital downloads" taxation law in Washington State suggests that files downloaded via file sharing programs may be covered by the law — meaning that you may be expected to pay taxes based on 'the value of the digital product ... determined by the retail selling price of a similar digital product.' Thus, if you were to download music or movies and not pay the taxes, would you be liable for tax evasion charges? How much do you want to bet the RIAA will push exactly that claim?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wow. If you thought that the whole saga with the deceptive and plagiarized reports about intellectual property in Canada was over, when The Conference Board of Canada recalled the reports and admitted that they were both plagiarized and not up to research standards, think again. One of the named authors of the report is now speaking out to reveal some of the behind the scenes details. Now, he's only giving one side, but if his version of the events is true, it's incredibly damning of the Conference Board. Basically, he says that he wrote a very, very different research report last year, and handed it over in late August. He had already quit to take another job, but had finished up his research. However, months later, he received phone calls from both The Conference Board and some of the IP lobbyists who funded the research to complain about what the research said (impartial? non-biased?). Since he was no longer employed, he figured it was none of his business, but he implies that in response to these calls, the Conference Board appears to have replaced much of what he wrote with the plagiarized snippets from the lobbyist's own reports... but left his name on the report as an author. He's not happy:

• I was a full-time employee with the Conference Board between September 2007 and July 2008. I resigned almost a year ago to take a fulfilling job with a non-profit in British Columbia.
• I submitted draft research to my former supervisor for the IP reports in mid-August 2008. I finished the research after I moved even though I was neither on salary nor on contract with the Board.
• The research I submitted did NOT include the controversial passages or plagiarized content.
• I worked with three contract researchers on this project between April 2008 and June 2008, including Jeremy deBeer, whose work I integrated into the draft. These researchers did not submit research that included the controversial/plagiarized content.
• I had no involvement in any content changes and did not see these papers after I submitted them in August.
• My new work was interrupted in mid-September by my former supervisor at the Conference Board to tell me there had been “push back” from one of the funding clients about the research and inclusion of Mr. deBeer’s contribution. I had quit almost two months earlier so this was of no concern to me.
• Around the same time, my new work was also interrupted by a call from one of the funding clients who expressed similar concerns. Again, I informed him that I no longer had anything to do with these reports.
• I received news of its publication on May 26, 2009, ten months after my resignation. I downloaded and read the research after I was informed of the controversy and was alarmed to see the direction it had taken.
• I sent my letter to Anne Golden the following day.
• The VP of Public Policy e-mailed me on May 29th to ask for my assistance in finding both researchers who could "fix" the reports, as well as external reviewers who would be impartial in reviewing the new work. His message stated that “I trust your judgment, experience and knowledge and would value your help.”

The Conference Board wants my help to fix reports that were published 10 months after my departure. It wants me to help fix publications that were re-written (and plagiarized) months after my departure and after they discarded the research I compiled and submitted. The Conference Board asks for my help but won't acknowledge that it was wrong to put my name on reports that bear little resemblance to the original research I submitted, were substantially reworked, and were published ten months after I resigned. After Anne Golden laid blame on contract researchers and supervisors late last week, I noticed two of the authors who still were listed on the organization's web site were no longer on the staff list.

If true, this is all pretty damning, and raises serious questions about how The Conference Board of Canada created this report, as well as its impartial nature as a research institute. It's no secret that many research firms are accused of producing reports that favor the funders of those reports -- but to specifically toss out contrary results and replace them with the funders' own text goes beyond even what many "pay for the research results you want" type firms normally do.

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(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)

Today's episode of Boing Boing Video, via Oddball Film + Video, is a 1966 Scopitone that tells the romantic tale of a Spanish bullfighter, with help from an Amy Winehouse lookalike and mustachioed Flamenco dudes bearing overwrought facial expressions. The song is "Olé Cordobes," the credited artist is Miguel Cordoba.

Wait -- what's a Scopitone, you ask? Well, basically -- 1960s video jukeboxes. As Pesco blogged earlier this year on Boing Boing, "Scopitones and Cineboxes were first introduced in Europe in 1959-1960 and came to the US a few years later. The coin-operated machines were quite popular but were swept into the dustbin of dead media by the 1970s."

More required reading, if you're interested in the history of these primordial music video jukeboxen:

* Scopitone Archive
* Wikipedia entry
* NPR: Rise and Fall of the Scopitone Jukebox
* Scopitone of the Day

The video comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film + Video, a San Francisco stock footage company that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings in San Francisco. BB Video will be bringing you more from their superbly surreal collections in the weeks to come.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes 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 Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)

An anonymous reader writes "UK police are talking to private companies about using plug-in USB devices that can scour the hard drive of any device they are attached to, searching for evidence of illegal activity. The UK's Association of Chief Police Officers is considering using commercial devices that can perform targeted searches of text, pictures and computer code on hard drives, allowing untrained cops to detect anything from correspondence on stolen goods to child pornography. Police in the UK are desperate for a way of slashing the backlog of machines seized by the police in raids, with many forces having a backlog that will take a year to process." Maybe they shouldn't seize so many computers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Media Matters catches Bill O'Reilly in another lie, this time about Dr. George Tiller, who performed abortions for "women diagnosed with cancer who needed abortions to qualify for chemotherapy, women who learned late in their pregnancies that their wanted babies had fatal illnesses, and rape victims so young they didn't realize they were pregnant for months," as reported by Susan Hill, President of the National Women's Health Foundation. (See Xeni's post.)

From The Daily Beast:

Finding the truth uncomfortable, Bill O’Reilly has apparently decided just to lie about it: On his show last night, O’Reilly claimed that he could be sure that he did not incite Dr. George Tiller’s assassin because he never called him “Tiller the Baby Killer”; he only “reported what groups were calling him.”

Here's what Media Matters has dug up:

* On the May 15 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly stated that Kathleen Sebelius, who was then the governor of Kansas and is now secretary of health and human services, "is the most pro-abortion governor in the United States. Based upon Dr. Tiller, the baby killer in her state, and all of that. All right? So there's no doubt."

* On the May 11 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said Sebelius "is pro-abortion. She wants the babies done for. This is -- she supported Tiller the baby killer out there."

* On the April 27 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said that Sebelius "recently vetoed a bill that placed restrictions on late-term abortions in Kansas. The bill was introduced because of the notorious Tiller the baby killer case, where Dr. George Tiller destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."

* On the April 3 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly said, "Tiller got acquitted in Kansas, Tiller the baby killer."

* On the March 27 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly stated: "Now, we have bad news to report, that Tiller the baby killer out in Kansas -- acquitted. Acquitted today of murdering babies. I wasn't in the courtroom. I didn't sit on the jury. But there's got to be a special place in hell for this guy."

O'Reilly falsely claimed he only "reported what groups" were calling Tiller

The most awesome Theo Gray, author of the I-can't-recommend-it-highly-enough Mad Science, has a post on Powell's Books blog about his book and the dangers it contains (the subtitle is "Experiments You Can Do at Home -- But Probably Shouldn't"). He writes:

Is it irresponsible to write a mass-market book that describes how to do dangerous science experiments? It used to be very common. I have books from the early 1800s through the mid 1900s that would make your hair stand on end. One 1930s book from none other than the Popular Science Press includes the recipe for Armstrong's mixture, a friction-sensitive explosive notorious for blowing hands off while it's being mixed.

But that's ancient history now. Books of home science, and even classroom chemistry at the high school level, are filled with baking soda and vinegar science. The Dangerous Book for Boys, for example, is completely devoid of danger.

Surely recommending only perfectly safe experiments is a good thing, isn't it?

Is Science As Important As Football?

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GWMAW! writes "Spending more time on social networks and blogs? You're not alone, with the latest figures showing the number of minutes spent on social networking sites in the United States has almost doubled over the past year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A bunch of states have been pushing forward with plans to add taxes on digital downloads. The state of Washington apparently passed just such a law, which is scheduled to go into effect on July 26th. Nate sent in a note, pointing out that under a strict reading of the details of the bill you could see how the state could go after unauthorized downloaders as "tax evaders." Now, that may not be the case (and it would be great if we could get someone from the state to clarify), but it seems that what Nate is likely referring to is this explanation in the Q&A about the bill:

What is the value of the digital product for use tax purposes?

The value is the purchase price of the digital product. If the digital product is acquired by means other than a purchase, the value of the digital product is determined by the retail selling price of a similar digital product.

From that, you could easily conclude that anyone in Washington who downloads unauthorized files is now expected to pay a tax based on the "retail selling price" of the files. And, from there, it's not hard to see how failing to pay such a tax, could eventually be seen as tax evasion. How excited do you think that makes the RIAA? Remember, this is the same RIAA that suggested that the feds use copyright infringement laws to arrest drug dealers. You can check out the specific text (in Section 304) within the full bill (pdf file), which is basically the same as what's written above.

The feds eventually went after Al Capone on tax evasion charges. Are file sharers next?

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Chimps built a 5-piece toolkit to help them extract honey from underground bee colonies.

The tools consist of pounders, enlargers, collectors, perforators and swabbers. Chimps, suspended in acrobatic positions on branches, might first pull out a thick stick pounder to break open beehive entrances. They then reach for another stick, the enlarger, to perforate and widen different honeybee hive compartments. Next comes the collector, used to dip or scoop out honey.

Different tools and methods are needed to obtain underground bee honey. The chimps wield a perforator to penetrate the ground, locate a honey chamber and dig into the soil. They then pull off strips of bark to "dip and spoon the honey out of the opened beehive."

Obtaining honey from an underground hive isn't easy. Aside from dealing with angry, stinging bees, the chimps must dig narrow sideways tunnels, maintain perfect aim and prevent soil from falling into, and ruining, their desired sweet reward.

The honey extraction toolkit has been licensed by Home Depot and will be available later this fall, says one of the chimps.

Chimpanzee toolkit

Nathan Seidle. of Sparkfun, is on a campaign to create a keyless life for himself. One of his last locks to join the 21st century was on the door to his Mazda:

I hate keys. I am on a mission to dispose of them all. There is currently a key pad to enter the SparkFun building, a key pad on my home, and RFID to get into the interior rooms at SparkFun. It is my goal to get rid of the last key in my pocket, my Mazda key! I combined the Nike+iPod device and my key fob, with an Arduino Pro Mini, to create the iFOB.

iFOBing A Mazda

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

Davis Freeberg writes "In an in depth discussion on the codec industry, CoreCodec CEO and Matroska Foundation board member Dan Marlin shares his thoughts on the growing popularity of the MKV container, confusion in the marketplace between X.264/MKV and DivXHD and weighs in on a controversial decision by Microsoft to block third party filter support in future versions of Windows media player. His interview offers a behind the scenes look at an important piece of technology that is helping to power the P2P movement. It also raises the prickly question of whether or not Microsoft is abusing their OS monopoly, in order to rein in competition within the codec industry."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Abbey Ryan creates one painting a day and auctions them on eBay. Other artists do the same thing. What a fun way to make a living! Here's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich she painted (6 x 8 in. oil linen on panel). The current bid is $152.50.

It's interesting to watch Abbey paint. Here's a video of her painting a picture of a strawberry and blueberries.

Abbey knows I am a cigar box guitar maker, so she sent me a photo of her cigar box easel (click for bigger).

Ryan Studio: A Painting a Day by Abbey Ryan

Ticketmaster helped build its consumer-unfriendly reputation even more earlier this year, when news emerged that it was collaborating with some musicians and concert promoters to try and push scalpers aside -- and grab their revenues. Scalping's back in the news again this week, but with a slightly different twist: a number of musicians are working with a company called Charity Partners to sell some tickets to their shows at scalper-like prices, then donate the revenues over face value to charity. It's definitely an interesting idea that seeks to do something positive with the excess willingness to pay for certain concert tickets over their face value, rather than let it go to scalpers -- or back into the pockets of the artists and promoters themselves. But will the charity aspect be enough to deflect criticism that this is just another way for musicians to fleece their fans?

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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Aeonite writes "Featuring a subtitle that is almost longer than the preface, Vintage Games: An Inside Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time offers a retrospective look at those games which authors Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton feel were, in their words, 'paradigm shifters; the games that made a difference.' As the preface points out, these are not necessarily best-selling games, innovative games, or novel games, but rather titles that, 'in their own special way changed videogames forever.'" Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Every gadget expands until it becomes a PC. Any gadget that does not so expand is replaced by one that will.

• Joel interviewed Dane Novarlic, the United Nations' emergency network admin. He's currently in Pakistan helping people displaced by the Taliban.

• Cabledrop holds cables securely, but has the added quality of looking very rude.

• TomTom touts "subtle swirls" on its special edition satnav, the world's most glamorous by far.

• The H-Bomb is a battery-heated $1,000 wetsuit.

• Yes, it was our Surfing theme day! Remember the Waikiki Beach Boys; Predict surf at Mavericks; and learn how to Sell surf wax.

• Liquid metal breeching rounds are exactly what they say they are.

• Someone put an Atom PC in a vase. But is it ceramic?

Miles O'Brien, whose work we've been featuring recently as a Boing Boing Video guest contributor, has been covering the Air France crash intensively on True Slant and in short bursts on Twitter. Here's a snip from his latest blog post, about the effort to retreive the plane's "black boxes."

Now that searchers have found some floating remnants of Air France 447 in the Atlantic 430 miles (700 kilometers) north of the Fernando de Noronha islands, the hard work of trying to locate the Airbus' "black boxes" - the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder - can begin. This is actually much worse than the proverbial needle in the haystack, because in that case, the assumption is the needle can be found after expending a lot of time and energy. These boxes might very well be truly lost to the abyss.

But of course they still must try to find them as well as any wreckage of the Airbus A-330.

To that end, a French research ship with a submersible capable of diving to a depth of 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) is steaming to the area. The French transport Ministry says the ship carries equipment "able to explore more than 97% of the ocean bed area, specifically in the search area." I some spots, Atlantic is more than 20,000 feet deep in the area where searchers found the floating debris.

The submersible will be listening for the distinctive "pinging" noise that these boxes are designed to emit once they are submerged in water. They are supposed to "ping" for thirty days in water as deep as 20,000 feet. Sonar used by surface ships is only good to about a thousand feet of depth - so it is essential to send some "ears" deep beneath the sea in order to find the boxes. These sonar devices can be towed by ships or ply the deep on their own power.

Long Odds Search for Black Boxes (Trueslant.com)

Former BB guestblogstress Maggie Koerth-Baker has a piece up on MSN today about food-borne illnesses -- a topic near and dear to my gut, having just spent a few weeks on the road in rural Central America, where every food choice one makes as a visitor is not so much, "will this taste good" as "how likely is this to give me a week's worth of the runs"?

"Ironically, three days after turning that in, I actually came down with what is likely mild foodborne illness myself," tweeted Maggie, "It's fun!" Here's a snip from the section about Campylobacter (shown above, from Flickr user dokidok's stream):

Campy" is the leading cause of bacteria-related diarrhea in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration. In fact, experts say it's likely you've had a run-in with Campy before, and just not realized it. So why the low profile?

There are a couple of reasons. First off, campy's just not that mean of a bug. Catch it and you can expect a week of flu-like symptoms, plus diarrhea. "I'm not volunteering to get it, but at the same time it generally doesn't result in hospitalization or death," says Jim Dickson, a professor of animal science at Iowa State University and head of the multi-university Food Safety Consortium.

Campy's pattern of infection is also a factor. The big-name food sickness outbreaks tend to be multi-state affairs, involving hundreds of people. Campy, in contrast, is more sporadic. An "outbreak" often means a bad week for one family. That's because this bug is a delicate creature. Heat it up, dry it out, deprive it of oxygen--lots of things will kill it quickly.

Take a Bite Out of Food-Borne Illnesses This Summer (MSN Health)

mbone writes "In the New York Times, there is an interesting story about a hydraulic analog computer from 1949 used to model the feedback loops in the economy. According to the article, 'copies of the 'Moniac,' as it became known in the United States, were built and sold to Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Ford Motor Company and the Central Bank of Guatemala, among others.' There is a cool video of the computer in operation at Cambridge University. I remember that the Instrumentation Lab at MIT still had an analog computer in its computer center in the mid-1970s. Even then, it seemed archaic, and now this form of computation is largely forgotten. With 14 machines built, it must have been one of the more successful analog computers — a supercomputer of its day. Of course, you have to wonder if it could have been used to predict our current economic difficulties."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's certainly nothing new to find out that record labels rarely have the best interests of the musicians at heart (despite their proclivity to claim so -- especially to Congress and the press). However, a new lawsuit (sent in by a bunch of you) that pits Cher and the heirs of Sonny Bono, highlights some of the many ways that labels screw over musicians. In this case, Cher is alleging that Universal Music funneled revenue through international subsidiaries in order to completely hide how much revenue was made on Sonny & Cher music, in order to avoid paying the contractually agreed upon royalties. Again, such charges of creative accounting are legion in the industry, but it's nice to see a lawsuit detail exactly how some of the funny accounting is done. Whenever major record label folks insist that the labels have the artists' best interests in mind, it seems worthwhile to point out these sorts of stories.

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(William Gurstelle is Boing Boing's current guest blogger. His new book Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously is on sale everywhere. Follow him on Twitter: @wmgurst)

Lately, I've been hard at work writing a book entitled Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously, (which not so incidentally, went on sale Monday.) While corresponding and talking with readers of my previous book, Backyard Ballistics, I found that many people enjoy taking technical, physical risks. And it seemed to me that the people who did so seemed to be a bit more intellectual curious, more self aware, and even a bit happier than those who were not. Was this true? Are people who take some well considered physical risks better off than those who do not?

Basically, I wanted to know this: is it intrinsically better to be an Evel Knievel or a Caspar Milquetoast? Better to be Chuck Yeager or Niles Crain? Are lion tamers happier with their lives than monks?

Psychologists can assess and numerically describe a person's risk-taking proclivity. Risk-taking behavior can be summarized as a single number from one to 100. A one is a house-bound agoraphobe and a 100 is a heroin junkie with a death wish. The distribution of risk-taking proclivity is described by a normal, bell-shaped curve. Not surprisingly, most people cluster around the mean score, as the graph shows.

But here's the cool thing. I found that moderate, rational, risk takers, that is, those with scores between the mean and one standard deviation to the right are the people who are most satisfied with their lives. I call that area "the golden third" because it's roughly 1/3 of the population. Studies (and there are several) show that people who take just a bit more risks than average, that is, those who live their lives in the golden third, tend to do better than average. They tend to be more satisfied with their lives and more fulfilled. To me, that's a stunning conclusion.

Next question: is it possible to consciously work towards becoming a better risk taker? I believe so; basically it's just practice. To write Absinthe and Flamethrowers, I researched and documented a dozen or so interesting projects designed to build risk-taking skills. For instance, if you know how, you can walk into a Home Depot and come out with everything you need to build a rocket - a real one. You can make gunpowder. You can throw knives, eat dangerous food, drive fast, and do all sorts of things that would make your mother shudder. But understand the difference between being cool in the Golden Third and just stupid:

Making an propane accumulator flame cannon - Golden. Making pipe bomb filled with match heads - Stupid.

Driving an Audi Q5 at 120 mph on the Autobahn- Golden. Friday night buzz driving on the Interstate - stupid

Fugu (tiger pufferfish) sushi in Yokohama - Golden. Boiling up a pot of pufferfish soup at home - stupid.

Using Bartitsu and a cane to fend off a thug - Golden. Street brawling with homemade nunchucks- stupid.

On Tor.com, Jo Walton has a sharp-eyed review of Frederik Pohl and CM Kornbluth's classic sf novel The Space Merchants. I happen to be in the middle of writing a story called "Chicken Little" that's a tribute to this novel, for an anthology in honor of Fred Pohl, and I've been thinking about it nonstop for weeks -- and Walton nails it.

Much more interesting as futurology are the incidentals of the background. This is a ridiculously over-populated Earth, only in Antarctica and around the blast-off range of Venus rockets is there any empty space at all. Rich people live alone in two rooms, with fold-out beds and tables. Privacy doesn't exist. The entire planet is at worse than the density point of modern Tokyo. Well, there's a future that didn't happen, but you can see how in 1952 in the middle of the Baby Boom it looked as if it might. There are golf clubs on high floors of corporate sky scrapers.

It's interesting to see conservationists so demonized, yet the forms of pollution and consumption everyone else is embracing so enthusiastically aren't the ones that we see as the problems. They're wearing "soot filters." That kind of pollution turned out to be a fixable problem and is pretty much gone in first world countries. They've run out of oil and are pedaling their cars and using rockets for long distance travel, but there doesn't seem to be any shortage of plastics. They don't have any climate change problem, and they're all eating hydroponic food and syntho-protein (with yummy addictive additives) because there's literally no room for farms. They've paved the planet without having problems without the "lungs" of the rainforests. They're also eating protein from Chicken Little, a giant chicken heart that keeps on growing and they keep on slicing--the image of that had stuck with me, especially the consie cell having a secret meeting in a chamber surrounded by it. And it's weird to see the conservationists essentially giving up on Earth in favour of Venus. I'd forgotten that. This is a much nicer Venus than later probes have reported, it's still pretty unpleasant but it's comparatively easily terraformable. But even so!

Advertising dystopia: Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth's The Space Merchants

The Conference Board of Canada's sellout on copyright just keeps on getting worse. To recap: the Conference Board is a supposedly neutral research outfit that was asked by the Canadian copyright industries to write a report on file-sharing and piracy in Canada. They hit up the Ontario government for $15,000 to fund an event where the findings of the report would be presented.

Then they hired an independent researcher who concluded that there wasn't anything particularly wrong with Canadian file-sharing. They threw away his research.

Then they plagiarized dodgy press-materials produced by the leading US copyright lobby group, quoting lengthy passages that were factually wrong.

Then they denied any wrongdoing.

Then they admitted they'd plagiarized, but insisted that the public money hadn't been spent "on the report" -- it had been spent on the conference about the report, which is a Different Thing Altogether.

Then the founder and leader of the Conference Board, Anne Golden, appeared on the TVOntario podcast Search Engine and argued that she didn't really see anything especially egregious about the fact that the plagiarists had copied the talking points of the people who'd hired them to write the "independent" report. She even tried to discredit the distinguished academic who wrote the conflicting report that they discarded by saying that he's a plagiarist for saying that "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck" (in reference to the Board's apparent bias-for-money position), because someone else said that first.

And now, it just got worse.

One of the named authors of the plagiarized report has come forward to say that the funders of the report -- Canadian copyright lobbyists -- actively pressured him to come to the conclusions that they wanted to see. He asked to have his name removed from the report prior to publication -- and Anne Golden called him to talk it over and then hung up on him.

# # My new work was interrupted in mid-September by my former supervisor at the Conference Board to tell me there had been "push back" from one of the funding clients about the research and inclusion of Mr. deBeer's contribution. I had quit almost two months earlier so this was of no concern to me.

# Around the same time, my new work was also interrupted by a call from one of the funding clients who expressed similar concerns. Again, I informed him that I no longer had anything to do with these reports.

# I received news of its publication on May 26, 2009, ten months after my resignation. I downloaded and read the research after I was informed of the controversy and was alarmed to see the direction it had taken.

# I sent my letter to Anne Golden the following day.

# The VP of Public Policy e-mailed me on May 29th to ask for my assistance in finding both researchers who could "fix" the reports, as well as external reviewers who would be impartial in reviewing the new work. His message stated that "I trust your judgment, experience and knowledge and would value your help."

Ex-Conference Board Author Speaks Out; Confirms "Push Back" From Copyright Lobby Funders

PL/SQL Guy writes "Search giant Google is set to offer its free Android mobile-phone operating system for computers, opening a new front in its rivalry with Microsoft by challenging the dominance of the company's Windows software. Acer Inc., the world's second-largest laptop maker, will release a low-cost notebook powered by Android next quarter, said Jim Wong, head of information-technology products at the Taipei-based company. Calvin Huang, an analyst at Daiwa Securities Group Inc, says that adoption of Android-based netbooks will likely eat into Windows' share of PC operating systems." Meanwhile, notes reader Barence, Asus is continuing to distance itself from Android, saying it "isn't a priority."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's Roald Dahl's impassioned plea to get your kids immunized. I live in East London, where we have live measles afflicting otherwise healthy kids who could have been vaccinated against them, but whose parents have been duped by a falsified claim that vaccinations are linked to autism (here's a non-falsified claim: measles leads to permanent disability and even death).

I remember when my daughter got sick and broke out with measle-like spots when she was too young to have had her vaccination against the disease. As I contemplated the possibility that my daughter might be permanently disabled or even killed because gullible people were choosing not to vaccinate their kids, I wanted to start wringing necks.

Dahl had a child die from measles, and he was determined that no other child should die needlessly from fear and ignorance.

Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die. LET THAT SINK IN. Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles. So what about the risks that your children will run from being immunised? They are almost non-existent. Listen to this. In a district of around 300,000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunisation! That is about a million to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunisation. So what on earth are you worrying about? It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunised. The ideal time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is never too late. All school-children who have not yet had a measles immunisation should beg their parents to arrange for them to have one as soon as possible. Incidentally, I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the fi rst was James and the Giant Peach'. That was when she was still alive. The second was 'The BFG', dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.

MEASLES: A dangerous illness by ROALD DAHL

I figured our Rob must be kidding when he posted on Boing Boing Gadgets about the frankly insane plan by a very senior Microsoft marketing manager to rebrand "netbooks" as "low cost small notebook PCs." But it's not a joke:

Steven Guggenheimer, Microsoft's General Manager of Application Platform and Development Marketing, thinks that the term "netbook" should be abandoned. Instead, he says, such devices should be called "low cost small notebook PCs."

Bear in mind that this chap is a marketing manager: he's doing this because he thinks it will make it easier to sell the software. Microsoft's soul is so attuned to selling committee-ordained business concepts to management that it just can't help itself.

Microsoft wants to rename netbooks with absurd five-word phrase

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Rick Dakan's third novel in his Geek Mafia, Black Hat Blues, is every bit as good as the two previous, rollicking volumes -- and shows the signs of a writer who's flexing new literary muscles with every book, getting better and better as he goes along.

The Geek Mafia premise is simple: a group of hackers have reinvented themselves as a crew of big-con grifters who use technology to exact elaborate revenge from the bastards who screw them -- and the world -- over. Oh, they pull straight-ahead cons, too; they're not philanthropists or anything. But they've got a (developing) ethic about who is and isn't fair game, and a lot of the tension in the books springs over disputes over this classing "honor among thieves" conundrum.

Black Hat Blues picks up where Mile Zero (the second volume) ended; the crew is in Key West, politicized and energized, and ready to kick ass. They decide to go after some very big game this time, a slimy DC beltway insider who richly deserves it -- but first they have to recruit some new talent from various hacker cons around America (these scenes are just fabulous, accurately portraying some of the weirdest events you'll ever attend). And things go well -- until they don't, and now the crew is in way over its head and the danger is dialled up to 11.

Clever, engaging, sexy, geeky -- Rick Dakan's independently published books are fantastic material, real heist/caper novels for the Happy Mutant set; as with the previous two volumes, the design is great (Rick's got a friend who's a great a graphic designer), but the book has an unfortunately high typo and copyedit-problem count, an occupational hazard of the self-published.

Black Hat Blues

Karen Curley and Lindsay Broomfield made this LED dress for the band Bachelorette using a LilyPad Arduino and some LilyPad sewable LEDs. Check out the Flickr set. Via Fashioning Technology.

More:

• New soft circuit kits in the maker shed and massive soft electronics roundup
  
• CRAFT Video: LilyPad Arduino 101
  
• CRAFT Video: LilyPad Arduino Blinking Bike Patch
  

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Is the opening cinematic to Harmonix's upcoming Beatles: Rock Band (above) the most aggressively, gorgeously surreal videogame intro of all time? I say there's no contest, not even Katamari Damacy's own animalistic rainbow explosion, and it's still my favorite cinematic to come out of the ongoing E3 thus far. Elsewhere on Offworld we wrapped up the day's top two stories: Nintendo's press conference, which went back to basics to appease its core audience with four new Mario games, a new Metroid game, and a new finger-clip hardware interface to help create new games meant to relax the player, and Sony's own press conference, which introduced their own new motion controller, and fired back with a suite of console exclusives: the GTA creator's 70s spy thriller Agent, PSP Metal Gear Solid sequel Peace Walker, and a launch exclusive online Final Fantasy 14. Other E3 highlights: a new massively multiplayer cops and robbers game from the Crackdown creators, a followup to Grasshopper's light-saber slacker slasher No More Heroes, the hyper-styled slapstick mania of Rabbids Go Home, and a new partnership between Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Ubisoft that bears a suspiciously similar codename to Mizuguchi's retro-futurist music-shooter Rez.

Bill Squier alerts us to the news that a bunch of companies have been sued for daring to store consumer payment information and allow either stored value payments or one-click payments on their site. The article linked here focuses on Apple as a defendant, and notes 14 other companies were sued as well, but in researching this, I found that Joe Mullin actually wrote about another batch of companies (20 of them) that were sued back in April. The earlier lawsuit included Google, Wal-Mart, Bank of America, Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, Mastercard, Visa, Vivendi, Disney and Western Union among others. The more recent lawsuit has (as mentioned) Apple, Best Buy, Amazon, American Express, Barnes & Noble, Citigroup and eBay among others. So... basically any online e-commerce site, credit card company or big bank.

As for the patents in question, they're all a variation on a "method and apparatus for conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens." The specific patents are 7,376,621, 7,249,099, 7,328,189 and 7,177,838. Reading through the claims, this seems like an incredibly typical online system for storing payment info and seeing if the person can actually pay. Since the patent system defenders among our readers get quite upset whenever I say something seems "obvious" to me, let's flip this around. Can anyone explain how these concepts were not obvious at the time of filing?

Not surprisingly, the cases have been filed in Marshall, Texas... and as Joe Mullin figured out, the guy who is running "Actus" is a lawyer known for representing some infamous patent hoarding companies. He also discovered that the lawyer representing Actus in these lawsuits appears to share an office (or at least the same address) with the son (who is also a patent attorney) of the judge handling the case. At some point, do people start questioning whether or not there's a conflict of interest there?

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Miladinoski writes "Opera Software ASA today released the first beta of their tenth version of the Opera browser. In addition to the browser's known features, like mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, voice navigation, mail and RSS support, speed dial and so forth, it now includes a Turbo mode which unclogs your connection to get faster browsing, a new interface, a tabbed browsing update and customizable speed dial. Opera 10 continues to follow the web standards by getting 100/100 and pixel-perfect scores on the Acid3 test. The beta is currently available for every modern OS platform."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Electromagnetic waves sent out by modern living can make for some decidedly eerie soundscapes - and some very interesting exploration. Radiolariax uses a variety of devices to listen in on the otherwise unheard -

The hunt for weird radio signals and other electromagnetic waves with small, cheap modified radios, cassette players, walkie-talkies, dictaphones, babyphones, pc speakers,... and simple circuits.

Check out the collection of devices used and relevant audio samples on the signal and wave hunting site.

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suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from the Washington Post: "The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether some of the nation's largest technology companies violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees, according to two sources with knowledge of the review. The review, which is said to be in its preliminary stages, is focused on Google; its competitor Yahoo; Apple; and the biotech firm Genentech, among others, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. The sources said the review includes other tech companies and is 'industry-wide.' By agreeing not to hire away top talent, the companies could be stifling competition and trying to maintain their market power unfairly, antitrust experts said. ... Obama's antitrust chief at the Justice Department, Christine Varney, has said she plans to look at the network effects of high-tech companies and how their grasp on markets has cut out competitors and hurt consumers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's the closest you'll come to getting uncomfortably covered in sticky sugar water without actually being at the Faire for an Eepybird show. Grab your 3D glasses and check it out. This anaglyph 3D video was shot by Eric Kurland of Retinal Rivalry. Thanks, Eric!

Eepybird.com

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eMusic is a rather successful indie music e-commerce player (reports put it at the 2nd largest music store), that has focused on charging people a subscription that lets them download a limited number of songs each month. It also supported DRM-free MP3 files long before others finally came around. I have many friends who love the convenience that eMusic provides (I tried it, and didn't find enough of the music I liked to stick around) and are willing to pay for the convenience alone. However, it's almost hard to believe that no one on the PR/marketing side of eMusic failed to predict what would happen this week when the company made two announcements: that it had signed its first major label, Sony, and that it was raising prices. The reaction was quick and almost universally negative.

The complaints hit on a number of points, but the two big ones (obviously) are the price increase and the fact that many people signed up with eMusic because of its indie music focus, and related to that: their dislike of major record labels. What's stunning is that eMusic couldn't foresee what a negative reaction this would bring. The company has raised prices in the past, which also created some level of anger -- but people had to know that announcing both the Sony deal and the price raise at the same time, was going to be a PR nightmare. What I can't understand is why they didn't separate out the announcements. They may have felt it was a "pulling the bandaid off quickly" sort of moment, where they could take flak for both announcements at the same time, but they didn't seem to consider the fact that the two issues are completely linked in users' minds. It's not "eMusic had to raise prices" and "eMusic added Sony music." It's become: "eMusic had to raise prices to get Sony Music's catalog into the system."

That makes both eMusic and Sony Music look dreadful -- because here's a major record label, whose music many eMusic subscribers didn't want in the first place, now being seen as having made life worse (and more expensive) for everyone. By connecting the two issues, it seems like both eMusic and Sony Music are getting hit a lot harder than if the announcements had been separated.

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Sony confirmed rumors at E3 yesterday by debuting their take on a motion-based input device, set to be released for use with the PS3 in the spring of 2010. The BBC has some entertaining video of the demonstration. "A sensor sits on top of the TV and detects the position, distance and movement of two controllers held in a user's hand. The device can not only measure where the controllers are in relation to each other, but also how close they are to the sensor, meaning you can create true 3D movement within a game. ... During the demonstration, the developers showed what the Sony PlayStation Controller was capable of, enabling users to wield weapons, fire a bow and arrow, write on screen and manipulate objects in a virtual environment. 'One thing that is really difficult to do in a virtual world is drawing,' said Mr Marks. 'And in particular, writing requires extreme precision. [The controller can be measured] to sub-millimetre accuracy.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When the Guardian ran a piece over the weekend on the Suggested User List, my interest, and others' re-stoked. Then I got an idea from Sarah Delman, pondered it, wrote some code, published the results. Now we know more about the source of the SUL. More back and forth, some of it heated, then it comes together for me -- we lack leadership. I can't provide it, I'm not trying to. I'm trying to be an provocateur, a role I often cast myself into.

As I've said before, I believe Twitter is a chapter in a story that's been playing out for a long time. It's both the best news system and the worst. No pictures, no video, limited metadata, and it has an increasingly confining 140-character limit. But it connects people like no system before has. It's both the backroom for journalism and the delivery mechanism. A lot of power there. But imho it's not the last word.

The remaining news organizations will move onto twitter-like systems over the next few years. The news system of the future is electronic and real-time. The stakes are huge now. If I were in their shoes, I'd be thinking very hard about how I want these systems to evolve as environments for journalism. I'd stop worrying about squeezing Google for a handout and start thinking about how to grab some of the PE-ratio for myself.

But the lions of the news industry lack imagination and chutzpah. Where are the strategists, the bizdev people of the news industry? They're plotting paywalls, when they should be creating and linking new conduits with graphics, sound and movies.

The business model? The same one that served Google in its early years. People are so excited about what you're doing that they pour cash all over you.

The SUL is a small piece of the big picture, but it's an important one. For all the reasons I've said. No need to repeat it. Now I'm going to let everyone else worry about this for a while.

Using nothing more than folded paper, German artist Simon Schubert creates some impressively realistic architectural imagery. Check out his online gallery to view the larger collection. [via Geekologie]

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eldavojohn writes "Someone accidentally released a 266-page report on hundreds of sites in the US for stockpiling and storing hazardous nuclear materials for civilian use. While some ex-officials and experts don't find it to be a serious breach, the Federation of American Scientists are calling it a 'a one-stop shop for information on US nuclear programs.' The document contains information about Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia, and opinions seem to be split on whether it's a harmless list or terrorist risk. One thing is for sure: it was taken down after the New York Times inquired to the Government Accountability Office about it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Generating dice-rolls over at the GamesByEmail HQ is a surprisingly efficient (and analog) matter. The conveyer belt based Dice-O-Matic can toss up to 1.3 million rolls per day, recording the results via die -recognition software.

The Dice-O-Matic is 7 feet tall, 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep. It has an aluminum frame covered with Plexiglas panels. A 6x4 inch square Plexiglas tube runs vertically up the middle almost the entire height. Inside this tube a bucket elevator carries dice from a hopper at the bottom, past a camera, and tosses them onto a ramp at the top. The ramp spirals down between the tube and the outer walls. The camera and synchronizing disk are near the top, the computer, relay board, elevator motor and power supplies are at the bottom.

This is quite a leap forward from the earlier lego-based version we highlighted many moons ago -

Dice rolling machine made from LEGOs

[via Gizmodo]

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theodp writes "In May, the White House launched what it called an 'unprecedented online process for public engagement in policymaking.' Brainstorming was conducted in an effort to identify ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness by making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative.' So, what were some of the top vote-getters? Currently near the top of the list are Legalize Marijuana And Solve Many Tax Issues / Prison Issues (#2) and Remove Marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (#3). For those who remember Obama's earlier Online Town Hall, it's deja vu all over again."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in November, when Craigslist first caved in to misguided complaints from various state AGs, we pointed out that this wouldn't do anything to stop prostitution -- it would just make it go elsewhere. And, indeed, that's exactly what happened. But, of course, that wasn't enough for the AGs who started grandstanding again a couple months ago, leading Craigslist to cave in again. So... what do you think is happening? Well, reader mikez points to a report noting a sudden and unexpected spike in adult classified ads in alternative weekly papers who had seen their business hit hard as such ads transferred to Craigslist. And, of course, as Craigslist had already pointed out, many of the ads showing up in those alt papers were already much more explicit than anything on Craigslist. In the meantime... with all these regular newspapers looking for additional business models, maybe they should start accepting those types of ads...

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Every year, at Maker Faire, I have one or more "epiphanies," transcendent moments where I feel joyously overwhelmed by the wonder of what's happening at the Faire -- where it dawns on me how truly amazing this event is and how lucky I am to be a part of it. This year, my epiphanies were smaller, subtler, but I thought they were still worth sharing:

Moment #1: After my robotics panel on Sunday, I went over to finally meet Michael Brown, creator of the amazing Bluerain scrolling LED light installation (seen above). He was talking to an elderly gentleman (I think he said he was in his '80s) who obviously knew something about the technology Michael was discussing. The man was also with a little boy, maybe 5 or so. "You seem to know something about this," Michael said. "I'm a engineer," the man replied, "I used to build robots." Michael looked down at the little boy and said, with enthusiasm in his voice: "Do you know this man?" The little boy said (with equal enthusiasm): "That's my granddad!" And Michael replied: "Whoa. You are SO lucky to have such a cool grandfather!" The kid had the most precious look on his face, like it was maybe just dawning on him that all of the amazing stuff he was seeing at the Faire -- like Bluerain -- his granddad might have had some involvement with similar "cool" stuff. And the look of pride on the grandfather's face was so tremendous it almost made me tear up. I thought about all of the older engineers and other makers of his generation at the Faire and how much joy they must get from seeing so much respect and attention finally being paid to engineers, whom James Kip Finch called "The great makers of history."

Moment #2: I was in one of the stalls of the men's room when a man came in with a very rambunctious small child. Immediately, he started saying: "Don't touch that! Leave that alone. Don't open the doors. Stop looking under there!" The kid was a whirlwind of chaotic exploration. Then I heard the kid say to somebody: "We're a family of makers." Very Ralphie Wiggums. Somehow the whole scene just cracked me up. I think that kid is going places (and probably a few where he "shouldn't").

Moment #3: The last one wasn't a moment, but many, and it wasn't at the Faire, it was on Twitter. As the Faire approached, you could see all of the tweets from people preparing their projects, or just enthusiastically getting ready to go to the Faire. Then, on Friday night, before bedtime, people tweeted before they went to sleep, excited for the coming day. It felt like the night before Christmas and everybody in Whoville was tucking themselves into bed getting ready for the magic that the morning would bring. Really a wonderful sense that we were all collectively getting ready to experience something truly special. Not surprisingly, the next day, somebody actually tweeted: "Maker Faire is the new Christmas."

If you were at Maker Faire this year, what were some of your "epiphanies?"

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lothos and several other readers let us know that the Public Interest Registry has announced the key-signing key to validate the signatures on the ORG zone. A few more details are on the PIR DNSSEC page. PC World interviewed PIR CEO Alexa Raad and writes: "On June 2, PIR will announce that it is signing the .org domain with NSEC3 and that it has begun testing DNSSEC with a handful of registrars using first fake and then real .org names. PIR plans to keep expanding its testing over the next few months until the registry is ready to support DNSSEC for all .org domain name operators. Raad says she expects full-blown DNSSEC deployment on the .org domain in 2010."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Photo by Scott Beale]

I frequently have to pinch myself over the fact that I get to know, work with, and be friends with so many amazing and talented human beings. One of those people is Bill Gurstelle. You don't have to spend much time with Bill to realize, as David Letterman likes to say: "He ain't hooked up right." But just as Letterman only reserves such a statement for crazy people he truly admires and respects, I mean this in the best possible way: Bill Gurstelle ain't hooked up right. Case in point: At breakfast on Sunday morning at Maker Faire, he was telling us about his desire to go to a place where he could eat Casu Marzu, the maggot-infested cheese where the maggots try and leap into your eyeballs as you eat it. The breakfast I had just finished took an interesting turn in my stomach, but knowing Bill, I figured I probably got off easy (at least the pancakes and eggs stayed in my stomach!). There's a method to Bill's madness, about risk, living life to its fullest, and the roll that risk/danger-seekers play in innovation, change, and probably evolution itself. He delves into more of this in his latest book: Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously.

Bill has also just begun a guest blogging stint on Boing Boing. It'll be interesting to see what sort of trouble he can get into there.

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With such an elegant interface that begs to be touched, you might wonder why anyone would bother using a stylus with an iPhone, but there are times when such an implement comes in handy. When you find yourself in such a situation don't bother grabbing your old PDA stylus. You'll need something that works with the iPhone's capacitive touch screen like this handy DIY iPhone/iPod touch stylus pen.

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We've seen all sorts of attempts by the entertainment industry to push their highly biased interpretation of copyright law (which sometimes strays into outright falsehoods) into schools as "educational" programs. The RIAA and the MPAA have each run campaigns in schools. And recently the Copyright Alliance (another industry propaganda group) released a questionable educational offering. It appears this effort is global. Phill alerts us that an Australian anti-piracy group is now pushing an educational campaign for schools. The group admits that the purpose isn't to learn about copyright from an impartial perspective, but teach "the importance of copyright" and to create " a change in attitudes and behaviour." In other words, it's not an "education" campaign as it's literally trying to change behavior for corporate interests. This should raise tremendous questions about why any school would allow this content to be shared with students, since it's specifically designed to promote the interests of certain corporations.

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Sociological Images expertly dissects the new Axe exfoliant-for-men ad, which suggests that it's the perfect thing to use after sexual relations with "Jessica" and "Jessica's Mom":

The heterosexual male fantasy of being sexually serviced by two women is so common as to have become a cliché, but what about the less-frequently endorsed but still prevalent fantasy about those women being sisters (or better yet, identical twins!) or a mother-daughter pair? Is it simple attraction (i.e., if you're attracted to one woman in a family, it's likely you'll be attracted to other women who look/act like her)? Is it the taboo element? Or does the power to coerce women into an incestuous situation serve as it's own reward?

Still, Axe got one thing right with this product. When I think about a guy who would buy this sponge in the hopes of securing sexual relations with a woman and her mother, I can't help but think of him as a, well...tool.

Geez, what a tool!

Investing in litigation is a gimmick from my next novel, Makers, coming next fall from Tor and HarperCollins UK -- the idea is that you can get rich by bankrolling people who have grievances against giant corporations in exchange for a piece of the award or settlement (this is something that plaintiff-side lawyers effectively do when they do work on contingency). I based it on a crusading lawyer I know who raised money from a philanthropist this way, but as far as I knew, that was the only case of it at the time.

No more: investing in litigation is now a sound business strategy, says the NYT:

Mr. Fields is chief executive of Juridica Capital Management. which runs a fund that invests in one side of a lawsuit in exchange for a share of any winnings.

"It's always a good time to invest in litigation," Mr. Fields said, though he added that the weak economy helped. "When the recession started to bite, the phones started ringing off the hook. Last year, we looked at 122 cases and we made 17 investments." A small but growing number of investors are exploring this idea, helping companies avoid some of the risks and costs of litigation in exchange for part of any money paid out when the case is settled or resolved by a court. After all, it can be costly to hire lawyers, who may charge close to $1,000 an hour at the most elite firms.

Credit Suisse has a unit devoted to this kind of investing. Juris Capital, a Chicago firm backed by two hedge funds, also does it. Several other hedge funds do, too.

Investing in Lawsuits, for a Share of the Awards (via /.)

guga31bb sends word on the next wave of investment in a slow market: bankrolling others' lawsuits. The practice sounds on the face of it indistinguishable from champerty. "Juris typically invests $500,000 to $3 million in a case, Mr. Desser said. He would not identify the company's backers, but said that 'on the portfolio as a whole, our returns are well in excess of 20 percent per year.' He added, 'We're certainly beating the market.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To be honest, stories about China using its "Great Firewall" to block certain sites are hardly new. They've been happening for years. And yet, tons of people have been submitting variations on the news that China appears to have upped the blockade by including sites like Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail and the new Microsoft search engine Bing, recognizing that it's the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown which is (not surprisingly) expected to draw quite an online discussion. I wasn't going to write anything about it, but a few thoughts occurred to me, as more and more people submitted it:

• Is anyone actually surprised that this has happened? China regularly bans and unbans a variety of different sites, often based on what's happening in the news. To think that it wouldn't raise the gates for such an event seems naive.
• Does it really do any good for the Chinese gov't? It pisses off those who use those services who are in China, certainly, but it also serves to call more attention to the heavy hand of gov't censorship in that country. Now, many don't seem to care one way or another -- and so it doesn't impact those people either way. But for those who do care, it reinforces their feelings about it, but hardly stops news from spreading.

So in the end, I'm still left wondering what the gov't thinks it accomplishes in being so heavy handed in censoring such sites, other than thinking that if they stick fingers in their ears, they can pretend no one's talking about this stuff online.

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Today at Boing Boing Gadgets...

* Lisa tested out a high-end wetsuit to see if it would stave off cold NorCal water.

* Steven interviewed Mark Sponsler, the guy who decides when legendary surf competition Mavericks will take place.

* Steven also learned how to shape a surfboard.

* Joel showed us an Atom PC in a ceramic vase and Logitech's new flight simulator.

* Rob showed us QWERTY keyboard bike handles and a USB retro vacuum cleaner.

Also, don't forget to check out sex wax for surfboards and the world's first battery-heated wetsuit.

HP has stepped up its efforts to crack down on printer ink counterfeiters -- and with good reason. While the company plays up that it's helping consumers by getting shoddy products off the market, it's more about protecting its business. In the past, HP's put pressure on retailers not to carry cheaper alternatives to its expensive replacement ink cartridges, and it's tried to use patent suits to shut down cartridge refillers. But with sales down across the board, HP is moving to try and recoup some of the $1 billion analysts allege it loses to fake ink every year. BusinessWeek says "For years, HP could afford to ignore the problem," because of booming sales. But apparently, it couldn't afford to try and use patent lawsuits, pressure on retailers and other shady tactics to try and crowd lower-priced alternative products out of the market. It's perfectly fine for HP to go after counterfeiters selling inferior products under its name, trying to fraud consumers. But let's hope that's all it's now doing, and it's given up on trying to force legitimate alternative products out of the market.

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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In the Atlantic, James Fallows describes how thoroughly erased the Tiananmen Square atrocity is from the memory of young Chinese people. Censorship apparently works.

I have spent a lot of time over the past three years with Chinese university students. They know a lot about the world, and about American history, and about certain periods in their own country's past. Virtually everyone can recite chapter and verse of the Japanese cruelties in China from the 1930s onward, or the 100 Years of Humiliation, or the long background of Chinese engagement with Tibet. Through their own family's experiences, many have heard of the trauma of the Cultural Revolution years and the starvation and hardship of the Great Leap Forward. But you can't assume they will ever have heard of what happened in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago. For a minority of people in China, the upcoming date of June 4 has tremendous significance. For most young people, it's just another day.

Lost memory of Tiananmen (via Kottke)

btempleton writes "It all started when I prepared yet another Downfall subtitle parody. In this one, Hitler is the studio head, upset at all the Downfall parodies, and he wants to do DMCA takedowns on them all. (If you're a DMCA/DRM fighting Slashdotter, you'll like it.) The EFF, which I chair, blogged it on Deeplinks, and hilarity ensued. That weekend, Exact Magic, an iPhone developer, had submitted a special RSS reader app to display EFF news on the iPhone. Apple's iPhone app store evaluators looked at the RSS reader, read the feed it pointed to, and then played the linked-to video. They saw the F-word flash in the subtitles of the video, and then rejected the RSS-reading tool from the App Store. We're up to several levels of meta here — Apple has banned an app over a parody about banning, and is now parodying itself. Bonus: TFA also has the story of just how hard it is to be fully legal in obtaining the famous clip for parody."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,

Public.Resource.Org is pleased to announce an RFP for an Enhanced Code of Federal Regulations. The purpose of this project, which is funded by the Sunlight Foundation, is to "Incorporate by Inclusion" all technical standards that have been "Incorporated by Reference" into the regulations of the U.S.government.

Casual readers of federal regulations may be astounded by the scope of these "Incorporated by Reference" standards. They govern some of the most fundamental aspects of what is law, such as "how much lead is too much in a pipe?" and "is this life vest safe?"

This effort builds on last year's "Code City," which released public safety codes (building, fire, plumbing, boiler, elevator, electrical) for public use. These public safety codes, also incorporated by reference, are the counterpart at the state and local level of the current effort to open up federal law to make it open and transparent for all.

Codes is law.

RFP: Enhanced Code of Federal Regulations (Thanks, Carl!)

Jonico sez, "Dailymotion is working converting their video library to open video formats -- Ogg Theora. Currently they are working with Firefox to get it working correctly on Firefox 3.5 Beta(they include a link with some demos) and soon on other browsers that support HTML 5. This is one of the biggest video sites to begin to offer their video in open video formats (Ogg+ Vorbis)."

Watch Video...without Flash

I'm guessing that this Nike Air/NES mashup is nonfunctional, but how cool would it be if you had a working Nintendo in your shoe?

Sneaker Pimps Nintendo (via Dvice)

Voting has closed on the Wikimedia Commons photo of the year competition; the winner and runners-up are stunning. And they're all free as in beer and free as in speech.

Commons Picture of the Year 2008: Results

Horses on Bianditz mountain, in Navarre, Spain. Behind them Aiako mountains can be seen.

(via MeFi)

The Tuffwriter: a pen for stabbing people with (not to be confused with the the KZ Xtreme Defense Pen) (also for stabbing people).

From Marines hunting terrorists in burning deserts, SAR expeditions in bone chilling mountains, SWAT officers executing high risk warrant service, EMTs functioning in extreme conditions, or a civilian working in a non-permissive environment. All of these special operations groups have something in common - they all require a pen that they can depend on...

Q: What exactly is a tactical / defense pen?
A: It's a pen designed to be as reliable and durable as the people using it. A writing implement as well as a last ditch defensive tool that you can bring virtually anywhere and have with you at all times. The Tuff-Writer tactical / defense pen is an essential piece of gear for anyone who needs tools that they can depend on.

Tuffwriter (via Beyond the Beyond)

I just started going through the @makerfaire twitter messages. Some of my faves already, even though I'm not even close to finishing to sort them:

@choklit: @makerfaire was brilliant, exhausting, magical, quirky and beautiful. The best was the many luminous lovelies I connected with. Now, to bed

@quellybeep: full day @makerfaire turned total sensory overload inspiration exhaustion. so many smart ppl brimming w/ creative energy making awesomeness.

@roxycraft: Winding day 2 at @makerfaire. My cheeks are sore from smiling...lol

@emora: At @makerfaire. So tired out from yesterday. But I'm still at it again. Awesome stuff. I want to be here forever http://twitpic.com/6cxm2

@SisterDiane: Pretty much ready to follow @makerfaire like the Grateful Dead. #mf09

Picture above is of the Flatulance-Twittering Office Chair by Randy Sarafan at Instructables. Photo by kentbrew.

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Tom sez, "Tired of boring unboxing videos? When I purchased the 1960's era CARDIAC computer learning aid recently I decided to do an unboxing video. Yesterday the UPS man reintroduced me to the cardboard wonder that I last used over 30 years ago. As my tripod has been hidden by the house teenager the camera work here is less Touch Of Evil and more Blair Witch..be warned. For those also inflicted with a love of this cardboard wonder I have started a FaceBook group. My son and I are panning on doing a set of video tutorials over the summer, they will show up in this group when they are done."

My first computer was a CARDIAC and it totally blew me away. I still see it in dreams, sometimes.

(Thanks, Tom!)

Video Link. Disturbing in a number of respects, and includes black-bar-censored manbuttocks. Metzger says, "They will be making a 'Play Him Off Keyboard Cat' of this quite soon, I predict... As seen on Graham Linehan's Twitter feed." Update: an unofficial PHOKC version.

It would appear that the folks in the newspaper business don't quite have their talking points set. Yesterday, we showed the letter from the Newspaper Association of America all about how the newspaper business was supposedly thriving despite what you may have heard. But clearly, not everyone in the industry agrees. A whole bunch of folks have sent in the Ars Technica article about the AP's supposed plans to go after sites that copy their articles, but we'd avoided posting it -- because there really weren't many new details beyond what they'd said before. However, reader Mark pointed to a rather interesting (and surprisingly honest) quote from the AP about why it wants to crack down on sites reposting some of its content:

"We need the money. The industry is falling apart."

So, on the same day, the NAA claims that the newspaper industry is thriving and profitable... and the AP insists its running out of money and the industry is collapsing. It would be great if, I dunno, one of these reporters could maybe dig into the actual numbers to figure out what's actually happening. Or is that not what the press does?

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Nintendo's E3 press conference was an eventful one, with announcements for a new Super Mario Bros. Wii, a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy, and a new entry into the Metroid franchise by Team Ninja. The new Mario Bros. game will be available for the holiday season, and the other two are scheduled for 2010. Nintendo also confirmed an updated version of the Wii Fit, called the Wii Fit Plus (trailer), due out this fall. A full list of Nintendo's announcements is available, which includes more games and new features. Live blogs of the press conference, with commentary and pictures, are up at Engadget and 1Up.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nintendo's E3 press conference was an eventful one, with announcements for a new Super Mario Bros. Wii, a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy, and a new entry into the Metroid franchise by Team Ninja. The new Mario Bros. game will be available for the holiday season, and the other two are scheduled for 2010. Nintendo also confirmed an updated version of the Wii Fit, called the Wii Fit Plus (trailer), due out this fall. A full list of Nintendo's announcements is available, which includes more games and new features. Live blogs of the press conference, with commentary and pictures, are up at Engadget and 1Up.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

---

A "highly confidential" 266-page report with details on hundreds of American nuclear sites and programs was this week discovered to have been accidentally published online by the federal government.

Each page is marked "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL SAFEGUARDS SENSITIVE" in all caps on the top of the page. The document also contained maps with the locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.

Steven Aftergood's (excellent) Secrecy News ezine picked it up first, and re-published the PDF. Snip from NYT story by William Broad:

As of Tuesday evening, the reasons for that action remained a mystery. On its cover, the document attributes its publication to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. But Lynne Weil, the committee spokeswoman, said the committee had "neither published it nor had control over its publication."

Gary Somerset, a spokesman for the printing office, said it had "produced" the document "under normal operating procedures" but had now removed it from its Web site pending further review.

The document contains no military information about the nation's stockpile of nuclear arms, or about the facilities and programs that guard such weapons. Rather, it presents what appears to be an exhaustive listing of the sites that make up the nation's civilian nuclear complex, which stretches coast to coast and includes nuclear reactors and highly confidential sites at weapon laboratories.

Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, revealed the existence of the document on Monday in Secrecy News, an electronic newsletter he publishes on the Web.

Mr. Aftergood expressed bafflement at its disclosure, calling it "a one-stop shop for information on U.S. nuclear programs."

U.S. Releases Secret List of Nuclear Sites Accidentally (NYT)

FAS.org still has a copy of the PDF up at the time of this BB blog post.

Salon's Kate Harding has collected a number of first-person accounts from women (and families) who were patients of the recently murdered Dr. George Tiller. As I understand it, he was one of only three providers of late-term abortions in the USA, and widely considered the most expert practitioner in this extremely controversial area of health care. Snip:

Susan Hill, President of the National Women's Health Foundation, who knew Dr. Tiller for over two decades and referred girls and women to his clinic, said in a phone interview, "We always sent the really tragic cases to Tiller." Those included women diagnosed with cancer who needed abortions to qualify for chemotherapy, women who learned late in their pregnancies that their wanted babies had fatal illnesses, and rape victims so young they didn't realize they were pregnant for months. "We sent him 11-year-olds, 12-year-olds who were way too far along for anybody [else] to see," said Hill. "Eleven-year-olds don't tell anybody. Sometimes they don't even know they've had a period."

Since the news of Dr. Tiller's murder broke, personal narratives from people who used his services have been appearing around the Web. A commenter at the blog Balloon Juice told the story of finding out in the eighth month of his wife's pregnancy that she was carrying conjoined twins. "Conjoined twins alone is not what was so difficult but the way they were joined meant that at best only one child would survive the surgery to separate them and the survivor would more than likely live a brief and painful life filled with surgery and organ transplants." They chose to terminate the much-wanted pregnancy, rather than bring a child into the world only to suffer and die. "The nightmare of our decision and the aftermath was only made bearable by the warmth and compassion of Dr. Tiller and his remarkable staff."

A commenter on Metafilter tells a similar story: "My wife and I spent a week in Dr. Tiller's care after we learned our 21 week fetus had a severe defect incompatible with life. The laws in our state prevented us from ending the pregnancy there, and Dr. Tiller was one of maybe three choices in the whole nation at that gestational age." He went on to share his memories of Dr. Tiller. "I remember him firmly stating that he regarded the abortion debate in the US to be about the control of women's sexuality and reproduction. I remember he spent over six hours in one-on-one care with my wife when there was concern she had an infection. We're talking about a physician here. Six hours.... The walls of the clinic reception and waiting room are literally covered with letters from patients thanking him. Some were heartbreaking -- obviously young and/or poorly educated people thanking Dr. Tiller for being there when they had no other options, explaining their family, church, etc. had abandoned them."

Where will women go now? (Salon, via @zephoria)

Also by Harding, in today's Salon:  "Protecting abortion providers: A friend of George Tiller's says the doctor knew something bad was coming. Why couldn't anyone stop it?"

Image of Dr. Tiller taken from a Wayback Machine cache of drtiller.com. Site is now offline.

Fox spokesdouche Bill O'Reilly produced a number of hateful, incendiary stories about Tiller. Here's an AP item about that. And here is another piece in the NYT.

Wired is discussing the suddenly relevant legal question of whether or not a security auditor should be held liable if it claims a company's data is secure, and then there's a data leak. The specific lawsuit in the spotlight right now involves Savvis -- who had audited the security of CardSystems' computer systems and determined that the company "had implemented sufficient security solutions and operated in a manner consistent with industry best practices." As you may remember, CardSystems was later found to have had a massive breach of credit card data (for a while, until recently surpassed, it was considered the largest ever credit card data breach). So Savvis is now being sued for claiming that CardSystems' systems were secure. This is certainly a tough one. Obviously, it's no good if security auditors are simply rubberstamping things -- but it's impossible to be fully confident that a system is secure, and there can always be a leak somewhere. So holding auditors liable for any such leak could make it prohibitive to even be an auditor -- with the end result being fewer auditors, and potentially less actual security. But... at the same time, you certainly want there to be some incentive for the auditors to take their job seriously. It seems like in the absence of clear negligence on the part of the auditor, that it's a bit extreme to put any liability on the auditor.

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(Image: "'62," (cc) TW Collins, via Flickr)

At the deathbed of General Motors, says Michael Moore, "the company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with—dare I say it—joy." As the federal government and courts "reorganize" the auto giant, Moore proposes a plan to President Obama "for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole." Here's the first of those nine steps:

Twenty years ago when I made Roger & Me, I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the president must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass-transit vehicles and alternative-energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks, and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war—a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford, and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true—that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

Goodbye, GM (Daily Beast)

BrianWCarver writes "The San Francisco Business Times covers a study by student researchers at UC Berkeley's School of Information pointing up the massive holes in privacy policies and protections of which US companies take advantage. The researchers have released a study and launched a Web site, knowprivacy.org, in which they found that Web bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were placed on 92 of the top 100 Web sites and 88 percent of the approximately 394,000 unique domains examined in the study. This larger data set was provided by the maintainer of the Firefox plugin Ghostery, which shows users which Web bugs are on the sites they visit. The study also found that while the privacy policies of many popular Web sites claim that the sites do not share information with third parties, they do allow third parties to place Web bugs on their sites (which collect this information directly, typically without users' knowledge) and share with corporate 'affiliates.' Bank of America, to take one extreme example, has more than 2,300 affiliates — and users cannot learn their identities. The full report and more findings are available from their Web site."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrianWCarver writes "The San Francisco Business Times covers a study by student researchers at UC Berkeley's School of Information pointing up the massive holes in privacy policies and protections of which US companies take advantage. The researchers have released a study and launched a Web site, knowprivacy.org, in which they found that Web bugs from Google and its subsidiaries were placed on 92 of the top 100 Web sites and 88 percent of the approximately 394,000 unique domains examined in the study. This larger data set was provided by the maintainer of the Firefox plugin Ghostery, which shows users which Web bugs are on the sites they visit. The study also found that while the privacy policies of many popular Web sites claim that the sites do not share information with third parties, they do allow third parties to place Web bugs on their sites (which collect this information directly, typically without users' knowledge) and share with corporate 'affiliates.' Bank of America, to take one extreme example, has more than 2,300 affiliates — and users cannot learn their identities. The full report and more findings are available from their Web site."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Check out parkour free running master Damien Walters's latest showreel. (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

I didn't get a chance to take a ton of photos at Maker Faire, but I did catch this dad and his daughter working on this electronics kit together in the Sparkfun tent. I didn't catch their names, so if that's you, post in the comments! I think there should be an international "teach your daughter to solder" day; I didn't learn until college!

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Cris Benton writes in:

This year’s event was fabulous and my kite aerial photography group had a fine time. I took a break from the KAP exhibit on Sunday and made a circuit through the Faire with my pole camera setup. I was able to stitch an interior 360 degree panorama in the large hall from 19 images taken at shutter speeds less than 1/30th of a second. At 17,000 pixels wide, the original panorama would print over six feet wide at high resolution and also works well as source for a QTVR.

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Sean over at the 463 blog has a cool post comparing mentions of "hired" vs. "laid off" on Facebook wall postings, and noticed a bit of a trend: Who knows if it's really indicative of anything in terms of whether the "worst" of the recession is over, but what I found worth noting was how cool it is that we can even analyze such data. Traditionally, trying to get a sense of whether or not more folks were getting laid off than hired, you were pretty much limited to various official stats that would be released. But thanks to the fact that people now share such things via Facebook or Twitter status, you suddenly can get at least a proxy bit of data. Now, there are obvious caveats, including the fact that the population on Facebook is clearly not a representative sample of the wider population (and, many of those most impacted by layoffs are probably least likely to be on Facebook), so I wouldn't go tossing aside national labor stats just yet -- but it is a sign of the new types of data that can increasingly be built from the fact that people are now sharing status information publicly.

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